Meg is still laughing to see me so riled. ‘You do know that in the last ten years, you were a total gym bunny. You did classes and stuff. You ran races. You were the fittest person I know.’
‘Well, naturally. I’m super fit. It’s the giant staples in my head, I reckon.’
Meg rolls her eyes at me. ‘Do the exercises.’
‘But they hurt.’
‘Says the girl with the pierced nipple.’
The family take it in turns to be with me at the moment. Dad brings me photo albums hoping it might jog something, Mum brings crisps and lectures about wearing bike helmets. Beth brings music and Grace brings me medical journal articles on case studies of amnesia, including the story of a man who got amnesia from herpes, which made me check my lady parts with a mirror. Assorted friends drop in; some I know and some I don’t. Farah did a video call and it turns out she’s not my go-to party girl any more. She’s married with a son and living in Amsterdam. She still loves me dearly but liquid eyeliner and drinking until we fall down is not the priority any more. She’s changed. They’ve all changed.
‘Why don’t you do one of those colouring books like he suggested for your fine motor skills?’ Meg suggests.
‘All right, Mummy. Only if you do it with me,’ I say in a whiny kid’s voice.
‘Are you going to draw cocks and balls on everything again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, we will tell Igor you tried.’
I like Meg for the dryness and the camaraderie. I think the two of us are kindred spirits in how we regularly test Mum and the limits of her patience. Meg snuggles into me and starts colouring in a panda. I give the panda a willy on his head.
‘How is Tess?’ I ask. ‘I have a feeling I scared her on that first day. Is she OK now?’
‘She has a lot of questions but she’s just worried. You and her were quite close to be fair. She came down last month to spend some time with you. She wants to get into theatre so you showed her round your manor.’
‘I did?’
‘I have a feeling you did much more than just show her around various backstages but she adored you after that trip.’
‘She wants to act?’
‘Costume design,’ Meg continues. ‘Turns out the girl can draw. All from her father, those skills.’
‘Or maybe from me, look how well I can speed-draw a penis.’
‘Beautiful colouring, Lucifer.’
I laugh and she allows me to rest my head on her shoulder. She started calling me Lucifer the day I first learnt how to bite. To me, she is Big Meg because she was always taller and bigger and more mature. The day she first kissed a boy, she came back and told us all the detail: how he slipped her some tongue and she nearly bit it off in shock. We all sat there in our matching nighties (that was a thing, it saved our mum time) like the Von Trapps, in giggles and admiration of the biggest one of our lot stepping out into the world and coming back with morsels of gossip. If we could we probably would have sung about it.Boys in Adidas who know how to sing, these are a few of our favourite things.
‘I have a question, Meggsy?’ I ask her.
‘I suspect this will be a running theme for a while.’
‘What’s with the high-waisted baggy jeans? You look like Mum from when we were little.’
She looks at me and shakes her head. ‘I’m not too old and you’re not too unwell that I can’t slap you.’
‘It may bring my memory back.’
‘These are nineties chic. You know fashion, it goes full circle. All the cool girls are in mom jeans. Anyways, they’re high-waisted and tuck in my gut.’
‘Yeah, I noticed the gut.’
This time she does hit me. My memory does not come flooding back. What I do want to say though is that she kinda reminds me of Mum. But if I say that, she’ll kill me. She’ll push me off the bed and say it was an accident.
A knock on the door gets our attention and Meg welcomes the people in.We know them?It’s a man and a woman, a couple?
