“It may have been the best thing you could have done.”
He turned and she continued, “It’s why I asked him not to look around the house.We really have very little knowledge of treating this kind of autobiographical amnesia, but it’s caused by stress and shock—it’s the mind’s protective glass, if you like, an attempt to prevent the glare of reality causing pain.We have to protect him from more stress.”
“And you think me telling him we’re…that I’m…will causemorestress?”
She seemed puzzled.“Well…he thinks he’s twenty-two.What was he doing when he was twenty-two?Not this.He wasn’t gay!That could…”
“Fuck.He thought he was being outed on national TV.They boasted they were going to kill him because he was gay.”
She appeared to think about this for some time.“That’s a considerable stress factor I’d not considered, yes.”She sighed.
“As I said, it’s why I asked him not to look around the house…all the evidence of your life here together.”
Nikolas winced.He wondered.If Ben wandered around.What would he see?Not a single photo of them anywhere.The bed, yes, but it was neatly made, clean linen—he didn’t pay his cleaning service to leave cum-splattered sheets on his bed.The shower?He had three bathrooms, four bedrooms.Ben had nothing here other than a few clothes.No, he didn’t think looking around their house would cause Ben Rider—for that was, apparently, who he was again now—any problems at all.
“What am I going to do?”
For the first time Nikolas asked a question Andrea Gillian apparently couldn’t answer.For the first time he asked a question in a tone of voice that appeared to break her habitual veneer of callous indifference she’d adopted with Nikolas.She ran her fingers through her styled hair and said nothing.
* * *
Some things, obviously, Ben had to be told.He had to be told he was older than he thought he was and that he’d effectively lost the last ten years of his life.He was told he wasn’t in the army—that he actually worked now for Nikolas.Nikolas told Ben he was a bodyguard—his bodyguard.Friend and bodyguard.He allowed himself this addition.Insisted Ben call him Nikolas.Ben wouldn’t and seemed happy calling him sir, as he once had, before things had changed between them.
Kate had been looking after Radulf, so they both arrived together.Tim had called and told her, so this time she didn’t arrive into a scene of horror as she had on their return from Devon once, being told Ben was dead and seeing her friends broken and battered.
She needn’t have worried too much.Ben remembered Radulf and, more confusingly, he recognised her.He’d known neither of them when he was twenty-two.Nikolas couldn’t decide whether this was a good thing or not.Knowing Radulf was okay.He allowed Ben that.
Ben knew the dog was called Radulf, knew this meant wolf of the house, but appeared to recollect nothing about why or how he knew him.He didn’t know why the dog was blind, only that he was.The confusion made Ben upset and he took his anger out on everyone there.Andrea Gillian calmed things down with a glance to Nikolas.
Kate questioned him gently on what he recalled about her.Ben thought she was his girlfriend, although this clearly only confused him more, because, as he admitted with an anguished appeal, she looked so bloody old!Everyone found this funny and then felt awful and apologised to Kate, trying to explain.Nikolas didn’t need to do either, but then he hadn’t laughed.
* * *
Ben was tired.Andrea Gillian stressed it was symptomatic of his condition and not to fight it—he should sleep as much as he needed.Tim showed Ben to the room he and Squeezy used when they slept over.It appeared lived in—alarm clock, a book on the table, some clothes in the wardrobe that could easily belong to him.Ben wasn’t suspicious and wasn’t worried too much about anything he was told anymore.
It was all so confusing he’d decided not to try and pick out individual things that bewildered him—until he glanced in the mirror later, when he went into the en-suite to piss.That terrified him, and he made a choked sound of alarm.He heard someone come into the bedroom and turned to see his big, blond boss.The man was gazing at him with an almost blank expression.Ben had always been good at reading people, but he got nothing off this man at all.He nodded back at the mirror.“Sorry, it was a bit of a shock, sir.”
“Good one or bad one?”
“I’m blond.Sort of.”
“It’s growing out.It was for the op.”
“Yeah, I got that.I’m fucking old, too.”
“Ben?”
“Sir?”
“Please don’t swear when you work for me.I don’t like it.”
“Fuck, sorry.I mean…yeah, okay, sir.”They stood and stared at each for a while, until Ben asked, frowning so deeply that the tall stranger almost disappeared, “Were we just speaking…?”His voice hitched up in panic, and his boss came to his side, a hand on his arm, very lightly reassuring him.
“Yes.Danish.You still remember.”
“Danish?I don’t know how to fucking speak Danish!Do I?”
“You learnt.In the time you don’t remember.”
