Free Land of the Living by Nicci French Page A

hair. That’s what relationships are for, little things like that. Charles Mulligan gave a little murmuring sound as his fingertips pattered over my head. I gave a little cry when he touched above my right ear. ‘That hurt?’
    ‘It’s just sore.’ He looked more closely. ‘Is there a problem?’
    ‘Swollen and bruised—but I can’t see anything significant.’ He sat back. ‘There. That’s all done.’ He reached over for a file. It took some rummaging to find the right one. ‘Now I’m going to ask you some questions. They might seem a bit silly, but bear with me. They’ll take a bit of time. Are you up to it? I could come back later, or tomorrow, if you need a rest. I know you’ve had a hard day.’
    I shook my head. ‘I just want to do anything I can as quickly as possible.’
    ‘Great.’ He opened a large printed booklet. ‘You ready?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Is this part of the test?’
    ‘That’s sort of a philosophical question. Do you want to bear with me?’
    ‘Abigail Elizabeth Devereaux.’
    ‘When were you born?’
    ‘The twenty-first of August, 1976.’
    ‘What’s the name of the Prime Minister?’
    ‘Are you serious? I’m not that bad.’
    ‘I’m testing various kinds of memory. It’ll get harder.’
    So I told him the name of the Prime Minister. I told him the day of the week and that we were in St Anthony’s Hospital. I counted backwards from twenty. I counted forwards in threes. I counted backwards from a hundred in sevens. I was rather proud of myself. Then it started to get hard. He showed me a page of different shapes. He chatted to me for a moment about something stupid and then showed me another page of shapes. I had to remember which were on both sheets. He got a bit embarrassed as he read me a story about a boy taking a pig to the market. I had to tell it back to him. He showed me stars and triangles paired with colours, word pairs. He showed me four increasingly complicated shapes. The fourth one looked like a vandalized electricity pylon. It made me dizzy even to look at, let alone draw from memory.
    ‘This is giving me a bloody headache,’ I said, as I struggled with it.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he said, with concern.
    ‘It makes my head spin.’
    ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I get stuck at the counting backwards. Don’t worry, there are just a couple more.’
    He started to recite sequences of numbers. Groups of three and four were a doddle. He stopped at eight, which I could just about manage. Then I had to recite the sequences backwards—that really made my brain ache. After that he brought out a sheet of coloured squares. He tapped them in an order which I had to repeat. Again up to eight. And then backwards.
    ‘Fuck,’ I said, when he put the sheet away.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s all. We’re done.’
    ‘So, did I pass? Am I brain-damaged?’
    He smiled cheerfully. ‘I don’t know. I have no tests for the pre-morbid period. Sorry, that sounds grim. I mean for the period before the onset of amnesia. But I can’t believe that it was much better than this. You’ve got a remarkably good memory. Your spatial recall in particular is excellent. I’d swap you any time.’
    I couldn’t help blushing. ‘Well, thanks, um, Charlie, but …’
    He looked serious for a moment and peered at me closely. ‘What do you think?’ he said.
    ‘I feel fine. I mean, I don’t feel fine. I have bad dreams and I keep going over and over things in my head. But I can think clearly. It’s just that gap in my memory. I keep trying and trying to remember but it’s like staring into pitch darkness.’
    He began putting the papers back into files.
    ‘Try looking at the boundaries,’ he said. ‘Take your image of an area of darkness. You could say that there is an area that’s entirely dark and another that’s entirely light. You could try concentrating on where the two areas meet.’
    ‘I’ve done that, Charlie. Oh, God, I’ve