I shook my head. ‘Will my sister always believe this imaginary husband actually exists, and am I making things worse by encouraging her to believe something we know to be untrue.’
The doctor’s smile was so fleeting I almost missed it. ‘The most important word in that sentence is that you are stillencouragingher, rather than dismissing her claims.’ She gave a small, barely audible sigh. ‘Sometimes patients themselves will begin to realise that the facts they’re clinging to simply don’t add up. That can be a real breakthrough moment.’
‘And sometimes…?’ I prompted, already knowing the answer, but needing to hear it out loud.
The doctor didn’t disappoint. ‘And sometimes they don’t.’
*
Physically, Amelia was beginning to show signs of improvement. For a start, she was hooked up to far less machinery than before. It meant we were able to take slow, careful walks along the hospital corridor, wheeling her trusty IV beside us as we went. She clung to my arm on these jaunts, terrified of letting go. I wondered if she remembered it was exactly how I’d been at our local lido when she was teaching me to swim. Or when she ran alongside my bike on the day the trainer wheels were finally removed.
‘Don’t let go,’ she implored me now, echoing the words I’d once said to her as I took her entire body weight on my arm. I answered her the same way she’d done to me all those years ago. ‘Don’t panic. I’ve got you. I’m right here.’
I just wished supporting her mentally was as easy as assisting her up and down that corridor. The afternoons, when the shadows grew longer, were when Amelia’s thoughts turned melancholy. In a way, it was good that Mum rarely got to see the defeat that crept over her like a second sickness as she grew increasingly tired.
‘Why is Sam taking so long to get here?’ It was a frequent question, posed almost daily, and I’d formulated a collection of stock replies. Some days they even worked. But not today. ‘Surely he can’t still be at that stupid retreat place?’
‘I don’t know, Mimi,’ I said, feigning a sudden interest in the clouds scudding past the window. It was always easier to lie when I didn’t have to look directly at her. ‘One of the girls in my office went to one of those places for a week and ended up staying almost a month. Some people just need longer to recharge mentally than others.’
‘Wouldn’t he have asked them to let me know if that’s what he was doing?’
I really wanted to sayGood point, but of course I couldn’t. My explanations were so full of holes, they were virtually sieve-like.
‘Is there something about Sam that you’re not telling me?’ Amelia asked unexpectedly, late one afternoon.Like he’s not real, you mean, I thought sadly.
‘Like what?’
‘Has something bad happened to him that you don’t want me to know? Has he been in an accident?’
‘No,’ I replied, crossing my fingers behind my back to cancel out the lie, because that still worked when you were in your thirties, didn’t it?
Amelia lay back on the pillows, turning her gaze towards the window, where the light of day was already fading.
‘Has he left me, Lexi? Is that what’s happened?’
I swallowed noisily. Was this one of those breakthrough moments the doctors had said might come?
‘Doyouthink he’s left you?’ I parried, cowardly batting the question back to her.
She looked beyond the skyline of rooftops and telegraph wires, seeing something other than the view. Slowly she shook her head. ‘No. And deep down I don’t think you believe that either. Not after everything I’ve told you about us.’
I did my best to fix a smile that felt genuine on my face. Retelling the story of her romance with Sam had somehow become part of our daily visits. Perhaps I was better at listening and pretending than Mum was. Whatever the reason, I’d been privy to an almost date-by-date account of their relationship. Her recall of something that had never actually happened was truly astonishing, as she recounted their love story in such detail that sometimes I even found myself blushing.
I knew about their first date, first kiss, even the first time they’d made love. I knew the places he’d taken her – even the clothes she’d worn. I knew their story so well, I could have given it to a ghost writer and had them pen a book about their romance.
The thought felt like a striking bell that I couldn’t silence.
‘But I have nothing to prove that any of it happened,’ Amelia said sadly, her hand clasped around her locket. ‘There are photos of us on his phone and on mine too… but you say mine is still missing, and who knows where Sam’s is.’
If Sam really was a flesh-and-blood absent husband, rather than one who lived only in her head, I would have asked if she’d backed up her phone to the cloud, or we could have searched for him on Facebook. In truth, I could have suggested a dozen different ways of tracking him down, but the doctors had cautioned us about directly challenging Amelia on her confabulation. ‘The doubts have to come from her,’ the physicians had warned.
‘There are so many things I can’t remember properly,’ she said now, her voice forlorn. ‘There are huge gaping holes in my head that scare the life out of me. What if all my memories of Sam get sucked into them? What if everything I remember is taken away from me? What will I do then? How will I go on?’
Her tears were falling fast at just the thought of losing someone who didn’t even exist. I should have been whooping at the possibility of Sam’s presence finally being exorcised, but I couldn’t do that. Not when I could see how it was breaking her heart.
‘That won’t happen. We won’t let it,’ I told her, gathering her up in my arms and rocking her like a lost child.
*