20

It worked.

Later that week, I added something new to my routine.

Studying at Jubilee Library on Saturdays.

The library happened to be next to the café Nico and I got coffee on our first not-date. So each time I went past, I would linger on the pavement outside, hoping to see her.

That’s what I was doing that third Saturday in April, two weeks to the day since I’d seen her at the beach. I don’t know why it matters that it had been two weeks, but I will say that it felt like much longer. Anyway, I’d just left the library after spending the day trying to decipher my history notes and the café was about to close, so it was empty except for a few stragglers who were finishing their coffees and gathering up their shopping bags.

My heart stung as I watched them and wondered if that’s how it would always be. Me, standing on the pavement every time I went past, hoping to see her and burning with the pain and promise that one day I might.

But as I turned away from the window, there she was.

Nico.

In her pink coat and pink scarf.

As soon as she saw me, she stopped, the skin between her dark eyebrows pinching before her confusion cleared and I held my breath, sure that was it.

She remembered.

And she did.

Just not what I wanted her to remember.

“Hey! You’re the one who found my notebook.”

I nodded and tried to smile back as she tilted her head at me and asked, “You didn’t read it, did you?”

“Of course not,” I told her with a gasp.

But then my face flushed as I remembered that I hadn’t read it, but I had opened it, hadn’t I?

I WILL BE MYSELF AGAIN.

She just chuckled, though, and it was a sound I’d never heard before.

Soft.

Light.

The sound her pink scarf would make if it had a voice.

And it was lovely, but it didn’t sound like her.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t read it. Those are my plans for world domination,” she told me, the corners of her mouth twitching as her eyes lit up, the sparkle suddenly back in full, unavoidable force.

And the shock—and thrill—of it was enough to tug on the corners of my mouth as well as I said, “In that case, I did read it. The monkey thing?” I shook my head and pulled a face. “It’ll never work.”

She stared at me for a moment, her lips parted, then threw her head back and laughed.

Really laughed, this time.

As soon as I heard the sound fly out of her mouth, I recognized it.

It was the way she used to laugh when we first met.

That big, loud, conversation-stopping laugh.

The sort of laugh that made people look over and smile.

“I’m Nico, by the way.”

As soon as she said her name, I shivered. But it wasn’t like the first time we met that morning in June outside the station when I’d waited for her to finish, then went up to her while she was putting away her guitar. That time she said her name with a slight sneer, all smudged eyeliner and chipped black nail varnish as she handed me a nicosings sticker. A sticker I still have and is now stuck to the front page of this notebook I’m writing in.

No, that day in April, it sounded brand new.

Like a door opening.

“I’m Mara,” I told her. “Mara Malakar.”

I made sure I told her my surname as well, hoping that it would register.

That she would remember that morning in June outside Brighton station.

Remember all of it.

Any of it.

But there was nothing.

She just asked, “How’s it going?”

“Good.” I shrugged, but given how heavy my shoulders suddenly felt, it was a Herculean effort. “You?”

“I’m great.” She stopped to grin at me and it was dazzling. Devastating. “What are you doing?”

I thumbed over my shoulder at the library. “I was just revising.”

“Sorry, I mean, what are you doing now?”

That threw me. “Now?”

“Yeah.”

I panicked.

That was one thing that hadn’t changed. Before, when Nico asked me what I was doing, I always had to fight the urge to lie. Tell her that I was meeting friends on the beach to get drunk on Blue Pineapple & Kiwi Dragon Soop before we headed to CHALK to see a band I knew she’d love.

Now I think about it, it’s kind of sad because I really wanted to be that person. The sort of person who went to gigs at CHALK. The sort of person who caught her off guard instead of the other way around. Even though Nico would never have said, That sounds cool. Can I tag along? Because she wasn’t the tag-along type.

She had this energy. Even when she was standing still, she seemed in perpetual motion, like the clouds and the gulls and the sea. Moving. Always moving. Like she had no idea where she was supposed to be, it just wasn’t there.

I guess all I ever wanted was for where she was supposed to be, and where I was, to be the same place.

But that day when she asked me what I was doing, I was too stunned to lie and said, “Nothing.”

She nodded, and when the corners of her mouth twitched with mischief, I saw her again.

The old Nico.

“OK,” she said, her cheeks a little pinker as I felt my own warm. “You’re going to think I’m a complete weirdo, Mara, but that’s OK because I am a bit weird and you should probably know that now.” She stopped to chuckle, that light, baby-pink chuckle I was still getting used to. “I mean, normal is overrated, right?”

That made my head—and heart—spin because that’s what she used to say.

Normal is overrated.

So I was so startled that it didn’t register when she asked, “Do you fancy grabbing a coffee?”

I don’t know what I said (I’m pretty sure I just grunted) as she nodded at the café—our café—and I followed her gaze, looking at it, then back at her as I asked myself if I was actually hearing what I was hearing or if it was just some cruel trick my mind was playing on me. But then I saw the hopeful look on her face and the doubt that pinched at the skin between her eyebrows as I hesitated as though she thought I was going to say no.

As though I could ever say no to her.

“I know we’ve only met once for, like, two seconds,” she said, and I know now that was my chance, wasn’t it? My chance to correct her—to tell her the truth—but all I remember thinking is She sounds nervous.

Unsure.

If there was one word I would never use to describe Nico it was unsure.

It scared as much as startled me because it was her—it was definitely her—but it wasn’t. And I don’t just mean the pink coat and the pink scarf, but everything, from the crease of doubt between her eyebrows to the way her voice faltered. That wasn’t Nico. Nico was nothing but bullshit and swagger, to quote Michelle. She was more than that to me, of course, but whatever you thought of her, she certainly knew what she wanted.

I’d always envied that.

But there she was, fidgeting and flustered as she said, “Do you know who I am?”

I nodded warily.

“Well, if you know who I am, then you know what happened to me. So you’ll believe me when I say that I haven’t seen anyone other than my mum or my therapist for four and a half months. I’ve just come out of group therapy, in fact, so it would be good to talk about something, anything, else.”

“Sure,” I said with a nod that was almost certainly too enthusiastic because I couldn’t believe it.

If I’d left the library two minutes later, I would have missed her.

Two tiny minutes and we might never have had that.

A second chance.

So with hindsight, I probably should rewrite that moment so I said something more memorable—more worthy of committing to paper—than Sure. But it doesn’t matter what I said, just that I said yes. Besides, if you haven’t already gathered, I’m much better at writing things down than saying them out loud.

“Really?” Nico looked so thrilled that it took me a moment to recover as she reached for the door.

“Sorry, guys. We’re closed,” Kyle said from behind the counter as we walked in and I felt Nico’s energy dip as my heart did the same. But then he looked up, and when he saw it was me, he smiled. “Oh hey, Mara!”

“Hey, Kyle.”

“I didn’t know it was you. Don’t worry. We haven’t turned the coffee machine off yet.”

“Great.” I smiled back as Nico reached into the pocket of her pink coat and pulled out her purse.

That was pink as well.

Pink with little red strawberries.

But the Nico I knew didn’t have a purse. She’d keep whatever she earned singing outside the station in her pockets. Sometimes she’d have so many coins that the sound of them jingling while she walked made me think of the 2p machines at the pier.

“I’ll get these,” Nico insisted, holding up her purse. “What do you fancy?”

“What are you getting?”

“A peppermint tea.”

I had to stop myself before I laughed because Nico only ever drank lattes.

I could actually hear her saying, Joan Jett doesn’t drink peppermint tea, Mara.

But it gave me the courage to tell her that I wanted a hot chocolate. I still tensed when I did, though, waiting for her to snigger sourly and tell me that hot chocolate was for kids, but her eyes lit up.

“Does that come with cream?” she asked, turning to Kyle.

He nodded, then raised his eyebrows. “And Maltesers.”

“Oh yes!” She bounced up and down. “I’ll have one of those as well.”

When Kyle turned away, she leaned in and said, “Don’t tell my mum that I’m drinking hot chocolate. She’s got me on a vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free diet.”

“Sounds fun,” I said, forced to raise my voice slightly as Kyle steamed the milk.

The look she gave me confirmed that it was not.

“Mum seems to think it will cure me and I’m too weak from the lack of meat, gluten, and sugar to argue.”

My heart tripped on cure me, but before I could ask myself from what, Kyle turned back to put two paper cups down on the counter that were so loaded with cream and Maltesers, he gave us two spoons as well.

“I know we’re closed, but as it’s you, Mara, you’re welcome to sit over there and drink these.” He gestured to a table in the corner by the window. “As long as you don’t mind me cleaning up around you.”

But when I looked at Nico to see what she wanted to do, she said, “Do you fancy a walk?”

My heart hitched.

It had been so long since we’d been for a walk.

But I tried to sound nonchalant as I said, “Yeah, that’d be nice. I’ve been stuck in the library all day.”

As soon as we got outside, Nico took a deep breath and said, “OK.” She nodded, more at herself than at me, I think. “We should get this out of the way so it’s done and we can just be normal.”

I don’t know how I managed to hold on to my cup because as soon as she said that, the pavement dissolved into water beneath my feet, devouring me in a great, greedy gulp as I asked myself if she knew.

If she knew who I was.

“So, you know my story, right?”

I nodded and it felt like I was treading water.

“Everyone in Brighton knows my story. People know my story better than I do.” Nico sighed tenderly and rolled her eyes. Then she took another deep breath, and when she exhaled, she said, “I have amnesia.”

I hoped I looked like someone who had no idea what that was, not someone who had stayed up until midnight the night before, listening to a podcast about how the brain stores memories.

“I’m fine,” she said, and again, I think it was more for herself than me. “I’ve had every test under the sun and no one knows why I can’t remember, so my therapist thinks it’s dissociative amnesia.”

“What’s that?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

But I really wanted to ask if her memory loss was localized or generalized.

“It can happen after a traumatic event, like, I don’t know, almost drowning.” She chuckled, but there was no lightness to it this time. “I can’t remember how I ended up almost drowning, though.”

“You don’t?” I asked before I could tell myself not to pry.

Not to interrupt.

To just let her talk.

But Nico didn’t seem to mind as she shook her head, her curls shivering. “All I remember is being on a boat, then being hauled out of the sea. And I remember the ride in the ambulance to the hospital, but everything after that is a blur of police officers and doctors and tests and Mum fussing. But that’s all I remember. My therapist thinks that whatever happened was so traumatic that in an effort to forget it, I’ve forgotten everything else.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. I remember everyday stuff, like how to walk and how to use a knife and fork and stuff, but everything else is gone. I didn’t even recognize my mum when I first saw her at the hospital.”

“God, that’s awful, Nico. I’m so sorry.”

She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite lift the corners of her mouth.

“All of it is just gone?” I asked, and I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have pushed—but I couldn’t imagine waking up one morning to find I’d forgotten everything. It was bad enough that I could only remember seeing the world because of the postcards and photographs in that shoebox under my bed, but for my whole life to go? To not recognize my parents. Or Michelle. Or to walk past Louise, Erin, and May at school like they were no one.

Nico’s head must have felt like a house someone had taken a match to and burned to the ground.

“Not forever,” she said with a shrug.

And it was so hopelessly Nico to act like it was nothing—like she didn’t care—that I almost smiled.

“My memory will come back. I mean, for some people it doesn’t…”

Six percent of the time, I almost said, but managed to stop myself before I did.

“But for most people it does. That’s why I’m in therapy three times a week.”

I tried not to sound horrified, but I couldn’t help it. “Three times a week?”

Nico raised her eyebrows as if to say, I know.

“Why do you think I need this?”

She held up the hot chocolate, then sighed as she scooped up a spoonful of cream topped with a Malteser. When she slid the spoon into her mouth, her sigh was almost obscene as her eyes rolled back.

“God help me, this is amazing,” she muttered, crunching on a Malteser as she scooped another spoonful and made a similar sound when she ate it. “Mum isn’t convinced, though.” She pointed the wooden spoon at me, before going in for more. “She wants me to give up therapy because she’s lost faith in Western medicine. That’s why she has me on this impossible diet, because she read somewhere that eating clean boosts your brainpower.”

“Isn’t fish good for that as well?”

“Yes! But she says it’s full of mercury. So I’m taking omega-3 fatty acid.”

“OK. But doesn’t that come from the fish that are full of mercury?”

Nico thought about that for a second, then shook her head. “I don’t know. She gives me something and I put it in my mouth.” When she sniggered, I waited, and sure enough, she followed it with, “That’s what she said.”

I never thought I’d be so happy to hear a That’s what she said joke.

But Nico never let an opportunity to say it pass her by.

“Sorry,” she winced as if to say, Don’t judge me. “I’m watching The Office.”

Of all the things to reassure me that the old Nico was still there—somewhere—it was that.

Nico was fond of making grand statements like, I don’t watch television. So, if you didn’t know her, you’d think that all she did was read Kazuo Ishiguro novels and listen to Mr Bongo reissues. But she loved The Office. She’d told me one afternoon in late July when we were sitting side by side on the beach, our hips grazing and our toes pointed toward the sea. She’d just said that she couldn’t stay long because if she missed dinner again, her mother would kill her. So, as always, I’d feigned insouciance and said that was OK because I had a date with Michael Scott. As soon as I said it, she turned to me, her eyes wide. She asked me what season I was on, and when I told her that I’d just watched the episode with the fire drill, she laughed and laughed.

I think that was the first time she’d really let me see her.

The first time I’d seen her as normal.

Until then, all I’d seen was the impossibly cool Nico who sang outside the station and only wore black. So, I couldn’t imagine her sitting up in bed in her pajamas with her laptop on her knees, watching The Office.

But as this Nico chugged on her hot chocolate, I could imagine it.

“What episode are you on?” I asked with a smirk.

“Michael just burned his foot on the George Foreman Grill.”

“A classic.” I nodded. “I ask Michelle to butter my foot at least once a week.”

“Who’s Michelle?” she asked, her voice a note higher than it had been a moment before.

“My best friend.”

Again, I was probably overthinking it, but when our eyes met, I swear I saw her pupils swell as she smiled. And it was so pure—so unfiltered—that I couldn’t help but smile back.

But then Kyle emerged from the café with a bag of rubbish in each hand and the moment was lost.

“Still here?” he asked when he found us standing on the pavement.

“Sorry!” Nico stepped back. “We were just chatting.”

“You’re good.” He shook his head, then tipped his chin up at me. “Tell your parents hello, yeah?”

“Is that how you know him?” Nico asked when he walked away. “Through your parents?”

“Sort of. My parents have a café in the Lanes and Kyle comes in on his day off for lunch.”

“A café? What’s it called?”

“Malakar’s. Original, I know.”

We started walking then. I don’t even remember where we went. All I remember is Nico next to me and the way her curls rose and fell as she walked and the smell of her sweet, sweet perfume. Even that smelled pink.

And I remember talking.

Talking and talking and talking.

“How did your parents meet?” she asked as we stopped to let someone pushing a stroller pass.

“At uni.”

Nico pretended to swoon as I took a sip of hot chocolate. “Was it love at first sight?”

“Not quite. Dad pursued Mum for quite a while before she agreed to go out with him.”

“How come?”

“No reason other than he was a nice Indian boy from a nice Indian family and Mum was going through her boys-with-tattoos phase. When they met, she was seeing the lead singer of a band called the Deborahs.”

“How did your dad change her mind?”

“She went to see the Deborahs at the student union one night and Dad’s band was opening for them.”

“No way!” Nico gasped, then tugged at her scarf. “Hold on. I’m suffocating. I told Mum I didn’t need this, but she’s terrified I’m going to catch a cold, or something.” She pretended to pant, then turned to me with a relieved sigh when she’d freed herself from the scarf. “So, your dad’s band was opening for the Deborahs?”

“Yeah, the nice Indian boy from the nice Indian family was in a punk band.”

“Plot twist!”

“Exactly! As soon as Mum saw him playing the drums, that was it. She was besotted.”

“What happened to the band? Are they still going?”

“Nah, they went their separate ways after uni.”

“That’s a shame.”

“I guess. But Dad says it was probably for the best. They were terrible, apparently.”

Nico laughed, then said, “So, he decided to conquer the world of catering instead?”

“I don’t know if conquer is the right word, but the café’s still going after nineteen years.”

“Did they open it straight from uni?”

“No, they went traveling for a year. Then, when they came home, they got proper jobs.”

“What’s a proper job?”

“Mum was a teacher and Dad was a pharmacist. Which makes sense, I guess. He loves the alchemy of food. How if you heat something at a certain temperature or add spice, the taste changes completely.”

“Like chemistry?”

“Exactly,” I said, then let out a soft sigh. “Plus, his mum died when he was four—”

“Four?” Nico interrupted, her nose wrinkling. “That’s horrible.”

“I know. He was so young when she died that he only remembers her from photos. But then, when he and Mum were traveling around India after they graduated, he had this bottle gourd curry in Vrindavan that tasted exactly like the one his mum used to make and he realized that’s how he could remember her. Through food.”

I saw her eyes darken then as she nodded and began to walk with less purpose. When she turned her cheek to look ahead of us, I knew she was gone and felt that painfully familiar pinch I used to feel when Nico did that before. When I’d say something and she’d look away and I knew she’d gone somewhere without me.

I tried to ignore the memory of it as it scratched at some deep, unreachable place and told myself to focus on now.

Here.

This Nico as she stopped walking and turned to face me when I did the same.

“You know how your dad only remembers his mother from photos?” She lowered her voice as though she was telling me a secret. And I guess she was. “That’s the only way I can remember who I am, through photos.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Thank God for my mum. Every evening after dinner we sit in the living room with a different photo album and we go through each one.”

Nico finished her hot chocolate, then tossed the cup into a bin. “She’s taking it slow. She doesn’t want to overwhelm me, you know? So we started at the beginning, with her childhood. Then Dad’s. He was born in Korea, but she was born here, in Brighton. Her family is, like, loaded and super conservative, so they didn’t approve. When we went to my grandmother’s funeral last summer, she hadn’t seen them for over twenty years. Her older brother died three years ago and no one told her. How messed up is that?”

“That’s awful.”

“The funny thing is, Dad’s grandparents went through the same thing. No one approved because he was American and she was Korean. They met while he was in Wŏnsan during the Korean War. Mum’s got all of these great photos of him in his army uniform. That’s where my surname, Rudolph, comes from. From him.”

I tried not to stare at her because the old Nico didn’t tell me her surname. It was a month before I found out it was Rudolph. And even then she didn’t tell me; I overheard her say it when we went to Resident to pick up an album she’d preordered. So, I didn’t know what to say. And even if I did, I don’t think I could have said anything as I hung on to every word. Each one—each thing about herself—being shared with such ease that I felt seven again and hanging from the monkey bars at that playground by the mini golf course, Michelle dangling beside me as we waved at the train as it rattled past. And just like seeing the beach I knew so well from upside down, it was as thrilling—and as dizzying—to see Nico from a completely new angle.

So, in my fevered curiosity to hear more—to hear it all—I didn’t dare interrupt.

“Mum says it was this epic love story,” she told me as my fingers tightened around the paper cup in my hand. “Something from a film. I’m sure she’s exaggerating, but they look so happy in the photos. They’ve passed now, but Mum has promised to take me to Korea to visit the rest of my family when things calm down.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Korea,” I admitted. “Michelle was obsessed with BTS a couple of years ago, so she got me into K-dramas. We watch one every Friday night.”

“Yeah?” Nico said, her eyes bright and wide again. “Can you give me a list of ones to get started with?”

“Sure. There are tons, though, so I should warn you—once you get started, you won’t be able to stop.”

“That sounds perfect. I’m so bored, stuck at home all day, looking at photo albums.”

“Is it helping?” I asked carefully, hoping that it wasn’t one question too many and she’d shut down.

But she just shrugged. “I think so. It’s like Mum’s putting me back together, piece by piece. Photo by photo. Filling the void between then and now. But the trouble is, I don’t know if I actually remember any of it or if I only think I do because Mum’s told me the story, you know?” When I nodded, I saw another glimpse of the old Nico as she shrugged again and said, “But that’s normal, right? I mean, who remembers their first steps?”

“I don’t,” I told her as I finished my hot chocolate and threw the empty cup into the bin next to hers.

I know the story of my first steps, how Michelle and I took ours together at that campsite in Peacehaven that we go to every August bank holiday. (Although technically, Michelle walked first, and I followed because, as always, I wanted to know where she was going.) But I don’t actually remember doing it.

I wouldn’t even know that’s how it happened if my parents hadn’t told me.

When I turned away from the bin, Nico wrapped her arms around herself and said, “But what happens if I don’t remember? If I never remember it because I don’t want to? Because I don’t like the person I used to be.”

When she frowned at me, I knew what she wanted me to say.

What I should have said.

That it was OK.

That there was nothing to be afraid of.

That she wasn’t a terrible person.

But then I thought about the photographs of birthdays and holidays that line the walls of my house and all of my parents’ stories that bridged the gulf between what they could remember and what I could remember and how they could have told me anything if they wanted to and I would have no idea. Maybe Michelle and I didn’t take our first steps together. Maybe I got up and walked across the living room one morning and they missed it, so they told us it happened at that campsite in Peacehaven because it made for a better story.

Maybe none of it was true. Maybe I wasn’t born to the sound of my mother wailing, my father crying, and Van Morrison singing “Brown Eyed Girl.” And maybe Michelle wasn’t born in the car park of that Gala Bingo because she couldn’t wait and was named after the paramedic with the quickest hands.

But they’d never do that to me.

So I couldn’t do that to Nico.

I couldn’t lie to her because what if she didn’t like the person she used to be?

Maybe she never liked that person, which is why she wanted to be Joan Jett.

And that’s another word I would never have used to describe Nico.

Happy.

Yeah, she knew what she wanted, but she also knew that it wasn’t what she had.

So, instead, I said, “What if it doesn’t matter?”

She blinked at me. “What do you mean?”

I thought about it for a second, then said, “I mean, what if it doesn’t matter who you used to be? Who any of us used to be. What if it only matters who we are right now?”

Nico smiled, slow and easy. “I like that.”

“Let’s make a promise, right here and now, by this bin”—I gestured at it, our empty cups crowning the pile of rubbish like two white teeth—“that we will only ever be exactly who we are. Not who we used to be or who we want to be, but who we are right now because there’s nothing wrong with who we are right now.”

I held up my pinkie finger and she looked at it for a moment.

Then her smile sharpened to a grin as she hooked hers around mine and shook it.