I’m an honest person at heart. But people can only be as honest as others allow them to be.
I can’t remember the first time I didn’t remember something. But I can remember the first time my parents noticed I didn’t remember something. In the hours after mock examination results were revealed, sometime before the weight of GCSEs had really landed on me, I casually told my parents that my grades were failing ones. It was nothing, and I said it like it was nothing, midway through scooping mashed potato into my mouth while we all sat around the dinner table. But Mum froze.
‘What do you mean, failing?’
I laughed. ‘Failing like, not passing.’
‘So, how are you going to get into college?’ Dad asked. ‘A Levels, remember?’
‘I’ll worry about that in the next two years.’ I set my fork down. ‘Come on, they’re nothing. Even the teachers told us not to worry about them.’
‘Because your teachers won’t have to support you once you’re kicked out of school,’ Mum answered, her tone rising and rippling with panic around the edges.
‘How am I suddenly getting kicked out of school?’
‘Don’t talk to your mother like she’s an idiot,’ Dad chimed in.
‘Well she’s act–’
‘Don’t you dare,’ Mum cut me off.
Things were tense the following morning. Mum would usually set out breakfast things galore to give me and Dad options, but there was nothing more than bread and spread available. Dad had already left for work when I got downstairs but Mum was there, sat at the table as though she were waiting for me.
‘Is everything okay?’ I asked, with my back to her while I pulled a mug from the cupboard. I didn’t even wait for a response before adding, ‘Do you want a tea?’ When she didn’t answer I turned around and spotted that she was already holding a mug, cradled between her hands like a small bird. ‘Oh, sorry, never mind.’
Mum didn’t say a word while I boiled water, added the teabag, dug out the milk; nor while I loaded the toaster with bread. She waited until I was sat across from her, tearing the crusts from my toast.
‘I think we need to talk.’
‘Okay,’ I carried on eating all the while, ‘about what?’
She narrowed her eyes at me, as though searching me for something. ‘Last night.’
‘About my mock exams, you mean?’
‘Sort of about that, but also about…’ she petered out. ‘The way you spoke, last night.’
‘I’m genuinely sorry about that, Mum.’ I washed my toast down with two mouthfuls of tea. I didn’t really have time for a long apology if I wanted to catch my car-share to school. ‘I know that I could have found a better way to tell you.’
‘It wasn’t the telling that was the problem.’
‘Then…’ I let my question go unfinished.
‘You don’t see a problem with last night?’ she asked, and she looked genuinely confused. Although my expression stayed blank. I shook my head gently and waited for more from her. She eventually sank back in her seat and repeated, ‘You don’t see a problem with last night.’ And it didn’t feel like a question anymore.
A car horn sounded from outside and I slugged down the rest of my tea.
‘I’m really sorry, Mum, honestly. We can talk more later? Love you.’
Mum didn’t need to talk to me later, though, she needed to talk to Dad. I overhead them; that is, I sat at the top of the stairs like a small child and listened.
‘I’m telling you, there was no recollection of last night at all.’
‘Pssh,’ Dad answered. ‘You can’t know that. It’s teenage pranks.’
‘It isn’t, I’m telling you–’
‘You never pretended to forget something to get out of answering for it?’
‘I might have done, but I didn’t pretend to forget an argument from twelve hours earlier, did you?’ Mum snapped, and there was a long silence after that where I imagined Dad thinking carefully about his answer. ‘You can brush it off as much as you like but I’m telling you, there was no hint of recollection or remorse there, none. It was like looking at a blank slate.’
‘So, what you are saying? Are you saying it’s a blackout, is that a thing?’
‘I don’t know what I’m saying. Jesus, why do you – I don’t know what I’m saying,’ Mum repeated herself again and I felt sorry that Dad and I were sending her in loops. ‘I’m saying that something was missing, that’s all I’m saying. That’s as much as I know.’
There was a silence then where I thought Dad might have reached across the table to give her hand a squeeze; or I hoped he had. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I think I see.’