Forever is Now

DAY THREE 2

Dante Fiore : And now we get to the part in this incredible story where it makes most sense to talk to you, Robert. To find out what happened. Now, you’ve asked for us to call you Robert—as you said that’s the only name you remember, and we will get to this of course, but I think, we just need to start from the beginning with you—the beginning of this incredible sequence of events. So, you’re in Indonesia. What next?

Robert Hayden : [ He laughs, dryly ] I don’t recall being in Indonesia at all. I... [ He sighs ] I was in water though. I remember that, the darkness of it, and the immense pressure—right here, inside my skull. And something hit me on the head. I’ve got this scar here. But I don’t remember that actually happening. There’s nothing really.

Dante Fiore : And yet you ended up in Australia?

Robert Hayden : Bigge Island.

Dante Fiore : So this is off the coast of Western Australia?

Robert Hayden : Yeah. Kimberly region.

Dante Fiore : And I must say it’s remarkable that you actually have an Australian accent now.

Robert Hayden : [He laughs] The locals wouldn’t agree with that. They assumed I was English. That’s how I came to be known as Robert... but I feel like I am him, even now. I know what was apparently my own life way less than his... God, this is all so fucked up.

Dante Fiore : Sorry, I should just let you talk. So, tell us it all.

Robert Hayden : So the island is sort of owned by a group of Aboriginal Australians. I can’t remember their group’s name, sorry. My memory’s awful, even now. But they found me. I... I was swept up on their shore. I was unconscious at that point, but they dragged me in. There was a broken wooden door or something near me and we think now that I’d been on that. That that’s how I got across the ocean from Indonesia. Must’ve taken weeks. I don’t know.

It’s so bizarre thinking about it. I don’t know how I survived.

But the locals thought I was this English photographer, Robert Hayden. That’s how I became him—and I really thought I was him. They showed me a photo of him, and while I had swelling on my face and all these cuts on my neck and arms, I did look like him. I had no reason to doubt that I wasn’t him.

I mean I couldn’t remember otherwise.

The photographer had apparently been visiting Bigge Island on his own, as he was solo traveling for a couple of years. He’d only been missing for a day or two. And then the locals found me, and they knew that there was this man missing. And I looked like him.

The locals looked after me for a few weeks, I think, treated my injuries with their bush plants. But I couldn’t remember a thing. There was a white man there as well, at one point—and he was the one who said I must be Robert. The locals had been calling me a different name up until then, but now I really believed I was Robert. I thought this newcomer had recognized me, and it was such a relief. It was like finding myself.

I didn’t stay on Bigge Island for all that long though. When I got a bit stronger, I was back on the mainland, staying with a family that the Indigenous people on Bigge Island knew. One of them was a doctor, and he said I should go to the hospital for a CT scan or something.

So I did. We went there. But there was nothing. No problem.

I still couldn’t remember who I was, but everyone was saying I was Robert. The missing photographer. I used to literally tell myself that. “I am Robert Hayden. I’m thirty-one years old.” The doctors at the hospital said that my lack of memory was probably psychological. There was no physical reason for it. My brain scan was fine. And so that was that, really.

At some point, Robert’s possessions were brought over to me. I had my passport, an English driver’s license, bank cards, two rucksacks full of clothes, and a whole load of photography equipment that I had no idea how to use. I also didn’t know the password for the phone, or the PINs for the bank cards. But I knew what all of them were, like I knew how Western society worked. It was just anything to do with who I was that I didn’t know.

I stayed in contact with the people who’d found me, and with that family on the mainland too. They helped me loads, and one of them knew a tech guy. He got me into my phone and then I was able to go to the bank, get access again. I honestly hadn’t thought that that would work. But it did.

I expected that I’d feel more like myself—like Robert—as time went on. Everyone seemed to think that I’d start to get my memories back, but there was always just this nothingness. It’s so weird, when you can’t remember who you are. It’s like you start again, like learning to talk and learning to walk. Except you’re a grown man and you can talk and walk—only you wonder who taught you.

I pictured my parents often—these imaginary faces, faces that would change and mold. I’d spend hours looking in the mirror, trying to work out which of my features might be transferable to their faces. Were my eyebrows like my father’s? Did my mother and I share a nose?

It’s so strange, because I never really concentrated on my own face, on how I looked—because I was a stranger. I didn’t even recognize myself, that’s the extent of my amnesia. There was no recognition at all—even when photos would be taken of me, I’d look at them after, and there’d be this moment where I’d search for myself in it, but there’d never be that click. That moment of ‘Ah, that’s me.’ Instead, I’d work out where I was in the picture by a process of deduction.

Across the next six months, I moved around a bit. I had money in my accounts, and I thought I was a photographer, so that’s what I did. I was proper shit at it though. Like, really bad. So that didn’t last long. Instead, I ended up lodging with the Wilsons, a family that ran a surf school.

And that was how I met Mia. She’s their daughter.

Her whole family were just so, so kind. So welcoming to me. I ditched the photography, and I thought I’d do manual labour, but I just kept getting these headaches. Waking up in cold sweats in the night, really struggling to sleep properly. I was so drained and I just had no energy.

I kept thinking about that doctor that had said it was all psychological, and I knew that something must’ve happened. I’d been found half-drowned or something. So, yeah. [ He laughs a little]

The Wilsons had originally been giving me reduced board rates in exchange for manual labour, but Rick realized I couldn’t do it all. He was kind though. He’s this big guy in his sixties. Really strong, muscular. I was chatting to him one evening about it all, that I just still couldn’t remember who I was. Of course he could see my scars on my face, but I showed him the ones on my sides too, and my back. “Something happened and I don’t know what,” I told him.

And he said something like, “Looks bad.”

We were smoking a couple joints by that point—all the Wilsons did. Usually in the evenings, after they’d closed up the surf school. Their place was directly on the beach, and Mia and her sisters would be out having fun in the water. Wetsuits. Long blond hair, they all had, apart from Mia’s. Hers was jet black. They all looked good, the Wilson sisters. Mia, Teyah, and Andi. So Mia’s the oldest. Then there’s Teyah—she’s really loud. Like, always talking. Andi’s quieter, more like Mia, I guess. But Mia’s got more confidence.

All three were late twenties, only like a year or so between each of them, and they were all just so relaxed. So happy. Always laughing. Like, in the evenings, I’d just hear them and it would bring a smile to my face.

But yeah, back to that evening, Rick said they were looking for someone to do admin in the office. Taking bookings for their lessons. That kind of thing. He offered it to me, and I was just so grateful. The idea of just traveling around again with a few bags just really scared me. I felt so unanchored, even though every family I’d stayed with was so welcoming, treating me like one of their own.

So I began working at the surf school, and of course that meant that me and Mia got closer. She was a trained lifeguard too, I discovered. She’d done some qualifications in it down at Bondi, I think. She was proper respected now, though she later told me she’d had some wild days when she was younger—a time when she’d really gone off the rails. But we’d hang out quite a bit. Especially once I started doing the admin work. I’d be at the office quite late, and usually once she’d finished teaching the teenagers, she’d pop back into the office.

She started bringing me a cup of coffee, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I couldn’t stand the taste of it. I just really liked talking to her. She’d still be in her wet suit, but she’d take the top half off, have it hanging around her waist. The wetsuit arms would fly about from her hips as she’d walk, and it was just mesmerizing. She’d have a bikini on underneath, of course, but I think it was pretty obvious that she knew I was interested in her.

How couldn’t I be? Damp hair hanging about her shoulders, in beautiful waves. Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear this, do you? You’re Summer’s friend.

Dante Fiore : I want to hear your story—whatever it is.

Robert Hayden : Okay, well, we got together. It was just fun at first, reassuring, warm—more and more, I realized that she was the person I just wanted to be spending more time with. Just being around her made me feel different, lighter. It made me forget that I had this past life I couldn’t remember, that I didn’t really know who I was, because when I was with Mia, we were making new memories, and although I was still struggling with forming new memories, there was always something of them that was left within me. I’d see her each day, recognize her, think fondly of the time we’d walked down on the beach together, or when we’d been listening to music in the office, or grabbing some food, and I’d feel this warmth. This reassurance. This sense of it just being right, you know?

Mia and I would hang out in the evenings at the pub too. I met all her friends. Sometimes her sisters would be there too, and she treated me like I was normal. That was the thing I really liked, really appreciated about her. How she saw me as Robert, not the man who can’t remember or the man who nearly drowned or the man who washed up on Bigge Island. I was just me . And it was like she knew who I was, even if I didn’t.

Mia’s pretty health-focused. I mean, all the Wilsons are. They may go down to the pub, but they don’t really drink all that much alcohol. Mia keeps track of what she drinks and eats, not to the extent that she’s logging calories in an app or anything, but she’s conscious of her body. Of what it needs.

I’d order the same each time we were at the pub—a couple of pints, which began to become three or four—and she’d still be there, drinking a lemonade or an orange juice. She never really judged me for my drinking—and I didn’t really realize that I had a problem with it either, because drinking, well, it was the only time—other than when I was with Mia—that I could truly forget my problems. It felt familiar, a glass in my hand. A bottle clutched in my fingers. A crate of cans hugged to my chest. It felt right, and it made me wonder about who I was before. Just a little bit, among the haze.

Although I had access to my social media accounts—Robert Hayden’s—they didn’t go back all that far, and what posts there were, were pretty sparse. There were messages too, friends who’d check in. Friends who I didn’t remember, no matter how many times I looked at their profiles or photos that included them and me.

“Think of it like a game,” Mia said to me one evening. “Like piecing together the story.” My phone was on the bar in front of us, and the pub was loud but not too loud. We could still hear each other, hear ourselves think.

And I replied to her something like, “What if I find out I’m a criminal?” and I laughed, even though I didn’t really feel like laughing, and even though my life wasn’t a game.

But Mia laughed too, and that’s when she said it. She said, “I love you,” and she was still laughing, her warm hand on my arm.

She loves me? I balked and I felt so sweaty all of a sudden. There was a bitter taste in my mouth from the beer I’d been drinking. Suddenly, I wanted to throw up.

But I didn’t. I just looked at this gorgeous woman in front of me. My only true friend. My best friend.

We’d known each other six months, and I couldn’t imagine moving away from her, not seeing her. Mia really was the light in my very dark life. And she loved me.

And so I told her that I loved her too.

We kissed then, the first time. Her lips tasted sugary. I held her gently, and I felt this thing building inside me. This urge to be with her, to never let her go. Of course, I expected to feel something down below too—only I didn’t, and that confused me. Because she was gorgeous, and I should’ve been feeling that.

I didn’t tell her, of course. How could I? When I loved her.

We hung out together more and more. I all but moved into the Wilsons’ family home, leaving the little annex untouched for days. And I realized how much I was relying on Mia.

I was still struggling to sleep, and I was getting these nightmares now too. Really bad ones. Of drowning, of being in water, in darkness. Of a woman shouting my name, but I could never actually hear what she was shouting. It was just this sound, but it stirred something in me. Something frightening.

I’d wake, crying, sometimes, and Mia would be there. Holding me. Telling me it was okay. We figured it was just from the near-drowning I’d had off the coast. She told me over and over that I was lucky to be alive. That I was meant to find her.

It was... We were intimate, after a few months—I think she was surprised how long I waited... but I... God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this... I thought I should’ve liked it more. I just felt awkward... And I always felt like there was this wall between us. Not because of her, but me. This wall that I couldn’t break down, couldn’t get past. It was like I couldn’t feel things properly. We’d have sex, and I really wanted to feel something—I was desperate to. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. But it wasn’t like the sex was bad. That was the really confusing thing. It just didn’t really do a lot for me.

I didn’t look forward to it like I thought I should’ve.

Mia said that was okay—not that I really told her everything that was going through my head—and she said that it was the trauma I’d been through. She did research on it, read some of the stuff to me. It made sense, but I also wondered if maybe I was gay or something. Had my accident meant I’d completely ghosted a boyfriend I’d had or something?

When I was with Mia, even though I was absolutely in love with her, I still felt like I wasn’t experiencing attraction in the right way, and this just really fueled my nightmares in a way that I didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. Because I’d hear this woman shouting what I was sure was my name—even though I couldn’t hear what my name was—and then suddenly I’d be out of the water with all that crushing darkness, and I’d be in these castle ruins, and there’d be a man sitting on the ground in front of me. He had like a hammer and all sorts of tools, and he was digging and looking for stones or something, and I just didn’t understand what any of it meant.

That dream kept happening, and I kept feeling so bad. Who was that man? And why wasn’t I dreaming about Mia? I’d told her I loved her, and I really did. Because even though I didn’t feel like I was attracted to her in the way I thought I should be, I was in love with her. I can’t make that clear enough—because everything in my life felt so uncertain and new. Except Mia. She was my familiarity. My home. I wanted to spend all my time with her. I just... I had to be with her.

We had been together for three years, when Mia told me she was pregnant. I was surprised. Like, really. Because we weren’t really sleeping together all that often. When we did, it was her that initiated it, and more often than not, I just did it because I felt that that was expected of me. That was my role.

But then the baby came along—and there was something about seeing Mia pregnant that just made us closer. My baby, growing inside her. Holding her, holding them both. I’ve never loved anyone more.

As time went on, I did start to feel more attracted to her as well, and that in itself was a relief, even though I still felt like I wasn’t feeling it in the right way.

We were still living with the Wilsons when Alex was born, but when he was about a year old, we realized we needed our own space. Mia had quite a bit of money saved up, so we were able to rent a place for ourselves. I was still doing the admin work for her family’s business, and it made sense to continue that—especially as I was the only one earning now. And I really felt like the Wilsons were my family. Really did. Rick and Yvette, they treated me like I was their son. Anything I needed, they were there for me.

About a year later, our second was born. A little girl. And I named her this time, because Mia had chosen Alex’s name, and I... I named our little girl Summer. I never knew where the name came from, still don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but... but our girl’s called Summer.

I think that was one of the things that Mia found hardest, when we all learned the truth. Looking at our girl and knowing that she’s most likely named after Summer Taylor-Braddon. That a part of me remembered my past life. That I’m not actually Robert. It’s all just such a mess.

But it wasn’t for another two years until we found out who I was.

Mia was pregnant again. After Alex was born, you see, we’d decided to have a couple more, so we were trying. We got Summer quickly, and that almost made the sex easier for me, like I knew it had a purpose, a function. We’d get a happy baby at the end—and I discovered I loved being a dad. It’s like I was made to be a dad.

It took longer, with our... our third. And Mia was five months pregnant, and little Summer, well, she wasn’t well.

She’d been quite a sickly baby. In and out of hospital. But she’d just been diagnosed with a condition and it meant that me and Mia also had to get tested. There were so many tests, and I can’t even remember at this point how it came out, but it turned out the real Robert Hayden had had some DNA tests done before. They were on the hospital system, so he must’ve had it done in Australia, before he went missing, before I inadvertently took over his life. And then something in my bloods showed a mismatch and—and I wasn’t him. It was as quick as that. One click of the computer screen, a doctor looking at me with a confused face. And my whole life—the last six years that I’d been living as Robert Hayden—everything was just upended. Again.

Dante Fiore : That must’ve been quite a shock.

Robert Hayden : It was, because I’d become Robert. I’d really grabbed hold of that identity, made it my own, because I didn’t have anything else. And it felt like this massive loss. Like something huge had been ripped away from me. Everything, taken. And I was left with what felt like nothing. Not knowing who I was again. Because although I’d never remembered my life as Robert, I was still him. I’d lived as him for six years.

I was engaged to Mia, and she was going to become Mia Hayden, and it was all just... such a mess.

Mia was confused and angry—she thought at first that I’d tricked her. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t tried to deceive anyone. She said she still loved me though, that we’d find out what had happened.

And of course, I was still part of her family. We had kids together. Another on the way. But she and I spent ages trying to find who I was. We figured I was English, because of my accent—even though I had now developed an Australian twang—and so we began looking and looking for any missing English men.

It felt ridiculous at first, and it also made me question why I’d not done this before. Why I’d just accepted I was Robert.

But Mia said to me, “You wouldn’t question it though, would you? Someone gives you a passport, says it’s yours, says your Robert Hayden but you’ve had an accident that’s affected your memory, you’re not going to question it.”

And I said, “I suppose so.”

But I still felt guilty—like deep inside I’d known, even though I hadn’t.

It wasn’t just guilt about that though. Guilt about the real Robert Hayden. Where was he? What had happened for that man to go missing? Was he dead? Had me stepping into his shoes meant that no one would actually look for him? Could he have been saved?

To this day, we still don’t know what happened to the real Robert. And that keeps me awake at night, often more than anything. I feel haunted... by him, maybe, I don’t know. Haunted by something. Like I played a huge part in this crime against him. I stole his life, because I didn’t have one of my own.

I tried talking about this to Mia soon after we learned that I couldn’t be Robert, but she snapped at me. I mean, it’s not fair to say that about her, like, she’s been amazing. She was pregnant too, of course. And this was all a lot of stress and shock.

She just told me not to worry about who Robert Hayden was. To worry about who I was.

And then we read about Ruari Braddon.

[Silence for five seconds]

Robert Hayden : It was weird—because I knew immediately that I probably was him. Ruari Braddon. Not that I felt a connection to the name or that any of my memory came back. It didn’t. There was still nothing.

But there were photos online. So many photos. And they looked like me. More so than any of Robert’s had, even though we’d thought Robert’s photos did look like me, at the time.

Plus, there was also so much information about how Ruari had disappeared.

“On honeymoon in Lombok,” I remember saying to Mia, “disappeared during the tsunami.”

And I remembered it—the crushing weight of the water. How dark it was. The pain in my lungs. And a woman. A woman calling my name.

But that was all I remembered.

We went to the police, me and Mia. And that just started it all off... this whole, well, it felt like an explosion. There were DNA tests done, and police from the UK and also Indonesia were involved. The DNA tests confirmed it. I was Ruari Braddon.

That was such a weird hour—finding out for sure. I felt like it was something to celebrate. Getting my life back. And yet I couldn’t celebrate it. Mia couldn’t either, because we read online that Ruari Braddon had been in Indonesia with his new wife, and we’d seen photos of her. Summer. It was such a gut-wrench seeing her name. It made Mia physically sick.

I looked at photos of her, my wife —photos of the two of us that had been published—but I didn’t recognize her. Or remember them being taken, those photos. But I wondered if I’d know her voice, when I heard it. If she was the woman in my nightmares who’d been calling my name for years.

It was such a weird feeling. A yearning, almost. I both wanted it to be her voice, and not. And of course, I was scared. Scared what all of this meant.

I said to Mia, “I’m still with you,” one day, because I could see she was worried. I think it was a couple days after the DNA confirmation. She was scared.

Doctors got involved too. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be doing tests on me, scans. And I mean everyone . I had to undergo psychiatric evaluation too.

And then I heard that my wife was flying over. This Summer Taylor-Braddon who I didn’t know. But maybe I did? And it was all so confusing.

I... I think a lot of people thought I did remember Summer though, at least partly, because I’d named mine and Mia’s daughter after her—that’s what they said. Rick got particularly mad at me one day about it. But he calmed down. Mia made him calm down. She held my hand and told me—and everyone—that we’d sort this. We’d work things out.

But I felt like a fraud. A criminal. Like I’d done something wrong. I couldn’t shake that feeling—and it’s still with me now. It’s like being haunted, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. It’s torture, it really is.

And I’ve got my little girl—Summer Hayden, that’s her name. But I’m not a Hayden. The real Robert Hayden is still officially missing, and I thought about him too much of the time, back then. Well I still do now, but then? Then it was driving me mad. And my little girl, I kept fixating on that, that she should be Summer Braddon, only that’s just messed up, because my wife and... I had a wife I didn’t remember, and a girlfriend who I was scared was going to leave me. This whole thing was just... It was a lot, you know.

And of course my daughter wasn’t well. I’m not going to disclose her medical details here, because that’s private. But Mia and I were spending so long at that hospital, only now there were British consulates getting involved. All sorts of other people too—reporters, journalists. The press were everywhere, camping at the hospital. And I just wanted to be with my girlfriend and daughter. Little Summer was undergoing treatments, and I needed to be there for her—only I couldn’t. Because all of this was happening, and Mia was getting fed up with how she couldn’t drive to the hospital with our daughter without paparazzi following her car.

But we were being followed, all the time. It was so stressful. People were shouting at me, shoving microphones into my face. Yelling at me. Constantly there were camera flashes. Cameras were even directed into our house. Someone got a photo of Mia as she got out the shower one day. It was all over the papers.

And it was getting worse.

The constant hounding of the media.

I hadn’t really expected it, but the day when I was going to meet the woman who was apparently my wife I had to have security with me. Apparently, this had been a massive case in the UK. And Summer—this wife I didn’t remember—was famous. Like, proper famous. We’d seen she’d written books, but we hadn’t quite understood just how big a deal she was. Or how a big deal all of this would be.

I was so nervous going into the hotel, to meet her. I was told her mother was there too. A woman called Margaret Taylor. Apparently, Summer and I had lived with her when we were younger. Before we got married. And Margeret had even taken me in when I’d had some problems at home.

My heart was hammering so fast as the door to Summer’s hotel room was opened. I can’t even remember who else was present. I just looked at this woman, at Summer Taylor-Braddon, my wife—and I didn’t remember a thing.

##