and deep. He told me to wait where it all began. Wait for him to return. It was all coming at me in flashes, like a jigsaw I needed to put together. It was overwhelming and like nothing I had experienced before.
Katie touched my arm, shaking me from the images that were attacking my peaceful fog. As I focused back on the present Rachael and Sean were oblivious. Her head on his shoulder, both contained in their own bubble of happiness. No doubt both thinking about their baby.
‘Dan, are you okay?’ Katie looked at me, worry clouding her eyes. I released my grip on her arms, aware that it had tightened far more than I had intended it to.
‘Yes, yes I’m fine.’
‘You just saw a memory, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘What happened?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s probably nothing.’
I reach for my wineglass take a sip, my hand shaking a little as I did.
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Later, this night is about those two,’ I said gesturing to the soon-to-be parents.
‘Okay,’ she said, understanding. ‘Let’s talk about it tonight when we’re home. Promise?’
‘Of course.’
I pushed my troubled thoughts away and made myself continue with the evening. Once the firework display was over we made our way back inside and chatted for about an hour more before we could see Rachael getting tired. I went upstairs to give Thomas a kiss on his head and he mumbled dream-like words in his sleep that had no true form. We said our goodbyes, congratulating Rachael and Sean again and thanked them for a great night before we began our fifteen-minute walk home through the town centre that was full of happy revellers, most of them wishing us a happy new year. We left High Street and turned onto Maiden Lane that cut through to Blackfriars Street where St George’s Church stood, uplit and majestic. The quiet lane offered a chance for us to talk uninterrupted so I told Katie what I saw when the song came on.
‘I’ve not seen anything so vivid before. Usually it’s just a flash of one thing but I saw so many different things. I heard my father. I’m sure of it. It was his voice. And those words. I can remember them, but I have no idea what they mean.’
I spelt out the letters that I could still see in my mind and Katie struggled to understand them too. The arrangement wasn’t something either of us knew.
‘Try Google,’ she suggested. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought of that already. Punching the letters in there was an immediate hit. It stopped me in my tracks.
‘Dan, what is it?’
‘France,’ I said, my confusion clear in my voice.
‘Sorry?’
‘Those words, it’s the name of a place in France.’
Monday
Daniel
Stamford
1st January 2018, 7.31 a.m.
Following my vision, I pushed my concerns for professional boundaries out of the way and messaged Will, saying something new, something big had happened. He responded within a few minutes telling me he would call later. I could barely contain my excitement, and fear, as Katie and I spent the morning looking into the French town I had seen, the name flashing past my eyes whenever I closed them. A place called Auvers-sur-Oise. It was a small town, unremarkable aside from the fact that it was a popular destination for landscape painters. Amateurs had been going for hundreds of years to paint the view. The pictures of the town online didn’t look familiar, they didn’t coax anything else out of the blank space in my mind. We even did a Google Earth Street View, and still there was nothing about Auvers-sur-Oise that I recognized.
Though, seeing the name so clearly in my mind had to mean something; the image was too powerful to not be part of my past, part of the man I once was. I messaged Mum, asking her to come over, and waited for her to reply. Katie and I looked at Auvers for clues for hours, speaking of little else, until my head hurt so badly I needed to lie down. No matter what we tried, no more memories came back to me.
When I woke, Katie was packing her bag. Her eyes were puffy and red. She had received a call from the hospital as her father had taken a turn and she was advised to come down as soon as she could. I started to get a bag ready too, but she told me she would drive by herself. I protested but she told me it would be good for her to spend time alone with him.
She left just after two o’clock and as I watched her drive away towards the A1, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I should have been driving her, I should be holding her hand as she copes with the forthcoming loss of her father. But I understood, she had to do this alone. I didn’t know her father, it would be wrong for me to be there. So, home by myself all I could do was wait until Will called.
It was just after four, as he’d promised, when he called and in our brief chat I told him what happened at Rachael and Sean’s. He asked me what specifically was happening in that moment and I mentioned the smell of fireworks and the song that was playing in the background that triggered the montage of broken images.
‘Yes. Sounds and smells can play a huge role in recalling memory. Especially smells.’
‘But I’ve smelt fireworks before?’
‘Perhaps the combination of both was what triggered the memories. Perhaps, Daniel, this is the progress we’ve been waiting for.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Before we get excited, talk to your mother. Tell her the things you saw and mention the French town you recalled. All of what you experienced might not be true. But some could be, and if so, that’s promising.’
Mum finally replied, apologizing for the delay, telling me she was out with friends for the day and she would be over in half an hour. I needed confirmation from her of what I had seen so that I could get a sense of what proportion was true and what was confabulation. I didn’t want to get my hopes up until I had that conversation. But, Will’s final words, ‘that’s promising’, made it impossible not to. By the time Mum had arrived I had paced around my lounge so much I was sure the carpets had worn thin. I didn’t ask how she was, or make her a drink before launching into what I experienced. As I motored on, she only spoke to ask me to slow down.
‘Sorry. I’m trying to keep calm.’
‘I understand.’
‘Mum, is any of what I’ve just said true? Is any of it actually from my memory?’
‘Yes, some. Your dad’s voice for a start. How you described it is exactly how I would.’
‘What about the digging? The sense of being high on a building?’
‘I don’t know about those things, they sound like something we might have done on a trip somewhere? The building could be a castle we visited perhaps? Nothing springs to mind but I’ll check when I get home.’
‘Check?’
‘My holiday scrapbooks. When we went away each year I kept a scrapbook of the holidays. Something to look back on.’
‘You’ve kept holiday scrapbooks? For how long?’
‘Every trip we’ve ever taken.’
‘Including holidays before my accident?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why haven’t you shown me? They could have triggered something years ago! You know I used to ask about pictures all the time. You always said you never took any.’ I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice.
‘I thought about showing