The Day I Died. Polly Courtney
the supplies through from the back. Her mornings had developed a kind of rhythm that was disconcertingly predictable. She could hardly believe that only just over a week had passed since she’d stumbled off the night bus into Trev’s Teashop.
‘I’ll open up,’ said Trevor, needlessly. Jo had learned her lesson on the second morning: opening up was the proprietor’s job. Other tasks he would happily delegate–and generally did–but winding out the awning each day was something he liked to be seen doing. It allowed him to show the world that he, owner and manager of Trev’s Teashop, Oxfordshire, was open for business. He probably thought of himself a bit like the Queen cutting the ribbon on a new institution, thought Jo, watching him sweat with the effort.
‘I’ve got an errand for you,’ said Trevor, propping the door open and waiting for her to look up. ‘I need these things posting,’ he said, patting a pile of letters on the counter.
Jo nodded and started to dry her hands.
‘No–not now. Post office only opens at nine. You’ll need to buy stamps. You can take the money from the till.’ He explained this last point slowly, in case it might be too complex for her.
Jo got back to stocking the fridge, wondering again what she had done for a living before she’d lost her memory. She hoped it was something more challenging than this.
Her contemplation continued as the morning progressed. This being a Friday, the usual eight o’clock rush was less frantic than usual and spread over a longer period. She was on autopilot: taking orders, serving drinks and doing as much ‘flitting’ as was possible, given the lack of seated customers and Trevor’s recent transition into more of a managerial role. Instead of manning the counter, he preferred to busy himself in the background, keeping an eye on Jo’s handiwork, making unhelpful suggestions and trying to strike up conversations with the commuters–most of whom did their best to ignore him.
Jo handed over a double espresso and watched as the suited customer added a mound of sugar, then another, then another. She frowned. The sugar wouldn’t dissolve in that small amount–anyone could tell that. But that wasn’t why Jo felt perplexed. She felt perplexed because of something going through her mind, something she knew.
The man’s espresso was becoming a suspension. That was the proper term for a liquid solution where not all the particles were dissolved. The man hurried out and Jo was left staring at the space where he had been. A suspension. Where had that word come from? And how had she known to use it?
Another customer came in and Jo found herself mechanically filling the shot-holder again, trying to work out what this new piece of information meant–if anything. Perhaps it was insignificant. It was probably something they taught in school that anybody might remember. Perhaps all this meant was that Jo had paid attention in school–which was something of a revelation in itself, but not a particularly interesting one.
Jo watched the dark brown liquid bubble into the paper cup, wondering whether coherent memories would come back to her or whether she’d have to piece things together from clues like this. If she didn’t start remembering things properly, then she’d only have half the picture. She might discover what she liked, what she was good at and what type of person she gravitated towards, but she wouldn’t know why. She wouldn’t know what, in her past, had caused her to be the way she was.
She handed over the coffee, caught up in a complex internal debate about nature versus nurture and the pros and cons of remembering her past. There was still a part of her that didn’t actually want to know what had happened. If they were bad memories, it might be better that she didn’t have them at all. Because once they were back, there was no way of un-remembering them.
What she really wanted was the option of remembering. As if her memory operated like a tap, she wanted the ability to turn it on, gently, then if it started gushing out unpleasantly and making a mess, she could turn it off again. The problem, of course, was that her memory didn’t operate like a tap. She wasn’t in charge. Nobody was. The more she tried to remember, the more elusive the memories became. She just had to wait, and observe, and jot things down.
The media was one possible source of information. Jo had been following the coverage of the bombing all week. She was half hoping, half dreading that one day she’d return from her shift to see her face on the lunchtime news–a grainy version of a holiday snap or a Christmas family photo–with her real name and the word ‘MISSING’ underneath. She insisted on helping Mrs P arrange the newspapers every morning so that she could skim the pages for a reference. But there was no such reference. Every article seemed to be a rehash of the initial coverage, and even that hadn’t said very much. As the week progressed, the news of the Buffalo Club bomb became less and less significant, and this morning the investigation hadn’t even warranted a mention. Clearly the media wasn’t going to help her very much.
There was a lull in customers. Jo distracted herself, wiping the surfaces and rinsing the milk jug, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. Or at least, she wasn’t fooling herself. Her hands were shaking and her eyes kept wandering down to the cupboard under the sink where six dark liqueur bottles sat, teasing her. They were supposed to be for adding to coffees, presumably, but if the crusty, sugary coatings inside the lids were anything to go by, they rarely got used. And there were crusty, sugary coatings inside the lids, because Jo had checked. She had opened them all, sniffed them and put them away again. About fifteen times.
The craving was stronger than ever today, perhaps because it had been nearly a week since her last proper drink. She reached down and extracted the leftmost bottle, unscrewing the lid and preparing to duck behind the counter. Amaretto–not her first choice, but better than the other options, which all smelled rather like petrol and had unrecognisable Italian names. She glanced around, then crouched down.
Her lips made contact with the crystallised sugar and she tilted the bottle, gagging for the sweet, fiery liquid in her throat.
‘Nine o’clock!’
Her head hit the counter.
‘Sorry?’ Jo fumbled around for the lid and replaced the bottle with one hand, holding out the other for the pile of letters. Her body was filled with unfulfilled desire.
‘You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’ Trevor grinned at her stupidly.
Jo flashed a smile and removed her apron. The sense of anticlimax, of getting so close and then pulling away, was exasperating. ‘No, just about to go,’ she said, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. ‘Down the road and on the right?’
‘Down the road,’ he motioned like an obese air steward, ‘and on the right.’
The warm air felt good on her skin, and gradually, with concerted effort, Jo managed to disentangle herself from the yearnings and focus on the things around her. Birds cheeped in the hedgerow, trees rustled in the breeze and somewhere nearby, farm machinery was whirring into action. A cloud skittered across the sky, briefly obscuring the sun and then leaving it to shine, and for a moment, Radley looked like the most beautiful place on earth.
Semi-detached and set back from the road with a pebble-dashed front, the post office looked exactly like somebody’s house except for the rounded red sign on the telegraph pole outside and the billboard announcing the headline, ‘VIOLIN CASE THWARTS ROBBERY’.
Not for the first time, Jo marvelled at how some things seemed so familiar whilst the details of her life remained a mystery. She knew exactly what first-class stamps looked like and how the UK postal system worked. She knew what Facebook was and how to use it. How, then, could she not name a single one of her friends?
She applied the stamps and looked at the swarthy young man behind the counter.
‘I don’t suppose you have an internet connection?’
He nodded over to a large, bulbous monitor in the corner of the store. It looked like a TV from the 1920s.
‘Could I just…?’
‘One pond for fifteen minutes.’
‘But I only—’
‘Three