30
‘That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, but what you’re saying makes no sense whatsoever.’
I glanced across at Mum, but she appeared to have developed a sudden fascination with the threads of the hospital blanket. Amelia’s gaze was focused on me anyway, waiting for an answer or an explanation that I’d been searching three months to find.
‘Why would I have claimed something crazy like that? Didn’t anyone question the total lack of evidence?’ Amelia lifted her hand and began counting points off on her fingers. ‘You say there are no clothes of his, no belongings at the cottage, there’s no wedding ring, nothing at all to suggest that I’d secretly got married and hadn’t told either of you about it.’ She gave a derisiveas ifI’d ever do anything like thateye-roll. ‘And how was this supposed “husband”’ – she air-quoted the word – ‘meant to have disappeared off the face of the earth?’
I drew in a deep breath, knowing that I was walking through a virtual minefield here. ‘Mimi, hon, we asked you all of those questions and a thousand more.’
‘So why did you believe this nonsense, then?’
Mum lifted her head, and it nearly broke me to see the tears in her eyes. ‘We didn’t, sweetheart. Butyoudid. You believed it with all your heart.’
Mum’s words took the wind from Amelia’s sails, but we were still in choppy waters.
‘In the early days when you were very poorly, the doctors thought the delusion was a result of the hypothermia,’ I said, reaching for my sister’s hand and squeezing it. It was one of only a few times I could remember when she didn’t squeeze mine back. ‘They hoped it would fade away as you grew stronger. But it never did. It was sorealto you, and you were so unwell. It would have been cruel to keep insisting you were wrong. The doctors kept telling us the false memories would eventually become less real to you, and that you’d stop believing you were married.’ I gave a small humourless laugh. ‘I guess they were right about that one after all.’
Amelia was still shaking her head as though at any moment I was going to burst into giggles and sayHa ha, April Fool.Except it wasn’t the first of April, and I’d never found anything less funny in my entire life.
‘If it had beenyouthis had happened to,’ Amelia said, with a hint of challenge in her voice, ‘I’d have insisted that you showed me proof. I’d have wanted to see your marriage certificate, Facebook posts, or photos of the two of you together.’
I swallowed down a throatful of guilt as I waited for the other shoe to fall. It did so with an almost audible thump.
‘Oh my God. Isthatthe meaning of this memory box? Were you trying to fool me into believing a fantasy?’
She made me feel like I’d failed her all over again. Tears stung my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. ‘You were terrified of forgetting Sam. And your memory has been a bit…unreliable… lately. The photographs were my misguided attempt to help you keep him real.’
‘Even though he wasn’t,’ she countered, but the fire had left her argument now. Thank God, something I’d said had managed to extinguish it.
The memory box full of photos was still upended on the hospital bed. In a court of law, it would probably be referred to as Exhibit A.
‘But it’s notmein those photos, even though the person in them looks like I doandappears to be wearing all my clothes,’ Amelia said, with just a hint of sass in the jibe. Something inside me slowly began to relax. ‘Those photos tell a story for sure, but it’s not one of me and a man named Sam. They’re the story of how my sister finally fell in love.’
Back in the courtroom scenario, this was the point when someone ought to be leaping to their feet and shouting out ‘Objection’.
I gave it a shot.
‘I never claimed I wasin lovewith Nick. We’re just having… a thing.’
Finally, Amelia smiled, even if it was sardonically. ‘You might be able to lie to yourself, Lexi, but you can’t lie to me. You never could.’ She ran her hands over the scattered photographs. ‘The truth is there in every single one of these. You’re not that good an actress. I should know – I’ve sat through enough of your school plays.’
She blurred in my vision as I laughed and cried at the same time.
*
Long after I dropped Mum back at her house and returned to Amelia’s cottage on the beach, my head was still spinning at the turn of events. To be honest, Amelia totally forgetting her insistence that she was married to a man called Sam was almost as hard to grapple with as her having invented him in the first place.
‘You do know what this means, don’t you?’ Mum asked, with one hand still on the door handle of the car when we pulled up outside her home. It was telling that she hadn’t wanted to ask me this question while I was driving.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means there’s now no obstacle to prevent you and Nick being together,’ she said, with such joy that it brought a lump to my throat.
‘Except maybe the three thousand miles that separate his home from mine,’ I reminded her.
‘Pwah,’ she said expressively. ‘That’s a minor detail when you think about the one that previously stood in your way.’
‘I’m too tired to think about any of it tonight,’ I lied, reaching across the centre console and pressing a warm kiss on her cheek.