She came to with a jolt. Someone was pressing a finger against her neck.
‘You’re all right. Take it easy, OK?’
Her eyes slowly focused in the dim morning light and she propped herself up on one elbow. A man in a luminous yellow jacket was crouching over her.
‘Steady now…Slowly.’ He reached round to support her and shone a small torch in her face. She tried to twist away but her muscles felt all spongy. There was a noise like a hundred car alarms going off at once. And the people…There were people everywhere.
‘Okaaaay,’ he said, clicking the torch off and rocking back on his heels. ‘You’ve had a bit of a shock, but nothing serious.’ He gently hoisted her into an upright position.
‘Derek, over here!’ cried someone above the din.
The paramedic gestured that he was on his way and took another look at the girl.
‘Here,’ he said, grabbing what looked like a crumpled jacket from the gutter and shaking off the grit. ‘Sit on this–you don’t want any more cuts and bruises, do you?’
She allowed him to slip it underneath her, and for the first time looked down at her body. Her palms were grazed and bleeding slightly, like a child’s after a playground fall. Her bare feet were scratched too, probably from the shards of glass that littered the street. But it wasn’t her skin she was looking at; it was her clothes–or lack of. Tugging at the stretchy material of her dress, she tried to cover the tops of her thighs, only to find that the whole garment moved down and she didn’t appear to be wearing a bra.
‘Once we’ve accounted for everyone we’ll get you to a hospital and check you over properly. Can you tell me your name?’
She nodded vacantly.
The man waited a moment then repeated, ‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘Derek!’ the voice yelled again. ‘Over here, please!’
Holding up a hand in acknowledgement, the paramedic peered into the girl’s face. She avoided his gaze and stared out at the mayhem. The road was strewn with fallen masonry, pieces of twisted metal and broken, blackened furniture. Parts of the street were stained with blood. But she saw none of it. She wasn’t listening to the sirens or the screams. Something else was occupying her thoughts.
‘I think you may be in shock,’ said the paramedic, standing up. ‘Put the jacket around you and I’ll get one of my colleagues to check you over. Just wait here, OK?’
She nodded vaguely, continuing to stare into space as the man rushed off. The questions were mushrooming inside her head, multiplying, jostling and competing for space. Questions like, why was she here, where the hell was ‘here’, what had happened…? But of all the fears crowding her mind, one was so immediate, so profound that it eclipsed all the rest.
She didn’t know her own name.
How was that possible? And it wasn’t just her name that was missing; it was her whole life: her background, her home, her family…Friends, lovers…Everything was a blank.
Ignoring the mounting nausea, she tried to focus, to force her memory back into action. She ran through as many names as she could think of in the hope that one might click. None did. Her head pounded and there was a high-pitched whining in her ears. The harder she struggled to remember, the emptier her mind seemed to be.
She shivered and wrapped the coat around her bare legs. Her breathing was shallow and her hands were shaking uncontrollably. The fear engulfed her all of a sudden. She looked around. It was as though she was scared of something, or someone. It wasn’t just fear of the unknown–the unknown that was her identity–it was something dark and amorphous: a paranoia that she couldn’t explain. She only knew one thing for sure: she had to get away.
On autopilot, she grabbed the jacket from under her and stood up. Her legs wobbled and the ringing in her ears intensified. She was half expecting a paramedic or one of the other uniformed men to stop her as she slipped away, but nobody did.
The scattered debris hindered her bare-footed progress, but slowly she picked her way down a narrow street bordered by tall buildings that seemed eerily quiet compared to the pandemonium she’d just left. She looked back. It was a nightclub, she ascertained. That explained her flimsy dress. The remains of a neon sign, bulbs half shattered, stuck out above the entrance, which was now little more than a burned-out concrete shell. She wondered what could have caused the destruction. A burst gas main? A bomb?
She slowed down, relieved to have escaped unchallenged but still feeling tense and scared. It was partly the fear of what lay ahead, she thought, but mostly it was fear of what had gone before: the huge, gaping hole that was her past and, more specifically, the thing–whatever it was–that had caused her to run away.
The sun had yet to rise in the mottled pink sky and her dress wasn’t providing much warmth. She shook the grit off the jacket and pulled it around her. Something rubbed against her hip as she tied the belt. The pocket was open and her fingertips brushed smooth leather.
Stopping in the shadows, she pulled out the wallet. ‘Joe Simmons’ read the name on the credit card. She leafed through the other items. Two more credit cards, one cash card, one gym membership card, a couple of other unidentifiable swipe cards, lots of receipts randomly folded up and shoved into one compartment–definitely a man’s wallet, she thought–and a Post-it note covered in anonymous scribbles. Hoping that Joe Simmons was a rich man, she unzipped the notes pocket and peered inside.
Despite the anxieties, she felt a rush of excitement as she counted the eighteen twenty-pound notes. Mr Simmons was a rich man. And careless. Only a fool carried that much cash around with them. She slipped the wallet back into the pocket and continued walking towards what looked like a main road, wondering how it was that she could know such things as the value of money, how to read, how to add up and how to speak English, without knowing her own name. Her memory seemed to have blotted out the facts whilst maintaining the skills.
She stopped at the kerb and took in her surroundings. In front of her was a leafy park, a pleasant surprise after the claustrophobic alleyways and looming buildings. She darted across the four lanes of traffic, light at this time in the morning and mainly black cabs. Black