‘Or you’re an obsessive who sees it as a fucking challenge,’ I say.
‘That might be true,’ he says, then sips his coffee and asks, ‘Does Stephen know about me?’
‘I told him I had a climbing accident, and that I lost my memory, but nothing about us.’
‘Why hide it?’ he says sharply. He’s clearly offended.
‘I didn’t remember enough to talk about it,’ I say.
‘So he doesn’t know you’re still married?’
‘Look, I didn’t know I was still married until two weeks ago.’
‘Do you remember the accident at all?’ he says, with a nervous twitch in his left eye.
I shake my head.
He looks at me closely. ‘Nothing at all? You shouted “Rocks”. You tried to grab me. Anything?’
I shake my head and look down. I can smell the damp from the carpet. Hollis moves closer.
‘You can’t be married to two people at the same time, you know.’
I nod. ‘Sadly, bigamy is still illegal in the UK.’
‘You’re going to have to choose who you really want to be with and forget about bureaucracy for a moment.’
‘It’s been a long, long time, Hollis. I’ve moved on. I’m not that girl.’
‘When you did remember bits and pieces, did you ever think to look for me?’ he says coldly.
‘I did, but I saw those articles about the accident and presumed you were dead.’
‘But there were other articles. Stories about my miraculous journey.’
‘I stopped looking. I focused on the future. I just thought that part of my life was over. I had to make a new life for myself.’
‘Why did you disappear? Why did you change your name? It makes no sense to me. Like you were hiding.’
I look at him. There are too many questions here that can’t really be answered. And he’s been dwelling on them for years and years. You can see that when he talks – an etched frown and a twitchiness around his eyes.
‘You know I carry a lot of baggage. This was the chance to start again.’
‘But you can’t start again. You can’t reject the past just like that. We’re still legally married, for instance,’ he says. He seems to enjoy the difficulty this puts me in. ‘You’re essentially cheating on me with Stephen.’
‘Come on, Hollis. I thought you were dead.’
‘Do you love him?’
The question catches me off guard. I hesitate slightly and look up. ‘He fits into the shape in my head. Our lives are entangled.’
‘Entangled? What, you share a mortgage and bills? We had real electricity.’
‘Electricity is unstable. Unstable compounds tend to explode,’ I say.
‘An explosion sounds like fun.’ He reaches across, holds my hand and looks into my eyes. I feel a tiny flicker of static electricity spark between us like a pin prick.
‘I want stability,’ I say, and pull my hand away.
