Nicci French - The Memory Game

And cannot come again.

I was getting confused. Was the point of this documentary that you could go home again or that you couldn’t But Paul was talking again. ‘The family,’ he said. ‘Alan Martello called it torment and peace. Jane Martello, my sister, said that it is where we are our best and our worst selves.’ [Oh, Christ.] ‘Erica, my wife, calls it a haven and a prison – we can always return to it, but no matter how far we go from it, we can never escape it.’ (Which Christmas cracker did she get that from?) Paul smiled with the wisdom of the ages and walked on, into the final sequence I had already witnessed, full circle back to the house and the site of the body.

I switched off the television, resolving to sell it. Or maybe a crack addict would break in and steal it while I was away with Kim. It was nearly five thirty. I buckled up my suitcase, then on an impulse I opened it once more and threw in my childhood diary. I quickly punched in Paul’s number but was answered by a machine. After the bleep I said:

‘Paul, it’s me, Jane. I’ve just watched your film. It’s very impressive – honestly, in spite of everything, it holds its own ground. I’m going away for the weekend with Kim, but I’ll call you as soon as I get back. Well done.’ I was going to replace the receiver but a thought struck me. ‘Oh, and Paul – can you just tell me: which side of the river were you walking along at the end?’

As I put the phone down, I heard Kim’s horn. I put on my leather jacket, picked up my bag and walked into the weather.

River Arms was a small white inn with low beams and a huge open fire in the bar. We had a double room, with a bathroom. Kim said that when we woke in the morning we’d be able to see the river and the mountains from our window. Now it was dusk and damp. I sat on my bed, feeling too tired to move.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ said Kim. ‘Why don’t you have a bath, and I’ll meet you in the bar in half an hour. They do wonderful meals here, but we’ll wait until tomorrow for that. Let’s just have a snack by the fire tonight.’

‘Fine.’ I yawned and stood up. ‘How do you know about this place?’

Kim giggled. ‘My romantic past. It comes in useful sometimes.’

I had a deep warm bath, breaking open all the bath gels and foams. I washed my hair and dressed in leggings and a thick baggy cotton shirt. Downstairs, Kim had ordered two large gin and tonics, and had managed to secure a place by the fire. She raised her glass and chinked it against mine.

‘Here’s to better times,’ she said.

My eyes filled with tears, and I took a long swallow of cold clean liquid.

‘I’ve ordered our meal, as well,’ Kim continued. ‘Cold roast beef sandwiches, and a bottle of red wine. Okay?’ I nodded; I was glad, today, of someone to take decisions for me.

‘Tomorrow we can go for a long walk, somewhere high up, with thin air and fine views. If it doesn’t rain. I’ve got Ordnance Survey maps in my bag; we can look at them at breakfast.’

We sipped our drinks and said nothing for a bit. There aren’t many people you can be happily silent with. Then Kim said:

‘Was it worse than you expected?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I expected. Pretty bad, though.’

The sandwiches arrived: thin slices of rare beef, horseradish sauce on the side; a bottle of shiraz rich and smooth enough to befuddle me into a kind of peace.

‘Why did you and Andreas split up? You seemed so happy together.’

‘We were. I thought we were.’ Kim opened her bread and carefully spread a thin layer of horseradish over the beef. ‘One minute he was talking about where we would go on holiday in the summer and what kind of house we would live in together, and the next he was telling me he and his old girlfriend had decided to give it another go. Sorry and thank you and I’ll never forget you and you’re wonderful and all that crap.’ She topped up our wine glasses. ‘I was too old. I can’t have children. I’m past not future.’ She raised her glass once more: ‘Here’s to growing old disgracefully.’

I leant over and gave her a hug.

‘He was mad. He didn’t know how lucky he was.’

Kim grinned a little crookedly.

‘Life never turns out the way you think, does it? When we were at university together, if you’d asked me what I wanted from life I’d have said I wanted it all: a good lasting relationship, children, lots of children, a career, friends. I’ve got friends and I’ve got the career, though nowadays that doesn’t seem to count for much with me. I can do it standing on my head. But I don’t seem to be doing very well with the lasting relationship. And I’ll never have children.’

What could I say? ‘Life’s cruel. I used to think you made your own luck but that’s a very young thing to think, isn’t it? Here are you, beautiful and witty and warm – and on your own. And here am I. I’ve always had more or less what I wanted and suddenly I’m living in a nightmare. Anyway’ – I was a bit drunk now, garrulously mournful – ‘we’ll always have each other.’ This time, I raised my glass. ‘To us.’

‘To us. I’m plastered.’

We ate hungrily.

‘Did you know,’ I said after a bit, ‘that we’re really quite near the Stead.’

‘Actually,’ replied Kim, ‘I did know. Is it a problem?’

‘Not exactly a problem. Do you mean you chose this place because it’s near the Stead?’

‘Kind of. I mean, I thought of it as a lovely place to come to, and then I also thought you might want to go there. To lay a few ghosts. Otherwise I thought it might come to hold a hellish power over you.’

I stared at her in astonishment.

‘Kim, you’re amazing. Ever since we arrived I’ve been thinking that I’ve got to go back there. I’ve got to go to where it happened, not just the Stead but the hillside. I can’t explain it, but I feel as if it won’t be over until I’ve revisited it. I’ve gone back there so many times in my memory; if I close my eyes I could describe the place inch by inch, each ditch and tree. But I’ve never, not ever, been back to it in person – not since Nat vanished. It became like a forbidden area to me. Well, I know why now, of course, but I also know that I can’t escape from what I’ve done, so I’ve got to confront it. Walk through it, as it were. You do see, don’t you?’

Kim nodded, and drained the last of the bottle into our glasses.

‘Certainly. If I were in your shoes, I think I’d feel the same.’ I started to speak, but she stopped me. ‘Since I’m not in your shoes, I will go for a long walk tomorrow, while you return.’

We relapsed into silence once more, both staring into the flames, blurred by wine and fatigue.

‘What are you thinking?’ Kim asked.

‘It wasn’t the Memory Game, you know,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘The game we played at Christmas, trying to remember the objects on a tray. It’s not called the Memory Game. It’s called Kim’s Game.’

‘My game? What on earth are you talking about?’

‘I found a copy of Kim , you know, Kipling’s novel, in a box of my old stuff from the Stead that Claud brought round. I was browsing through it and when Kim is learning to be a spy, his memory is trained by memorising collections of random objects which are then hidden. Kim’s game.’

‘You want another glass of wine, Jane,’ said Kim, smiling.

‘The Memory Game is where you have cards face down and you try to pick out pairs. I don’t know how I forgot that.’

Kim stood up.

‘I forgive you,’ she said. ‘Come on. Bed-time.’

The Stead already looked as if it had been abandoned. As soon as I got out of Kim’s car and looked around I could detect the absence of Martha. She once told me that her books got illustrated somehow and the children brought themselves up, but she felt that her garden really needed her. There was a man who used to come from Westbury a couple of times a week but in my days at the Stead she seemed to be out in the garden for almost every minute, on her knees poking at the soil with a trowel, pruning, planting. She had been endlessly resourceful at a craft about which the rest of us knew almost nothing. When we noticed the flowers and the fruit and the vegetables, we adored them, we were glad to have them around, but we paid no attention to all the little battles that had been won and lost in their creation. Had anybody thought about how the garden could function without Martha? She had been absent from it – first in spirit and then in body – for less than six months, but it looked bereft. Canes stood in the beds with nothing attached to them, there were sprigs of dandelion in the lawn dotted among the mangy half-piles of leaves.