Chapter 16
They drove down a wide, tree-lined street. Robyn could see that ahead it was a no-through road, the street ending at a clearing in a forest of pines. They passed imposing detached houses that were clearly very old, all set back from the road. No two properties were alike; they had obviously been individually built by wealthy families who must have employed their own architects to build their grand homes – or perhaps second homes. She caught glimpses of them down their long drives.
‘The houses here are amazing.’
Gayle nodded. ‘It’s a lovely leafy street, isn’t it? These houses were all built in the Scottish Baronial style, apparently. At least that’s what my parents told me. Hence the abundance of turrets and gables you can see.’
Robyn couldn’t wait to arrive at Gayle’s family home. She’d had no idea she would be invited to stay in such a wonderful street, with large, opulent houses that reminded her of historic mansions or country estates.
Robyn raised her eyebrows, wondering why these grand houses would remind her of mansions and country estates – after all, she doubted she was rich and had ever lived in one. Robyn guessed she’d probably seen the like in a glossy magazine.
They reached the end of the street and the car swerved unexpectedly to the left through an almost indiscernible gap in a high, overgrown hedge. Robyn looked at Gayle. She couldn’t see a house from there – in fact, she’d thought they had passed all the houses in the street.
‘Bet you wondered where I was headed,’ Gayle said, winking at Robyn as she slowly made her way up the drive. Either side of the drive, which was overgrown with weeds, was the lawn, which was overgrown too with weeds and wildflowers.
Robyn gaped, speechless, at the house that came into view.
Gayle parked the car on the gravel driveway outside the house.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Robyn cooed.
‘What, this old wreck?’ Gayle switched the engine off and turned to Robyn. ‘You’re just being kind.’
Robyn turned quickly to Gayle. ‘No, I mean it. It’s a lovely house.’
‘Maybe once upon a time, but I think it’s seen better days, don’t you?’ Gayle said, getting out of the car.
Robyn sat for a moment, admiring the house. Yes, it had seen better days. It was certainly in need of some updating. The gorgeous yellow stone brickwork had mellowed with age, making the striking house look distinguished, like a gentleman’s residence from another era, but the peeling paint on the window frames, which were down to bare wood in places, really let it down. Shutters hung forlornly on broken hinges, and some of the windowpanes were so dirty that they looked like someone had forgotten to remove the blackout curtains from World War Two. She noticed that one of the windowpanes even had a large crack in the glass. But she could see through all that to the grand residence it must once have been.
Robyn quickly got out of the car. ‘I love it, Gayle, truly.’
‘You do?’ said Gayle warily, raising her eyebrows.
When Robyn could tear her eyes away from the house, she reached into the car for her magazines and followed Gayle, who was waiting for her by the front door with a suitcase. That reminded Robyn of what she had to do. ‘I need to go to the police station to collect my stuff.’
Gayle gave her a quizzical look. ‘You aren’t fooling, are you?’
Robyn didn’t understand.
‘You really have got amnesia.’ Gayle said flatly, lifting up the old case.
Robyn looked at it. ‘That’s mine?’
Gayle nodded. ‘I stopped off at the police station this morning, when I was on the way to collect you. Where do you think those clothes came from?’
Robyn looked down at the clothes she was wearing. ‘I thought they were yours.’
‘How did you figure that? Do I look like I’d wear those sorts of clothes?’
Robyn stared at Gayle in her jeans and colourful blouse, which were so unlike her own black jeans, t-shirt and sweatshirt. ‘So, if you stopped off to collect my things on the way here, where did this outfit come from?’
Gayle shook her head. ‘Oh, Robyn. I can see this is going to be rather tiresome. Not your fault, though – obviously. It’s the blow to the head.’
Robyn gingerly touched the bandage at the mention of a blow to the head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That was the outfit you were wearing when you had the accident. I took the clothes home and laundered them. Fortunately, they weren’t torn in the accident.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Robyn said, embarrassed. ‘Look, I can stay in the bed-and-breakfast in town if this isn’t going to work out.’
‘No, absolutely not. You’re staying here, and that’s that.’
Robyn offered up a wisp of a smile. ‘All right. As long as you’re sure …’
‘Of course I’m sure. Now, let’s get you and your suitcase inside.’
Robyn eyed the suitcase in Gayle’s hands suspiciously. Hadn’t Dr Jamieson said that her memory would click into place at the sight of familiar things? Since it hadn’t worked with her luggage, Robyn guessed it would take something more significant, like familiar surroundings, perhaps, or a familiar photo.
Gayle trudged up the steps leading to the front door. She stopped when she realised Robyn wasn’t following. She turned around. ‘Are you sure you still want to stay here? I know it must be a bit of a shock seeing the state of the place compared to the neighbouring properties.’ Gayle pointed the old, tattered suitcase at the house. ‘You’re having second thoughts about staying here.’
‘No, not at all. I want to stay,’ Robyn said, enthusiastically striding up the steps with the heavy magazines as she caught up with Gayle.
‘Didn’t the doctor say you’ve got to take it easy for a while?’ Gayle admonished. She put the case down by the door and took some magazines out of Robyn’s arms as she said conversationally,
‘This was the first house in the street to be built, you know.’
‘Really?’ Robyn said, turning slowly around on the spot to take a closer look at the house.
‘And it used to be the grandest,’ Gayle said, standing beside Robyn, ‘I guess it’s a bit like those new houses they build, where they make the first just a bit larger and roomier and grander to encourage people to buy one of the others that will be built.’
‘Like a show home,’ Robyn said, watching Gayle put the key in the large wooden door.
‘That’s right.’ She opened the door. She shook her head. ‘They don’t make them like this anymore. No two houses in this street are the same, you know.’
Robyn had noticed.
‘They are all individually designed,’ Gayle said with satisfaction as they stepped inside. ‘Mother?’ she called as she closed the front door.
Robyn watched Gayle walk up a wide spiral staircase as she called for her mother. The old stairs were fitted with a very worn patterned carpet that lay in a strip in the centre, leaving the rest of the wooden stair treads exposed.
‘It looks like something out of Gone with the Wind ,’ Robyn exclaimed in delight. ‘It’s like stepping into an old movie set.’
Robyn deposited the rest of the magazines in her arms on the pile Gayle had left on a large mahogany sideboard. She ran over to the stairs, skipped up two, turned, and said passionately, ‘Where shall I go? What shall I do?’
Then she turned around and deepened her voice . ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ She giggled hysterically.
‘You’d make a terrible actor,’ Gayle chuckled over the landing banister.
Robyn skipped up the stairs towards her.
Gayle stood there with her mobile phone to hand. ‘That’s odd. Everyone remembers that iconic line from Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. But I bet very few people can quote what the character Scarlett O’Hara said to warrant that response. I had to Google it to check.’ Gayle stared at Robyn. ‘How on earth did you know that?’
Robyn said, ‘Wait a minute. I couldn’t remember anything since before the accident. But I remembered that old movie.’ Her eyes went wide. ‘You know what that means?’
Gayle grinned. ‘I think so.’
‘My memory must be coming back! It’s weird. It was those stairs.’ Robyn turned around and cast her gaze down the stairs. ‘They must have triggered something …’
‘Okay,’ Gayle said slowly. ‘Can you remember anything else?’
Robyn furrowed her brow, holding her breath, trying to concentrate really hard. Finally, she let out a deflated breath. Her shoulders sagged as she turned to look at Gayle. ‘Nope, nothing.’
‘Well, give it time.’
Robyn frowned. That was what the doctor had said.
She followed Gayle down the hallway. ‘That’s odd,’ she said.
‘What is?’ said Gayle as she humped Robyn’s case down the long, dark, wooden hallway.
Robyn followed after her. ‘David was talking about some movie showing at the local cinema.’
‘Trying to ask you for a date,’ Gayle chirped knowingly over her shoulder.
Robyn stopped. That hadn’t occurred to her. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘apparently it was a digitally re-mastered version that they were showing. He seemed a bit surprised that I couldn’t recall having seen it before. In fact, I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Well, we’re not all into the same kinds of movies, are we?’ Gayle said matter-of-factly. ‘What was the name of the film, anyway?’
‘I think he said it was Star Wars .’ Robyn shook her head, unsure.
‘Ah.’ Gayle stopped abruptly, turning to face Robyn. ‘Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, C-3PO.’ She gazed at Robyn. ‘Ring any bells?’
‘What are you on about?’ Robyn didn’t understand Gayle’s strange litany of words. ‘I take it,’ she said, looking at Gayle’s expression, ‘that this Star Wars is quite a well-known movie.’
‘You could say that.’ Gayle smirked. ‘But not any more well-known than the movie you remembered.’ She opened a bedroom door and walked in.
‘I remembered,’ Robyn said slowly, standing in the doorway. ‘I really remembered something!’ she said excitedly.
Gayle put her suitcase on the bed.
‘But why that old movie?’ Robyn said, confused.
Gayle shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there.’ She suddenly stopped, staring at Robyn, wide-eyed. ‘Wait a minute. I forgot that there’s something of yours I haven’t given you.’
Robyn looked at the suitcase. ‘There’s something else?’
Gayle said, ‘Wait here.’
Robyn watched her run out of the room. She walked over to the window. She looked down at the overgrown front garden and caught Gayle opening the car door and leaning inside. She couldn’t see what her friend was collecting from the car. Gayle slammed the car door shut and disappeared back to the house before appearing in the bedroom doorway with a handful of letters.
‘Here, this is your bag.’
Robyn looked at the rucksack that Gayle had brought in from the car. Unfortunately, she didn’t recognise the bag either.
‘And these are addressed to you. The desk sergeant at the police station handed them to me when I collected your luggage. I didn’t want to open your suitcase, so I put them in the glove compartment for safekeeping instead. Then I forgot about them. Sorry.’
Robyn recalled that the doctor had mentioned some letters from her mother that the police had found in the car. Some were unopened, so the police had obviously noted who they were from. Dr Jamieson had suggested they might jog her memory.
Robyn took the letters, her hand shaking as she quickly read a couple of the short notes. Her fears were not unfounded. Her mind remained a blank – she couldn’t even picture her own mother, who had apparently written the letters.
‘Are you okay?’ Gayle asked.
Robyn looked up. ‘According to these letters, my mum is travelling abroad.’
‘On business?’
‘I don’t know.’ She glanced at the unopened letters, wondering if they’d shed light on why she was out of the country.
‘There was this too,’ Gayle said, handing her a note. ‘It’s from the police.’
‘Oh.’ Robyn looked at her anxiously.
‘It’s nothing to worry about. They understand you’ve got some memory problems as a result of your injury, so they wrote down your address.’
‘They did?’ Robyn had wanted to ask the police officer when he’d visited the hospital, but the thought that she might be in some kind of trouble had held her back. Until her memory came back, she didn’t want the police delving into her or her past.
Robyn took the note and frowned. ‘Oh. I thought it would be my home address.’
‘Well, at least you know one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re a student at university.’
‘A mature student,’ said Robyn, wondering what she had been doing with her life after her A-Levels and before she’d started university. Most people graduated when they were twenty-one, but according to the police, who had identified her through the car registration, she was twenty-one, and by the sound of it still a student. Perhaps something had happened, and she’d dropped out for a bit or had taken a gap year. Was that something that deep down she knew, or was she just guessing?
Robyn sighed. She suddenly felt so tired. She agreed with Gayle’s sentiments; this memory thing was getting really tiresome.
Gayle said, ‘I hope the room is okay. It’s a bit … dated, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s … great.’ Robyn smiled for Gayle’s sake as she looked around the dark, musty room. Beggars can’t be choosers , she thought. She obviously had student accommodation, but she didn’t know if she paid all year round or was expected to vacate it over the holidays. The fact that she had a suitcase with her suggested she might have been on her way home. But the question was still there – why so late on Christmas Day? Surely, she would have left university days earlier, when the term finished.
She stared around the room, wishing she hadn’t left her magazines downstairs and thinking that having them lying around would brighten up the room a little.
Gayle must have caught her expression. ‘If you don’t like the room, there are others down the hall. Just take your pick. But I’m afraid they’re all pretty much like this one.’
Old-fashioned, dark and musty , Robyn thought. But the place was growing on Robyn. It had character. And it wasn’t hospital.
‘Robyn?’
Robyn was twirling around, taking in the room, the high ceiling with its ornate coving, the worn cream wallpaper with a delicate green flowered print, and the large cast iron fireplace in which she imagined servants had once lit the fire each evening for the master and mistress of the house, or their guests – if this had been a guest bedroom.
‘It’s great – really.’ Robyn had a question. ‘How many bedrooms are there in this house?’
‘Oh, goodness. There are six bedrooms. Far too many for just me and Mum now.’
Robyn nodded.
Gayle pointed at the letters. ‘So, nothing jogs your memory?’
Robyn slowly shook her head.
‘David doesn’t know about the memory thing, does he?’
Robyn turned to face Gayle. ‘No, because I ... it’s just that ...’
‘He might not believe you?’
Robyn frowned. ‘You must admit, it does sound a little wacko – like something out of a bad movie, where they can’t think of a decent plot, so they resort to the tired memory loss thing.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Gayle agreed. ‘What did the doctor have to say about it, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Robyn glanced at the strange suitcase that Gayle had left on the bed. ‘It could come back just like that,’ Robyn clicked her fingers. ‘That’s why I’d rather not waste my time telling people today what could be all changed by tomorrow.’
‘Okay, your secret is safe with me.’ Gayle winked at Robyn. ‘I won’t tell a soul, I promise.’ She paused. ‘Except perhaps …’ Gayle put her forefinger to her chin and looked up at the ceiling, ‘… my mother.’ She chuckled.
Robyn relaxed.
‘Where is the crazy old woman anyway?’ Gayle said, smiling at Robyn as she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.