One by One (6 page)

‘So how have you been, Matt?' he asked me, his voice soft, yet sonorous and reassuring. We'd been seeing each other twice a week every week here at my sister's, and this had always been his opening line.

‘OK, I guess. Nothing much changes really.' Which up until a few days ago had been the truth. Now, though, I was less sure.

‘I sense you're looking a little despondent today,' he remarked. ‘Don't lose hope, whatever you do. Recovery from the kind of immense brain trauma you suffered takes time. Sometimes months. Sometimes years. We've both got to be patient through this process.'

The brain trauma he was referring to was my car accident. Early one morning some months back, I was driving in a semirural stretch of Hampshire when my car left the road, went down an embankment, and hit a tree. For some reason I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, which possibly saved my life, because I was thrown clear of the car, straight through the windscreen, and was twenty feet away from it when it burst into flames. I was in a coma for three months, and when I woke up my life was this.

A blank slate.

Without doubt, the most lonely feeling in the world.

‘I know, I know,' I said, with more than a hint of exasperation. ‘It's just we don't seem to be making any real progress.'

‘Well we are,' he countered firmly. ‘We've managed to get you to remember growing up with your sister; the camping trips with the family when you were a boy. We're slowly piecing together your childhood, Matt. And we're using that as a foundation to allow us to reconstruct the memories of adulthood, and finally get your memory back altogether. When people suffer from the kind of amnesia you do, the memories often come back very slowly, starting with the earliest first. We may never solve the mystery of what you were doing on the road that night, we may never remember the few months of your life prior to the accident, but we will return your life to you, Matt. You have to believe that. It's like a box we've simply got to prise open.'

I sighed. ‘I'm trying.'

‘So nothing's come to you since we last spoke?'

I paused. Did I tell him or didn't I? ‘Everything we talk about here is confidential, isn't it? It can't go any further than these four walls?'

He gave me a strong, reassuring smile. ‘Exactly. I'm bound by oath not to repeat anything you tell me to anyone. Has something come back to you then?'

I paused again. Because the thing was, I didn't entirely trust Dr Bronson. It was hard to say why. He acted genuine enough, but maybe that was the problem: he came across like an actor playing a part. Yet maybe that was what all therapists were like with their patients. In the end, I bit the bullet, figuring I didn't have anything to lose by telling him. ‘I've had a dream.'
Jesus, the dream.
I took a deep breath. ‘The same one, twice in the last four nights.'

‘Did you write everything down like I suggested?' Dr Bronson always suggested. Never told.

‘I didn't have to. I can remember the whole thing vividly. And it was exactly the same both nights. I never have recurring dreams. I never really dream. But this …'

Now, suddenly, Dr Bronson looked really interested. He wrote something down on his yellow A4 notepad. ‘Tell me about it. Start from the beginning and take me through every detail. You know, we might have a breakthrough here, Matt.'

That, worryingly, was what I was afraid of. I took a deep breath. Then I began.

‘I'm in an unfamiliar house. The lights are on and it's night. The dream starts with me standing outside a half-open door. I push it open all the way and I notice that I'm wearing gloves. The lights are on inside the room and I feel a sense of terrible foreboding as I walk slowly inside.

‘The room's a mess. A lamp's been knocked over and a glass of wine's been spilled on the carpet. But my attention's focused on a naked woman who's lying sprawled out on her back on a huge double bed. She's dead and the sheets round her head are covered in blood. As I get closer, I can see she's been beaten over the head with something and I'm pretty sure her throat's been cut too. She's young, somewhere in her twenties, with long dark hair and curves in all the right places, and I feel a pang of something I can't quite put my finger on. It's more than sadness, but it's not quite guilt. I touch the skin of her neck with a gloved finger, feeling for a pulse, but to be honest, I already know she's dead, because I can actually smell the odour of shit in the air, and she's not moving at all. Her eyes are closed and it looks like she's asleep, but when I put a hand to her mouth, I can't feel any breath.

‘I turn and leave the room, still feeling this strange pang. Then I'm back in the hallway of this house. It's a big, flashy-looking place, with marble flooring and arty paintings on the walls – you know, the sort that are all bright patterns, but not actually of anything. Everything screams money, and everything looks pristine and brand-new.

‘I walk down the hall, and it's then that I hear a noise behind me. I'm scared, I know that, and I turn round quickly.' I stopped speaking for a moment. I could hear my heart quickening as I recalled the scene. ‘That's when I see her. She's blonde, dressed in black lace underwear – a bra and panties, nothing else – and she's sitting on the floor against the wall. I wonder what she's doing. And then she turns her head my way, very slowly, and I get a look at her face properly for the first time. And you know what? She's utterly beautiful, like the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life, and I get this really strong physical hit in my gut. But the thing is, she's hurt. There's a gaping wound on the side of her head and it's bleeding all over her hair and down on to her shoulder. And her eyes are wide and staring.'

I paused again because the memory was bringing back that same feeling in my gut, making me breathe in short, rapid starts. I was beginning to sweat too. I couldn't work out whether it was excitement at the fact that I could actually picture this scene, and that it felt real, or something else. I shut my eyes, trying to remember everything as it happened, trying to hold the memory absolutely still amid the fog inside my brain.

‘Take your time,' said Dr Bronson. He said something else too, but I didn't hear it. I was too busy concentrating.

I took a deep breath. ‘And then this girl's eyes focus as she sees me properly for the first time, and her expression changes. First, it's surprise. Then shock. And then something else.'

‘What?'

My insides tightened. This was why I hadn't wanted to talk to him about it, but I ploughed on regardless. ‘Fear. She's looking at me and she's frightened. But it's more than that. She's absolutely terrified. I can see it in her eyes. And it's me she's terrified of, even though I don't know why.' I took another deep breath. ‘Then I turn away from her and I catch my reflection in a full-length mirror. I look different. It's me, but at the same time it's not me. My face is thinner, and my cheekbones are more pronounced. My hair's shorter too. But it's the expression I'm wearing that I really notice. It's cold. Hard. There's no humanity there. And yet inside I'm feeling all these emotions.'

‘What kind of emotions?'

‘I'm not sure exactly. I know I feel angry for some reason. And panicky too, like I'm caught up in something running out of control. But it's not just that.' I took a moment to think hard, trying to take myself back into the dream. I pictured the blonde girl again. Her deep blue eyes, the gentle curve of her lips. And immediately I knew what it was. ‘Infatuation,' I told him, a certainty in my words. ‘I'm in love with this woman. And not just in the dream. I've met her before. I know her.' I emphasized the last three words, almost spat them out.

‘Try to think, Matt,' said Bronson soothingly. ‘Where do you know her from?'

Once again I concentrated, summoning up every ounce of willpower as I tried to squeeze out anything important that might be drifting on the misty edges of my subconscious. But nothing happened, and the effort tired me. I shook my head, picked up the glass of water on the table next to me and took a big gulp. ‘Right now, that's all I can tell you.'

‘We often find with amnesiacs that dreams take on a very realistic quality precisely because real memories are so scarce,' said Dr Bronson.

‘It felt real.'

‘Were there any differences between the two dreams? Any details that were in one but not in the other? You see, Matt, it's very rare to have exactly the same dream twice.'

‘It was exactly the same one,' I said emphatically. ‘Down to the last detail. I told you, I've never had a recurring dream before and I don't even dream that much. I mean, what is there to dream about? My subconscious is a pretty empty space so it's not like I've got a great deal of available material. But this was different. Very different.'

‘Well, we know that at some point before your accident you were a police officer in London,' Dr Bronson ventured. ‘Could the dream have something to do with anything you worked on?'

‘I really don't know,' I said, because I didn't. I had no memory at all of being a police officer. According to Jane, my sister, on whom I relied for most of my information about my past, I worked in uniform in London for approximately five years, having had a career change from being a teacher. I was unmarried, had no steady girlfriend, and no one knew where I was going, where I'd just been, or why I was carrying no ID when the car I was driving careered off the road on that fateful night five months earlier.

Wiping out everything I'd ever known.

‘This is where the hypnotherapy really helps us,' said Dr Bronson, leaning forward. ‘Let's put you under and see if we can extract some more from this dream. See where it leads us.'

Part of the way through each of our sessions, Dr Bronson engaged in hypnotherapy with me. In other words, he put me into a trance. I never remembered anything about this part of the session; it remained a blank space, like my memory. I knew it was meant to be a way of pulling up memories from deep in my subconscious because Dr Bronson always told me so. Except he'd turned up nothing, other than some images from my childhood that were so vague I wasn't even sure they were real.

Part of me wanted to cooperate, to find out what this dream related to, but I was scared of where it might lead. Because if it was based on real events, then I was somehow involved – either directly or indirectly – in a murder. But my caution ran deeper than that. I was feeling less and less comfortable allowing Dr Bronson to put me in a position where I was completely vulnerable.

‘I'm sorry, Doc, I don't think I can handle it today,' I said, suppressing a fake yawn. ‘I don't feel too good, to be honest. I could do with lying down.'

‘It would really help if you could stay awake for the next half an hour, Matt. This is all for your own good.'

He was eyeing me with suspicion now. I didn't want to upset him because it was possible I was wrong, and right then he was still the best hope of getting my old life back.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘We've got a real opportunity here, and you know one of the things I like about you is how determined you always are to cooperate. This could be a real opening for us.'

He leaned across and turned me gently so I was facing him. He was looking into my eyes now, his own eyes magnified by the lenses in his glasses, and suddenly an insistent voice coming from somewhere inside told me to get out of there.

I relied on my instincts. These days I had nothing else.

‘I'm sorry, Doc,' I said, breaking free from his gaze and putting some distance between the two of us. ‘I honestly feel really sick.'

‘You'll feel better once I get you under.'

His voice was more insistent now, and I didn't like the expression on his face. It was no longer comforting and avuncular. Although he was attempting to hide it behind a tight smile, there was an almost desperate eagerness there.

‘No,' I said, shaking my head and trying to look as ill as possible. ‘I don't think I will.'

Dr Bronson's eager expression disappeared and was replaced with a disapproving one which I guessed he reserved for his most uncooperative patients. ‘Are you still taking your medication?' he asked.

‘Of course I am,' I told him, which strictly speaking was true. As it happened, I didn't have much choice in the matter. Because of the seriousness of my memory loss, Jane had brought in a live-in male nurse called Tom who was there to help look after me, and it was Tom who gave me the medication. He always watched me put the pills in my mouth and waited while I swallowed them with a glass of water. He then checked inside my mouth just to make sure they'd gone down. He always did it in a friendly way, with a few laughs, like we were mates rather than patient and carer, but lately I'd been watching him more closely – subtly of course, because I didn't want to raise any suspicion – and the more I saw of him, the less he convinced me in his role. He was a big guy, early to mid-thirties, with a hard, lived-in face, the chiselled jaw of the naturally fit, and a scar on his chin. He reminded me of one of those buff actors they use in the war movies I watched a lot these days. Plus he'd taken up with my sister – I heard them humping at night occasionally – which couldn't be that ethical, and wasn't the behaviour I'd necessarily expect from a nurse. Although what the hell did I know any more? Anyway, in the past week I'd decided that I had to find a way to keep the pills out of my system, because that same gut instinct that was at work in this room was telling me in very loud words that they were hindering, not helping, my condition.

It wasn't a decision I'd come to easily. I'd been totally reliant on Jane, Tom and Dr Bronson. They were my crutch, my defence against a dark, foreboding outside world in which I was a complete stranger. Put bluntly, they were all I'd got.