Out of Sight Out of Mind (4 page)

‘Here you are, practically naked in my bed – one of my beds. And I still haven’t found out your name.’

For a second the eyes cleared, as if he understood her. He muttered something. She leaned forward to hear. It was barely a breath and then his eyes closed, shutting her out.

She frowned. He wasn’t making sense, or she hadn’t heard properly.

What she
thought
she’d heard him murmur was ‘Don’t know.’

Madison opened her eyes slowly. Light was filtering through the narrow gap she always left between the curtains. The enticing scent of brewing coffee drifted over her. She stretched luxuriously. It must be Sunday, or Neil would have woken her.

Her head jerked up. Neil was gone. There was no dent in the pillow next to hers. No pillow there at all. If she could smell coffee then there was only one person who could be making it.

She slid out of bed quickly, reaching for her robe.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, with his back to her, hands wrapped around a large mug. Her eyes travelled to the machine on the counter, staring. He’d figured out how to make it work. Wouldn’t you know? It had to be a guy thing. Sandra cleaned the monster every week, but it hadn’t been used since Neil—

She swallowed hard, eyes abruptly filling with tears.

‘The brew’s fresh. Want some?’ He was getting up to pour it for her, but she waved him back to his seat, keeping her head averted. Finding a mug and filling it gave her a moment.

‘Uh – good morning.’ She leaned against the counter behind him, sipping. That sweater had never suited Neil. She’d pulled it out last night because it had a fastening at the neck that would be easier on the injured shoulder. It looked better on him than it ever had on Neil.

The disloyalty of the thought rocked her.

Then he turned, and she got a look at him that wasn’t clogged with tears.

The beard was gone.

The face was all planes and angles, the mouth sensuous and firm. There were hollows where there shouldn’t be and dark circles under the eyes, but they hardly mattered.

Something in her belly clenched, then relaxed. Warm.

He was studying her, warily.

‘There was a razor, in the bathroom.’ He looked uncertain, misreading her silence. At least she hoped he was misreading it. With an effort she pulled herself together.

‘No problem … er … did you sleep all right? With the shoulder?’ She dragged out a chair and subsided into it. With luck he’d just think she wasn’t a morning person.

‘Yeah.’ The puzzled look was still in his eyes. ‘Thanks for putting me to bed.’

‘It seemed better than your choice. The bathroom floor,’ she reminded him, when he looked even more confused.

‘Oh – yes.’ He frowned. ‘I must have been pretty hard work last night.’

‘Some,’ she agreed. ‘Look, won’t you change your mind about seeing a doctor? I can run you down to A&E.’

‘No.’ He moved too quickly and winced.

‘You’re still in pain.’

‘No hospital. No doctor. I’ll take analgesics, if you have them, otherwise, I’ll manage.’ There was an edge of something in his voice that she didn’t understand. It sounded like desperation.

She got up and found some tablets, grimacing at the eagerness with which he accepted them. ‘It would be better if it was strapped up. You’d be more comfortable.’

She could see he wanted to shrug in response, but had more sense. His head was down, studying the mug.

‘Hospitals ask questions. They want to know things I can’t tell them.’

She hesitated, then decided to let it go.

‘Hungry?’

‘Starving.’ He looked up and grinned. It did something very peculiar to the base of her throat.

‘Breakfast, then.’ It came out husky.

Covering her confusion, she went to the fridge. Every week Sandra unpacked the shopping ordered online and delivered to the apartment. Every week Madison reminded herself to alter the automatic order that replaced all the things she and Neil had cooked and eaten together. Every week she forgot and Sandra took away or threw out the unused food. Now Madison was glad she’d had the lapse of memory.

She unshipped bacon, eggs, sausages and mushrooms.

‘Full English breakfast?’

‘Please.’ He got up. ‘More coffee?’ He refilled both mugs. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you, so I just put the machine on.’

Neil’s coffee maker, Neil’s razor, Neil’s clothes.

‘No problem.’

It felt strange to be cooking breakfast with a man sitting at the table again. Strange, but not wrong.

She dished up and put it in front of him. ‘Heart attack on a plate.’

‘Right now I don’t care if you’ve laced it with arsenic. It looks wonderful.’ She sat and watched him tackle the food with a concentration that gave her a totally unexpected sense of pleasure. Halfway through he looked up.

‘You’re not eating?’

‘Toast, in a minute.’

‘You should have some of this. You cooked it.’

He held out a forkful of bacon. After a second’s hesitation, she took it, then let him pass her a mushroom.

‘No more. You finish it.’ She licked sauce off her fingers. ‘We’re sharing breakfast and I don’t even know your name.’ She watched closely, knowing she wasn’t imagining his sudden stillness. ‘I’m Madison Albi.’

‘And I can call you Miss Albi, or is it Ms Albi?’ His eyes slid away from her.

‘Dr Albi, actually, but Madison will do.’

He’d pushed his plate away and was fiddling with his mug, which was empty.

Madison leaned back. ‘And you are?’ she prompted.

‘I can’t tell you.’ His eyes were everywhere but on her.

‘Can’t or won’t?’ She held her breath.

‘Can’t.’ Cornered, he had to look at her. The bleakness in his eyes flared in her heart. She could feel it spilling out of him, and the well of despair behind it. ‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know.’

He put up his hand to cover his eyes and she knew he was trying to block her out, but the emotion was too strong. It was seeping over the table to her, choking in her throat. She put out her hand, to touch him.

‘Take it easy.’

She sat quietly, trying to give him what strength she had, without invading him. It seemed to be working. There was colour coming back to his face. He dropped his hands.

‘Better?’ she asked softly.

‘Yes.’ The word was slow, considering. The dark glance was wary. ‘You get this a lot, do you? Strangers you’ve picked off the street eating breakfast and then telling you they don’t know who the fuck they are?’

‘I think I can safely say that this is a first.’ She paused. ‘If you’re trying to ask why I’m not more surprised, then I have to tell you that you did give me a strong clue.’

‘I did?’

Madison nodded. ‘Last night, when you were half-asleep, you said you didn’t know your name. I assumed I’d misheard, but when I thought about it some more, it made a certain kind of sense.’
But I wanted you to tell me.

‘I wish it did to me.’ He balanced his hands on the edge of the table, palm down. ‘I have no idea who I am. I have no memory of anything beyond the last three months.’

‘You just woke up one day, in an alley somewhere?’

‘Close to the railway line, near Paddington Station. Apparently I’d been sleeping in a nest of cardboard boxes. It looked like I’d been there for some time. I was cold, dirty and hungry. I was dressed in the clothes I had on last night – ragged and filthy – and I didn’t have any fucking idea who I was, or how I got there. It sounds impossible, but it’s the truth.’

When he looked up from studying his hands and she saw the desolation in his face, she knew it couldn’t be a lie.

‘There has to be a reason. A head injury?’

‘That’s what I thought, but there’s no evidence.’ He bit his lip. ‘I did go to the hospital. They couldn’t find anything. Eventually they turned me out for wasting their time.’ He held her eyes, steady. ‘I don’t blame them, but I’ve not been near one since.’ He shifted awkwardly and his eyes dropped away, but not before she saw the memory of anguish in them.

‘No.’ She tried to imagine how it would feel. Isolation. Panic. She couldn’t even come close. ‘You can’t remember anything at all?’

‘When I try, there’s just this … it’s like a wall. And … my head aches.’ His eyes skittered away for a moment. ‘Once I got as far as the letter J. I don’t know if it means anything. I have dreams sometimes, when I almost know—’

‘And then you wake up.’

The smile was heart-tuggingly rueful. ‘Yep.’

‘You think J is your name? Part of it?’

‘It’s all I have. What I’ve been using. J-A-Y,’ he spelled it out.

‘Jay.’

Madison got up, made toast and put it on plates, giving herself thinking time.

She put one plate in front of him and sat down again. ‘This isn’t my field, but I don’t see how you can suddenly become amnesiac without trauma. If there’s no physical injury—’

‘It has to be emotional trauma. My mind is running away from something.’ His voice grated.

‘Maybe,’ she admitted cautiously. ‘From your description, it seems as if you were already homeless when you woke, in some sort of trouble, anyway – so that wasn’t necessarily the result of the memory loss,’ she mused. ‘Substance abuse?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Nothing fits.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘No, you tell me. You say it’s like a wall?’

‘That I can’t get around. Do you want to come in and find out?’

Madison drew in her breath sharply. ‘You mean that?’

‘Why not? It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? So you can mess with my mind?’ His eyes were narrowed, sizing her up. ‘This is what you do for a living, right? You’re a scientist, doing mind experiments?’

Madison chewed her lip. The lab wasn’t a secret, just … discreet. Her other subjects knew exactly what went on, so why not him? There would be forms, waivers – and payment. She had arrangements in place. She could get him into a hostel – regular meals, health checks, the chance of a fresh start …

But if he is what you think he is, what he might be …

She sat forward, folding her hands. ‘What do you know about mind reading?’ She forced her voice to be crisp and businesslike, waiting for the laughter and the jokes.

‘What’s to know?’ He wasn’t laughing. ‘Officially it doesn’t exist – except in fiction or on the stage …’

Madison took a shallow breath. ‘But?’

He shrugged his good shoulder. ‘Military authorities are supposed to have been trying to make it work for years – if you believe the conspiracy theorists.’

‘Do you?’

‘Don’t know if I care either way.’ Something flickered across his eyes. He frowned. ‘I suppose … Maybe there are more things on earth, Horatio, and all that – a lot of people believe in that thought-reading stuff.’ The frown deepened. ‘I don’t know … I suppose … it’s sort of like science …
Science
is interesting.’ He focused on her face. ‘You’re the real deal though. ESP, telepathy, whatever. You can actually
do
it.’

‘Mind reading isn’t exactly ESP, or telepathy. Not the way that I do it.’

‘No?’ There was interest in his eyes. Genuine interest, not the look she so often encountered.
The one that said ‘humour her’. ‘
What
is
it like?’ His eyes were sharp and alert, fixed on her face.

‘It’s more a matter of focus.’ How to explain the unexplainable? ‘I don’t channel into someone’s mind and straight into their thoughts, word for word. I pick up … brainwaves, I suppose you’d call them, which is a kind of telepathy – but to actually read, that requires a degree of concentration. It’s like a probe, a direction of energy—’
Why are you sharing this? You
never
share this.

He hadn’t noticed her sudden hesitation. ‘It’s not a random thing.’ He nodded, clearly pondering. ‘You have to be able to process and handle raw data. What sort of results are you getting?’ His attention sharpened on her again. Her face warmed under the intensity of his stare.

‘I …’ she hesitated, confused.
But what’s the point of stopping now, if he’s going to be part of it?
Her shoulders relaxed a fraction. ‘Nothing is clear cut.’ She couldn’t help the tiny sigh. ‘I get results, but they’re tangled, impressionistic. When people imagine mind reading they think of a verbatim record – monitoring exactly what’s taking place in someone’s brain. For me it’s more about emotion than logic. I sense what people are feeling.’

Abruptly the wash of pain that had flooded out of him last night came back to her, leaving an acrid taste in her mouth. She picked up her mug and drank the dregs of her coffee, bitterness chasing acrid. ‘The facility I work for is a charitable foundation, researching the heightened use of the senses in a therapeutic context.’ She stopped, checking on his expression. The official-speak that she always found mildly embarrassing didn’t seem to bother him. ‘I’ve done some work on memory, but my particular area of research at present is connection. Basically, I’m trying to find ways of making mind-links that might eventually be used for therapeutic purposes. But that’s a long way off.’ This time she held in the inevitable sigh. ‘So far, simply making coherent links is proving difficult enough.’

‘Not a vast amount of messing with people’s minds, then?’ Now he
was
grinning.

‘My work is still in development,’ she defended herself, knowing that her back had stiffened. She went through this at every annual review, defending tiny increments of progress, expecting each time to be challenged.

‘Maybe you’re looking at the wrong minds?’

‘I think you may be right.’ She had already begun to consider the question. ‘I may need to widen my subject pool.’

‘Starting with me.’

‘You … I’ve never encountered a subject with the kind of response you have. I’ve never known a subject who can feel when I’m in their head.’

‘I’m special, then, am I?’

‘Yes.’ She looked into his eyes. Felt a shiver, deep down in her abdomen. Some of it was attraction, no question, but what else? Excitement, anticipation … fear.

This is the most dangerous man you have ever encountered, and he doesn’t even have a name.

The thought turned her cold, then hot. She should walk away. As a woman, she was ready to go. As a scientist?
Never
. She’d protected herself all these years.
You just have to handle this.

‘I think maybe I’m flattered.’ His mouth twisted, half grin, half grimace. ‘Whatever you need to do, I’m willing.’ His voice grated, rough edged. ‘Feel free to mess. If you find anything in there, let me know.’ The flippancy didn’t quite hide the pain.