‘Sit down. We are going to finish what we started.’
The bath was almost full, and her mother turned the taps off, letting silence return to the house. Next to her, a long slab of corkboard rested against the far wall.
‘Why did you make me forget?’ asked Sara, stepping into the bathroom.
Her mother looked away, her eyes alighting on something at the other end of the bath.
‘Look what’s still here,’ she said to herself.
She reached out and picked up the four, yellowing scraps of paper that were resting on the edge of the bath, the edges fishtailing up.
‘I sat here for the first few hours. Watching you. That first time,’ she said, as if in a dream. ‘Doodling. You always loved anagrams.’
She held up the words for Sara to look at.
Phoebe. A. Wife. Rests.
Sara stared at them for a few seconds before looking up at her mother.
‘Beware. Of. The. Spies.’
‘Good girl,’ smiled her mother. ‘Take these.’
She held out two tablets in the palm of her hand.
‘Your name’s Phoebe,’ said Sara. ‘I remember now.’
‘Too late,’ said Phoebe. ‘It’s time to forget.’
‘I don’t want to forget,’ said Sara. ‘I want to go with you.’
‘They’ll find me, eventually,’ said Phoebe. ‘They’ll try to take me back. But I won’t go back.’ Emotion crept into her voice. ‘I won’t go back. Ever. And nor will you. It’s too late for me, but I can give you freedom.’
Sara held up her hands and fought to keep the panic from her voice. ‘Mother, listen to me. I don’t know what we’re running from. But whatever it is, we can fight it. Or run from it. Together.’
Phoebe stopped and looked at her.
‘You have no idea who we are dealing with. Just take the tablets.’
Sara took the tablets and threw them at the wall.
‘I want some answers. Now.’
Phoebe stood up and pulled the blind away from the window, peering through the frosted glass.
‘We don’t have much time, Sara. You have to trust me. This process will take a few hours. And they are already looking for you. They’ll come here, eventually.’
Sara shook her head in confusion. She was crying now, her cheeks wet with tears, their taste salty where they ran into the corner of her mouth.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said, her voice incredulous. She looked at her mother in dismay. The woman standing in front of her was inaccessible, focused on only one thing.
‘You’ve already begun to remember,’ said Phoebe. ‘Each day you’re coming into more of your power. They won’t stop until they find you. Sara, look at me.’
Sara brushed her tears away roughly with the back of her forearm and looked at her mother.
‘Don’t trust me,’ said Phoebe, ‘trust your heart. If you still don’t think what I’m telling you is right, we can leave together right now.’
Phoebe stretched out her hand to Sara, palm upwards. Sara looked at her mother’s hand with trepidation for a few seconds and then reached out and held it in her own.
She had no idea how long they were connected. It could have been a few minutes or several hours. When she finally broke contact, Sara backed away as far as she could until her back hit the bathroom wall.
‘No, no, no!’ was all Sara could whisper to herself.
What she had seen continued to throb through her like an electrical current.
‘Here,’ said her mother. Her palm was outstretched again, this time with two more tablets sitting within it.
Sara looked back at her with apprehension and then nodded to her mother.
She watched as her mother crushed the two tablets with the flat of a dirty spoon and dragged the powder across the tile into a glass of water.
Sara drank it, swiftly, in two gulps, in case she changed her mind. She took off her jeans and top and walked towards the bath.
Before she could get in, her mother stopped her and pulled her into an embrace that was so tight it startled her.
Sara buried her face in her mother’s hair and inhaled its scent, desperate to store as much of it away as she could.
And then it hit her. The memories she had experienced when she stood in front of Janey’s hospital bed. They were not memories. They were what was unfolding in front of her, right now.
Her mother released her, and Sara moved towards the tub without looking back.
She sank into the warm water, the pads of the earphones pressed to her ears, her mother’s taped words like a lullaby in her head.
Above her, Phoebe lifted the corkboard in her arms.
A profound sense of surrender washed over Sara, a hundred times more powerful than the final tug of sleep at the end of each day.
Before the lid blacked out all light, a thought occurred to Sara, and she mumbled to her mother.
‘What’s my real name?’
Before she heard any reply, strange sounds and images swam into her disintegrating consciousness as the final residues of her memory began to fade, like a sand structure washed away with the tide.
Then the world went black.