Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

She’d had a mostly good relationship with her father, until he had walked out on her and her mother. Subtly encouraged by her mother, she had believed that it was all his fault, that he had abandoned his wife and daughter in a fit of selfishness, but now she was pretty certain that Patrick was the reason that her parents had split apart.

She had hoped that when she had gone to visit him in Hoh Chi Minh City over the summer, she would have been able to rebuild the relationship, at least to see things from his point of view. But she had been surprised — shocked — to find that he was living with a girlfriend, Ngoc, of whom she had never even heard. Ngoc was about thirty, slinkily beautiful, with a simpering, insincere smile. For the first couple of days father and daughter had had some good conversations, but as each day passed Ngoc’s displeasure at Clémence’s presence became clearer, and her father withdrew. Until, by the time she left, she was under the impression that they were both glad to see the back of her.

For years now, Clémence had lived her life alone. She had envied her friends at boarding school whose homes were only twenty miles away, and whose parents loved each other and visited every other weekend to take their daughters out for lunch or to watch them play netball. She had a mother whom she was growing to hate, and a father whom she never saw. The only thing her parents seemed to agree on was that she should live thousands of miles away from them. Everyone else had a family; why couldn’t she have one too?

Inevitably, she had blamed herself for this. There was something wrong with her, there must be or why wouldn’t her parents care about her? One good thing about reading Death At Wyvis with the old man, was that she was beginning to suspect that actually her problems weren’t rooted in the present and defects in her personality, but in the past, between the covers of that book.

She considered the people she had been reading about: Angus’s friends, or rather Alastair’s. She was getting a pretty good idea of them, but she didn’t know what they looked like. She wondered whether there were any photos in the old man’s study; Sheila MacInnes had suggested that there were.

The old man would probably be out for a while. She nipped up the stairs to the study and opened the desk drawers. There were some letters, an exercise book, a passport, a birth certificate, bank statements, bills. There was an article from Cognitive Neuropsychology dated 1997 and entitled ‘Confabulation: knowledge and recollective experience’.

And in the bottom drawer was an old leather-bound photograph album, with the dates ‘1935–1939’ written on it in white pencil.

She opened it. There was a picture of a boy with Alastair’s cleft chin standing next to a middle-aged couple by a tree near a stream. They were all smiling at the camera; and the older man was clutching a pipe. Beneath it was scrawled in white Mother, Me, Father.

Clémence flipped the pages, fascinated. There was a girl called Joyce — Alastair’s younger sister. There was his college at Oxford: a group of male students in jackets and ties, including a tall and incredibly handsome Stephen, her grandfather, standing next to Alastair in the quad of a college. Stephen’s smile was knowing, warm, yet dangerous. A couple of Alastair playing rugby for the Greyhounds, whoever they were. Each photograph was labelled in neat white writing.

Then Paris — the Eiffel Tower, the Seine. Nathan, short and swarthy, sitting with Stephen at a café. Deauville: a tall half-timbered house with turrets. Two smiling girls — Madeleine and Sophie — one dark, one fair, both beautiful, both wearing scarves around their necks. It was true, Sophie did look a bit like Clémence, although Sophie was blonder and much prettier. No wonder Alastair had fallen for her. But there was Stephen’s wicked smile again, and Clémence could see why Sophie had picked him rather than Alastair.

Only two or three photographs of Bart’s, a family Christmas in 1938 and then Capri. Towering mountains, sea of shining grey, flowers blooming in monochrome, two or three shots of the friends relaxing around an outside table on a terrace, always including Sophie. Then a ruin that was labelled Villa Jovis, water cisterns . Then a more modern façade with peeling plaster, unlabelled but it must be the Villa Fersen. And the ornate but tattered interior of the villa itself, and a semicircular room with tapestries: the opium den.

And then nothing. Four or five blank black pages.

Clémence turned back to a couple of the photographs of Alastair. There weren’t many of them, which wasn’t surprising since he was the photographer. They reminded her of someone or something.

Who?

Stephen speeded up as he approached the crossing, but the green man had finished flickering and turned to red by the time he got there. He swore mildly to himself: that particular crossing took an age to turn green again.

Two young women joined him, shoving pushchairs. They were speaking animatedly in French. This seemed to be the new thing in Notting Hill — first it was the English yuppie bankers, then the Americans, and now the French spilling over from Kensington. There were very few people he still recognized from his arrival in Notting Hill in the seventies. Mr Chaudhury, who had just sold him the copy of the Racing Post which he was clutching under his arm, being one of those few.

Stephen eavesdropped. The women were discussing one of the fathers at school who always wore very tight trousers. The question was, did he do that on purpose to advertise the size of his manhood? Indeed, was his manhood worth advertising? The women were so engrossed in the problem that they had not noticed Stephen.

They were quite attractive really, especially the small one with the promising chest. Years ago, they would have noticed him. The conversation would have tailed off, there would have been sideways glances, and then whispers when he walked off. But not now. Obviously not now.

He cleared his throat and addressed the smaller woman. He spoke loudly and clearly in his plummy French accent: he had been taught how to project, after all. ‘ Madame, ces nibards sont magnifiques! Votre fils a beaucoup de chance.’

One of the women let out a small shriek and the other reddened instantaneously. The light changed to green and the two pushchairs shot across the road, leaving Stephen chuckling to himself.

He got home and opened the Racing Post to plan his campaign for the day. A horse he had backed unsuccessfully before was running at Uttoxeter. He still fancied it. Difficult one.

The phone rang. Who the hell was that? Bloody people, never gave a chap a moment’s rest.

He picked it up. The phone hissed. ‘Dad? It’s Rupert.’

What the hell did he want? But actually, Stephen could guess. He grunted.

‘I’ve just had Clémence on the phone. From Wyvis.’

‘I know,’ said Stephen. ‘She rang me yesterday. Whose stupid idea was it to send her up there?’

Stephen and his son spoke for ten minutes, which must have been the longest conversation they had had in years. Things were unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory.

As Stephen hung up the phone, he thought of Clémence. By and large he didn’t like his grandchildren much, at least the ones he knew, but he had grown fond of Clémence the couple of times he had seen her as a schoolgirl when she had visited him on her way to boarding school. He didn’t want her mixed up in the whole Sophie thing; she would only get hurt like the rest of them.

He stared at the Racing Post on the kitchen table, but he couldn’t concentrate. His eyes were drawn to the half-empty bottle of Scotch he kept in the kitchen. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock. He could wait an hour and a bit until his pint at the Windsor Castle.