My name is Lucy and this much I know. I’m seventeen years old, a few weeks off my eighteenth birthday. I’m off to study Theatre Studies and English at Birkbeck University come the autumn. The last thing I remember is Mum telling me to get my accommodation forms in order otherwise they’ll put me in a leaky bedsit in East London above a minicab office that doubles as a meth lab. We were having conversations about saucepans. She said she’d treat me to a trip to Ikea to buy clothes pegs and frying pans and I told her I wouldn’t need such things. She laughed. What would I fry eggs in? I told her I would buy my fried eggs from the many London cafés and she told me this is why I would end up with no money. But Mother, I told her, I will have my looks, my smarts and my spunky outlook on life. That doesn’t fry eggs, Lucy, she replied. And she laughed and exhaled in both despair and adoration because I’m her favourite daughter. We all know it.
What else do I remember? Lady Gaga? Obama is President. David Cameron is the Prime Minister. My life’s ambition is to, one day, snog Robert Pattinson or join the cast of Glee. I left sixth form a few months ago so I’m in some in-between stage of working and partying, spending days as a waitress and behind the bar at The Shy Fox, which is a crappy gastro pub that’s managed by Fergus, who sits in the storeroom in his breaks and watches porn on a laptop. I have my mates at school. Farah’s my girl. My go-to party mate. And I have four sisters. One brother-in-law. One niece. A boyfriend.
These are all answers to questions that people keep asking me. The psychologist, the neurologist, the phlebotomist, they all end in -ist and someone needs to help them find better shoes. They ask me to talk at them, draw circles, show them that I know my left from my right, my blues from my reds. I sing and spell and I’m a fricking queen at their flashcards. They poke and prod me. Right, they say. I’m just going to call in another specialist who may be able to advise, and I get passed along to the next person like the bowl of peas at a roast dinner. She was always quite tricky to work out, Dad jokes with a pained expression. Mum thinks I’m faking and keeps telling me to stop messing about. This isn’t funny at all, Lucy. Grace cries with worry. Emma seems fascinated, like I’m a science experiment to her. Because I’m not seventeen. Apparently, I’m nearly thirty and, fuck me, I can’t remember any of it.
When you’re the youngest of five girls, you get used to being talked about a lot. I am the baby of this clan and, as such, I’ve been forced to grow up far quicker than most. I found out about periods before I was ten (I walked in on Meg changing her pad; I thought she was bleeding to death), I found out about sex from reading Beth’s diary (she lost her virginity to some boy called Christian who she thought looked like Orlando Bloom, but he didn’t know where to put his willy) and I first got drunk with Grace after being insanely jealous that our sisters were going out clubbing without us. We got hammered on Bacardi and Ribena. Ribena is not a suitable mixer by the way. My mother will tell you that because we both threw up. Grace didn’t make it to the toilet in time either and chucked up purple in the hallway over a basket of freshly washed laundry. Dad had to repaint.
As the youngest, you become the butt of the jokes. You’re the accident. Mum and Dad never really wanted you. The one on the end. To combat that you acquire the best of skills, the loudest of voices, the snark is off the scale. You’re the one who has to shout the loudest to be heard otherwise you’ll be forgotten. You think that’s an exaggeration but it isn’t. When I was ten, I went to the supermarket with everyone and was tasked with wheeling the trolley back. THEY DROVE OFF WITHOUT ME. I’m not even joking. They only noticed when the car hit the dual carriageway and they had cracked open some crisps and realised there was an empty seat.
Am I a rebel? Maybe I’ve done more at a younger age than most. I mean, I had four sisters at university. I’ve heard all the sisters’ stories. I’ve been invited to visit and partake. It’s been a running theme my whole life. Let Lucy tag along. And I did. I absorbed all that experience into my soul. Because of this, people talk about me.
She’s overly confident, Mrs Callaghan. She defies authority and is abrasive in her manner.
She threw a full can of Coke at my daughter’s forehead.
I am afraid we will have to ban you from the village hall after the party you held here last week. We have not seen carnage like it.
I think Lucy slept with Danny’s brother-in-law at my wedding.
MUM! LUCY STOLE MY SHIT AGAIN!
They’re doing it now. I can hear hushed whispers from the corridor chatting about me, thinking I’m still in my coma, believing I’m still the baby on the end who needs protecting, who’s still vulnerable.
‘How can she think it’s 2010? That was over ten years ago?’
I don’t know who is in that huddle but amongst them is my brain surgeon, Mr Gomes, who came in earlier and asked me a bunch of questions and shone a lot of light in my eyes. He does this a lot and inspects my scar, looking by and large extremely proud of his work. When he came in, I fully expected one of the sisters to be married to him. Maybe I was married to him. Maybe I fell in love with a Portuguese doctor who has a rounded paunch like a teapot. Maybe we have kids called João and Inez and a house full of cats.
I don’t know who anyone is any more because it’s 2022. I’ve literally lost years and no one knows why. Am I scared out of my mind? Yes. This is like the future. Are the cars flying yet? Because the phone technology is crazy. Is Justin Bieber still a thing? I had a whole season of 30 Rock saved on the planner. Did anyone get rid of it? But I daren’t say this out loud because I should feel lucky to be here, to be alive. It feels like a hangover. A really terrible one. I watched that film. I remember that film. We all wanted to shag Bradley Cooper after that except Emma, who was strangely drawn to the singing, toothless dentist.
Or maybe I’m a traveller in time. Like a female Michael J. Fox. Like maybe a bus hit me into another dimension or forward in time. Yet all my theorising, all my worry, is also mingled with suspicion because I know what my sisters are like and this could possibly still be a very elaborate joke. Those cows told me for years that my real father was Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that he had to leave the actual country to be a Watcher because he was so ashamed of me. They loved the pranking.
I’ve been introduced to so many children. One nephew is literally months old. His name is Jude. Nieces and nephews for days. They all seem to like me very much and I’m surrounded by their artwork so I’m glad that whatever has transpired in the last ten or so years means I’ve been a quality aunt. But the life stories, the sheer amount of extra people we seem to have acquired, makes me think this could be a very elaborate set-up. These are all actors, perhaps. Maybe the sisters have gone to extra lengths to prank me. A prank that has seen Beth go up a few dress sizes, Meg dusting her hair with talc, Emma pretending to be a qualified doctor. If it is a prank then there is a lot of attention to detail, almost too much. This means there is only one outcome here and that is my brain has shut down the last ten or so years of my life. It’s literally forgotten them.
‘The brain is a very curious mechanism and amnesia like this is not something we can ever hope to understand. It could be brought about by injury or the trauma. I would need to do more investigations. The earlier MRI showed no clots or other injuries that could be causing this,’ explains Mr Gomes.
‘So is this permanent?’ Meg.
‘What if the MRI missed something?’ Grace.
‘How can this be happening? She remembers everything.’ Beth.
‘Emma, is this the best neurosurgeon we know? Is it time for a second opinion?’ Mum.
‘I can’t answer that for sure. Sometimes these things can be temporary. I’ve had people in comas who’ve woken up with accents, new personalities, the deficits and changes can be so different. I can’t say anything until I’ve done more exploratory tests,’ continues my poor brain surgeon.
I wonder what those tests will be. Will they involve needles? Then again, I must be OK with needles because I have these tattoos. Not just the leopard. I have some flowers down one shoulder that trail along my bicep. I have an actual Tweety Pie on my ankle. Did I do that as a bet? I close my eyes for a second. Come on, Lucy. You were on a bike. Remember the bike. It must be in there. Maybe it’s like a maze. I have to open up all these doors and channels to remember anything. Try harder.
‘All I know is that her initial reflexes and observations are good. Please give her time to rest. Don’t inundate her. It may just be some sort of fog. We need to let the fog clear. I’ll let you know when I know more. For the meanwhile, I’m going to ensure someone from psychiatry comes down too.’
‘You think this may be caused by some psychiatric disorder?’ Emma.
‘What she has been through is traumatic, and when we have no organic answers for why Lucy’s amnesia has happened then we have to look to other psychological mechanisms to explain things.’
Lucy. She always had a touch of crazy about her. I try and piece together what I’ve just heard. So the brain is intact. That’s good. But maybe there are some screws loose. Christ, this could be a hallucination of sorts, some form of psychosis. I’ve not left this room. What’s outside this room? Maybe there’s nothing. I’ll know if I start seeing twins dressed the same and twisting staircases, right? This could be a truly excellent episode of The X-Files. What was the last thing I remember? What did I last eat? What was I wearing? I don’t have a bike. There is certainly no bike. I clench my eyes closed. Come on, Luce.
‘Are you in pain? Are you wincing, my dear?’
The door of my room is open and Zahra stands there in an apron and with a trolley.
‘No. Come in… I was just closing my eyes to see if I could retrieve my memory.’
‘Well, that is one way of doing things. Has it worked?’
‘No.’
She leaves the door ajar as my family continue to fire questions at poor Mr Gomes. Zahra watches me listening, taking in all these words about my poorly working brain, about a part of my life I’m desperately trying to find.
‘Is Mr Gomes safe? Are they coming at him from all directions?’ I ask.
‘Haha, I am sure Mr Gomes can handle himself.’
‘You’ve not met my family…’
‘I can tell them to move into one of the rooms down the corridor if you don’t want to hear anything? It can be a lot to take on.’
‘It’s fine. This way I get to earwig. I’m good at that. One of my best skills from being the youngest. Have they at least stopped crying?’ I ask.
‘Your dad is still quite bereft. Him and Grace are standing there holding each other.’
‘Grace apparently lost a husband recently. His name was Tom. My sister must have been through so much. All that grief and I can’t remember any of it.’
I look thoughtful at saying that out loud and Zahra comes over and puts a hand to my arm.
‘All these beautiful children they’ve brought into my room too. I didn’t want to scare them because they’re so tiny so I hugged them all, but I don’t know them either.’
‘I need to tell your sisters to take it easy on you. They’re all so happy and relieved that you are well, I don’t think they realise that you’ve been inundated with so much.’
She wipes a tear from the side of my face. ‘I think I feel guilty, Zahra. I feel bad I’ve put Grace through some repeated trauma of losing someone, of having no recollection of any of these people.’
‘Hush now. That’s the last thing you should be feeling. Now the focus should be on you.’
‘And Emma… is divorced? Did you know Simon?’
Zahra pops her head around the door to see who may be listening.
‘Yes, he was famous in this hospital for all the wrong reasons. I’d seen his penis and I hadn’t even slept with him. If you ask me, we thought your sister had some sort of brain injury herself for sticking with him for so long…’
I laugh and cough a little and she sits me up in bed to steady myself.
‘Jag is a good guy. I went to a party after they got married. They hired a restaurant, it was lovely.’
‘Was I there?’
‘I don’t recall. I think I would have remembered you.’
For the minute, I seem to be clinging to Zahra. Everyone else is firing information at me and waiting expectantly for me to react. These are my daughters. I got married. I’m dating a bloke I met on a plane who looks like Aquaman. And I stare back at them wondering when and how everyone got so grown up. And who on earth is Aquaman? Shit, does your new boyfriend have webbed feet?
Zahra doesn’t lay that on me. She pauses for a moment to take my pulse and observe my monitors as Beth walks into the room, her small baby, Jude, in her arms.
‘Is it OK if I just take a chair and feed the little one?’ she asks.
I smile. ‘Of course, you numpty.’
Beth beams to hear my reply and I watch as she removes the little man out of his sling and retreats to a corner of the room. Beth came in and, like Meg before her, launched herself at me before realising she had a baby strapped to her bosom. Beth has a baby. Scrap that, she has two babies. How is that possible? To me, she’s my sister at uni who came back at Christmas and told us she’d shagged a lad in the laundry room on top of a tumble dryer. His name was Paul. She showed us a picture and Meg said he looked hairy like a hobbit and then Beth threw a Rubik’s cube at her face and cut Meg’s lip open. This is the stuff I remember.
‘How old?’ Zahra asks.
‘Two months.’
‘Is it Jude like the song?’ I ask her.
‘Naturally.’
Beth was the muso sister. She made mix CDs for everyone and gifted them us at Christmas and most of the time we told her she was a cheap bitch for doing so. But she lived her life for gigs and festivals and she’d be the person who you’d want on your team for any music-based quiz.
‘How is it I remember all the lyrics to that song but I can’t remember you having your baby?’ I ask her.
‘Everyone knows the lyrics to that song. It’s something all of us just learn subliminally through time.’
I hum it to myself. ‘Tell me the story of how he was born,’ I ask her.
‘It was May. We didn’t even make it to the hospital. Jude was eager to get out into the world so I birthed him on the floor of our flat. Will delivered him. He had Emma on FaceTime…’
‘Way to go, Mummy…’ Zahra adds.
‘FaceTime is the phone call on the screen thing, right?’ I ask.
Beth nods, trying to piece together what I do and do not know.
‘And Will…?’
‘Is my boyfriend. We got together when I was twenty-four or so.’
‘And he makes you happy?’
Beth pauses for a moment to adjust Jude on her boob. ‘Very.’
Did I ever envisage my sisters with all these kids, boyfriends and husbands? In my mind, I always thought at least one of us would bag Zac Efron.
‘Can I ask a question, B?’ I mutter.
I take a deep breath, almost too scared to hear the answer.
‘Sure, hun.’
‘What have I been doing in the last ten or so years? Am I still with Josh? Is he coming to see me?’
Beth’s face tells me the answer. ‘Josh Reid? That footballer you used to date? The one with the acne and the Vauxhall Corsa?’ I can’t tell if she wants to turn this into a joke or play it seriously. ‘Luce, no.’
As soon as she says it, I feel a crushing sensation in my chest and exhale deeply, my bottom lip quivering.
‘Oh, Luce… I’m so sorry. I don’t know how else to put it. You and Josh broke up before you left for university. He wasn’t kind to you at the end.’
That part feels like an arrow to my very soul. What did he do? Zahra looks over at Beth to tell her to maybe stop. I loved him. I’m pretty sure he gave me a ring. Like, not an engagement ring. It may have been from Argos but I’m sure we were destined for something more. He looked like Beckham. Even if he was prickish to me, why do I feel so sad? Because I don’t know what he did. It’s like my heart being broken for a second time by the same person.
‘So, did I have a boyfriend? Kids?’
‘Not exactly. You have friends. Lots of them. Out of all of us, you are busy. You work and party hard. You have… fun.’
I look at her quizzically. ‘Are you saying I’m some sort of slag…?’ I ask her, almost aghast.
Zahra tries to intervene. ‘Lucy, I’m going to start washing you. We have the physio coming in a bit. I can come back later if you want to finish your conversation?’
‘Nah, you’re good,’ I say, studying Beth’s face. ‘Go on, you were telling me I was a bit of a ho.’
‘Not that at all,’ Beth says, trying to backtrack. ‘You just… out of all of us, you’ve almost shied away from that traditional relationship stuff. You worked hard at your career, you’ve spent most of your twenties at university, doing courses.’
Zahra undoes my gown and slips a flannel down my back. ‘But my career? I thought I was some sort of second-rate party princess. That doesn’t sound like I’m doing much with my life?’
‘You do all sorts. You do a lot of auditions, you’ve been in a lot of musicals and shows. I saw you in Rent. You were brilliant.’
‘Oh… so basically I bed-hop and work-hop and have nothing stable or of any concrete value in my life. Do I own a flat? A house?’
‘You live in a house share in Herne Hill.’
‘Do I have a car?’
‘No. You failed your test five times and your instructor said after that you may be a lost cause.’
‘I remember him, his name was Robert. He said I was good at driving.’
‘You gave him a concussion after a touch of road rage where you drove into a Domino’s delivery moped.’
‘I don’t remember that.’
Beth goes silent as Zahra holds my gown up, trying to protect my modesty. I peel it off completely.
‘Please, she’s got her boobs out, what are two more?’ I say. ‘You join in whenever you want, Zahra.’
If you have four sisters then you’re not really allowed to be shy. You have to embrace the nudity in enclosed spaces and all the body hair, tampons, farts and screeches over shared lip balm that come with it.
‘You have wonderful tattoos on your back?’ Zahra says.
Beth nods slowly.
‘Christ, I’m a fricking easel. Of what?’ I ask.
‘I think it’s a tree?’ Little Jude rolls off Beth’s boob and she pops him on her shoulder and clips her bra into place. ‘Here, let me get a picture for you.’
She comes over with her magic phone, takes a pic and shows me. That’s not a tree, that’s a bloody forest on my back and a sexy woman in a beret with a devil tail. Who’s she? Before I hand the phone back, the camera comes on again and I take a look at my face on the screen. I’ve not done this yet. When I woke up, they were so keen to do their scans that they wheeled me straight into MRI and I caught a glimpse of someone in a lift. Someone with a bandaged head and bruised eyes like she’d been in a fight. She had no hair. Oh my god, that’s me. I recognise her. Has she aged? She looks like she’s seen stuff, her eyebrows need work, but her eyes are still the same bluey-grey colour.
‘So I’ve also spent the last ten years doing stuff to my body. Anything else I should know about? Is this a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo thing? Am I a spy? Am I really bloody good with guns now?’
‘I wouldn’t know if you were a spy. I don’t think you’re a spy. You’re terrible at keeping secrets in any case.’
My shoulders slump. I’m not scrapping that theory though because that’s what happened with Jason Bourne when he fell off that boat.
‘When did you get your piercings done?’ Zahra asks.
‘My what now?’ I say, reaching up to my ears.
Beth winces a little, not quite knowing what to say. ‘Oh, well… you nearly broke the MRI here because when you came in you were unconscious and naturally they didn’t think to look for your piercings,’ she explains.
‘Where the hell are my piercings?’ I ask.
Zahra reaches in a cabinet under the bed and pulls out a cardboard basin full of metal bits that look like they’re the fittings for a flatpack wardrobe.
‘A nipple, I think, and then you had a clitoral hood thing too… I had the pleasure of removing them. Someone suggested a metal detector to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.’
I reach at my private areas, Zahra laughing.
‘But why? How? Have I got holes in my minge?’ There’s a grin I can’t quite explain on Beth’s face. ‘Why are you laughing?’ I ask her.
‘You got it done one summer because you heard it increases sexual pleasure,’ Beth explains.
‘It does?’ asks Zahra.
‘I wouldn’t remember…’ I reply. I remove my gown to take a look at my naked form. Now this has changed. I have a softer stomach, my legs look fuller, my pubes are bristly. ‘So I told you all about my fanny piercing?’
‘You have a habit of broadcasting information. Some family dinner and no one believed it so you got your bits out in one of the bedrooms and showed us. Grace asked if it jingled when you ran,’ Beth informs us, bursting into laughter, tears in her eyes. ‘You literally just pulled your knickers down in that room, no shame. Emma fell over from the shock. She told you to douse your bits in salt water so it wouldn’t get infected. You said it stung and Meg and her just looked at you because they’d had babies so we got a rundown of their vaginal traumas.’
Like, why isn’t that burnt into my memory? Surely something like that would stick to the grey matter? ‘Do I pee funny now?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Luce. We share a lot but there are limits.’
I laugh. Oh, Bethy.
‘Luce, it’s who you are. There’s a real freedom about you – courage, adventure, nothing was off limits. You were always the one at the top of the tree and one of us would have to come get you, you gave bullies what for, you defied everything. It was part of your magic and, in your twenties, it was a running theme. You lived your best life.’
‘Lived my best life? Did you just come up with that?’ I ask her.
‘No, it’s a thing now. People say it a lot. I need to catch you up with the lingo,’ she says, patting her baby’s back as he falls soundly asleep on her shoulder. Look at him, Beth. That’s your baby. ‘And when you’re telling your nurse to get her boobs out, when you swear and ask me if you’ve got holes in your minge, then that’s my Lucy. It’s unapologetic, slightly… no, very… coarse but you were open and honest. So honest and funny. You were the tonic we all needed.’
‘Well, obviously. You bitches were kinda boring, even back then…’ She smiles and comes over to sandwich me in a hug again. ‘Beth, we’re squishing your baby again…’
‘He won’t mind… Is this a good time to tell you you’ve got a peach tattooed on your right arse cheek too?’