Chapter 20
“Ya what?” said Sylvie, horrified.
“You don’t approve of my plan, I take it?” said Marielle.
“If you do that, I’ll have you bloody sectioned.”
“Do say it as it is, Sylvie. Please don’t hold back.”
“Marielle, you don’t know this woman from Adam. What if the reason she’s lost her memory is because she’s killed someone and
it’s all too traumatic to bring back?” Sylvie shook her head. “Marielle Bonetti, do not do this.”
“She hasn’t killed anyone, silly,” said Marielle, and though she couldn’t be wholly sure of that, the odds were against it.
“She’s rotting in hospital.”
“Good, let her rot,” said Sylvie, “and I’m not being callous. I would just rather it was her at a disadvantage than you.”
“Well, I’m not listening to you. My mind is made up.”
“I’ll tell Teddy. You give me no choice.”
“Then if that’s your answer, I’m going, Sylvie Sampson.” And Marielle reached for the jacket she’d taken off not long before.
Never once had Marielle walked out of Sylvie’s house on bad terms, and they weren’t going to start now. Sylvie stood up to
block her way. “I’m sorry. Please don’t go.”
“I’m sixty-three years old, not some child who doesn’t know her own mind, and you’re threatening to tell my son on me.” Marielle was angrier than Sylvie had ever seen her.
“Look, Marielle—love—I’m only thinking about you.” Sylvie swapped the heat in her voice for concern. “Come on, you can’t blame
me after what happened last time when you let that woman stay in the flat and she ran off with everything that wasn’t screwed
down.”
“I made a mistake then and I admit it, but Sabrina is a very different case. I’ll let her stay in the flat for just a little
while, I promise. I’ll keep the door between us locked. She’s not making any headway in a hospital environment, and the sooner
she does, the sooner she can go back to her life. They’ve tried all sorts of things on her this past fortnight. She hasn’t
even responded to hypnotherapy, so whatever it is, is very deep-seated—”
“Or she’s making it up,” Sylvie said, unable to stop herself, then, seeing Marielle’s expression, apologized quickly. “Okay,
I’m sorry. But surely she’s better off in hospital?”
“I don’t think she is. I think I can help her break down the wall she’s built up inside herself,” said Marielle.
“And what makes you think you can do that?”
“Because I was a nurse for forty years and I’ve done it before,” Marielle answered.
“When I was working in the hospital in Naples, there was a young woman on the psychiatric ward who couldn’t remember who she was, very similar circumstances to Sabrina’s.
She was in there ages and it did her absolutely no good at all.
So she discharged herself even though she had nowhere to go, and Sal and I took her in.
She lived with us and she’d help out, cleaning, cooking, and just by doing banal things that didn’t take up any headspace, her brain must have started turning over in the background, and she began to remember bits and pieces.
Like when you can’t think of an answer in a crossword and you can’t force it out, but it’ll come to you if you go for a walk or do some ironing.
To cut a long story short, we discovered that she was traumatized after losing her child.
She had a family in Turin going mad to find her and we were able to reunite them.
So whatever you say, it’s happening. I’m going to try to help Sabrina my way. ”
The doorbell rang; the others were arriving for the Mad Cows get-together.
“Then do me one favor, Marielle. Just run all this past everyone else and see what they say. I promise you, I’ll keep my mouth
shut. Now you get the glasses and I’ll get the door.”
Sylvie wasn’t even going to bother putting on the kettle. The Mad Cows were going to need something a bit stronger to wash
that down with.
Sylvie didn’t do baking, she never had, so when it was her turn to host, she bought cake from the posh deli in Slattercove,
but it was never as moreish as Jackie’s filo tarts, Bev’s French fancies, Diana’s scones, or Marielle’s simple, moist homemade
custard creams. But the food always played second fiddle to the camaraderie. They were a vacuum-safe space, nothing was out
of bounds to talk about, and no one ever felt judged, and that’s why Marielle’s cousin Cilla Charlesworth would never be a
Mad Cow, even though she’d done her best to elbow her way in.
“I saw Cilla in Waitrose,” said Diana, daintily lifting up a forkful of cake to her lips. “She couldn’t wait to show me her
tan, which was, I have to say, very impressive.”
They all knew Cilla from old. Bev had known her since school, Jackie lived a few doors down from her, she frequented Sylvie’s
beauty salon, although there was always something she found to complain about and press for a discount, and she used to go
to the same book club as Diana before Cilla drove out most of the people with her outspoken ways and it closed down.
Marielle had been eleven when her mum’s feckless sister died, leaving behind four-year-old Cilla, so her parents had adopted their niece.
They’d spoiled her, ruined her, overcompensating for her less-than-ideal start in life, and in the process made their daughter feel second-best. It was, all the Mad Cows agreed, no wonder that Marielle had buggered off to Italy at age seventeen and married the first man to give her some love and attention.
Cilla had been a thorn in her cousin’s side when they were kids and she still was, even though Marielle was too kind to admit the full extent, even to her besties.
She’d recently come back from a cruise in the Bahamas with Hugo, a new man on the scene whom she’d found on the internet, and Marielle didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.
Any attempt to warn Cilla to be careful had been rebuffed with an accusation of pique, and so Marielle had decided to back off.
“She said the sun shone every day, Hugo was the perfect gent, and the caviar and champagne flowed,” added Diana.
“Wonder who paid for all that then?” asked Jackie, but it was a question they all knew the answer to. Hugo’s money was all
tied up in long-term investments, Cilla had told Marielle and Marielle had told her friends. He had to give a stupid amount
of notice to access his funds, so while they were waiting for clearance, so he didn’t lose any interest, Cilla stumped up
for everything.
“She’s a grown woman. Let her get on with it,” said Bev. “Even at school she always knew best.”
Marielle blamed her parents for that, giving her a false sense of her own importance. Cilla could do no wrong growing up.
The result was that the spoiled, entitled child grew up into a spoiled, entitled woman.
“I don’t want to talk about Cilla anymore. How are Doug’s bowels?” asked Marielle.
Diana smiled. “He got his results back this morning: no action. And it might help if he stopped eating beetroot and scaring
himself stupid.”
Bev raised her glass. “A toast to Doug’s colon.” And everyone else followed suit.
“Any other business?” asked Jackie.
Sylvie, who by now was on her second glass of malbec, reneged on her promise and dropped Marielle right in it.
“Marielle’s taking in another woman of no fixed abode,” she said, then clamped her hand over her mouth. “Whoops.”
There followed a stunned silence.
“You’re fecking joking,” said Bev, breaking it.
“What’s Teddy said?” asked Diana.
“Oh, bugger Teddy,” replied Marielle in a hard voice she seldom used. “Why does everyone think I haven’t got a brain but my
son has?”
“I’m sorry, Marielle,” said Sylvie, wishing she’d never opened her mouth. “Just tell them what you told me.”
So Marielle told them all the story of the Lost Lady, and they listened without smart comments or interruptions until she’d
finished.
“How come she’s not forgotten how to eat or walk or sleep?” asked Diana.
“Can you forget how to sleep?” questioned Bev.
“Because it’s psychological, not physical,” Marielle explained. “There’s no brain damage, but something is keeping her from
remembering things, probably some trauma. The brain works in odd ways, and hers is obviously trying to protect her from recalling
something probably very unpleasant until it thinks she can cope with it, so it’s set up its own internal blocking system.”
No one said it, but they all thought that Marielle might be as capable of fooling herself with the “Lost Lady” as Cilla was
with “Internet Hugo.” They also all thought that they’d be watching this Sabrina character like a hawk, and woe betide her
if she was as rotten as some of the others Marielle had tried to help.
“How long are you going to look after her for then?”
“What if she never gets her memory back?”
“Will the hospital just let you take her out like that?”
“Surely social services should be looking after her, not you.”
“How are you going to explain her to Teddy?”
“How old is she?”
Questions missiled at Marielle, and she had to hold up her hands to stem the flow.
“She’s about thirty-five, and no, I don’t know what will happen if she doesn’t get her memory back.
We’ll have to cross that bridge if we get to it.
Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t do this again, but she’s different from the others.
Yes, I’ll make sure I’m on my guard, but I know that I’m doing the right thing—there’s not a doubt in my head.
Yes, it took a bit of jiggery-pokery to get her out of hospital because they weren’t happy about her wanting to discharge herself against all their recommendations and safety orders, but they could hardly stop her if that’s what she wanted to do. ”
“Be careful, darling,” said Diana, not wanting to be too judgmental. Her friend had a heart of gold, and none of them wanted
to see her good intentions blow back in her face.
“I hope we’re going to meet her,” said Jackie, by which she meant she insisted they did so they could suss her out.
“Hang on. You used the past tense,” said Sylvie. “You said it took a bit of jiggery-pokery.” She raised her eyebrows in question.
“I did,” replied Marielle. “I brought Sabrina home this afternoon. She’s making herself comfortable in the flat as I speak.”