I’ve lived as if my whole life has been defined by one moment in the garden in Burma. I want to scream out but that is not me, and then I wonder if it’s true. Maybe we all have one defining moment from which we can never escape?
The day I really do escape is a day like any other. The sun is attempting to shine through hazy clouds and I’m sitting in my usual chair.
I feel as if I’ll drown when he asks me to picture the day I lost Elvira. He tells me I don’t have to do it, but I know I must. I close my eyes. Time and time again I try but something keeps on stopping me, as if a solid wall prevents me from going further. I push against it, but it won’t give way. He says I’m trying too hard and encourages me not to focus on the pram at all but to gently recall all the other lovely details of the garden. As I relax and begin to drift, the pretty summer house appears, although I don’t see myself inside it. Then other images begin to stream through my mind. And when I picture the orchid tree with its heart-shaped leaves and flowers of white and pink, and the huge canopies where the monkeys swung in the branches, I smile. I can see the luminous green birds, smell the beautiful scented flowers: roses in June and July, huge poinsettia bushes with bright red flowers in December and asters surrounded by delicate white butterflies in spring. Slowly I sink back into the past and it really is as if I’m there in Burma, sweltering in the humid air.
As if from a great distance I hear him ask what else I can see. I shake my head and feel my breathing quicken. Only the pram under the tamarind tree, I say.
Dr Gilbert does not speak again.
Then, when I feel I can’t bear to look any more, I’m felled by a blurred image. I squeeze my eyes even more tightly shut as I try to focus. Or not. I’m unsure which. The image sharpens, and I make out a woman dressed in black, hurrying away from the pram and carrying a bundle. It is over in a flash and I wonder if I’m imagining it, but then I see her again as she turns to check if anyone has spotted her and for the briefest moment I feel as if I know who she is.
It was not I who harmed my baby girl. It was not I.
I open my eyes and see Dr Gilbert smiling at me. Well done, my dear, he says. Well done.