What Alice Forgot

I just want you to make it stop hurting, please, Dr. Hodges. That’s why I’m paying you the big bucks. I just want to feel like me again.

I have wandered off from the point again. My point was that I’ve been imagining what it would be like if I lost memory. So, I hit my head, and I wake up and I discover it’s 2008 and I’ve got fat and Alice has got thin and I’m married to this guy called Ben.

I wonder if I would fall in love with Ben all over again. That would be nice. I remember how it crept up so slowly on me, like that agonizingly slow old electric blanket which used to almost imperceptibly heat up my frosty sheets, second by second, until I’d think, “Hey, I haven’t shivered in a while. Actually, I’m warm. I’m blissfully warm.” That’s how it was with Ben. I moved on from “I really shouldn’t be leading this guy on when I have no interest” to “He’s not that bad-looking really” to “I sort of enjoy being with him” to “Actually, I’m crazy about him.”

I wonder if Ben would try to protect me from bad news, the way we’ve been skirting around certain subjects with Alice. He’s a terrible liar. I’d say, “How many children have we got?” and he’d mumble, “Well, we haven’t much luck there,” and he’d scratch his chin and clear his throat and look away.

I would bossily insist on all the details, and eventually he’d just have to go ahead and say it.

Over the last seven years, you’ve had three IVF pregnancies and two natural pregnancies. None of those theoretical babies became real babies. The furthest you ever got was sixteen weeks and that one broke both our hearts so badly we thought we’d never recover. You’ve also been through eight failed IVF cycles. Yes, this has changed you. Yes, it has changed our marriage, and your relationships with your family and your friends. You are angry, bitter, and, frankly, you’re often a bit strange. You are currently seeing a counselor after an embarrassing incident in a coffee shop. Yes, all this has cost a lot of money, but we really prefer not to go into the figures.

(Actually, Dr. Hodges, I’ve had six miscarriages. But Ben doesn’t know this. I only got to five weeks, so it barely counted. Ben was away on a fishing trip with a friend, and I’d only done the pregnancy test the day before, and then the next day I started bleeding and that was that. He was so happy and dirty and sunburned when he came back from that trip, I couldn’t tell him. It was just another lost little theoretical baby. Another tiny astronaut adrift in space.)

So, what would I say after Ben told me this long sorry story?

Well, this is the thing, Dr. Hodges, because I remember the old decisive, take-action, nerdy me and my first thought was that I would say something bracing along the lines of “if at first you don’t succeed.” After all, I was the woman who used to start each day by looking at a framed picture of a snow-capped mountain with a quote from Leonardo da Vinci: “Obstacles cannot crush me; every obstacle yields to stern resolve.”

Good one, Leonardo.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that maybe I wouldn’t say anything motivational at all.

It’s quite possible that I might briskly slap my hands against my knees and say, “Sounds like it’s time you gave up.”

Chapter 15

It was Alice’s mother who finally broke the silence. She said, “Gina was a friend of yours.” She placed the salad bowl on the table without meeting Alice’s eyes. “Actually, I think this bowl was a gift from Gina. That’s probably why you thought of her.”

Alice looked at the bowl and closed her eyes. She saw crumpled yellow paper. She tasted champagne. Possibly heard a peal of feminine laughter. Then nothing.

She opened her eyes again. Everyone was looking at her.

“Well, I really have to go,” Elisabeth said, looking at her watch.

There was a flurry of relieved activity. “I think I’ve parked you in!” Roger said happily, pulling out a huge set of keys from his pocket and jumping to his feet.

“Don’t forget to listen out for that call from Kate,” said Elisabeth as she hurriedly backed out of the room. “Otherwise you’re hosting a party tonight.”

“I’ll come and wave you off,” Barb said as she and Roger followed Elisabeth down the hallway, obviously wanting to speak to her privately.

When it was just Alice and Frannie left alone, Alice picked a cherry tomato out of the salad and said, “So how do I know this Gina?”

“She lived across the road,” said Frannie. “I think they moved in just before Olivia was born. You don’t remember anything about her?”

“No. So she doesn’t live across the road anymore?”

Frannie paused. She seemed to be struggling with the right thing to say. She said, “No. The family moved to Melbourne. Not that long ago.”

Suddenly Alice got it.

Something went on between this Gina and Nick. It explained everything. That’s why everybody had behaved so awkwardly.

Gina. Yes. The name was definitely associated with raw pain of some kind.

Why had she thought she was exempt from infidelity? It happened all the time. It was one of those tacky soap opera events that always seemed sort of vaguely comical when it happened to someone else but was earthshakingly horrible when it happened to you.

Alice thought of poor Hillary Clinton. Imagine having the whole world know that your husband had cheated on you in such a messy way. You would have thought being president of the United States should have been a pretty distracting sort of job. It could happen to Nick.

After all, she realized with a shock, they’d been married for over ten years by now. Maybe Nick caught a slight case of the seven-year itch (which was practically a medical phenomenon, not really his fault), and then this awful manipulative woman took advantage of him, seduced him.

The bitch.

He was probably drunk. It probably just happened once. Maybe there was a party and Nick kissed her (quickly! hardly at all!) and Alice had overreacted and Nick had apologized but Alice wouldn’t budge (stupid!) and now they were getting a divorce because of it. It was all Alice’s fault. And Gina’s fault.

She must be very beautiful.

The thought of her beauty, and the thought of Nick finding her beautiful, hurt so sharply that she groaned out loud.

“Are you remembering?” asked Frannie anxiously.

“I think so.” Alice massaged her forehead.