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‘I'm not leaving until you tell me.'

Doctor Hamid walked over to the door and opened it. ‘I can say only this, Gregory. It is nothing that I or anybody else can cure. It is something that, in time, you will learn to accept.'

Michael glanced toward the waiting-room outside. The two white-faced security men were standing by the tropical fish tank in their black suits and their sunglasses, their hands cupped over their genitalia in the standard pose of all security men everywhere.

‘No fuss, please, Gregory,' said Doctor Hamid, very softly.

Michael looked at him intently – trying to see if he were sending him a message with his dark brown eyes that he was not at liberty to say with his lips. All he could read was sympathy.

For some reason, Doctor Hamid felt sorry for him.

B
efore he went home, Michael knocked on the half-open door of Kingsley Vane's office. Kingsley Vane's personal assistant Valerie was sitting at her desk with a half-eaten bagel on top of her in-tray, talking on the phone. She beckoned Michael to come in and take a seat.

‘Of course I'll tell him,' she was saying. ‘Of course I will. He'll be
delighted
.'

When she had hung up, she gave Michael a smile, all scarlet lipstick and horselike teeth. ‘Mr
Merrick
,' she said. ‘Mr Vane said that you'd be dropping in.'

‘He told you why?' asked Michael.

Valerie reached over to her out-tray and picked up a brown Manila envelope. She passed it to Michael and said, ‘Durable power of attorney. That was the one, wasn't it?'

Michael took the two-page document out of the envelope and read it. Gregory Merrick had appointed Kingsley Vane his attorney-in-fact, even if he became disabled or incompetent. At the foot of the document ‘Gregory Merrick' had signed his name and two witnesses had added their signatures – ‘
Catherine T. Connor
' and ‘
A. Hamid
.'

He handed the envelope back. ‘All above board, I trust?' smiled Valerie.

Michael nodded, but at the same time he thought:
If I'm really Gregory Merrick, then yes, it's valid, even though I don't remember signing it. But what if I'm not?

As he walked back to Isobel's house, he met Jemima and Angela coming up the slope in the opposite direction – Angela with her white sheepdog gasping at its leash and Jemima circling around on her bicycle.

‘We
heard
about you, Gregory!' Jemima sang out.

Michael stopped, shielding his eyes with his hand. The sun shining on the snow was dazzling, and both girls looked blurry and unfocused, as if they had moved while they were having their photographs taken.

‘Oh, yes? So what did you hear?'

‘We heard you're getting mar-ried!'

‘Excuse me?'

‘That's what my mom was saying. We heard her talking to Mrs Steinman next door. She said you're going to marry that hoo-ha!'

Michael lowered his hand and shook his head. ‘'Fraid your mom's got it wrong there, girls. Me and Mrs Weston, we're just good friends, that's all. We're not getting married. And – please – don't call her that name any more, OK?'

‘Hoo-ha! Hoo-ha! Mrs Weston's a hoo-ha!'

‘You be careful there, Jemima,' Michael warned her. ‘One of these days when you least expect it I'm going to come right up behind you and drop a spider down the back of your neck.'

‘Hoo-ha! Hoo-ha!' sang Jemima, and Angela's sheepdog barked to join in.

Michael gave the girls a dismissive wave and continued to walk down to Isobel's house. When he let himself in, he found Isobel in the kitchen, rolling out pastry. Her hair was tied back and she had a smudge of white flour on the tip of her nose.

‘You're back! How did it go?'

‘Pretty much the same as usual. Catherine seems to think I'm not making sufficient progress, but for Christ's sake, some of the questions she asks me! What costume did I wear for my seventh birthday party? Can
you
remember what you wore for your seventh birthday party?'

‘Yes, a pink frilly dress with a huge bow at the back. And pink ballerina shoes.'

‘You're kidding me.'

Isobel came up to him and put her floury hands on his shoulders and kissed him. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I'm kidding you.'

‘I met those two girls,' he said. ‘What are their names? The one with the bike and the one with the dog.'

‘Jemima and Angela.'

‘That's it. Jemima and Angela. According to them, we're getting married.'

Isobel stared up at him with those liquid brown eyes. Her full pink lips were slightly parted and he could just see the tip of her tongue between her teeth. He could see that she was deliberately trying to look seductive.

‘Erm … that's what their mom said, apparently,' Michael added, when she didn't answer straight away.

‘We
will
, though, won't we?' she asked him.

‘Get married? I'm sorry. Who said anything about getting married?'

‘Don't you
want
to?'

Michael took hold of her wrists and gently took her hands off his shoulders. ‘Isobel – we've never even discussed it.'

‘You love me, though, don't you?'

Michael didn't know what to say to that. ‘I'm not physically or mentally fit to get married,' he told her. ‘I still need a stick to walk around with, and I can't remember what my name is. How can I marry you when I don't even know who I am?'

‘That doesn't matter. Why should that matter? You're still
you,
whatever your name is. I love you, Greg. I love you so much. I need you. I really need the security of knowing that you're always going to
be
here.'

‘Isobel – I don't intend to stay in Trinity for the rest of my life. As soon as Doctor Hamid has given me the all-clear, and as soon as I've gotten over this amnesia, I'm out of here. I really mean it.'

‘You can't.'

‘What do you mean, I can't? What's going to stop me?'

She started to reach up to touch his face, but then she suddenly realized how floury her fingers were, and so she simply stood there in front of him with both hands lifted in a gesture of helplessness. To Michael's surprise, he realized that she was close to tears.

‘Greg, please marry me. Marry me and stay here in Trinity.
Please
.'

‘Isobel …' he began, but at the same time he was thinking:
Doctor Hamid said that it would be ‘disastrous' if I left Trinity. Now Isobel's telling me that I simply
can't
leave Trinity
.
But nobody will tell me why.

Apart from that, there was Isobel's physical coldness. How could he marry a woman whose skin always felt so chilly, and whose insides froze his semen into ice crystals?

And that wasn't the only thing that disturbed him about her. He was still baffled and confused by what he had seen when he had woken up and looked at her this morning. Or what he
thought
he had seen.

In spite of all that, he didn't like to see her so distressed. He put his arms around her and held her close and kissed her forehead and then her lips, and smiled at her and wiped the flour from the end of her nose with his finger.

‘OK,' he said. ‘I'll think about it. I promise.'

That afternoon, ragged gray clouds began to drift in from the south-west, and the inside of the house gradually grew dark and colorless, as if they were going back in time.

Michael came into the living room where Isobel was sitting in front of the television watching
Days Of Our Lives.

‘Just going out for my obligatory walk,' he told her. He nodded toward the television and said, ‘How's life in Salem these days?'

‘A whole lot more exciting than Trinity,' said Isobel. ‘You
will
be thinking, while you're walking, won't you? About you-know-what?'

Michael didn't answer but blew her a kiss. He closed the front door behind him and headed down the slope toward Mrs Kroker's house. He wanted to thank Lloyd Hammers for his help last night, even though he hadn't managed to get away.

Not only was it gloomy outside, it was utterly still and silent. At ground level there was no wind at all, although the clouds were still moving, and a plume of snow was waving from the peak of Mount Shasta like somebody fluttering a long white scarf.

As he passed the house next door, Michael saw that their neighbor was standing in the window of his front room, wearing a mustard-colored cardigan. Michael didn't know his name, and he hadn't yet come by to introduce himself, but he was a stockily built man with slicked-back gray hair and a podgy, Slavic-looking face.

The strange thing was, he was pointing at Michael, and he appeared to have a disapproving frown on his face. Michael slowed down and then stopped and stared at him. The man continued to frown, and to point, as if he were accusing Michael of something. Michael pointed to himself, like Robert De Niro in
Taxi Driver
, and mouthed the words, ‘You pointing at
me
?'

But the man didn't respond. He simply continued to point. After hesitating a few more moments, Michael continued walking. He glanced back once, but the man was still pointing at him. Michael felt distinctly uneasy. Another reason not to get married to Isobel and stay here in Trinity.

When he passed the next house, he saw two people standing in their living-room window, a youngish couple. The man was wearing a pale blue sweater and heavy-rimmed Clark Kent glasses, while the woman appeared to be pregnant and dressed in a floral maternity smock. They, too, were pointing at him; and they, too, had stern, accusing frowns on their faces.

Michael was tempted to walk up to their front door and ring their doorbell and ask them why the hell they were pointing at him, but they looked so hostile that he decided against it.

He carried on. As he approached the next house, he saw that there was nobody standing in the living-room window, even though there was a light on, and a television screen flickering. It was a two-story house, however, and when he looked up he saw an elderly woman in one of the bedroom windows, pointing at him in the same way. He stopped and stared back at her, but she didn't flinch.

It was the same in every house on his way down the slope to the community center. In every one of them, somebody was pointing at him – single people, mostly, but some couples and even some families with children.

In the second-to-last house before he reached Mrs Kroker's, a man of about his own age was pointing at him – slim, pale, with floppy brown hair. Michael went up to his porch and pressed the doorbell. There was no answer, so he pressed it again. When there was still no answer, he knocked on the door with his knuckles.

‘Come on, what are you afraid of?' he shouted.

The door suddenly opened, and Michael was confronted by a middle-aged woman with short gray hair. She was quite handsome, although she was wearing a sludge-green woolen dress which reflected under her chin and made her look as if she were ill.

‘Yes? What do you want?' she asked him. From her accent, he would have guessed that she was Canadian.

‘I just wanted to ask that fellow in the window why he's pointing at me.'

A pause, then, ‘Why do you
think
he's pointing at you?'

‘I don't have the first idea. And he's not the only one. Everybody in the whole damn street is doing it.'

‘They're giving you a warning, that's why.'

‘A warning? A warning about what, exactly?'

‘Causing trouble. Asking questions that nobody wants answered. You think that word doesn't get around, here in Trinity, just because everybody keeps themselves to themselves? Well, let me tell you, Gregory Merrick, word gets around. Everybody here is hanging on by their fingernails, and the last thing they want is trouble.'

‘Trouble?' said Michael. ‘Believe me, I'm not out to cause trouble; and the only questions I want answered relate to my own personal health.'

‘So where are you off to now?' the woman asked him, in the tone of a schoolteacher asking a pupil what he was doing out of class.

‘I'm taking a walk, that's all. I have to take a walk every day. It's part of my therapy.'

‘You're not going to see Lloyd Hammers, then?'

‘I don't mean to be rude, but I don't see that it's any business of yours whether I do or not.'

‘Of course it's my business. It's everybody's business. Everybody here is hanging on by their fingernails.'

‘I don't understand what you mean.'

Instead of answering his question, the woman said, snappily, ‘Are you going to get married then – you and Mrs Weston?'

Michael half-turned away from the door in exasperation, and then turned back. ‘Again – I don't think it's any of your business. Who told you that, anyhow?'

‘She did.'

‘Well, we've talked about it, that's all.'

‘I see. Maybe folks will stop pointing, if you do.'

Michael was about to ask her what possible connection there could be between him marrying Isobel and people in Trinity pointing their fingers at him when she abruptly closed the door, and noisily rattled the safety chain.

He stood in the porch for a few moments, but even if he managed to persuade the woman to open up the door again, he doubted if she would make any more sense. He turned around and went back down the driveway, conscious that the young man with the floppy brown hair was still pointing at him, even behind his back. He continued on his way to Mrs Kroker's house. Across the street, in the living-room window of the house next to the community center, he saw a tall ginger-haired woman in black, and she was pointing at him, too.

To start with, all of this pointing had been baffling, and even faintly ridiculous. With each successive house, however, it had become more irritating; and then annoying. Now it was beginning to make Michael feel seriously uneasy. They were pointing at him, these people, as if they were accusing him of some terrible crime – a crime for which they would expect him to be punished. He felt like a murderer desperately trying to escape from a vengeful crowd.