Time is a funny old thing, the way it stretches and folds and bends.
Maggie stares at the photo of Aimee as a little girl, thinking that it could have been yesterday. The look in the child’s eyes dislodges memories of happier times and reminds her that there were some.
We weren’t always the us we are now.
Maggie pushes the thought far away, wishing she’d never had it, but some memories are impossible to delete, no matter how hard we try.
Her back aches from a day of delivering antiques to shops along Portobello Road, and her hands are blistered from moving the larger items. Business is booming, and she had a lot of stock she needed to shift. The homes of the dead are dusty, neglected treasure troves, and the plunder is there for the taking; the dead don’t miss what is no longer theirs. It’s been hard work, and while she’s all for equality, truth be told it is man’s work; all that heavy lifting. She relaxes a little when she remembers it was the last time she’d ever have to do that job, there’s no need now for her to work ever again; Aimee will call soon.
The girl has always had the most incredible memory, even as a child, and once she remembers her past, they can both get on with their future. Maggie’s memory is a little less reliable. As far as she is concerned, none of us can remember every moment of every day of every year for an entire lifetime; the storage systems of our minds simply do not have that capacity. Yet. We select which memories to save and which to archive, and like everything else in life, it’s about choices. We lead the life we choose to, based on what we think we deserve, and we hold on to the memories that mean the most to us, the moments we believe shaped the life we lead now. It’s a pretty simple system, but it works. Unlike Aimee, Maggie might not remember it all, but she remembers enough.
Everything that has led them here was so carefully thought out, and soon, all of her hard work will have been worth it. It was always a good plan:
Identify a suitable partner for Aimee.
Someone nobody knew well enough to notice if he came back to life: Ben Bailey.
Cast someone believable to play his part.
Keep the keys to his home and delay clearing out his belongings until Aimee was in L.A. and could be persuaded to buy the property.
Dig up and rebury the dead man beneath the decking in what used to be his own garden.
Burn his remains in Epping Forest first, so that dental records would be used to confirm his identity.
Dress like Aimee to visit the bank and petrol station and make police believe she was violent.
Make it look as if she had killed her husband, to teach her a lesson: you should never forget who you are and where you came from.
No wonder Maggie feels so exhausted.
She stares at the framed Polaroid photo next to the phone again, reassuring herself that Aimee will call. All Maggie has to do is wait a little while longer. She knows this, because although Maggie might not have the best memory in the world, she knows Aimee better than she knows herself.