‘I can’t believe any of this. It feels unreal!’ he says as he hands me the tea. ‘After ten years, you’re actually here. This is the best surprise ever, and it’s not even Christmas yet.’
‘I know,’ I say, holding the warm mug to my chest.
‘Tell me what happened? What the fuck! You fell, I fell... We both made it out. I can’t get my head around it. How did you get out of that ravine? We found your helmet, it was smashed to pieces.’
‘More importantly, how did you get out, with your legs like that?’ I say, hoping to distract him.
‘I just thank God.’ He pauses and looks at me, his eyes wet. ‘I was lying there unable to move. I was so cold and I’d accepted that I was going to die, and then I stopped thinking about me and my pains, and thought about you. Love gave me the strength to crawl back up the mountain.’
Exes are the worst, but exes who don’t realize that they’ve survived a murder attempt and still believe you’re in love are worse still. He leans towards me and takes my hand.
‘Did you climb out? Where did you go?’
‘I don’t know what happened to me,’ I say, realizing I should’ve come up with a backstory. I stare blankly.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ he says, his eyes darting with interest.
I shrug and look blank. His eyes search my face.
‘Oh God, you did lose your memory, didn’t you?’ he says, ecstatically. ‘Just like I imagined.’
I nod slowly with appropriate solemnity. There is one thing worse than thinking about the past, and that is having to speak about it. I look down and compose myself, as if I’m experiencing strong emotion, but all I feel is my stomach rumbling because I’ve forgotten to eat again.
‘I don’t know who found me. I was unconscious. A coma. Must’ve hit my head badly. Some climbers carried me down the mountain. I woke up three months later in a hospital. Frontal lobe damage from the fall,’ I say, and show him a scar on my head, which I had from when I was twelve. ‘I couldn’t remember anything. Not even my name.’
‘That must’ve been terrifying,’ he says. A moment later, he lurches forward and squeezes my arm.
‘I guess it was,’ I say. ‘But you just fight on.’
‘What a journey we’ve been on, and then we find each other again.’ He leans across and gives me another wet-cheeked hug.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’
‘Which hospital was it? I searched every hospital in France,’ he says.
‘I was taken to Italy,’ I lie.
‘So that’s why there was no record of you. I’ve racked my brains for years trying to work out what happened to you. And you call yourself Lalla now? Where did that come from?’
‘I thought it was my name. I suppose it’s similar,’ I say, and whimper a little for effect.
‘Oh, don’t cry, Lola! I can help you.’
‘No one can help, Hollis. That part of my life is gone. It’s a blank. I’ve got a new life now.’
‘But this is destiny, I can help you to remember everything. I can fill in those blanks for you. Every moment we shared.’
‘Do you think you could?’ My stomach churns but I don’t think it’s hunger this time.
‘I’ve been quite fanatical about it. I’ve pieced together everything about us. We can go through it all, day by day.’
‘Every single day?’
‘We can relive our whole marriage,’ he says as if this can ever be a desirable prospect.
I look at him, stunned, which is genuine. I make a mental note to find all such material and destroy it.
‘And what’s your life like now?’ he asks. ‘Jason Mercer said you were married.’
