When we arrive back at the house I go straight upstairs, eager to avoid Ben. I don’t remember anything about him once trying to kiss me, and I don’t want to run into him now that I know. I arrive in my bedroom and open the drawer in the bedside table and pull out a pen and an old bible. I open the book, see that just inside the front cover I have at some point in the past written my name: Chloe Daniels. As I flick through the pages, I recall standing in church, singing a hymn, holding a book just like this, the cry of a baby in the background. A memory, or my mind playing tricks? I’m not sure. I grip the pen tightly and press the tip against the first page. I write down the code from the gate, then scrawl my name over and over. The letters are shaky, almost childlike. But it is my name. That is what’s important. Chloe. Me. Still here. It doesn’t take long before I fall asleep.
I wake hours later to the sound of a car engine. I get up, move across to the window and open it a little to have a look at who has come home. I see my mother’s white Range Rover on the driveway, now back from the garage, her feet quick across the frosty ground. The breeze bothers at the edge of the heavy floral curtain so I close the window quickly, slip back into the room. I am only wearing a light cotton blouse, and I am cold. I need to find something else to put on.
I open the cupboards but the clothes are not mine, most of them either my mother’s or cast-offs from Jess. Hand-me-downs travelling in the wrong direction. Everything in the cupboards feels wrong, because nothing really belongs to me.
I look down at the bag under the bed, the handle sticking out from where my mother disturbed it the night before. I drag it towards me, setting it on the edge of the bed. I pull on the zipper, peer inside.
Jeans, T-shirts and a couple of simple grey jumpers. Nothing immediately familiar. I find the set of pyjamas I was wearing in the hospital, a drip of blood on the inside of the left sleeve from where they changed one of my lines. I try to think back to the hospital, picture myself wearing these pyjamas. Even those days seem blurry to me now.
I rummage deeper in the bag and pull out one of the photo albums that my parents created for me in an attempt to make me feel like part of this family. I crawl onto the bed, setting the album down on my legs, and turn the pages one by one, taking in the images. In some of the pictures I am a child in the garden, fishing in the river, wearing a daisy chain I must have made. In others I am on holiday, part of a scene at the beach, a green and blue swimsuit with a badge sewn on the front for my achievements in the fifty metres.
As I turn the pages I grow, time fast-forwarded to my teenage years in which I evidently became shy of the camera. In nearly all of the pictures from that time there is a silly grin on my face, an awareness of the photographer, an awareness of myself. In those pictures I have lighter hair, bleached either by the sun or by my hand. I look a bit like Jess does now. There is a picture from my graduation ceremony after I finished at university, my parents flanking me on either side. Jess is small in front of my mother, perhaps nine years old. I wonder who took that picture. A well-intentioned stranger, or somebody else from my past whom I have forgotten?
I notice that the final picture of my graduation has slipped out of position. Underneath there is another photo, which has been hidden, the edge now exposed. I peel the plastic cover away, take the picture out. I am sitting in the kitchen, eating a slice of cake. There is a balloon attached to the back of my chair, and Jess is standing beside me pulling a stupid face. A knife in her hand, a cake set before her on the table. I count the candles. Fifteen. Five years ago. Mum is in the kitchen too, busy at the worktop, a glass of wine at her side. But there are two more details to which my eye keeps returning. Things that don’t make any sense.
The first is the ring on my finger, a simple gold band on my left hand, glistening in the flash from the camera. It looks like a wedding ring. The second is a little boy sitting on my lap. I have my arms wrapped tightly around him, my chin nuzzled into his neck, holding him close.
I look down at the ring finger of my left hand as a rumble of thunder creeps across the heavy grey sky. The skin is dry, the finger itself perhaps slightly thinner than its counterpart on the right. Has a ring been sitting there? Was I married? Am I married? If so, where the hell is my husband? And who is that little boy? Is it the boy from my dreams?
The rain is really picking up by the time I get downstairs, coursing down the kitchen window in waves, creating turbulent shadows that shift across the walls. My leg is sore from the effort of walking, my head throbbing. I call for Mum, then Jess, and when nobody replies I sit down at the table and wait. The light is fading further, dark descending despite the early hour, leaving in its place the cool lustre of an approaching storm. And then I see her, my mother, rushing along the winding path of the back garden with her coat pulled up over her head, caught in the sudden downpour.
She races through the back door, head down and shoulders curled over, shrieking as cold rivulets of water drip from her hair and run down her back. She is laughing to herself as she pulls the door closed behind her. Then as she turns and sees me, she almost jumps out of her skin.
‘Chloe!’ she shrieks. She catches her breath, laughs as she shakes the water from her coat. ‘You frightened the life out of me. Jess told me you were sleeping.’
‘I woke up. I was looking at the pictures you brought to the hospital. One of the albums you made.’
‘Oh?’ she says as she locks the back door. She sets her riding jacket on a black wrought-iron hook. I can hear horses neighing in the garden stables. ‘Anything new coming back to you?’ She sits down on a small bench, pulls off her muddy boots. She puts the kettle on to boil before sitting down at the table.
‘You tell me,’ I say as I hold up the picture that I have taken from the album. She takes it from my hand. I don’t know if it is just my imagination, but in that moment it looks as if she is worried. I see her swallow, an uncomfortable lump in her throat, her hands shaking with fear. She appears on the verge of being sick. ‘Who is that little boy?’ I ask.
She takes a heavy breath in and sets the picture down on the table. She crosses her hands in front of her, plays with the band on her ring finger. ‘Where did you find that?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I tell her.
She looks at the picture again, pushes it away as if it’s all too much. She can’t look at me. Can’t look at the picture. She moves to the door, then stops herself. She’s scratching at her forehead, making it red.
‘Just tell me, Mum.’
‘I can’t.’ Eyes to the door. ‘We should wait until your father gets home.’
‘No,’ I say, slamming my fist against the table. I’m up on my feet, aware of a blurring of my eyes, a thickness in my throat that makes it hard to swallow. It’s the truth, I think. That’s what I can feel choking me. I am close to some sort of truth for the first time. I’m about to find out what they have been keeping from me. ‘I need you to tell me now. I’m wearing a wedding ring in that picture too. Am I married?’
Her hands are shaking as she brings them up to her face. She wipes her fingertips underneath her eyes, a tear escaping. ‘I really think we should wait for your father to get—’
‘Mum, just tell me,’ I interrupt.
She slumps into a chair, hangs her head in her hands. I remain on my feet. ‘No, Chloe. You are not married.’ The scar on my head throbs with each beat of my heart. Her voice is all of a quiver. ‘At least not any more.’
‘Oh my God.’ I begin to cry too, my throat burning, my cheeks hot. I feel like I might faint. Not any more? I was married? I had a life and a partner and a … I feel a cloud of dizziness approaching, so I cling to the table, palms flat against the surface. My mother moves to comfort me, steady me. I pull away. ‘And the boy?’ I whisper, my voice breaking, my whole body overwhelmed as I ask a question to which I think I already know the answer.
She gazes at the picture, tears streaming down her face. Yet she is defiant as she looks up at me. ‘Chloe, I’m so sorry we kept it from you. That little boy was your son.’