Amnesia

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My life was flawed, you could say, but my death was perfect. In fact, leaving the body turned out to be enjoyable.

I opened the front door to our house half-expecting Noa in her pink pyjamas, calling ‘Daddy!’ Instead, the hallway was empty and silent. I tossed my keys on the pine console, glanced over a stack of sympathy cards, and poked my head into the lounge. In the faint light cast by the television, Helen was staring at the wall-mounted screen, still in her dressing gown. The plate of food I’d prepared for her in the morning was untouched on the glass coffee table, and the musty smell told me the windows hadn’t been open today.

I tiptoed across the room and switched a floor lamp on; then I drew the curtains on the French windows, catching a glimpse of the pitch-black garden beyond my reflection. After much hesitation, I slid into one of the armchairs. Not the one closest to the sofa, but not the furthest one either. In my presence she pulled her knees a little closer to her chest, her wet puffy eyes still fixed on the plasma screen. I craved to take her hand, hold her against me like we used to. But I did nothing.

We sat in silence for a while, watching her favourite programme: Britain’s Got Talent. As the cameras focused on Simon Cowell, a nascent smile appeared on her face, concealed in the corners of her mouth. It was a small giveaway but it was enough for me. I was reassured that my wife was still there, somewhere behind that ashen face.

‘Can I get you anything?’ I ventured.

She lowered her head, and remained silent.

I sighed quietly, hoping she wouldn’t notice my exasperation. Noa was my daughter too, I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t have helped. So I got up, and planted a gentle kiss on her hair before slipping out of the room. It wasn’t too bad this time, I thought, feeling more alone than ever.

On my way up, I stopped by the drinks cabinet and opened the door to a small compartment. A neon light came on, gleaming on empty shelves except for one glass and a bottle. I could sense my breathing getting faster and shallower as I reached for the litre of Jack Daniel’s, my fingers hovering a few inches away from the screw top. Just one sip, I thought, while loosening my tie. A waft of malt rose from the velvet interior and triggered a chain reaction in my body. Saliva was already flooding my mouth, and sweat dampened the palms of my hands. Given the state I was in, you wouldn’t have known I’d been sober for almost eight years.

My resistance was short-lived. The image of Noa lying peacefully in her child-size coffin thrashed about inside my skull, and the raging pain in my heart awakened. Just one sip, the alluring voice whispered in my ears. Once I broke the seal on the dusty bottleneck, there was no going back. I poured myself a large one and trudged up the wide staircase to the bedroom, drink in hand.

♦

The soft lights either side of the headboard created a cocoon atmosphere which appeased me. The rain tapped gently on the window, drawing crooked lines down the glazing. As I perched on the unmade bed, I caught a glimpse of my hunched figure in the mirrored wardrobe doors, the drink still in my hand. At the sight of my reflection, my stomach turned and a sensation of nausea rose at the back of my throat. I immediately set the glass down on the bedside table and took a few large breaths. The sickening feeling subsided after a few minutes.

I kicked off my shoes, and the soft sensation of the carpet under my feet brought a measure of comfort. I found myself gazing into space, my mind empty. Then my attention turned to the three framed photographs on the wall before me. On the left, Noa was blowing her first candle on a humongous chocolate cake. In the middle picture Helen, Noa and I were laughing hysterically on a deserted beach in Brittany, our broken umbrella barely keeping the rain off. At this point, a cry started in my abdomen, then worked its way up to my throat. As I glanced at the last photo of us, taken only a few weeks earlier, I broke into tears. Head buried in my hands, I hopelessly wished everything were back to normal, the way it was before Noa’s diagnosis. How could I make this pain stop? How could I prevent my heart from disintegrating? I racked my brain in a panic, but deep down, I knew that the only way out of my grief was the long journey through.

Despite my torment, the exhaustion of the past few weeks finally hit me. As fatigue invaded every cell of my body, I curled up fully dressed on top of the bed, and sank into a restless sleep.

Sometime later, I was roused by what felt like a hand on my back. A quick look around the room confirmed that I was alone. Strange. I started listening out for clues, but apart from the light drumming of the rain, the house was silent.

‘Hello?’ I heard myself call.

Without a response, I shook my head, feeling silly. What else did I expect? It was the middle of the night and the only other person in the house was Helen, who hadn’t set foot in our bedroom for weeks.

Something was still bothering me, so I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door. The light in the corridor was still on, and everything looked as expected. Downstairs, the faint voice of a male TV presenter leaked from the living room. Since losing Noa, Helen had been spending most of her nights downstairs, so I assumed she’d fallen asleep on the sofa. I turned the lights out and returned to the bedroom.

I caught my pale reflection in the large wardrobe mirror. A sleep scar stretched from my mouth all the way to my temple, and the skin under my eyes appeared dark and sunken. I went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, and felt more awake. But as I entered the bedroom, I froze: a child was standing by the wardrobe, smiling. I shook my head, looked away, and when I looked back she was gone. Evaporated.

I stared at the empty space before me, while reaching for the wall to help steady myself. I had just seen a girl in a dress, right there, and she was the spitting image of Noa.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment gathering my thoughts, throwing an occasional glance towards the wardrobe. Post-bereavement hallucinations came to mind. At the hospital, it was not uncommon for families to report experiencing the “presence” of a loved one in the weeks or months following a death, but I’d never imagined it to be so real. I could have sworn Noa had actually been there. And a small part of me wished it were the case.

Little did I know.

My lapse in scientific objectivity was brief, and I reframed the situation at once, my doctor’s hat on. However convincing the hallucinatory episode, Stephen, it was merely a trickery of your brain. A misfiring of neurons in an attempt to deal with the emotional shock of losing Noa. That settled it for me.

Then I yawned, and decided to go straight to bed.

Reaching down to undo my belt, an odd shuffling noise interrupted me. I whipped round and my jaw dropped at the sight of Noa. In an instant I was stripped of my professional objectivity, and fell wholeheartedly for the vision before me.

My eyes trained on the living body of my dead daughter. Her buttery-blonde hair in braids either side of her thin face, the short sleeved pink dress dotted with white flowers we’d bought for her eighth birthday party. She looked a bit skinnier and a little paler than I remembered. And then her eyes, the way the irises failed to scatter the light, no glimmer or sparkle.

‘Noa?’ I asked.

I gingerly stepped forward, stretching out my arm. When my fingertips brushed against her bare shoulder, I gasped and stumbled backwards on the bed. She didn’t flinch but smiled instead, apparently amused by my reaction.

‘Hi, Daddy,’ she said.

There was something about her voice; it was definitely Noa’s, but her tone was oddly monotonous for a child.

I was still pondering on the lack of inflections in her speech when her smile vanished, and her mood quietened.

‘You need to check on Mummy now,’ she said, calmly but firmly.

‘Helen? But what do I tell her?’

‘You’ll know. Go, there’s no time!’

Adrenaline charged through my body. I jumped off the bed and whisked out through the door, without giving it a second thought.

♦

I found Helen in the living room on her hands and knees, picking up the pieces from a broken plate. She didn’t appear to be hurt, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

The way Noa had warned me, her insistence, made me wonder if there was more to this. I looked around the room, but nothing out of the ordinary caught my eye, except perhaps a large glass of water by the sofa. Helen didn’t usually drink plain water: it tastes funny, she used to say. I put this detail in the back of my mind, and concluded that the plate incident was all there was. At least, I hoped so.

When Helen noticed my presence, she lifted her head. Her eyes were begging for me to either leave, or come to the rescue; I wasn’t sure which. Then Noa’s words echoed inside my head. You need to check on Mummy now. Go, there’s no time!

I kneeled a couple of feet from her and started picking up food off the rug. We were both cleaning in silence, and a calm sensation spread inside me. This was more than we’d done together in a long time.

When Helen reached under the coffee table, an orange container fell out of her pocket, rolled over and stopped against my leg. She shot a guilty look at me; then looked away, blushing. I grabbed the pill bottle and held it in the light, my hand shaking. The seal was broken but the contents were intact. I doubted she would have been prescribed this strong medication for her depression. Something was wrong. The pills, the plain water. . . My stomach filled with knots as an alarming thought broke through all the others.

‘Helen?’

She turned towards me with tears pooling under her downcast eyes. I wanted to shout, tell her off for what she’d intended to do. The anger inside me pushed upwards, but no sound came out of my mouth. It wouldn’t get past my throat. Not knowing what else to do, I tentatively placed my hand on her shoulder. Simultaneously, she grabbed my shirt and buried her head in my chest. Once I got over my initial surprise, I wrapped my arms around her in a tight embrace. We sat this way for a while, rocking gently.

Worried about saying the wrong thing, I aborted my first attempt to talk to her. Then the words came out before I could stop them.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you since Noa died,’ I said.

She pulled away from me and made steady eye contact.

‘Since she was born, you mean,’ she replied flatly.

It hurt, because she was right; I had stopped drinking when Helen was pregnant, but I had become a workaholic instead.

‘I know how important your work is, Stephen, but we were important too,’ she added. ‘And Noa really missed you.’

After those words, Helen fell back into my arms. I rested my chin on her head, and stared into space. I’d really missed them too.

When all I could hear was her light breathing, I assumed she must have dozed off. I slid one arm under her legs, supporting her back with the other, then stood up with one push.

I carried Helen up the stairs, just like I’d done on the night of our wedding. I was holding onto her like onto my own life, manoeuvring through the doorway and around the bed posts. When I lowered her feather-light body on the mattress, she was fast asleep. I pulled the duvet up to her shoulders and brushed a few strands of hair off her forehead. My hands were still shaking, but with Helen safe in our bed, the tension began to leave my body.

‘Thank you, Noa,’ I heard myself say, my fingers wrapped around the pill bottle in my pocket.

Before long I became aware of the amber liquid I’d left earlier by the side of the bed. It was still there, waiting for me. This is the thing – alcohol never makes the first move. I picked up the glass, my wedding ring making a dead clink against the crystal, and headed for the en suite. The right thing to do would have been to pour the entire contents in the sink and turn the tap on.

If only.

I settled for a compromise, albeit a dangerous one: I left my drink inside the wall cabinet.

Back in the bedroom, I sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. I gazed at Helen’s relaxed face; in sleep she looked younger, less worn by life.

Thoughts about Noa’s apparition started to bounce around inside my head. How could she have known that Helen was about to take those pills? Maybe it was my imagination, and Noa was just a hallucination after all? That would have been a more sensible explanation. I shook my head, and placed my arm protectively over her body.

Minutes passed and my eyelids grew heavy. The jumble of thoughts began to settle, and my body sank into the softness of the mattress. The last thing I remembered before falling asleep was seeing, through the window, the pink streaks in the sky.

♦

‘Daddy. . .! Daddy. . .!’ The gentle and distant calls pulled me towards consciousness, but I clung onto sleepiness. I was not ready to face another day. ‘Daddy. . .!’ I buried my head under the pillow, but it was as if the voice originated from inside my head. ‘Daddy. . .!’ Eventually I gave in, opened my eyes, and started when I saw Noa standing at the foot of our bed. The pulse in my temples was strong but it was not out of fear; it was excitement, and curiosity. I think I’d secretly hoped for another encounter. I sat up at once, rubbing my eyes, and stared expectantly.

Noa glanced towards Helen, still deep asleep. Seemingly contented, she slipped round to my side of the bed, and sat cross-legged facing me. A long silence ensued. She was only inches away, yet I didn’t feel scared. After her potentially life-saving intervention earlier, I wanted to trust her.

Up close, her resemblance to my daughter was even more striking. But an aspect of her appearance caught my eye; I hadn’t noticed until now the subtle glow permeating her body.

‘Is that really you, Noa?’ I asked.

She nodded, grinning.

‘But you seem different,’ I said.

Noa reached for my hand and placed it on her cheek. When the cold tips of my fingers touched her skin, tiny ripples of light appeared. Then a warm sensation spread along my arm and into my chest.

‘I missed you,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady.

‘I missed you too,’ she replied, without moving her lips.

‘What happens now?’ I asked.

‘You need to take care of Mummy.’

’Sure,’ I told her, looking down and away. ‘If she wasn’t so angry with me.’

Noa tilted her head and pressed her lips together. ‘When Mummy sometimes snapped at me, you used to say it was because she was sad, didn’t you?’

I nodded. No doubt Helen had every right to be angry with me, but even more so to be sad. Losing her only child, and being married to a man who always put his work before his family were good enough reasons.

With that thought, guilt began to gnaw at me again, and Noa stared with a strangely mature expression: maternal concern.

‘How did you find out about Mummy. . . you know, the pills?’ I asked.

‘We’re never very far, Daddy,’ is all she said.

I paused. ‘Who is ”we”, sweetheart?’

The deep frown forming between my eyes must have shown my confusion, but she didn’t offer any explanation. Instead, she closed her eyes.

This is when my ears began to fill with an odd pressure, and someone knocked on the bedroom door.

‘Come in!’ Noa called out, before I could speak.

The door swang open, and a short woman in a red dress stepped inside. I examined her round face and long charcoal hair.

‘Mum?’

 She was unrecognisable. The sad eyes, permanent frown, and grey skin had gone, swapped for a resplendent and peaceful smile.

I let go of Noa’s hands, and felt like screaming.

The last time I saw Mum I was ten. My foster parents told me she was very ill and this is why she couldn’t be there anymore. But I believed it was because of me – children always do. Her name was never mentioned after that, until she died of an overdose a few years later.

A slow and warm pulsating energy radiated from her, but I tried to shut it out. Then my mum’s words infiltrated my mind. ‘Stevie, you were always in my heart. . .’

Chaos inside my head. I pressed my clammy hands against my ears, and she stopped at once. Then I gripped Noa’s arm, shivers running through my whole body.

‘I want to be alone,’ I begged her.

Noa and my mother exchanged glances but didn’t appear to be fazed by my response. It was as if they’d been expecting it. Without delay, my mother glided out through the door. I turned to Noa, who was still smiling, and blacked out.

♦

The first thing I noticed was my body pressed against the mattress. Then my eyes opened slowly, letting in morning light. The only sound in the room was Helen’s slow and regular breathing next to me.

Images of my mother rushed back in my mind. She was warm and attentive, but I was filled with anger and confusion. She stood there like nothing had happened. Like it didn’t matter. I had an opportunity to ask her all those questions that’d been tormenting me for thirty years; the whys that had me grind my teeth in sleep through my childhood and teen years. But I’d thrown it away.

I checked Helen was still asleep, and climbed off the bed quietly. I tiptoed to the bathroom and sat, the drink firmly back in my hand. Everything in me wanted to down it.

I stared at the ceiling light for a while, as if delaying the mistake I was about to make. Then as the glass touched my lips, Helen appeared in the doorway. I hadn’t heard her get up. She stared at me, then at the glass, expressionless. No word came out of my open mouth. What was there to say, anyway?

She walked out, shutting the door behind with a click. It was all over, and my hopes for a future together volatilised instantly.

So much for winning her back.

I buried my face in my hands, my eyes stinging, then a loud shuffling in the corner demanded my attention. Noa stepped out of the shower cubicle, and walked straight to me, her indelible smile on. Under different circumstances, I might have found this image funny.

‘Daddy,’ she said directly, ‘you know you always used to work late when I was alive?’

‘Yes,’ I muttered.

‘Was it because of me?’ she asked, taking the glass away from my hand before climbing onto my lap.

‘Sweetheart, how can you possibly think. . .‘

Her words sliced through my mind, opened me up with one sweep. Then it dawned on me: there was nothing I could have done to stop my mother from intoxicating herself. I’d known this for years, in my head. But for the first time, I knew it in my guts. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. I stayed with this realisation for a few minutes, and a heaviness slowly lifted in my chest.

As soon as Noa disappeared, I got up and opened the door, bracing myself for the worst.

Helen perched on the edge of the bed, looking down at her hands. I resolved to tell her everything about Noa, but I feared she wouldn’t believe me.

‘I don’t want to lose you,’ I blurted out.

She heard me but didn’t respond. I offered my hand, and waited. Eventually she put hers in mine, albeit unconvincingly. Pulling gently, I invited her to the en suite. I grabbed the glass and poured its contents in the sink. Her eyes followed my every move. Then I got her pills out of my pocket, twisted the lid open with my teeth, and emptied it in the toilet.

I watched as she leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor. I joined her and we sat side-by-side, shoulders touching.

We didn’t say much for an hour, maybe more, but she didn’t let go of my hand once.

♦

Helen and I made it through the next twenty years together, until my fatal stroke. I no longer worked double shifts, and she gave up sleeping on the sofa. We opened up more often about our struggles, and these moments of vulnerability became our strength.

I never got to tell her about Noa’s apparitions, or my mum’s, in the end. Some things just aren’t meant to be shared.

Here, I see Mum nearly every day, although there’s no such thing as “mother” or “father” – that’s only relevant back there, on Earth. Here, we’re all “friends”, the best you can hope for.

Helen has done very well alone after my passing. I’m so proud of her. She hasn’t crossed over yet, but we’re making the final preparations for her arrival. Noa got back early from one of her “trips” especially for the occasion; she would never miss the return of her student. As we wait for Helen, she takes my hand, and the excitement is now palpable.

Here she comes! I can see her, emerging from the bright haze. She looks unsure, but everyone does, until they remember where they are.

Her eyes search the unfamiliar surroundings for a while. When they finally meet mine, she stares at me, unblinking, and the corners of her lips turn up into a smile.

♦   ♦   ♦

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