Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

Today Tejani comes home.

The little girl’s laugh lingers in the air, is swept away by the tide. Kai stands up and calls the children. They make a race of returning to him. He meets them halfway down the beach. The little girl opens her hand to show him a five-petalled sand dollar lying upon her palm. They have arrived rolled in sand, like a sugar coating, and Kai leads them back down to the water. The little girl likes to ride into the waves upon his shoulders, rides him like a bull through the white horses.

From the front of her house, where she stands surrounded by sleeping dogs, Ileana waves goodbye. And then they are in Old Faithful, driving along the beach road. People have polished their vehicles and brought them out for the Sunday cruise, a motorised promenade. A blind man, a yellow bag slung over his shoulder, uses a broken crutch to tap his way along the road. The sound of the metal tip sings through the noise of the traffic and the crowds. They stop in front of a young girl sitting by a basket heaped with silver fishes and the line of traffic is overtaken by the blind man. In the back of the car the children play with an old stethoscope given by Kai to Abass. They take turns pressing the metal disc on to each other’s chests, the car window, the sand dollar, the space between Kai’s shoulder blades.

Ten minutes and they are on the move again, turning around the roundabout, leaving the other cars behind. Now they are driving with their backs to the sea. Ahead of them the peninsula bridge unfurls, straight and true. Kai rolls down the window on the opposite side of the car and briny marsh air flows through the car. There are people out in the marshes, searching for shellfish; the sound of their voices resounds across the emptiness. Kai pushes the cassette into the player and leans back, one hand on the steering wheel. The sudden sound of the drum beat causes the children to stop playing with the stethoscope. They stand and squeeze themselves into the space between the front seats. Well they tell me of a pie up in the sky .

They all see the kingfisher flash from a street lamp down to the water right in front of the car. The bird rises, a fish glints on the end of its beak. The little girl screams with pleasure. They do not see, for they cannot, as they cross the peninsula bridge, the letters traced by a boy’s forefinger into cement on the far side of the bridge wall half a century ago, beneath the initials of the men who once worked the bridge. J.K .

The Memory of Love is a work of fiction. There are those, however, upon whom I have relied to research certain aspects of the background, setting and factual detail of the story and to whom I would like to offer my thanks. The patients and staff of Kissy Mental Hospital, Freetown, and in particular Dr Edward Nahim, who helped me towards a greater understanding of mental illness and of PTSD. For opening up the world and work of the orthopaedic surgeon, my thanks to the staff and patients of the Emergency Medical Hospital, Goderich. And for general medical advice and the practical challenges of running a hospital in Africa, the late Dr Mambu Alphan Kawa. I would also like to take this opportunity to remember the late Dr Aniru Conteh, a specialist in lassa fever who in 2004 died of the virus he had spent his life combating, as does Dr Bangura in The Memory of Love , the sole character in the novel some details of whom I have based upon a real person.

My thanks also to the following who read and commented upon the manuscript: psychotherapist Polly Bagnall, the psychologist and psychoanalyst Louise Lyon, Michael May and Blake Morrison. I would also like to thank David Godwin, a master of positive thought who always sees the big picture. To the team at Bloomsbury, in particular Michael Fishwick, a great friend and discerning editor, to whom I can hand the reins with confidence, and have done three times now. And to Simon Westcott who walked every step of the long crossing with me.

Adrian’s reference to ‘the fragmentation of conscience’ is drawn from the work of M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie . ‘The plain fact of the matter is that any group will remain potentially conscienceless and evil until such a time as each and every individual holds himself or herself directly responsible for the behaviour of the whole group — the organism — of which he or she is part. We have not yet begun to arrive at that point.’