Peter Lovesey: Upon A Dark Night

‘I’m an absurdly cautious driver, actually,’ Imogen claimed. ‘Do you live in Bath, Rose?’

Rose. She would have to get used to it now. She didn’t feel like a flower.

‘I couldn’t say.’

She thought it unlikely that she lived in Bath, considering it made no connection in her mind. Probably she was just a visitor. But then she could think of no other place she knew.

They drove past a signpost to Cold Ashton, and she told herself it was the sort of name you couldn’t possibly forget.

‘Ring any bells?’ asked Imogen. ‘I saw you looking at the sign.’

‘No.’

‘The way we’re going, down the A46, you’ll get a super view of the city as we come down the hill. With any luck, some little valve will click in your head and you’ll get your memory back.’

The panorama of Bath from above Swainswick, the stone terraces picked out sharply by the mid-morning sun, failed to make any impression. No little valve clicked in her head.

Imogen continued to offer encouragement. ‘There’s always a chance some old chum will recognise you. If this goes on for much longer, we can put your picture in the local paper and see if anyone comes forward.’

She said quickly, ‘I don’t think I’d like that.’

‘Shy, are we?’

‘Anyone could say they knew me. How would I know if they were speaking the truth?’

‘What are you worried about? Some chap trying his luck? You’d know your own boyfriend, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Stone the crows!’ said Imogen. ‘You do have problems.’

They drove down the rest of the road and into the city in silence.

At the office in Manvers Street, Rose – she really was making an effort to respond to the name – was handed twenty-five pounds and asked to sign a receipt. She was also given a second-hand shirt and jeans. She changed right away. Imogen put the old clothes into a plastic bin-liner and dumped them in a cupboard.

She thought about asking to keep her tatty old things regardless of the state they were in. Seeing them dumped in the sack was like being deprived of even more of herself.

In the end she told herself they were too damaged to wear and what were clothes for if you didn’t use them? She didn’t make an issue of it.

Then Imogen drove her to a women’s hostel in Bathwick Street called Harmer House, a seedy place painted inside in institutional green and white. She was to share a room with another woman who was out.

‘How long do I stay here?’

‘Until you get your memory back – or someone claims you.’

Like lost property.

Imogen consoled her. ‘It shouldn’t be long, they said. Chin up, Rose. It could happen to anyone. At least you’ve got some sleeping quarters tonight. Somewhere to count sheep. You’re luckier than some.’

The bed across the room was unmade and strewn with orange peel and chocolate-wrappings. Not promising, the new inmate thought, but it did underline one thing: you were expected to feed yourself in this place. Imogen the social worker had shown her the poky communal kitchen in the basement. If she could remember what she liked to eat and how to cook it, that would be some progress. Surely if anything could jump-start a girl’s memory, it was shopping.

So she went out in search of a shop. It would be pot-luck, because Bath was unknown to her. Or was it? She may have lived here some time. She had to get into her head the possibility that her amnesia was blocking out her ability to recognise any of it.

A strange place can be intimidating. Mercifully this was not. Viewing it through a stranger’s eyes, Rose liked what she saw, disarmed by the appeal of a city that had altered little in two hundred years, not merely the occasional building, but street after street of handsome Georgian terraces in the mellow local stone. She strolled through cobbled passages and down flights of steps into quiet residential areas just as elegant as the main streets; formal, yet weathered and welcoming. At intervals she looked through gaps between the buildings and saw the backdrop of hills lushly covered in trees.

An unfamiliar city. Unfamiliar people, too. She didn’t let that trouble her. She preferred the people unfamiliar. What if she did live here and suddenly met someone who knew her? That was what she ought to be hoping for – some chance meeting that would tell her who she was. But if she had a choice, she wanted to find out in a less confrontational way. She dreaded coming face to face with some stranger who knew more about her than she did herself, someone who expected to be recognised, who wouldn’t understand why she acted dumb. Her situation was making her behave like a fugitive. Stupid.

So she was wary of asking the way to the nearest food shop. By chance she came across Marks and Spencer when she was moving through side streets, trying to avoid the crowds. She discovered a side entrance to the store. A homeless man was sleeping outside under a filthy blanket, watched by his sad-eyed dog. Her pity was mixed with some apprehension about her own prospects.

Hesitating just inside the door of the shop, feeling exposed in the artificial light, she found she was in the food section, where she wanted to be. To run out now would be ridiculous. She picked up a basket and collected a pack of sandwiches, some freshly squeezed orange juice, a mushroom quiche, salad things and teabags and paid for them at the checkout. The woman gave her a tired smile that reassured, for it was the first look she’d had in days that wasn’t trying to assess her physical and mental state. Carrying her bag of food, she followed the signs upstairs to the women’s wear floor to look for underwear and tights. She blew fifteen pounds in one quick spree. Well, no one had told her to make the money last. Outside in the street she dropped some coins into the homeless man’s cap.

She saw someone selling the local daily, the Bath Chronicle. She bought one and looked for a place to read it, eventually choosing a spare bench on the shady side of the paved square beside the Abbey. She took out a sandwich and opened the paper.

This wasn’t only about orientating herself in a strange place. If – as her injuries suggested – she had been in some sort of accident, it might have been reported in the local press.

She leafed through the pages. The story hadn’t made today’s edition, anyway.

Trying not to be disappointed, she put aside the paper and started another sandwich. People steadily crossed the yard carrying things that gave them a reason for being there – shopping, briefcases, musical instruments, library books, city maps or rucksacks, going about their lives in a way that made her envious. Seated here, watching them come and go, secure in their lives, Rose knew she was about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of self-pity. She had nowhere to go except that hostel.

Shape up, she told herself. It was stupid to let negative thoughts take over. Hadn’t everyone said her memory would soon be restored? They’d come across amnesia before. It wasn’t all that uncommon.

Even so, she couldn’t suppress these panicky feelings of what might be revealed about her hidden life. Who could say what responsibilities she had, what personal problems, difficult relationships, unwanted secrets? In some ways it might be better to remain ignorant. No, she reminded herself firmly, nothing is worse than ignorance. It cut her off from the life she had made her own, from family, friends, job, possessions.

Lady, be positive, she lectured herself. Work at this. Get your brain into gear. You are not without clues.

All right. What do I know? I’ve looked in the mirror. Age, probably twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Is that honest? Say around thirty, then. Clothes, casual, but not cheap. The shoes are quality trainers and reasonably new. The belt is real leather. The discarded jeans were by Levi-Strauss. My hair – dark brown and natural, fashionably short, trimmed close at the sides and back – has obviously been cut by someone who knows what to do with a pair of scissors. As for my face, well, they said at the hospital that I wasn’t wearing make-up when I was brought in, but it doesn’t look neglected to me. You don’t get eyebrows as finely shaped as these without some work with the tweezers. My skin looks and feels well treated, smooth to the touch, as if used to a moisturiser. The hands? Well, several of my fingernails were damaged in the accident – though I did my best to repair them with scissors and nail-file borrowed from one of the nurses – but the others are in good shape. They haven’t been chewed down, or neglected. I’m interested to find that I don’t paint my fingernails or toenails, and that in itself must say something about me.