to rub them in your face.’
I understood her logic, but I couldn’t stop my annoyance. In the early days when things were bad Mum had been there on the countless nights I cried myself to sleep. She had held my hand when I had my many panic attacks. She had stayed patient when my frustration spilt over as rage and I broke things in her home. Despite it being a symptom of a head injury, I still felt ashamed of how I was all those years ago.
‘Mum, I’m stronger now. I’m okay with it now. I can handle that there are some things I cannot control. Things I may never know. You’re right, back then it would have caused more harm than good. But not now. I think it will help. I’d like to read about me as a kid.’
‘Then we’ll find an evening and we’ll do it together.’
‘Thanks, Mum. What about the French town? Does that mean anything?’
‘Maybe, I’ll have to check. We often drove to the south of France for our holidays, often stopping in small French towns along the way – time to soak up the culture, your dad would say. It’s possible we visited Auvers. Again, it’ll be in the scrapbooks if we did. We’ll know soon enough. Whenever you’re ready.’
I had mixed feelings about what we had discussed. Part of me was excited to know if it was real, that it wasn’t made up, my brain wasn’t playing a cruel trick on me. Another part felt hollow as I ticked off what I could take from the flashes. I saw my dad and learnt of a French town but as for the other things, I was none the wiser as to what they meant.
‘Mum, what do I do now?’
‘I guess you carry on. Find more songs from the same time-period and wait for more memories to come.’
‘Do you think they will?’
‘I think that over the past year you have remembered more and more. And who knows, maybe it’s like a snowball rolling down a hill. Now it’s started it will pick up speed and grow bigger and become unstoppable.’
‘I hope so, Mum.’
‘Me too,’ she said, but with some hesitation.
Sensing that I needed time alone to process what was happening, Mum made her excuses to leave, promising me she would dig out the scrapbooks and have them ready for when I came over next. I joked it would probably be tomorrow, half meaning it.
After Mum left I tried to call Katie a few times but her phone went straight to voicemail. At just after 11 p.m. my phone rang.
‘Katie? Are you okay?’
‘Yes, sorry, it’s been a rough day.’
I wanted to ask if her father was all right, but I already knew the answer.
‘Can I do anything?’
‘No. I’m going to have to stay here for a while.’
‘I understand. Shall I come down?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ She sounded exhausted.
‘Katie, please. I want to be there for you.’
‘I just …’ She hesitated, and I could hear in her voice that she needed me there.
‘Let me be there, I want to be.’
‘Thank you,’ she said conceding. Her voice tired, the edges of her words wrapped in sadness.
‘I’ll get a few things together now.’
‘No, there is no point tonight. Come tomorrow.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, it will give me something to look forward to.’
‘Okay, Katie, I’ll come first thing. Is he comfortable?’
‘Yes.’ She stopped, catching her breath, unable to finish her sentence. ‘He knew it was New Year’s after all. And I didn’t come and see him.’
‘Don’t, you did what you thought was best for him. He knows that.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Darling, you can’t beat yourself up over it. He knows how much you love him. Focus on that.’
‘Thanks, love. I can’t stay on the phone long. Cheer me up, what did Will and your mum say?’
‘That doesn’t matter right now, you’re the one that we should be focusing on at the moment.’
‘It does to me, please.’
I took a breath. ‘Mum told me that some of it’s real.’
‘That’s fantastic! And Will?’ she replied, her voice tired but still I could hear her smile in her words.
‘He said that the fact it was more than one memory was really promising.’
‘Oh, Dan, I’m so happy for you. I needed to hear that.’
In the background I heard another voice speaking to Katie, a male one. I couldn’t make out what was said but she let out a tired sigh.
‘I’ve got to go; Dad is awake.’
‘Of course, go. I’ll be here. Call me whenever you want, okay?’
‘Okay. I love you.’
‘I love you too. If you want me there before tomorrow morning, I can come.’
‘I know, thank you.’
‘Bye, Katie.’
‘Bye.’
The line went dead and I stopped to think about Katie for a moment. I couldn’t imagine keeping it together if I was by my mum’s side as she died. Katie was a stronger person than I was. And I wished I was with her with my arm around her, keeping her upright when she was ready to fall. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. Thinking about her in a dark, quiet hospital room, the only sound being the machines keeping her dying father alive, I felt embarrassed that my past mattered so much. Putting my phone on loud in case she called me in the night, I sat in front of the television watching nothing until I fell into a fitful sleep.
Daniel
Stamford
1st January 2018,11.47 p.m.
I was back in the car. In the dark. Bright lights of a lorry blinded me, and then I was rolling over and over and over until I rested upside down, blood coming from my head, the same place it always comes from. Dripping onto the sunroof. Drip, drip, drip. Then someone was shouting. I tried to move but couldn’t. A hand reached in and dragged me out. This time I was able to see who it was coming to my aid. It was my father. He spoke to me, telling me to run. Telling me to go to the place where it all began. I got up and ran as fast as I could away from the car. I couldn’t get caught, I knew I couldn’t be found. I didn’t know why. As I ran, the world went dark. A thick smoke enveloped me, blinding me. In my hands was a rope. There was an explosion above and I began to fall. As I hit the ground I expected it to be hard, like concrete. But it wasn’t. It was long, soft grass that cocooned me. A caterpillar waiting for its metamorphosis. When I wriggled free I sat up next to a river bank, the water fast moving, a tree shading me from the sun.
I snapped awake, my heart pounding, sweat sticking my hair to my forehead. The dream again, and again it had evolved. I looked over to where I thought Katie would be. Her side of the bed, empty. It took me a moment in my post dream state to remember why she wasn’t there. She was in a hospital ward down south.
Slowing my breathing, I swung my legs off the bed onto the cold wooden floor. I was glad in a way that Katie wasn’t with me while this was going on. She worried a lot when I woke with a dream. She asked a lot of questions, wanting to help decipher them. She would write down in the book any words that jumped out and then try to connect them to something else I had