What Alice Forgot (11 page)

“Hello?”

“Yeah, hi, it's me.” It was Nick; Alice felt blissful relief running straight through her bloodstream like a shot of brandy.

“What's happened?” His voice was deeper, rougher than usual, as if he had a cold. “Is it one of the kids?”

So Nick knew about “the kids,” too. Everyone knew about the kids.

Elisabeth was jumping up and down, waving her arms about, gesturing for the phone. Alice poked her tongue out at her.

“No, it's me,” said Alice. There was so much to tell him, she didn't know where to start. “I fell over at the, ah, gym, with Jane Turner, and hit my head. I was unconscious. They had to call an ambulance—oh, and I was sick in the lift all over this guy's shoes, so embarrassing! And wait till I tell you about this bike-riding class! So funny. Hey, you're in Portugal, I can't believe you're in Portugal, what's it like?”

There was so much to tell him, she felt like she hadn't seen him in years. When he got back from Portugal, they would have to go out for dinner at that Mexican restaurant they liked and talk, talk, talk. They would have margaritas; she could drink again, now that she wasn't pregnant anymore. Oh, she
yearned
to be in that restaurant with him right now, sitting in a dark corner booth, his thumb caressing her palm.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. He must be in shock.

“But I'm not badly hurt!” Alice reassured him. “It's not serious. I'll be fine! I feel fine!”

He said, “Then why the
fuck
did I need to call you?”

Alice felt her head snap back as if she'd been hit. Nick had never, ever spoken to her like that before, not even when they were fighting. He was meant to fix the nightmare, not make it worse.

“Nick?” There was a tremor in her voice. She was going to be so mad with him later about this; her feelings were
extremely
hurt. “What's the matter?”

“Is there some sort of strategy to all this? Because I'm not getting it, and to be frank, I don't have time for it. You don't want to change any of the arrangements for the weekend, do you? Is that what it's about? Or, for Christ's sake, tell me it's not something to do with Christmas Day again.
Is
it?”

“Why are you talking to me like that?” said Alice. Her heart raced. This was more terrifying than anything that had happened to her today. “What did I do?”

“Oh, for God's sake, I don't have time for fucking games at the moment!”

He was shouting. He was actually shouting at her, and she was in
hospital
.

“Paprika,” whispered Alice. “You have to wash your mouth out with paprika, Nick.”

Elisabeth stood up. “Give it here,” she ordered.

She removed the phone from Alice's trembling fingers, put the phone to her ear, and pressed a finger to her other ear. She turned her face away from Alice and dropped her chin. “Nick, it's Elisabeth. This is actually quite serious. She's had a bad head injury and she's lost her memory. She's forgotten everything since 1998. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Everything.
”

Alice let her head fall back against the pillow and breathed shallow gasps of air. What did it mean?

Elisabeth paused, listening, her forehead furrowed. “Yes, yes, I understand, but she doesn't actually remember any of that.”

Another pause.

“They're with Ben. He's taken them to their swimming lesson, and I guess we'll stay over with them tonight, and then—”

Pause. “Yes, okay, and then your mum can pick them up exactly as per the arrangements, and I'm sure by Sunday night Alice should be back on her feet and everything will be back to normal.” Pause. “No, I haven't talked to a doctor yet, but I will soon.” Pause. “Right. Okay, well do you want me to put Alice back on?”

Alice held out her hand for the phone—surely Nick would be himself again now—but Elisabeth said, “Oh. Okay. Well, bye, Nick.”

She hung up.

Alice said, “He didn't want to talk to me? He actually didn't want to talk to me?” She could feel stabbing pains all over her body, a long witchy finger poking her cruelly.

Elisabeth clicked the phone shut and put her hand on Alice's arm. She said gently, “You'll remember soon. It's okay. It's just that you and Nick aren't together anymore.”

Alice felt a sensation of everything around her plummeting toward the central point of Elisabeth's moving lips. She focused on those lips. Raspberry lipstick with a darker line around the edge. Elisabeth must use lip liner. Fancy that. She must
line her lips
.

What was she saying? She could not be saying—

“What?” said Alice.

Elisabeth said again, “You're getting divorced.”

Well, fancy that.

A
lice had one glass of champagne with her bridesmaids while they were getting their makeup done, another half a glass in the limo, three and a quarter glasses at the wedding reception (including strawberries), and another glass sitting up with Nick on the king-size bed in their hotel room that night.

So she was somewhat sozzled, but that was no problem because she was the bride and it was her wedding day, and everyone had said she looked beautiful, and so this was a beautiful, romantic drunkenness that would probably not result in a hangover.

“Do you love and adore my wedding dress?” she asked Nick for what could have been the third time, as she ran her hand across its rich, lustrous fabric. It was called Ivory Silk Duchess Satin, and touching it gave her the same sensuously satisfied feeling as when she was a little girl and she used to run her finger over the plush pink lining of her music box, except this was even better because back then she really wanted to be
in
the music box, rolling around on pink satin. “I love my wedding dress. It sort of looks like golden, magical ice cream, doesn't it? Couldn't you just
eat
it?”

“Normally I'd tuck in,” said Nick. “But I'm full of cake. I had three pieces. That was outstanding cake. Everybody will be talking about the cake at our wedding for years to come. Most wedding cake is boring, but our cake! I'm so proud of our cake. I didn't make the cake, but I'm proud of it.”

It seemed Nick had drunk quite a bit of champagne, too.

Alice set her glass on the bedside table and lay down on her back with a rich rustle of fabric. Nick slid down beside her. He'd taken off his tie and undone the buttons of his white dinner shirt. He had the beginnings of a five-o'clock shadow and slightly bloodshot eyes, but his hair was still perfect with a ridgelike wave at the part. Alice touched it and pulled her hand back. “It feels like straw!”

“The sisters,” explained Nick. “Armed with gel.”

He stroked her hair and said, “That's a nice synthetic feel you've got going there, wife.”

“Hairspray. A lot of hairspray, husband.”

“Is that right, wife?”

“Yes it is, husband.”

“How interesting, wife.”

“Are we going to talk like this forever, husband?”

“No way, wife.”

They looked up at the ceiling and said nothing.

“What about Ella's speech!” said Alice.

“I think it was meant to be touching.”

“Ah.”

“What about your Aunt Whatsie's dress!”

“I think it was meant to be, um . . . stylish.”

“Ah.”

They snickered quietly.

Alice rolled onto her side and said, “Imagine,” and her eyes filled with tears. She always got emotional when she drank too much champagne. “Imagine if we never met.”

“It was fated,” said Nick. “So we would have met the next day.”

“But I don't believe in fate!” whimpered Alice, reveling in the luxurious feeling of hot, wet tears rolling down her cheeks; those triple coats of mascara would be streaked all over her face. It seemed truly frightening that it was only by sheer chance that she had met Nick. It could so easily not have happened, and then she would have had a shadowy, half-alive existence, like some sort of woodland creature who never sees sunlight, never even
knowing
how much she could love and how much she could be loved. Elisabeth once said—very definitely and severely—that the right man didn't complete you, you have to find happiness yourself, and Alice nodded agreeably, while thinking to herself, “Oh, but yes he does.”

“If we'd never met,” continued Alice, “then today would just be like any other day and right now we'd be watching television in separate homes, and I'd be wearing
tracksuit pants
and, and . . . we wouldn't be going on honeymoon tomorrow.” The full horror of what could have been struck her. “We'd be going to work!
Work
!”

“Come here, my darling inebriated bride.” Nick pulled Alice to him, so that her head was resting beneath his shoulder and she breathed in the scent of his aftershave. It was much stronger than usual; he must have slapped on extra that morning, and the thought of him doing that was so unbearably sweet, it made her cry even harder. He said, “The important point here is this—wait for it, it's a very important and intelligent point—you ready?”

“Yes.”

“We
did
meet.”

“Yes,” conceded Alice. “We did meet.”

“So it all turned out okay.”

“That's true,” sniffed Alice. “It all turned out okay.”

“It all turned out okay.”

And then they had both fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep, with Alice's Ivory Silk Duchess Satin wedding dress swirled all over them, and a single red dot of confetti stuck to the side of Nick's face, which would leave a red circle that would stay there for the first three days of their honeymoon.

“We must have just had a bad argument,” said Alice to Elisabeth. “We're not actually divorcing. We would never divorce.”

That word—“divorce”—was so ugly; her lips pursed together like a fish on the second syllable. Dee-
vorce
. No. Not them. Never, ever them.

Nick's parents divorced when he was a child. He remembered everything about it. Whenever they heard about a couple divorcing—even a trashy, laughable celebrity couple—Nick always said, sadly, like an Irish grandma, “Ah, that's a shame.” He believed in marriage. He felt that people gave up on their relationships too easily. He once said to Alice that if they were ever having troubles in their marriage, he would move heaven and earth to fix things. Alice couldn't take it seriously because heaven and earth wouldn't need to be moved; any troubles in their relationship could always be fixed with a few hours in separate rooms, a hug in the hallway, the quiet sliding of a chocolate bar under an elbow, or even just a gentle, meaningful poke in the ribs that meant “Let's stop fighting now.”

Divorce was like a phobia for Nick, his only phobia! If this were true, then he would be devastated, crushed. The thing he feared most had happened. Her heart broke for him.

“Did we have a really bad argument about something?” Alice asked Elisabeth. She would get to the bottom of it, she would put a stop to it.

“I don't think it's just one argument. I guess it's probably a whole lot of little issues, but to be honest, you haven't really told me that much about it. You just rang me the day after Nick moved out and said—”

“He moved
out
? He actually moved out of the house?”

It was mind-boggling; she tried to visualize how it could actually happen, Nick throwing stuff into a suitcase, slamming the door behind him, a yellow taxicab waiting outside—it would have to be yellow, like an American cab, because this could not be real, this was a scene from a movie with a heart-wrenching soundtrack. This was not her life.