What Alice Forgot

Alice could never remember what happened next, or even how she felt on hearing the words. All she remembered was how Elisabeth had tried so hard to protect her from the “bad, surprised feeling.” She was twenty-four before it occurred to her with a jolt of surprise that Elisabeth had been only a little girl herself that day. She’d phoned her to talk about it, to thank her, and the funny thing was that Elisabeth had an entirely different set of memories about when their dad died and didn’t even remember putting Alice to bed.

Of course, there was also the time Elisabeth had thrown a pair of nail scissors at her, which got impaled in the back of her neck. But still . . .

Now Alice opened her eyes and said to Elisabeth, “You’re such a good big sister.”

Elisabeth took her hand away and said flatly, “No I’m not.”

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, and then Alice said, “Are you happy, Libby? Because you seem . . .” Desperately unhappy, she wanted to say.

“I’m fine.”

Elisabeth seemed to be thinking of things to say and then discarding them. “Just be your proper self!” Alice wanted to scream.

Finally Elisabeth said, “I guess maybe our lives haven’t turned out quite the way we envisaged they would when we were thirty.”

A voice interrupted them. “At last! I found you! I thought I’d never find you!”

There was a woman standing at the end of the bed, her face hidden for a moment as she ceremoniously held up a large bunch of yellow tulips.

She lowered the tulips and revealed her face. Alice blinked and blinked again in disbelief.

Chapter 9

“Mum?” said Alice.

It was Alice’s mother standing at the end of her bed, but this was an extraordinarily different Barb Jones from the one Alice knew.

For a start (and there were so many possible places to start), her hair was no longer short and brown, the humble nunlike hairstyle that she’d had for as long as Alice could remember. Instead, it was a rich mahogany color and long, falling past her shoulders, with two strands pulled back on either side of her face (so her pixie ears stuck out comically) and pinned at the top with a huge, jaunty tropical silk flower. Her mother, her unassuming, fade-intothe-background mother who normally wore only an apologetic smear of the mildest pink Avon lipstick, was wearing what could only be described as theatrical makeup. Her lips were the same mahogany as her hair, her eyelids were purple, her cheeks were bright, her foundation was thick and too dark, and were those, surely not, false eyelashes? She was wearing a halterneck, glittery sequined top, pulled in tight at the waist with a big black belt, and a full scarlet skirt. Alice lifted her chin and saw the outfit was completed with fishnet stockings and high, strappy shoes.

Her mother said, “Are you all right, darling? I always said those spin classes were too hard on your joints, and now look what’s happened.”

“Are you going to a fancy-dress party?” asked Alice with sudden inspiration. That would explain it, although even that would be amazing.

“Oh, no, silly, we were doing a demonstration at the school when Elisabeth left the message—I came straight here without stopping to change. I do get a few stares, but I’m used to that now! Anyway, enough of that, tell me what happened and what the doctors are saying. You’re as white as a sheet.” Her mother sat on the side of the bed and patted her leg. Sparkly bracelets slid up and down her arm. Was Mum tanned? Did Mum have cle**age?

“A demonstration of what?” asked Alice. She couldn’t take her eyes off this exotic creature. It was Mum, but not Mum. Unlike Elisabeth, she didn’t have any new wrinkles; in fact, that thick layer of makeup smoothed out her face so she seemed younger.

Elisabeth said, “Alice has lost a huge chunk of her memory, Mum. She doesn’t remember anything since 1998.”

“Oh,” said Barb. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. I knew she looked too pale. You must have concussion, I suppose. Don’t fall asleep! You have to stay awake after a concussion. Whatever you do, Alice darling, you must not fall asleep!”

“That’s a myth,” said Elisabeth. “They don’t advise that anymore.”

“Well, I don’t know about that actually, because I think I read something in the Reader’s Digest quite recently about a little boy, a boy called Andy, and he hit his head riding one of those mini-bikes out in the bush, which is exactly what happened to Sandra’s grandson, and I can tell you, I would not be letting Tom on one of those, Alice, even though I bet the little devil would love it, because they’re terribly dangerous, even if you do wear a helmet, which this little boy, this Andy, was not, I think it was Andy, it could have been Arnie, although that’s a funny, old-fashioned name you don’t hear much these days—”

“Mum?” Alice interrupted, knowing there was no way out of the Andy/ Arnie labyrinth. Her mother had always been a pathological chatterbox, although normally, when she was out in public like this, she would lower her voice in irritating deference to those around her, so you’d always be saying “Speak up, Mum!” If somebody she hadn’t known intimately for at least twenty years turned up, her chatter would stop instantly mid-sentence, like a switched-off radio, and she would duck her head, avoid all eye contact, and smile an infuriatingly humble smile. She was so shy that when Alice and Elisabeth were at school, she became literally sick with nerves before their parent-teacher nights and would come home white and trembly with exhaustion, barely able to remember a word any of the teachers had said, as if the point of it had just been to show up, not to actually listen, which always drove Elisabeth insane, because she wanted to hear all the nice things the teachers said about her. (Alice didn’t care because she knew most of her teachers probably didn’t know who she was, because she suffered from the same shyness.)

Now Alice’s mother was talking at a normal volume (actually, even a little louder than strictly necessary) and she wasn’t darting cautious looks around to make sure any important strangers weren’t about to turn up. Also, she seemed to have developed a new way of holding her head, her chin jutting and her neck strained, like a peacock. It reminded Alice of somebody, somebody she was sure she hadn’t forgotten, somebody she knew perfectly well, although she couldn’t temporarily name that person.

“But I still don’t understand why you’re dressed like that, Mum,” said Alice. “You look . . . incredible.”