Detained

He caught her hand and held it, threading his fingers through hers like Will did. She sucked in a breath to cool the heating coil of anxiety in her chest.

“Is it so wrong for me to want him to remember you? If he remembers you there’s a chance the old Will is still in there somewhere.”

She looked at their hands. Peter’s fingers were long and elegant. He was a concert pianist to Will’s manual labourer. “I can’t be an experiment. I can’t be a proving ground for you or Will. I’m not strong enough to do that.”

Peter turned her hand and pressed it back on the starched white linen tablecloth. He sat back in his chair. “One more visit. One more chance. I’m your friend, but I’m Will’s brother and I need him. It’s the least you can do.”

35. Sleeping Beauty

“He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.” — Confucius

Bo was confident. There was a strong chance Will had been foxing. But he wasn’t sure he was still doing it.

“He remembers the finest details. The way my wife made xiaolongbao—soup dumplings. That was eight years ago. I don’t see how he could remember that and not remember what happened to him, and not remember you. I think it’s too much for him, too painful. I think he doesn’t want to remember.”

“Where were you last night, Bo, when Peter strongarmed me into coming here again?” Darcy said.

Bo gave her a sympathetic look as he parked the Audi at the Double Happiness Rehabilitation Hospital.

“Oh, I get it. You don’t think he remembers me, but you want me to try again anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Darcy. Yes, that’s what I want. I’ll wait for you here.”

Darcy knew she could simply tell Bo to drive her back to the hotel and he would, no fuss, or at least that he’d show. She knew she could spend the afternoon shopping, and with money in her pocket, maybe even enjoy it. She knew Will was somewhere through those doors and there was a possibility he might remember her.

“What if remembering me means he has to remember all the dreadful things that happened to him, Bo? What if I’m so bound up in all that pain, he remembers me only to hate me?”

“Life is simple. We insist on making it complicated. What if he remembers he loves you?”

It was a big what if.

She got out of the car, went to the administration block and signed in as a visitor. The receptionist told her Will was in the gym, and if she waited in the café she’d see him come past. She went to the café, ordered a pot of tea and waited. Twenty minutes later, shirtless, in baggy cotton drawstring trousers that clung to him in sweat patches, and with his right hand in plaster, Will walked right past her without a blink of recognition.

That was it then. What more could she do? It really was over. Time to move on; and not look back. She stood. Will’s path had been blocked by two wheelchairs. She saw the detail of the tattoo on his back. This was a man who remembered the things important to him. How could he not know her? How could she not try to break through to him?

“Will Parker.”

He shifted, looking for a way around the wheelchairs. Without turning he said, “Who wants to know?”

“It wasn’t a question. I know who you are.”

He half turned, regarded her with dark, cold eyes. “Oh right. You, Pete’s squeeze. He’s not coming today.” His path was clear, but he hesitated.

“I know.”

Now he turned fully, aggression in his stance. “Then what are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

“Why would you do that?”

She searched his face for some trace of recognition; a softening, a shift, a blink. Anything.

He advanced on her. “Did we know each other? Did I fuck

you?” He came closer. Darcy could see the pucker in the skin of his arm where the bullet struck. She was catapulted back to the corridor at Quingpu and all that red, red blood.

“What’s wrong with you?” He grabbed her arm as she swayed, his fingers biting into her skin. “You need to get out of the sun or fucking eat something.”