Her parents had told her she’d turned up in a small Scottish town, but hadn’t mentioned which one. Maybe they hadn’t known the name. In fact, now she thought about it, they’d been quite tight-lipped about details of her disappearance, saying she hadn’t had much time to fill them in before her memories had come flooding back and she’d forgotten everything herself.
Lili continued flipping through the images. There were stations and departures boards, but then she came to a video taken on board a train, a guy with wavy dark hair who used his hands a lot while he explained the route they’d taken. Lili stared at it, even more confused than when she’d started watching.
Her mum had mentioned there’d been a man who’d helped her get home, but Lili had assumed the guy had merely assisted with looking up train times and routes. She’d also assumed the guy was a stranger.
But this was Ben Robertson, the guy she’d met in London who’d then ghosted her. Yet here he was in the flesh, not just helping her find the right platform but travelling with her, making sure she was safe. And the way he looked at her when she was behind the camera …
Lo took a sip of her cocktail and then answered the question Lili hadn’t yet asked. ‘Yes … He was the one who travelled five hundred miles with you. It was Ben the Bloody Photographer.’
‘I don’t understand … Oh! Invergarrig. That’s where Ben said he came from.Did I … Do you think I went there to find him?’
Lo gave her a look that said,the hell if I know.
‘Oh, my god! That’s why he was at the wedding! You invited him to say thank you! But …’ Lili’s eyes narrowed. ‘But why didn’t you tell me? When I asked you where the guy was, you said he couldn’t make it.’
Lo looked down at the table. ‘Well, I lied about that – at first because I thought it was better you didn’t get confused by seeing someone you’d met while your memory had been messed up, and later because I realised Ben-who-helped-you-get-home and Ben-who-you-met-five-years-ago were one and the same person.’ She met Lili’s gaze. ‘He hurt you so much last time you got tangled up with him. I thought maybe it was better to let things be.’
Lili stared at the phone again, not quite able to process all this new information. ‘If this is true, why hasn’t he got in touch since I’ve been home? Had he ghosted me –again?’
‘Ah, well … That might be my fault.’
Lili raised her eyebrows and waited for her sister to continue.
‘You’ve got to understand, Lil. It was very confusing for you when you got your memories back. None of us had any idea how to handle it, and the doctors had suggested you not get too stressed. I was worried you might slip away, forget you were Lili and become this “Alice” person again. Maybe forever. Then we’d never get you back. So I …’
‘Lo? What did you do?’
Lo sighed, looking pained. ‘I told him to go home and leave you alone, that he’d only be making things worse for you if he kept in contact.I thought it was for the best. I’m so sorry. But now I see how well you’re doing, I realise that maybe it wasn’t my choice to make whether he was still in your life.’
Lili wanted to be angry but she saw the guilt and remorse in Lo’s eyes and couldn’t stoke that fire. Lo had been stressed beyond belief when she’d gone missing. That had to have been bad enough on its own, but it had also been the week running up to her wedding. No wonder she’d got a bit overemotional. She could even imagine herself doing the same for Lo if their situations were reversed.
‘Why did he travel with me? And why did he disappear all those years ago?’
Lo nodded to the phone in Lili’s hand. ‘Everything you want or need to know is in there, in those photos and videos.’
Chapter Sixty-Four
Now.
LILI DIDN’T LOOK through the strange iPhone Lo had given her straight away. It was all too weird to think about. This was concrete evidence of her brain’s complete malfunction, wasn’t it? Images of places she’d never been to and people she’d never met. Except … she had.
She went to bed having stowed the phone in one of her kitchen drawers, but at two-thirty in the morning, unable to stop tossing and turning, she got up again, grabbing a soft, warm cardigan to throw over the top of her pyjamas. After putting the kettle on for a cup of tea, she pulled the unfamiliar phone out of the drawer and went and sat down on her sofa. Taking a deep breath, she opened up the camera roll.
First, she watched the most recent videos, ones of herself sitting in a hospital room explaining everything that had gone on both in that missing week, and why Ben had never got in contact all those years ago. Once she’d watched those, she went back to the beginning again, taking a bit more time over each photograph, even if it was a blurry departures board or a station platform.
When she reached the train video, the one she’d watched with Lo in the bar with Ben introducing himself,her insides fluttered exactly the same way they had when she’d met him in London. If only she’d known about his lost phone back then … She could have turned up at the garden the next summer as planned. Or even if she’d just given him the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst. They could have been together all this time. Maybe.
She shook her head, silently admonishing herself. There was no point in going down that route. What had happened, had happened. And then Justin had swooped into her life. By the twelfth of July the following year she’d been living with him. Besides, you couldn’t second-guess your own life, only deal with the choices you’d made. There were no do-overs.
And Justin was the choice she’d made. Yes, he’d brainwashed her, manipulated her, gaslighted her, but she’d chosen to ignore the red flags so many times, wanting to believe him when he said he’d change, that he’d try harder. She’d even chosen to go back – three times! – even when he’d been appalling to her. Looking back now, she could see it was a miracle she’d left at all.
To distract herself from those thoughts, she went back to the phone. After the train video were images of a generic-looking hotel, the outside of Penrith station, where there was also another video – her, this time, being a bit goofy and messing her words up.
Lili watched herself with wonder. In this video, she looked younger … No, that wasn’t it. It was that this version of herself didn’t look weighed down. She looked light and free. Happy. And even though she did aterriblejob of summarising the travel situation, this woman wasn’t petrified she’d make a mistake, or that if she did, she’d be punished for it.
There followed some beautiful photos of a ruined castle in the snow. The next video she came to was of a snowball fight between herself and Ben. They were laughing and chucking lumps of snow at each other. It made her smile to watch it at first, but then she hiccupped a sob and tears began to flow.
Who was this woman who knew how to find joy in life?
