Beauty Sleep Read online

  “What is it? Pain?”

  I shook my head, shivering as I whispered, “A little boy.”

  “A memory?”

  “He called me Lulu. Who is he, Benjie? I think I’m going to be—”

  Benjie whipped a cardboard dish in front of me as the gloop came back up.

  I knew then that I’d forgotten something important, so terribly important, to do with that little boy. I was sure of it and it frightened me. I clutched at Benjie, trembling. “Who is he? I should know, I can feel it!”

  But Benjie couldn’t help, or wouldn’t. He just gently patted my shoulder until I fell into an exhausted sleep.

  When I woke up, either Vera or Edna was sitting by my bed. I pretended I was still asleep.

  “I’ll still be here when you’re ready to talk,” she said softly.

  Talking. It had to be Vera then. With a sigh, I looked at her. “Who is he, do you know?”

  “I think you are on your way to remembering that yourself.”

  That single snapshot of memory had ripped my heart out and put it back in sideways. It scared me. I was comfortable in the clinic, cared for – I felt guilty for thinking it, but it was like remembering threatened that. I wanted to know and, at the same time, I didn’t.

  “Can I have a drink of water?”

  Vera went to the sink. The sky was pink outside.

  “Is it morning or evening?” I asked.

  “Evening,” she replied. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  I watched her fill a glass from the single high tap. It curved over the sink like a swan’s neck. Another memory slammed into me.

  A damp day walking by a pond. My hand inside a larger hand. Two swans circle each other on the water, their heads bowed together, forming a heart. I twirl under the person’s arm, dancing with them as they laugh.

  I tried to grasp the loose thread of memory but it snapped like rotten cotton. As my brain chased after it, I realized something that filled me with sadness.

  “Vera,” I said, “why does no one ever come to see me?”

  It wasn’t the rat running over my sleeping bag that woke me up, it was the blinding sun streaming through the shed window. I scrunched my eyes up against the light and rolled onto my back, feeling for Scrag. He was out already. I sat up, scratched my itchy head and whistled. Within minutes he’d wriggled past the broken plank at the back of my shed and was wagging his stubby tail in front of me. He dropped a bag of stale bread in my lap.

  “You clever boy! Been down the park robbing ducks, have you?”

  I rubbed his scruffy head and pulled a crust out of the bag. I gave one to him and took one for myself. It was bone hard. I couldn’t even bite through it. It had been a baking night and sweat trickled from my pits to my pants. I should have got up earlier and gone down the beach for a swim, freshened myself up a bit. It was too late once the sun was properly up. People would already be spreading towels over the pebbles, getting their picnics sorted. Showing off their perfect little families.

  Screw that.

  At least I had my shed. I loved it. It had everything I needed. A door, a roof and an army of cockroaches. One scuttled across the floor and I crushed it with the hammer I kept near my bed.

  Crunch.

  I was invincible.

  I rubbed my thumb on the warm wood of the hammer’s handle. It was one of the things Bert had given me when we still lived in the squat. He had this idea that I could be a carpenter or something. Fat chance of that with one hand and no proper training, but still, I liked making stuff, and I loved working with wood.

  We used to go along the shoreline when everyone had gone home – or before they’d arrived – and pick up bits of driftwood, sea-glass if we were lucky, all sorts of flotsam. Then we’d make things together out of what we’d found. Pecking seagulls, little bobbing boats, seaside scenes, that sort of thing. I’d sold all his long since and made a few quid from my own. They weren’t as good as Bert’s, but I was getting better. It was harder to find the wood in the summer – other people took it. It was easier in the winter but then I was tempted to burn it for the warmth. I always regretted it after. Like when I burned the complete works of Shakespeare that Bert had nicked from a library. It wasn’t like I ever needed to read that again – I knew those stories inside out – but once they were ashes, I felt colder than ever.

  I’d been proper lucky Bert had taken me in. I don’t remember a time before him. There were a few versions of how he’d found me. The one he told me most often was that I was wandering down the side of a main road when I was maybe four or five; just striding along with a screwdriver in my good hand and the blankest expression he’d ever seen. I don’t remember anything about it – or about life before Bert – and Bert used to tell stories for money, so who knows what was true?

  It was me and Bert against the world for at least ten years, maybe twelve. Most of that time we were in hiding. And by most of it, I mean all of it. We never went out together in the day. He said the authorities would take me away if they found out how we were living and that he wasn’t my proper dad. But he was a proper dad to me. I couldn’t have asked for better. Even after he got ill, all he thought about was what would happen to me when he died.

  So he found this place for us. An undisturbed shed, in an undisturbed garden of an undisturbed house. One day someone would buy the house and do it up, but while there were rats in the roof, rot in the floorboards and rumours someone had died in there, people stayed away. My shed was a gazillion times better than sleeping in a doorway and getting a kicking from some drunk or trying to find a sheltered spot that didn’t have spikes sticking out of the floor.

  Nice touch that, the spikes. Treating homeless people like pigeons. Who came up with that idea? Is there no part of their brains thinking, Sleeping on the streets must be pretty awful. The least we should do is let people who have nothing at all lie on a bit of pavement at night.

  Scrag slurped at his old ice-cream tub full of water. I was raging with thirst – my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth. Time for a drink. Might even be able to squeeze another cup of tea out of my teabag.

  I lay awake that night, filled with a strange, empty grief for a life I couldn’t remember. Fear and need made a sickening soup in my stomach. I clutched at the idea that the swan-necked tap had triggered such a vivid memory. I could remember the feeling of that larger hand around my smaller one and I realized that my body wasn’t just a thing dealing with pain and learning to move again; it held physical memories of its own – if I could find a way to access them.

  I felt my face with my fingers. My skin was smooth, my eyebrows thick and bushy, my ears rubbery and complicated. I squidged my nose – it was like a playdough blob in the middle of my face. Great. I was Mr Potato Head.

  Mr Potato Head.

  In pieces on a wooden floor, one of his ears stuck down a crack in the boards… My fingers scooping it out with a long match and it flicking through the air and landing…on a fluffy black cat. The cat looking at me with disdain and sashaying out of the room, Mr Potato Head’s ear still stuck in its fur. Somebody laughing, an absolute bubbling-over of joy.

  Was it the same boy? The one who called me Lulu?

  I smiled.

  I had a memory that made me smile, and I’d found it by poking my own face.

  By the next morning, I’d had a genius idea. If I could see what I looked like, surely I’d remember everything? I don’t know why it had taken me so long to think of it. Other things on my mind, I guess. Like trying to stay alive. When Benjie came in, I said, “Could I have a mirror?”

  Edna bustled past him before he could speak.

  “You’ve got a mirror, Laura. You just need to get out of bed and walk to it.”

  She pointed to the one by the sink. On the other side of the room. It might as well have been on the moon.

  “I’m afraid I’m with Edna on this one,” Benjie said.

  I looked across at the mirror. It could be the key to unlocki
ng my memories but… “It’s miles away. Couldn’t you just tell me a little bit more about who I am…?”

  “We could, but then there’s a danger of laying a false memory trail – something you’ll think you’ve remembered yourself, but is actually something we told you.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Well, I won’t. Your mind needs time to re-form its own neural pathways. There are things that will help nudge it along, and seeing yourself might be one of them.”

  “Fine,” I said, prickling with irritation. “I’ll walk to the stupid sink.”

  I tried to get up and fell forward, crumpled in half, my face muffled in blankets.

  “It’s not going to be quite that easy, I’m afraid,” Benjie said. “Edna starts your proper physio today. Work hard at it, and you will get the rewards.”

  “I thought you were nice,” I mumbled into the bed.

  “I am nice,” Benjie said, sitting me back up. “This is for your own good.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” I said.

  “I’ll leave you to Edna,” he said, with a wink.

  I wanted to throw something at him.

  Edna was not like Vera after all. Vera, the psychiatrist, was all forced calmness and soothing words. Edna was a ball of ferocious energy, determined to torture me with physiotherapy – stretching, pulling, pushing, twisting, rolling. She came twice a day and between her visits I had talking therapy with Vera, which mostly involved trying to “immerse myself” in the Mr Potato Head memory and mentally follow the cat out of the door.

  Between them, they drove me crazy. Days went by, and no new memories came.

  One day I snapped.

  “Just tell me! Tell me who I am!”

  “You’re Laura Henley. You’re in the rehabilitation phase of your recovery—”

  “I know, I know that, but tell me who I AM. Tell me about my brother!”

  Just like that. There it was.

  That little boy was my brother. My baby brother.

  Vera smiled but I felt like I had my skin on inside out. I couldn’t picture him, but I felt him. The absence of him.

  “Where is he?”

  Vera’s face went blank. I felt sick to my stomach.

  “This is cruel. Please, just tell me.”

  But they wouldn’t.

  A new determination to reach that mirror spread through me. I had a brother and I didn’t know where he was. I didn’t even know his name. But I had a brother. That thought coiled around me, driving everything I did. And I did it all. Whatever they asked. I offered up my arm for blood tests – there was a tiny needle inside a cuff that made it easy for them to monitor my vital signs and extract what they needed. I didn’t complain. I practised the exercises. I drank the C-plan milkshakes. I did everything, but not happily.

  I refused to speak to Benjie. He was in charge. He was the one who was stopping them from just telling me. He was the one who was making Edna torture me. And he was so annoyingly nice about it.

  “I know you’re mad at me. I understand, but I have to do what I think is best for your long-term recovery.”

  I scowled at him.

  Then one morning the whole team arrived. Everyone except Stephen, who’d gone off shift, and Miss Lilly, who I hadn’t seen since her first visit.

  Edna spoke first. “I think we’re ready to see how you do standing up.”

  “Now?” I said, as Mariya came in with an old-lady walking frame.

  “Edna thinks you’re ready,” Benjie said.

  “Do you?”

  She nodded. “You’ve worked so hard, Laura.”

  I took a good look at the mirror for inspiration, then pushed the blankets back. Edna offered me her arm and, inch by inch, I worked my way to the edge of the bed. Mariya placed the frame in front of me. All I had to do was shuffle forward, take hold of the frame and let my feet drop to the floor.

  “You’re doing so well,” Benjie said.

  “You are,” said Mariya.

  “Not much further,” Edna said.

  I got to the edge of the bed pretty much on my own. I was sure I was going to make it to the mirror. I reached over the frame, placed a hand on either side and felt for the ground with my feet. When my toes touched the cool floor, I soared with victory. What was standing up? Nothing.

  I slipped forwards and…my legs buckled underneath me. I landed in a heap on the floor, trapped inside the stupid frame with my feeble arms looped over the top.

  I was a baby. A bruised and battered jelly baby with jelly legs and a jelly head.

  “Not bad for a first go,” Benjie said.

  “You’ll get there,” said Edna.

  They scraped me off the floor and put me into a chair by my bed. Frustrated tears bit behind my eyes but if I wanted to fill in the empty space in my head, I had to know who I was, what I looked like.

  “I want to try again.”

  “And you will, but rest first. I’ll come back this afternoon,” Edna said.

  “No. I want to try now.”

  She nodded and set the frame in front of me. I steeled myself, clenching all my muscles to lift myself out of the chair and stand. It was harder than sliding off the bed, but as sliding off the bed had ended with landing in a heap, I thought this might be the better way round. My entire body trembled with the effort.

  It was all I could manage that day, but I stood.

  The next morning, I took my first steps. Hesitant, shuffly, old-lady steps, but it made me laugh with joy.

  “I’m doing it, I’m doing it!”

  Then, inevitably, my legs buckled and I slid down inside the frame. But I’d done it. I looked up at Benjie and Edna and said, “I walked.”

  “You sure did,” Benjie said, a big fat tear rolling down his cheek.

  I forgave him for the torture. I was so close now and so sure that seeing myself was the key to it all. Twice a day for three days I tried, and if my legs had held up, I would have done it more. It was exhausting but exhilarating. I could feel myself getting stronger. On the fourth day, I walked over halfway before my legs started to buckle.

  Edna said, “That’s enough for this morning. We’ll try again later.”

  “No. I can do it. Just give me a minute.”

  I closed my eyes, saying to myself, I’m going to find you, little brother.

  I breathed deeply and pushed myself on, one step at a time, until finally, I made it to the sink.

  I’d done it. My legs were wobbly and my arms were shaking; I felt sick and dizzy; but I’d made it. I hesitated before I looked up. I felt kind of shy about what I’d see. What if I don’t know my own face? What if it means nothing to me? I looked at Benjie and he nodded, encouraging me. I turned back to the mirror and there she was. I was. Me.

  There was no blinding flash of recognition but I was relieved to see I wasn’t Mr Potato Head. The nose that had felt so huge was just a nose. The eyebrows were thick and dark but looked nothing like hairy slugs. I had a pointy chin, sharp cheekbones and light brown eyes. Thick dark hair spiralled from my head. I wanted to touch it, but both my hands were taken up by the walking frame. It looked dry. Parched.

  Gentle fingers combing conditioner through my hair, teasing it into ringlets.

  Mum? My mum? I concentrated on the memory, the feeling of that gentle touch. Someone loved me.

  Darkness grew in my chest. So much worse than the absence of everything was the absence of something. I had a family. I knew it. I felt it.

  “Benjie,” I said, my voice pitiful, cracking with hope. “My mum…”

  “You remember?” he said.

  I didn’t want to admit that it was only a fraction of a memory in case he just repeated that I had to remember in my own time. I said, “Why doesn’t she come? Where is she?” I could feel the sobs building in me. “You’re so worried about protecting my future, but what about my now?”

  Benjie said, “I’m going to fetch Vera. Edna, can you help Laura back to her chair?”

  When Benjie retu
rned, he sat beside me and took my hand while Vera hovered nearby. I was light-headed with fear about what he was going to tell me. If you have to say a thing that gently, it’s bound to be really bad.

  “Laura, we think you are suffering from something called dissociative psychogenic amnesia – a specific type of memory loss. There is no cure. Treatment varies, but the current mode of thinking is that we need to allow your memory, with encouragement from us, to rebuild its own library from foundations that you can already access.”

  There was no cure? And he was never going to help me? Not ever? I couldn’t bear it. “So I go crazy trying to work out who I am, when all the time you know? My family are in here.” I pulled my hand away from him and tapped my skull. “I can feel them. It’s driving me mad not being able to reach them. You could help me – you just won’t.”

  “It’s not that I won’t. It’s that we don’t believe it’s the best thing for you.”

  “You don’t know that though. Not for sure. And what about me? What about what I think?”

  I let the tears fall. Didn’t even try to stop them. “You said you could give me encouragement, so do it. Give me a scrap of something, anything to work with. Please, Benjie. Vera? Please.”

  I was practically begging.

  Benjie sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe if you know the basics, it might help your recovery. But maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll make everything worse for you…”

  “How can it be any worse? I can’t forget any more than I have!”

  “It might stop you remembering accurately.”

  “But you can help me with that.” I looked at Vera. “All of you. You’re the best in the world, aren’t you? That’s what Miss Lilly said. Please. Help me.”

  Benjie glanced at Vera, who gave the tiniest of nods. He stood up. I thought he was going to leave, but he said, “Your kind of amnesia is usually caused by violent trauma. And in a way, that is what has happened to you.” He rubbed a hand over his face.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You were very ill, Laura. Your family were desperate. At the time, there was no conventional treatment that could save you. This clinic offered to take you on as a cryotherapy patient.”