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He rang Mrs Kroker's doorbell and Lloyd opened the door almost immediately.

‘Lloyd!'

‘Yes?' said Lloyd. Today he was wearing a plain black T-shirt and black jeans. A small gold crucifix was hanging around his neck.

‘I'm back, Lloyd. As you can see for yourself, I didn't make it.'

‘Did you want something?' Lloyd asked him.

‘Well, for starters, is it OK if I come in? That's unless the gorgeous Mrs K is still in her night attire.'

‘Did you want something?' Lloyd repeated.

‘I only wanted to tell you what happened, that's all. That road that's signposted for Route Ninety-seven and Weed – that road doesn't go to Route Ninety-seven and Weed. It goes right around in a damn great circle and comes back here to Trinity.'

‘I see.'

Michael stared at him intently. ‘Are you OK, Lloyd? You haven't been smoking the old sensemarilla, have you?'

‘Did you want something?' said Lloyd.

‘Who is it, Lloyd?' called a woman's voice, from the living room. It wasn't Mrs Kroker. It was a very much younger woman. ‘Can you close the front door, please – there's a terrible draft!'

‘Lloyd,' Michael insisted, ‘you need to know what happened. They were watching us the whole time on CCTV. They could have stopped us at any time they wanted to, but for some reason they didn't. Mr Vane said they let me do it as part of my treatment, but that didn't make any sense at all. Natasha Kerwin could have died.'

‘OK,' said Lloyd. ‘I'll see you around.'

‘Aren't you going to let me in?' asked Michael. ‘I want to talk to you about what we can do next. We really need to find out what the hell is going on here, Lloyd. When I walked down here, everybody was pointing at me, you know, like I'm some kind of leper or something. Every single person, in every house.'

‘Lloyd – the door!' the woman's voice called out again, much more impatiently this time.

‘I got it!' Lloyd called back.

He started to close the door in Michael's face, but Michael stepped forward quickly and jammed his foot in it.

‘Listen to me, Lloyd. I need your help. I can't do this on my own. They've told me that Natasha Kerwin's beginning to recover. If that's true, then I stand a much better chance of getting her out of here. But like before, I'm going to need some kind of diversion, which is where you come in.'

‘I'll see you around, Greg,' said Lloyd. Michael looked at his eyes and the pupils were like pinpricks. He repeatedly pushed at the door, trying to close it, as if he wasn't aware that Michael's foot was wedging it open.

‘
Lloyd!
' the woman shouted, and now the living-room door was thrown open and she came storming out into the hallway.

Her hair was curly, which it hadn't been before, but Michael recognized her instantly. It was his sister – or his so-called sister – Sue.

M
ichael said, ‘OK. What the hell is going on here?'

‘You'd better come inside,' said Sue. ‘We don't want Mrs Kroker to catch her death. Let him in, Lloyd.'

Lloyd opened the door wider and allowed Michael to step into the hallway.

‘Who's that, at the door?' called out Mrs Kroker from the living room. ‘Lloyd, are you going to answer the door? Lloyd, do you hear me? Lloyd!'

Sue ignored her and said to Michael, ‘Come into the kitchen. I think Mrs Kroker has had enough upsets for one day. Lloyd – go check on her, will you?'

‘Sure,' said Lloyd. He went into the living room and closed the door behind him.

‘Do you want to sit down?' asked Sue, pulling out a chair from the kitchen table.

‘You're not really my sister, are you?' said Michael.

‘No, Greg, I'm not. You do have a sister, but she and her family live in Guatemala, and there's no way she could have come to see you on a regular basis.'

‘So – what? So you've just blatantly been
pretending
to be my sister? I mean, why? What's the point of it?'

‘I'm sorry you had to find out this way,' Sue told him. ‘I'm sorry that you had to find out at all – at least until you could have remembered for yourself that I'm not really your sister. It's all part of the therapy, having a family member to show you photographs and tell you stories about yourself when you were younger. It helps you to rebuild your inner perception of who you are.'

‘But it's a
lie
, for Christ's sake! It's an out-and-out deception! Catherine Connor keeps telling me that I shouldn't create false memories … but here you are, you're creating a false memory
for
me.'

‘Not at all,' said Sue. ‘I'm simply acting as a guide. Doctor Connor asks you questions about yourself, to see if she can reactivate your memories, while I actually show you what your life was like before your accident. She and I are both therapists, in our different ways. It's an accredited technique, believe me.'

‘So when I called you on the phone, was that you or not? The number had an Oakland area code.'

‘That
was
me, Greg. But your call was diverted.'

‘And when I spoke to my mother, that wasn't my mother?'

‘No. It was one of our senior nursing staff.'

‘So where did you get all of this background information about my life? Where did you get all those photographs from?'

‘From your real sister, of course, and other people who knew you. School friends, colleagues from work, girlfriends.'

‘Did I ever have a girlfriend called Natasha Kerwin?'

She shook her head. ‘I'm sorry. Doctor Connor told me that you had a strong false memory that you used to know her, but no. I don't know how you could have gotten hold of that idea. Maybe she just looks like some girl you used to go out with.'

‘So what about Jack? What happened to him? And Lloyd? Lloyd's gone all weird since last night. He hardly seems to know who I am.'

‘Greg – so many of the people who live here in Trinity are in one form of recovery or another. Both Jack and Lloyd have suffered something of a relapse. Jack's was physical … Lloyd's, as you can see, was mental. I'm not blaming you, but when you asked them to join you in abducting Natasha Kerwin, that put a great strain on both of them. We're sure they'll improve, in time.'

Michael said nothing for almost half a minute, staring at Sue and breathing heavily, as if he had a head cold.

Then he said, ‘Bullshit.'

Sue shrugged and gave him a slanted smile. ‘You can think what you like, Greg. But I'm sure Doctor Connor has told you that the more resistant you are to us helping you, the longer it's going to take for you to get your memory back.'

‘It's still bullshit. I don't believe any of it.'

‘Then what
do
you believe? Tell me – it could help.'

‘I don't believe that my name is Gregory Merrick. I don't believe that I'm a marine engineer. I
do
believe that I know Natasha Kerwin. In fact I believe that Natasha Kerwin and me used to be friends. Maybe even more than friends.'

‘OK. Is there anything else?'

‘Yes. There's one more thing. I don't believe that if I leave Trinity it's going to be disastrous, which is what Doctor Hamid told me. And Isobel said that I
can't
leave, although she didn't say why. I believe that I
can
leave, so long as I can find the way out of here, and even if I'm still suffering from amnesia, I believe that I'll be able to survive.'

‘You can see Natasha Kerwin tomorrow morning.'

‘
What?
'

Sue nodded, and kept up that slanted smile. ‘You can see her. You never knew her, but you obviously find her very attractive, which is why your mind is telling you that you once had a relationship. Natasha is going to need a lot of support and encouragement to help her to recover, and who better to do that than you?'

‘Are you serious?'

‘Absolutely. And both Doctor Connor and I believe that it may help
you
, too. As you get to know Natasha better, you should gradually come to realize that you didn't actually have a relationship with her, after all, and that will strengthen your ability to distinguish between real memories and false memories.'

‘But if I do that I'll have to stay here, in Trinity?'

‘For the time being, yes.'

Michael thought:
If I do stay here for a few weeks longer, until Natasha Kerwin recovers, I can plan how to get her away from Trinity without us being intercepted
,
or driving around in a fifty-mile circle, like we did last night.

‘OK,' he said.

‘You mean it? You'd really like to give it a try? In that case, you can see her at the clinic tomorrow, when you go for your appointment with Doctor Connor, and after that you can visit her whenever you like, until she's ready to come home with you, which shouldn't be more than three or four days.'

‘You mean back to Isobel Weston's house?'

‘Of course. You still need Isobel to take care of you, and in her own way she still needs you.'

Michael wondered if he ought to ask Sue about Isobel, and how cold she was, but then he thought:
No, don't rock the boat
. He didn't want anything to make Natasha Kerwin's doctors change their minds about allowing him to look after her.

He did say, though, ‘I guess you know that Isobel wants me to marry her. Well – everybody else in Trinity seems to have heard.'

‘Yes. She said that to Emilio, too. She'll get over it. It's only because she's feeling insecure.'

‘So what should I say to her?'

‘Tell her that you will, in the summer. Tell her that there's nothing more romantic than a June wedding.'

He walked back up to Isobel's house. It had grown so dark now that the street lights had switched themselves on, even though it was only quarter of four in the afternoon. The drapes were drawn tight across the living-room windows of every house he passed. He felt as if – having been accused – he was now being ostracized. In some ways that left him feeling even more isolated and even more unsettled than before. He had nobody to rely on any longer, like Jack or Lloyd, and everybody else seemed to be lying to him. Not only that, they all seemed to be telling him different lies, which made it impossible even to
guess
what the truth was.

‘How was your walk?' asked Isobel, as he came in.

‘Interesting,' he said. ‘Educational, even.'

He sat down on the couch next to her to unlace his boots and she shuffled up close to him and ruffled his hair and kissed him. ‘Did you think about you-know-what?'

‘About supper, yes. I thought, I could murder one of Isobel's beef enchiladas.'

She gave him a playful slap and said, ‘
No
– I mean you-know-what with a capital M.'

‘Sure, yes. And the answer is – yes. We could get married in the summer, couldn't we? June weddings, they're so romantic. And June is only five months away – less than that – four-and-a-half.'

Isobel pressed her hand over her mouth and her eyes filled with tears.

At last she took her hand away and said, ‘You mean it? You really mean it? You'll marry me?'

‘I couldn't think of any reason not to.'

She put her arms around him and kissed him again and again. ‘Let's go to bed,' she said. ‘Let's go to bed now! I'm going to suck you till you scream for mercy!'

The following day was just as gloomy and a thick wet snow was coming down. Michael sat in Doctor Connor's office watching it through the window behind her. It looked as if it were falling in slow-motion.

‘Sue told me about your conversation at Mrs Kroker's house,' said Catherine. She looked a little more relaxed today, in an oatmeal-colored sweater and a brown skirt, and a pair of Ugg boots, stained with dark wet blotches from the snow. ‘She said that you seemed to be very understanding about her pretending to be your sister.'

‘Yes,' said Michael.

‘She also said that you would be happy to help Natasha Kerwin to convalesce.'

‘Yes. Yes, I am.'

‘She explained that it could be very good for you, too? That it could help you to get your memory back?'

‘Yes.'

Catherine stood up. ‘In that case, why don't we skip the question-and-answer session for today and go see her?'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, really. Come on.'

She left her office and walked ahead of him along the corridor that led to Natasha Kerwin's room. Over her shoulder she said, ‘We're
so
excited how quickly she's recovered. You won't believe it when you see her.'

She knocked on the door and then pushed it open. Natasha Kerwin was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows. She was still attached to the Veris monitor, but she looked very much better. In fact, she looked even more like the girl that Michael believed he had loved. She had a white gauze bandage around her head, but underneath it her straight blond hair was clean and brushed and shiny. Her eyes were bright, and although she was still quite pale, she had a touch of rose-petal pink on each cheek. Instead of a hospital gown, she was wearing a flowery cotton nightdress with a ruffled collar and puffy sleeves.

She was talking to Doctor Hamid and two nurses who were standing around her bed. Doctor Hamid was telling her, ‘—you
will
, Natasha, I swear to you – just as soon as we are happy that all of your vital signs are completely stable.'

When Michael and Catherine entered her room, Natasha gave them only a cursory glance. She had probably had doctors and nurses and orderlies walking in and out all day and two more weren't anything exceptional. But as they came up to her bed and stood beside Doctor Hamid, she turned her head slowly around and looked up at Michael, and this time her eyes widened and her mouth opened as if she were about to say something, but couldn't think of the words.