Yesterday by Felicia Yap
For Alex and Han Shih
Chapter Zero
A village near Cambridge
Two years before the murder
Let me tell you a couple of horrible secrets. I’ll start by showing you a photograph.
This is me, a long time ago. I had a flat chest and protruding ears. If you look closely, you can see that I once had hope in my eyes and fire in my soul. Today, both the hope and the fire are gone. Wiped out by years of institutionalization.
Here’s a second photograph. Oh, I see you flinching. That’s understandable. It is, after all, a photograph of you. Your own mug shot, taken recently. You don’t look too bad here. Blond hair cascading down your shoulders, impressive tits. Guess what? I’m going to transform myself so I’ll look exactly like you. I’m going to bleach my hair and get boobs like yours.
Is that a frown I see on your forehead? You don’t get it, do you? You’re wondering: Why would I want to look like you?
Let me explain. I remember everything. Really, I do. I’m the only person in this world who remembers her past. All of it. Mostly in vivid detail. I’m not kidding. And that makes me pretty damned special.
You don’t believe me, do you?
That’s understandable, too. Like the five billion Monos around us, you only remember what happened yesterday. You wake up each morning with facts in your head. Carefully curated information about yourself and other people. You stagger from your bed to the iDiary on your gleaming kitchen counter. To that electronic device of yours, your meager lifeline to the past. Desperate to learn the few pitiful details you’ve written down the night before. Eager to add them to your memories of what happened yesterday—and to the other cold, sterile facts you’ve learned about yourself.
Pretty rubbish, isn’t it?
And you’re even used to this, aren’t you? Because you’ve been doing it since the age of eighteen, after your hapless little brain switched itself off. No wonder you’re envious of the few Duos whose short-term memories are slightly better than yours. But you are all the same.
Equally pathetic.
Let me add a simple truth, since you’re getting to know the real me.
When you remember everything, you recall what other people have done to you (even if they don’t remember it themselves). Down to the smallest, most gruesome detail. Which causes you to desire vengeance if they’ve hurt you bad. Like, really, really bad. Like, say, if they caused you to end up in a mental asylum for seventeen years. It makes you yearn, during the darkest hours of the night when the moon’s smile has faded and the owls have fallen silent, to set matters straight.
When you remember everything, you will also get away with everything. Like revenge, for instance.
Fucking convenient, isn’t it?
This is precisely why I, Sophia Alyssa Ayling, will get away with it.
Vengeance would be nice. Especially in view of what you’ve done to me. All the terrible little things you’ve been guilty of over the years. I recall each and every one of them. It’s the sum total of remembered grievances that makes hatred potent. Oh, yes. The act of revenge will be easy.
Because no one will remember what I’m going to do to you.
Except for me.
Happiness is a process. Unhappiness is a state.
—Diary of Mark Henry Evans
Chapter One
Claire
A man is whimpering in the kitchen. He is also blocking my way to the marble counter where my iDiary lies, its LED indicator still flashing electric purple. I squint; he’s clutching his left hand and wincing in pain. Blood is dripping from his forefinger. He’s surrounded by the remains of a teapot.
“What happened?” I ask.
“It slipped,” he says, mouth taking on a stricken line.
“Let me have a look,” I say, stepping around ceramic shards. As I move towards him, the gold ring on his left hand mocks me with a sharp glint. It causes the main facts I’ve learned about my husband over the years to spin back to mind. Name: Mark Henry Evans. Age: forty-five. Occupation: novelist hoping to be the next MP for South Cambridgeshire. We got married at 12:30 on 30 September 1995, in the chapel of Trinity College. Nine people attended our wedding. Mark’s parents had refused to come. I promised Chaplain Walters that I will tell myself each morning that I love Mark. The cost of the wedding was ￡678.29. We last had sex more than two years ago, at 22:34 on 11 January, 2013. He was done in six and a half minutes.
I haven’t yet worked out if these multiple facts I’ve retained about my husband should make me feel bad, sad—or mad.
“Tried to catch it midfall,” says Mark. “But it bounced off the dishwasher.”
I study the gash on his forefinger. It’s almost an inch long. I lift my eyes to Mark’s face, taking in the heavy creases above his brow. The troubled wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes. His twisted lips. I remember him tossing about in bed last night, as if he was pursued by something in his dreams.
“Looks nasty,” I say. “I’ll get a bandage.”
Turning my back on him, I hurry up the stairs. Fact: The first-aid kit is stored in the cabinet next to the bathroom mirror. Before I reach up, I pause in front of my reflection. The eyes staring back at me are different from the haunted eyes I saw yesterday. Today’s face has clearer pupils. Yet its cheeks are swollen. The skin around its eyes is puffy.
I cried myself to sleep last night. I spent most of the day in bed.
I wonder why. I stare hard at the distended image in the mirror, willing the relevant facts to come to my mind. But the reasons behind yesterday’s misery are flitting beyond reach, like the wings of an elusive butterfly. I only remember hiding, sobbing into my pillow, and refusing to eat. I grimace in defeat; the face in the mirror frowns back. Yesterday’s unhappiness must have been caused by something that happened two days ago. But what?
I don’t recall what occurred the day before yesterday. Because I can’t. I only remember what happened yesterday.
My husband needs me, I tell myself with a sigh. I remove the kit from the cabinet and head downstairs. Mark is sitting at the kitchen table, nursing the injured finger in his right hand. His lips are still pulled back in a tortured grimace.
“Let me see to it,” I say, opening the kit.
Mark winces as I wipe the blood away with a cotton swab. The cut’s much deeper than I thought.
“I ought to disinfect it first.” I pull out a small bottle of antiseptic from the kit and uncork its stopper.
“No need to fuss.”
“I’m not having you walking around with an infected finger.”
“It’s just a small cut.”