What Alice Forgot

Ring Sophie. She’s your best friend! You must have told her something about what’s going on.

Your diary says you’ve got a Mega Meringue meeting at 1 p.m. Presumably you’ve got to run it. Great! That should be a hoot. Find out where it is! How? Ring someone. Ring that Kate Harper if you must. Or your “boyfriend.”

Would fix it if he could. Would fix it if he could.

Laundry.

Yes, you already said that.

Laundry!

Yes, calm down.

She shouldn’t have had the two cups of coffee. Her heart was beating much too fast. She took a few deep, shaky breaths to steady herself. She couldn’t keep up with her own body. She felt as if she needed to run crazily across a huge expanse of grass, flinging her body about like a puppy let off its leash.

When she got home she ran through the house as if she were in some sort of weird competition, gathering piles of clothes from laundry hampers and the floors of the children’s bedrooms and bathrooms. There was a lot. She pounded down the stairs to the laundry. No surprise to see a huge, shiny-white washing machine taking up half the room. She lifted the lid ready to toss in the clothes when she felt a rush of feelings. Embarrassed. Betrayed. Shocked.

What did it mean? The memory flipped to the front of her brain like a neat index card. Of course. Something had happened right here. Right here in this extraordinarily clean laundry. Something horrible.

That’s right. It was a party.

In the summer. Still warm late in the evening. There were tubs of ice on the laundry floor. Bottles of beer and wine and champagne poking out of the melting ice cubes. She went to get a new bottle of champagne and she was laughing as she pushed open the door and when she saw them, she automatically said, “Hi!” like an idiot, before her brain caught up with what they were doing, what she was seeing. A tiny graceful woman with closely cropped red hair sitting up on the washing machine, her legs apart, and Nick standing in front of her, his hands flat on the machine on either side of her legs, his head bent. Her husband was kissing another woman in the laundry.

Alice stared down at the pile of clothes in the machine. She could see the woman’s face so clearly. The delicate bones of her face. She could even hear her voice. Sugar-sweet and childlike to match her tiny body. It made her teeth ache.

She poured in a scoop of washing powder and slammed down the machine lid. How dare Nick guffaw when she asked if he’d had an affair? That kiss was worse than catching them in bed together. It was worse because it was so obviously a kiss at the beginning. Early kisses were so much more erotic than early sex. Sex at the beginning of a relationship was fumbly and silly and vaguely gynecological, like a doctor’s appointment. But fully clothed kisses, before you’d slept together, were delicious and mysterious.

Nick had kissed her for the first time up against the car after they’d just seen Lethal Weapon 3 at the movies. He tasted of popcorn, with a hint of chocolate. He was wearing a black jumper over a white T-shirt and jeans, and he was a bit stubbly under his lower lip and even as he was kissing her, she was already carefully saving it up as a memory, knowing that she’d be sitting at her computer screen the next day, reliving it. She’d pulled it out and replayed it like an old movie so many times. She had described it in minute detail to her friend Sophie, who had been in a relationship for five years and had therefore moaned with jealousy, even though Jack was the love of her life.

Sophie. Her oldest friend. Bridesmaid at her wedding.

She would ring Sophie right now. There was no way she hadn’t called Sophie and told her about the horror of that kiss in the laundry. First she would have called Elisabeth. Then Sophie. She would have skewed the story for each of them. For Elisabeth she would have concentrated on her own feelings. “How could he do that to me?” she would have asked and her voice would have quivered. For Sophie she would have spun out the story for maximum shock: “So I walked into the laundry to get some champagne and you will never in a million years guess what I saw. Go on, guess.” From Elisabeth she would have got sympathy and very clear instructions on what to do next. From Sophie she would have got shock and fury and an invitation to go out right now and get very drunk.

She found her address book and Sophie’s mobile number. It seemed that Sophie was living in Dee Why. The northern beaches. Good for her. She’d always wanted to live by the beach, but Jack preferred to live close to the city. She must have won out in the end. They must be married with children by now, although of course Alice had to remember not to take that for granted. She hoped Sophie hadn’t had fertility problems like Elisabeth. Or she and Jack could have broken up? No. Not possible.

“Sophie Drew.”

Goodness. Everyone had become so professional and grown-up.

“Sophie, hi, it’s me, Alice.”

There was a slight pause. “Oh, hi, Alice. How are you?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe what happened to me,” said Alice, and she realized she was feeling strangely silly. Almost nervous. Why? It was only Sophie.

There was another pause. “What happened to you?”

There was something not quite right. Sophie’s voice was too polite. Alice wanted to cry. Oh, for heaven’s sake, I can’t have lost you as well, can I? Who do I talk to?

She didn’t bother spinning out the story. She said, “I had an accident. Hit my head. I’ve lost my memory.”

This time there was an even longer pause. Then she heard Sophie say to someone in the background, “I won’t be long. Just tell them to hold on.”

Her voice came back. Louder. Maybe a touch impatient. “Sorry, Alice. So, umm, you had an accident?”

“Are we still friends?” said Alice desperately. “We are still friends, aren’t we, Soph?”

“Of course we are,” said Sophie immediately, warmly, except now her voice had an undercurrent of “Something weird is going on here. Must tread carefully!”

“It’s just that my last proper memory is of being pregnant with Madison. And now I find I’ve got three children, and Nick and I aren’t together anymore, and I can’t work out why, and Elisabeth—”

“No, no, not that one! The green one!” Sophie spoke sharply. “Sorry. I’m in the middle of a shoot for the new line. It’s a madhouse around here.”

“Oh. What do you do?”

Another pause. “Does that look green to you? Because it sure doesn’t look green to me. Alice, I’m sorry, but can I call you back?”