DAY THREE
Tuesday July 23 rd , 2024
S ummer Taylor-Braddon : What’s your favorite flower?
Adelaide James : Sorry, what?
Summer Taylor-Braddon : Your favorite flower? Come on, you must have one.
Adelaide James : I’ve always liked honeysuckle, I guess.
Summer Taylor-Braddon : I’ve always liked daisies. There’s something beautiful about them, even though they’re so ordinary. So simple. Those delicate white petals, the yellow center. The reassurance of them—that if you go to any grassy space, there’s a good chance you’ll find them.
They’re there. They’re reliable.
But whenever you ask someone their favorite flower, no one ever really says the daisy. It’s overlooked. People might say roses—because they’re beautiful, they’re works of art with the way their petals all whirl together. Or they might say lilies, with their elegance and gracefulness, the ballerinas of the flower world. Or they’ll say a dahlia or a chrysanthemum or a tulip or any other number of flowers. Or they’ll be like you and say honeysuckle—something sweet. Supposedly.
But I am a daisy. I feel that—have often felt that. I’m not massively beautiful or anything. People don’t stop to look at me in the street when they see me because of my beauty or my body.
I am a daisy that’s been magnified, made into this giant monster. People see me now, and they stop and stare, because of what’s been done to me. The daisy that’s been made enormous in the lab.
And I just want to go back to the grassy fields. I want to sit there with my friends, unnoticed, but constant. Reassuring.
But most of all I want Ruari, because he’s my field. He’s where I am at my safest.
And now he was back.
Adelaide James : Did you always plan for him to come back then, or had he just decided not to play along with your plan anymore?
Summer Taylor-Braddon : You know what, Adelaide? I’m not answering your questions just at the moment. I’m going to talk—tell my story. And then after I’ve talked, you’ll hear from my next guests. We’ll probably break that section up into several sessions, okay? You can talk afterward.
Adelaide James : Again, the interviewer normally decides how this goes.
Summer Taylor-Braddon : Again, this is my story. I’ll let you know when you can speak again.
Adelaide James : I’m not one of your characters.
Summer Taylor-Braddon : But you’ll do as I say—otherwise I can just find some other journalist to work with me on this.
[ Summer takes a deep breath]
Summer Taylor-Braddon : He’s a bit confused .
That’s what they told me first. Some doctors at the hospital said this to me over the phone. The British consulates all repeated it. Mum said it to me too. He’s a bit confused became this mantra that just kept following me around, as I frantically tried to pack.
We were flown out to Australia, me and Mum, because that’s where he’d now turned up. No one really knows for sure how he got there. Whether he’d truly been swept in the ocean all that way, or if he’d been on a boat, a canoe.
There were so many official people about. The British consulates of several of the Australian cities and loads of police and security. There were lawyers, too, and medics.
I didn’t know about Ruari’s amnesia then. They didn’t tell me. I don’t know why. Why they thought that telling me he was a bit confused was enough.
Mum and I were in the hotel room that had been designed to be the meeting place. The reunion. Annmarie, one of the British consulates, was also here. She was sitting by the tea and coffee facilities, in her impeccable suit. A soft-gray pencil skirt and matching blazer.
Outside, the reporters were everywhere, and Annmarie was tapping away on her phone. “He’s being brought around the back way,” she told me, a few moments later.
I felt so, so sick. I fidgeted, couldn’t decide whether I should sit on the bed or at the desk. There were two chairs at the desk, and another by the window. There was too much choice, and I was like a jack-in-the-box, constantly on the go.
Mum came to my rescue, placing her hand on my arm as I sat down for what felt like the hundredth time. “It’ll be okay,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. “You’re getting Ruari back.”
I’d not thought before how hard this must be for her. I was getting a second chance that had never been offered to her. I smiled, was about to say something, when the door opened.
The first person wasn’t Ruari. It was a tall, thin Black man in a suit, and the second person wasn’t him either—that was an Asian woman who was speaking on her phone. The third person was a white policeman, and then—then I saw him.
Ruari Braddon stepped hesitantly into the room, walking in a way that he’d never walked before. He’d always seemed so confident. So sure of himself, even when he was at school and shy. He had this presence. But now he walked with the air of someone much smaller, much shier. It was like his body was falling in on himself. He glanced around anxiously. His brows knitted together—and that was a familiar expression on his face. I’d seen it so many times before.
And that was enough for me.
I couldn’t move fast enough. “Ruari!” My heart pounded, and I reached him. My arms sprang around him, and I held him so tight. I was shaking, trembling so hard that I was nearly falling over, but his arms fell around me, and he held me.
He didn’t smell like how he used to—the shock of that really hit me, made my tears fall onto his jacket. A corduroy jacket—something that he’d never have worn. But I didn’t care.
I held him and I cried, and he held me.
“Summer?”
I was vaguely aware of my mum and Annmarie talking to me, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder that wasn’t Ruari’s. I wanted to swat it away, but of course I didn’t.
I just pulled back from Ruari enough to see his face. He had aged in the last six years. Quite a lot actually. And there was a scar on the side of his head that I figured must be from the tsunami. It was jagged and looked bumpy in texture, from the corner of his left eye, down his face. Long, meandering, like a snake.
He was sweating a bit, perspiration collecting on his brow, and he held his head at an angle.
His eyes were the same. Relief pounded through me. His eyes were the same.
“Who...who are you?” he asked.
I laughed—it just burst out of me, and I couldn’t stop. I laughed and laughed, and during my laughter, the two of us got separated. Mum was now holding me, and I saw the worried look on her face. I heard snatches of the conversation then—from Annmarie, and the officials, and...
Ruari wasn’t joking. He didn’t know me. His eyes, though they were the same, they were also different. Because I fought until I was away from my mum’s arms and back in front of Ruari, looking into his eyes. For the lightheadedness, for the corners of his eyes to crinkle as he smiled and yelled, “just kidding!”
But he didn’t yell. He just stared at me.
There was an emptiness in those beautiful eyes of his. A lack of recognition.
Now, I’m angry about this, about not being told by the doctors, because he’s a bit confused means he’s a bit confused, not that he has no fucking memory of our life together. Of me.
I don’t remember the rest of the reunion. I know that one of the reporters got it all on tape, that pretty much everyone in the UK has listened to it. It was broadcast everywhere—but I never wanted to listen to it. I must have shut myself off from my memory of it for a reason. To protect myself. A defense mechanism. The human brain is clever like that.
I know that he stayed in the room for seven more minutes. I know that people were talking about logistics and legalities. I know that I was referred to as ‘the legal wife.’ And I don’t really know much more.
Afterward, I cried into my mother’s arms. She cried too. Annmarie was still here. She patted my back in a way that I think was supposed to be comforting, but was anything but. Her nails were too long and they kept catching on the woolen jumper I was wearing. A jumper I chose because it was the first one that Ruari had given me. Out of all the jumpers.
And he didn’t remember me.
[Silence for five seconds]
Summer Taylor-Braddon : I began researching his condition a lot. Trying to work out if there was any way that his memory would come back. The doctors told me he’d been diagnosed with retrograde amnesia, and I began reading everything I could about it. It was a condition where memories from before a certain event were lost. Sometimes, these memories would just be inaccessible for a while, but other times, they’d have been deleted from the system, so to speak.
Ruari’s memories hadn’t returned in three years, and so his was considered permanent. But the more I read, the more I held out hope that it was just that he hadn’t been in the right environment to remember. I was who he needed. I could unlock his past for him. I could save him.
I spoke to his doctors frequently—as his wife, they didn’t question giving me information, though some of them seemed surprised when they saw me in person.
“I thought you had darker hair last time we spoke,” one said—which didn’t make sense at all and clearly meant they were getting mixed up with another patient’s wife.
It turned out that Ruari had been in and out of hospital a lot in these seven years, and in recent weeks, he’d had a few overnight admissions too. He’d been unwell, suffering from headaches, and it was noted in his file of course that he’d had an accident three years ago and had lost all memory thereof from before.
And I was leaving the hospital, one day, when I.. This woman stopped me. She had her hand on my arm, and she was trembling.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I had assumed she was another patient waiting to see the neurologist.
But she didn’t seem like she was. There was something about the way she was staring at me.
“Are you Summer?” she asked. “Summer Taylor-Braddon?”
“Who are you?” I asked the woman. She was skinny, leggy, and had gorgeous eyes. Her dark hair was long and sweeping over her shoulder.
“Mia,” she said. “Robert’s wife.”
[ Silence for five seconds ]
Summer Taylor-Braddon : Okay, so at first, I didn’t really take it in.
I stared at this beautiful woman, and I thought, Okay, who the hell is Robert and why is this important?
Mia was watching me closely, carefully. There was something about her dark eyes that was alluring—like I was iron filings being drawn to a magnet. She shifted her weight a little and her coat fell open. And I saw. I saw her belly.
She was five months pregnant. That was when it hit me.
Robert. Ruari.
“His wife?” I stared at her. “But... but...” I couldn’t get the words out. They just got stuck. Stuck on my tongue, my tongue that suddenly seemed too big for my mouth—and it was still swelling, swelling like her belly, because I blinked and I suddenly saw it: Mia nine months pregnant, Mia giving birth, Mia presenting her baby to Ruari. His baby.
I let out a choking sound.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she said. Her voice was so, so soft. There were dark circles under her eyes. “But I just... I had to come.” She tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. “We’ve been together years.”
Her belly was all I could look at, and suddenly it was like I had x-ray vision too, not just glimpses of the future. Because I could see the child inside there. What it meant.
“ I’m his wife.” At last, I bit out the words. At last, I felt like I could finally say something. “We got married. We...” My face crumpled—I felt it like it happened in slow motion, all the muscles suddenly sagging then growing taut with tension, with despair.
I wanted Ruari back.
I wanted my life back, our life back.
And then Mia—this woman that I suddenly had so much hatred for—put her arms around me. She held me and I didn’t want to be held by her. I didn’t want to be against her belly—against their child—but she held me as I sobbed, and I was just too weak, too exhausted to move.
“We’re not officially married, but we may as well be.” Her tone was cool, and she pulled back from the embrace. Her hand found her bump, and she cradled it.
That should be me.
I gulped in air, too quickly, ended up with hiccups. “He’s my husband.” I held my hand up, showed her the ring. I’d never taken it off. Ever.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said, and then as quickly as she’d arrived, as she’d sought me out, she left. Just like that.
I watched her leave. Her long coat flapped in the breeze.
He’s with her. He’s got a kid on the way.
[Silence five seconds]
Summer Taylor-Braddon : “It doesn’t matter if he’s lost his memory,” my solicitor told me. “He’s still legally married to you. And he cannot marry Mia Wilson, not without divorcing you first.”
Divorce?
I choked.
“But for the time being, in the eyes of the law, you’re his wife. He is currently undergoing psychiatric evaluations, and depending on the outcomes of those, decisions about his healthcare would come to you if he is not deemed of sound mind.”
Marriage does not depend on recognition. I can’t remember who told me those words. Whether it was that same solicitor. But they swirled round and round my head. Ruari losing his memory, having this whole other life for the last six years, didn’t change a thing.
I had Ruari back, and I was going to be with him again. I was sure of it.
Now, we’ll just take a look at the newspaper headlines from that week, and then we’ll bring my guests in.
##
TAYLOR-brADDON ADMITS SHE’S GOING TO KILL MIA WILSON
##
OUR FAVOURITE WRITER HAS A NEW VICTIM IN HER SITES
##
TAYLOR-brADDON TO KILL HUSBAND’S LOVER
##
ARE WE ABOUT TO FINALLY GET A BODY IN THE SAGA OF SUMMER TAYLOR-brADDON?
##
KILLER WRITER TO STRIKE AGAIN
##
SUMMER TAYLOR-brADDON VS. MIA WILSON: THE CAT FIGHT WE ALL WANT
##
A delaide James : I thought you weren’t going to bring another journalist in.
Summer Taylor-Braddon : Dante is here in his capacity as my friend, not as a journalist. Now, I’m stepping out of the room for this first part—it will be easier. Adelaide, you may remain only if you are silent. Do you understand? Because Dante will kick you out of the studio if you don’t follow the rules.
Adelaide James : You really are a piece of work, aren’t you?
Summer Taylor-Braddon : Just be quiet. No speaking until I tell you, okay? I’ll be back shortly. This next part of the story is going to be told in alternating segments between me and him. And I mean it, Adelaide—one word from you in this part, and you’re off the project.
##