Nicci French - The Memory Game

I watched his face, his steady grey eyes. I noticed how he used my name. It suddenly occurred to me that it had been a very long time since I had last felt happy. Standing with Caspar, in a house like a man’s brain, it was as if I was looking out from the gloom I had inhabited for so long, through a window, into a different kind of future: brighter. I could see views, sky. For a minute, I stood quite still, while hope clutched me. I caught his eye for a moment.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’

We descended the stairs again and crossed two rooms.

‘Look through there.’

I saw what looked like a totem pole made up of fragments from different columns. On it was carved the name ‘Fanny’. I turned to Caspar with raised eyebrows.

‘Yes?’ I asked.

‘That’s the tomb of the dog that belonged to John Soane’s wife. But it’s also the name of my little daughter.’

‘I thought Fanny was one of those names we can’t use any more.’

‘I’ve tried to revive it.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No. I live on my own.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

Outside, blinking in the chilly light, we grinned stupidly at each other. Then Caspar glanced at his watch.

‘Lunch?’

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Please.’

‘All right.’

We walked to Soho, past the delicatessens and the porn shops, and stopped at an Italian café-cum-restaurant. We had goat’s cheese half-melted on crisp toast, and green salad, and a glass of white wine each. He looked at my ringless hands and asked if I was married, and I told him I was separated. And I asked him how old his daughter was. She was five. Lots of people, he said, thought he was some kind of superman just because he did what hundreds of thousands of women did without anyone noticing them at all.

‘I didn’t know about love before Fanny, silly thing that she is,’ he said.

I told him about Robert and Jerome, how grown-up and tall they were, how they protected me, were always on my side, and he said he’d love to meet them one day. And then the possibility of there being a future to this, a ‘one day’, opened up before me and I felt dizzy and scared, and I lit a cigarette. I said I had to go. He didn’t try to stop me, just saw me to my bike and watched as I got tangled up with the lock and the helmet and wobbled off.

I felt like an adolescent, dizzy with excitement, and I felt like a terrified old woman being dragged back into a prison by hundreds of thin, sharp ties. I could have an affair with Caspar – no, I knew when I thought of his hand lightly on my shoulder, or his straight grey gaze, that I could have a relationship with Caspar. We wouldn’t just climb into bed with each other one night after a bottle of wine, we’d dig back into each other’s past, uncover old wounds, give ourselves up to the addictive grief of love. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t ready – that’s what counsellors always say, that you have to wait, to grow strong again, to learn to live with loneliness. I was ready, all right. It had been a long time since I’d lost myself to love. I was ready, but I was scared. I felt tired. A mild headache thrummed in my temples. Wine at lunchtime.

I rode my bike along Oxford Street, which, in the winter afternoon, was already lit up by its Christmas lights. God, I hate the way we now have massive Disney characters hanging across the roads. I hadn’t finished Christmas shopping yet, though I’d bought a pair of binoculars for Dad, and lots of ridiculous stocking presents from Father Christmas, who had always come to the house, long after the children had discovered he was me. It had always been my favourite bit of Christmas Day – the early morning, when everyone would crowd into my bedroom, sit on the bed, pull knickers and soap and corkscrews from their pillow cases. It suddenly occurred to me that I might be alone this Christmas morning: the boys would come for dinner, of course, and so would Dad, and maybe I should invite Claud because I couldn’t bear to think of him eating a neat meal for one, though probably he’d go to Alan’s and Martha’s. But maybe I’d wake up on Christmas morning in an empty house.

For a moment I contemplated going into the hot jaws of one of the department stores, thick with perfume, to grasp wildly at shirts and ties and jerseys for the boys. But they hated shirts and ties from department stores, and it had been a long time since I’d stopped choosing their clothes for them. On an impulse, I rode to one of my favourite shops in London, the hat shop in Jermyn Street, and I bought three fabulous and expensive trilbys: a brown one for Jerome, a black one for Robert, and a bottle-green one for Kim. I hung the bag on my handlebars, and pedalled towards Camden, where I bought lots of tiny paper cases for the chocolate truffles I was going to make for everyone, and some handsome green jars. In one shop, I saw a pair of earrings in the shape of tiny silver boxes. Far too expensive. I bought them for Hana and carried them away in a pretty, ribboned box.

That evening, I played my three Neil Young albums while I made tomato chutney and ladled it into the green jars, which I labelled, and I made chocolate truffles with bitter dark chocolate. I rolled them in cocoa, and laid them in their little cases. Tomorrow I would make boxes for them. The kitchen smelt of vinegar and bitter chocolate. I still felt excitedly energetic, so I poured myself a glass of red wine, lit a cigarette, and with a satisfyingly sharp pencil and my favourite ruler (long, with one flat edge), I made an architect’s drawing of my house. I doodled a fat kitsch cherub against the clean lines of the roof. When I went to the office, I would photocopy the drawing onto white card, and send off the copies as Christmas cards.

I poured another glass of wine – the headache was gone – and smoked a cigarette. Perhaps I would give up smoking for New Year. Through the window, I saw that the moon was quite full, and on an impulse I put on a thick overcoat, belonging to Robert, and went into the garden. It was a beautiful night, clear and bitingly cold. The stars looked close, and the branches of the pear and cherry trees were stark.

At one end, under the overgrown bay tree, was the unmarked graveyard of the boys’ numerous pets: hamsters, guinea pigs, two rabbits, a budgie. The boys used to play football on the lawn, churning it into mud. In spring and autumn, we would have binge gardening weekends, planting seeds that the neighbourhood cats would dig up. In April, the trees would blossom, the froth of pear and cherry and the waxy candles of the magnolia tree, and for a few weeks the garden would become a place of astonishing loveliness and grace. Claud and I used to sit out here with our drinks when the weather was fine. We’d had summer parties, with Pimm’s and strawberries, and the boys had handed out crisps. We’d had loads of barbecues, some of the hot dogs and fizzy drink kind, some with prawns on kebabs, and cajun mackerel, and flat mushrooms marinaded in a spicy sauce. My recall snagged again: there was something I wasn’t remembering. What had Alex told me to do – let myself remember.

Clutching my wine and cigarette, I made my private New Year’s resolution early: that I would not rest until I had walked through the landscape of my memory and reached its heart, and that I would give myself permission to be happy.

It never occurred to me that I could make the second resolution without the first.

‘He what?’

‘He wants to come for Christmas dinner with a television crew.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. For a start, what television crew would agree to work on Christmas Day?’

‘I think his would. It’ll be like the Queen’s message to the Commonwealth.’