I want to tell him about the dream, but I can’t think of a way to describe it without showing my hand, so instead I ask him about recovering memories, about hypnosis.
‘Well,’ he says, spreading his fingers out in front of him on the desk, ‘there are therapists who believe that hypnosis can be used to recover repressed memories, but it’s very controversial. I don’t do it, nor do I recommend it to my patients. I’m not convinced that it helps, and in some instances I think it can be harmful.’ He gives me a half-smile. ‘I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But with the mind, I think, there are no quick fixes.’
‘Do you know therapists who do this kind of thing?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t recommend one. You have to bear in mind that subjects under hypnosis are very suggestible. The memories which are “retrieved”’ – he puts air quotes around the word – ‘cannot always be trusted. They are not real memories at all.’
I can’t risk it. I couldn’t bear to have other images in my head, yet more memories that I can’t trust, memories that merge and morph and shift, fooling me into believing that what is, is not, telling me to look one way when really I should be looking another way.
‘So what do you suggest, then?’ I ask him. ‘Is there anything I can do, to try to recover what I’ve lost?’
He rubs his long fingers back and forth over his lips. ‘It’s possible, yes. Just talking about a particular memory can help you to clarify things, going over the details in a setting in which you feel safe and relaxed …’
‘Like here, for example?’
He smiles. ‘Like here, if indeed you do feel safe and relaxed here …’ His voice rises, he’s asking a question that I don’t answer. The smile fades. ‘Focusing on senses other than sight often helps. Sounds, the feel of things … smell is particularly important when it comes to recall. Music can be powerful, too. If you are thinking of a particular circumstance, a particular day, you might consider retracing your steps, returning to the scene of the crime, as it were.’ It’s a common enough expression, but the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, my scalp tingling. ‘Do you want to talk about a particular incident, Rachel?’
I do, of course, but I can’t tell him that, so I tell him about that time with the golf club, when I attacked Tom after we’d had a fight.
I remember waking that morning filled with anxiety, instantly knowing that something terrible had happened. Tom wasn’t in bed with me, and I felt relieved. I lay on my back, playing it over. I remembered crying and crying and telling him that I loved him. He was angry, telling me to go to bed; he didn’t want to listen to it any longer.
I tried to think back to earlier in the evening, to where the argument started. We were having such a good time. I’d done grilled prawns with lots of chilli and coriander, and we were drinking this delicious Chenin Blanc that he’d been given by a grateful client. We ate outside on the patio, listening to The Killers and Kings of Leon, albums we used to play when we first got together.
I remember us laughing and kissing. I remember telling him a story about something – he didn’t find it as funny as I did. I remember feeling upset. Then I remember us shouting at each other, tripping through the sliding doors as I went inside, being furious that he didn’t rush to help me up.
But here’s the thing: ‘When I got up that morning, I went downstairs. He wouldn’t talk to me, barely even looked at me. I had to beg him to tell me what it was that I’d done. I kept telling him how sorry I was. I was desperately panicky. I can’t explain why, I know it makes no sense, but if you can’t remember what you’ve done, your mind just fills in all the blanks and you think the worst possible things …’
Kamal nods. ‘I can imagine. Go on.’
‘So eventually, just to get me to shut up, he told me. Oh, I’d taken offence at something he’d said, and then I’d kept at it, needling and bitching, and I wouldn’t let it go, and he tried to get me to stop, he tried to kiss and make up, but I wouldn’t have it. And then he decided to just leave me, to go upstairs to bed, and that’s when it happened. I chased him up the stairs with a golf club in my hand and tried to take his head off. I’d missed, fortunately. I just took a chunk out of the plaster in the hall.’
Kamal’s expression doesn’t change. He isn’t shocked. He just nods. ‘So, you know what happened, but you can’t quite feel it, is that right? You want to be able to remember it for yourself, to see it and experience it in your own memory, so that – how did you put it? – so that it belongs to you? And that way, you’ll feel fully responsible?’
‘Well,’ I shrug. ‘Yes. I mean, that’s partly it. But there’s something more. And it happened later, much later – weeks, maybe months afterwards. I kept thinking about that night. Every time I passed that hole in the wall I thought about it. Tom said he was going to patch it up, but he didn’t, and I didn’t want to pester him about it. One day I was standing there – it was evening and I was coming out of the bedroom and I just stopped, because I remembered. I was on the floor, my back to the wall, sobbing and sobbing, Tom standing over me, begging me to calm down, the golf club on the carpet next to my feet, and I felt it, I felt it. I was terrified. The memory doesn’t fit with the reality, because I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear.’
Evening
I’ve been thinking about what Kamal said, about returning to the scene of the crime, so instead of going home I’ve come to Witney, and instead of scurrying past the underpass, I walk slowly and deliberately right up to its mouth. I place my hands against the cold, rough brick at the entrance and close my eyes, running my fingers over it. Nothing comes. I open my eyes and look around. The road is very quiet: just one woman walking in my direction a few hundred yards off, no one else. No cars driving past, no children shouting, only a very faint siren in the distance. The sun slides behind a cloud and I feel cold, immobilized on the threshold of the tunnel, unable to go any further. I turn to leave.
The woman I saw walking towards me a moment ago is just turning the corner; she’s wearing a deep-blue trench wrapped around her. She glances up at me as she passes and it’s then that it comes to me. A woman … blue … the quality of the light. I remember: Anna. She was wearing a blue dress with a black belt, and was walking away from me, walking fast, almost like she did the other day, only this time she did look back, she looked over her shoulder and then she stopped. A car pulled up next to her on the pavement – a red car. Tom’s car. She leaned down to speak to him through the window and then opened the door and got in, and the car drove away.