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I look up at him. “When did we get married?” I say.

He turns to face me, taking my hand between his. I am surprised by the roughness of his skin, used, I suppose, to the softness of youth. “The year after you got your PhD. We’d been dating for a few years, then, but you—we—we both wanted to wait until your studies were out of the way.”

That makes sense, I think, though it feels oddly practical of me. I wonder if I had been keen to marry him at all.

As if reading my mind, he says, “We were very much in love,” and then adds, “we still are.”

I can think of nothing to say. I smile. He takes a swig of his coffee before looking back at the book in his lap. He turns over some more pages.

“You studied English,” he says. “Then you did a few jobs, once you’d graduated. Just odd things. Secretarial work. Sales. I’m not sure you really knew what you wanted to do. I left with a bachelor’s and did teacher training. It was a struggle, for a few years, but then I was promoted and well, we ended up here.”

I look around the living room. It is smart, comfortable. Blandly middle-class. A framed picture of a woodland scene sits on the wall above the fireplace, china figurines next to the clock on the mantelpiece. I wonder if I helped to choose the decor.

Ben goes on. “I teach in a high school nearby. I’m head of department, now.” He says it with no hint of pride.

“And me?” I say, though, really, I know the only possible answer. He squeezes my hand.

“You had to give up work. After your accident. You don’t do anything.” He must sense my disappointment. “You don’t need to. I earn a good enough wage. We get by. We’re okay.”

I close my eyes, put my hand to my forehead. This all feels too much, and I want him to shut up. I feel as if there is only so much I can process, and if he carries on adding more then eventually I will explode.

Then what do I do all day? I want to say but, fearing the answer, I say nothing.

He finishes his toast and takes the tray out to the kitchen. When he comes back in, he is wearing an overcoat.

“I have to leave for work,” he says. I feel myself tense.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll be fine. I’ll call you. I promise. Don’t forget today is no different from every other day. You’ll be fine.”

“But—” I begin.

“I have to go,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ll show you some things you might need, before I leave.”

In the kitchen he shows me which things are in which cabinet, points out some leftovers in the fridge that I can have for lunch, and an eraser board screwed to the wall next to a black marker pen tied to a piece of string. “I sometimes leave messages here for you,” he says. I see that he has written FRIDAY on it in neat, even capitals, and beneath it the words laundry? walk? (take phone!) tv? Under the word lunch, he has noted that there is some leftover salmon in the fridge and added, salad? Finally, he has written that he should be home by six. “You also have a diary,” he says. “In your bag. It has important phone numbers in the back of it, and our address, in case you get lost. And there’s a cell phone—”

“A what?” I say.

“A phone,” he says. “It’s cordless. You can use it anywhere. Outside the house, anywhere. It’ll be in your handbag. Make sure you take it with you if you go out.”

“I will,” I say.

“Right,” he says. We go into the hall and he picks up a battered leather briefcase by the door. “I’ll be off, then.”

“Okay,” I say. I am not sure what else to say. I feel like a child kept out of school, left alone at home while her parents go to work. Don’t touch anything, I imagine him saying. Don’t forget to take your medicine.

He comes over to where I stand. He kisses me, on the cheek. I do not stop him, but neither do I kiss him back. He turns toward the front door, and is about to open it when he stops.

“Oh!” he says, looking back at me. “I almost forgot!” His voice sounds suddenly forced, the enthusiasm affected. He is trying too hard to make it seem natural; it is obvious he has been building up to what he is about to say for some time.

In the end it is not as bad as I feared. “We’re going away this evening,” he says. “Just for the weekend. It’s our anniversary, so I thought I’d book something. Is that okay?”

I nod. “That sounds nice,” I say.

He smiles, looks relieved. “Something to look forward to, eh? A bit of sea air? It’ll do us good.” He turns back to the door and opens it. “I’ll call you later,” he says. “See how you’re getting on?”

“Yes,” I say. “Do. Please.”

“I love you, Christine,” he says. “Never forget that.”

He closes the door behind him, and I turn. I go back into the house.

. . .

LATER, MID-MORNING. I sit in an armchair. The dishes are done and neatly stacked on the drainer, the laundry is in the machine. I have been keeping myself busy.

But now I feel empty. It’s true, what Ben said. I have no memory. Nothing. There is not a thing in this house that I remember seeing before. Not a single photograph—either around the mirror or in the scrapbook in front of me—that triggers a recollection of when it was taken, not a moment with Ben that I can recall, other than those since we met this morning. My mind feels totally empty.

I close my eyes, try to focus on something. Anything. Yesterday. Last Christmas. Any Christmas. My wedding. There is nothing.

I stand up. I move through the house, from room to room. Slowly. Drifting, like a wraith, letting my hand brush against the walls, the tables, the backs of the furniture, but not really touching any of it. How did I end up like this? I think. I look at the carpets, the patterned rugs, the china figurines on the mantelpiece and ornamental plates arranged on the display racks in the dining room. I try to tell myself that this is mine. All mine. My home, my husband, my life. But these things do not belong to me. They are not part of me. In the bedroom I open the closet door and see a row of clothes I do not recognize, hanging neatly, like empty versions of a woman I have never met. A woman whose home I am wandering through, whose soap and shampoo I have used, whose dressing gown I have discarded and slippers I am wearing. She is hidden to me, a ghostly presence, aloof and untouchable. This morning I had selected my underwear guiltily, searching through the pairs of panties, balled together with tights and stockings, as if I was afraid of being caught. I held my breath as I found panties in silk and lace at the back of the drawer, items bought to be seen as well as worn. Rearranging the unused ones exactly as I had found them, I chose a pale blue pair that seemed to have a matching bra and slipped them both on, before pulling a heavy pair of tights over the top, and then trousers and a blouse and finally a sweater.

I had sat down at the dressing table to examine my face in the mirror, approaching my reflection cautiously. I traced the lines on my forehead, the folds of skin under my eyes. I smiled and looked at my teeth, and at the wrinkles that bunched around the edge of my mouth, the crow’s feet that appeared. I noticed the blotches on my skin, a discoloration on my forehead that looked like a bruise that had not quite faded. I found some makeup, and put a little on. A light powder, a touch of blush. I pictured a woman—my mother, I realize now—doing the same, calling it her war paint, and this morning, as I blotted my lipstick on a tissue and recapped the mascara, the word felt appropriate. I felt that I was going into some kind of battle, or that some battle was coming to me.

Sending me off to school. Putting on her makeup. I tried to think of my mother doing something else. Anything. Nothing came. I saw only a void, vast gaps between tiny islands of memory, years of emptiness.

Now, in the kitchen, I open cabinets: packages of pasta, packets of a rice labeled ARBORIO, cans of kidney beans. I do not recognize this food. I remember eating cheese on toast, macaroni and cheese, corned beef sandwiches. I pull out a can labeled CHICKPEAS, a packet of something called couscous. I do not know what these things are, less how to cook them. How, then, do I survive as a wife?

I look up at the eraser board that Ben had shown me before he left. It is a dirty gray color; words have been scrawled on it and wiped out, replaced, amended, each leaving a faint residue. I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile. I am certain that all I would find are messages and lists, groceries to buy, tasks to perform.

Is this really my life? I think. Is this all I am? I take the pen and add another note to the board. Pack bag for tonight? it says. Not much of a reminder, but my own.

I hear a noise. A tune, coming from my bag. I open it and empty its contents onto the sofa. My purse, some tissues, pens, a lipstick. A powder compact, a receipt for two coffees. A diary, just a couple of inches square and with a floral design on the front and a pencil in its spine.

I find something that I guess must be the phone that Ben described—it is small, plastic, with a keypad that makes it look like a toy. It is ringing, the screen flashing. I press what I hope is the right button.

“Hello?” I say. The voice that replies is not Ben’s.

“Hi,” it says. “Christine? Is that Christine Lucas?”

I do not want to answer. My last name seems as strange as my first name had. I feel as though any solid ground I had attained has vanished again, replaced by quicksand.

“Christine? Are you there?”

Who can it be? Who knows where I am, who I am? I realize it could be anyone. I feel panic rise in me. My finger hovers over the button that will end the call.

“Christine? It’s me. Dr. Nash. Please answer.”

The name means nothing to me, but still I say, “Who is this?”

The voice takes on a new tone. Relief? “It’s Dr. Nash,” he says. “Your doctor?”

Another flash of panic. “My doctor?” I say. I’m not ill, I want to add, but I do not know even this. I feel my mind begin to spin.

“Yes,” he says. “But don’t worry. We’ve just been doing some work on your memory. Nothing’s wrong.”

I notice the tense he has used. Have been. So this is someone else I have no memory of.

“What kind of work?” I say.

“I’ve been trying to help you to improve things,” he says. “Trying to work out exactly what’s caused your memory problems, and whether there’s anything we can do about them.”

It makes sense, though another thought comes to me. Why had Ben not mentioned this doctor before he left this morning?

“How?” I say. “What have we been doing?”

“We’ve been meeting over the last few weeks. A couple of times a week, give or take.”

It does not seem possible. Another person I see regularly who has left no impression on me whatsoever.

But I’ve never met you before, I want to say. You could be anyone.

I say nothing. The same could be said of the man I woke up with this morning, and he turned out to be my husband.

“I don’t remember,” I say instead.

His voice softens. “Don’t worry. I know.” If what he says is true then he must understand that as well as anyone. He explains that our next appointment is today.

“Today?” I say. I think back to what Ben told me this morning, to the list of jobs written on the board in the kitchen. “But my husband hasn’t mentioned anything to me.” I realize it is the first time I have referred in this way to the man I woke up with.

There is a pause, and then Dr. Nash says, “I’m not sure Ben knows you’re meeting me.”

I notice that he knows my husband’s name, but say, “That’s ridiculous! How can he not? He would have told me!”

There is a sigh. “You’ll have to trust me,” he says. “I can explain everything, when we meet. We’re really making progress.”

When we meet. How can we do that? The thought of going out, without Ben, without him even knowing where I am or who I am with, terrifies me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.”

“Christine,” he says. “It’s important. If you look in your diary you’ll see what I’m saying is true. Do you have it? It should be in your bag.”

I pick up the floral book from where it had fallen onto the sofa and register the shock of seeing the year printed on the front in gold lettering. 2007. Twenty years later than it should be.

“Yes.”

“Look at today’s date,” he says. “November thirtieth. You should see our appointment?”

I don’t understand how it can be November—December tomorrow—but still I skim through the leaves, thin as tissue, to today’s date. There, tucked between the pages, is a piece of paper, and on it, printed in handwriting I don’t recognize, are the words November 30th—seeing Dr. Nash. Beneath them, are the words Don’t tell Ben. I wonder if he has read them, whether he looks through my things.

I decide there is no reason he would. The other days are blank. No birthdays, no nights out, no parties. Does this really describe my life?

“Okay,” I say. He explains that he will come and pick me up, that he knows where I live and will be there in an hour.

“But my husband—” I say.

“It’s okay. We’ll be back long before he gets in from work. I promise. Trust me.”

The clock on the mantelpiece chimes and I glance at it. It is old-fashioned, a large dial in a wooden case, edged with roman numerals. It reads eleven thirty. Next to it sits a silver key for winding it, something that I suppose Ben must remember to do every evening. It looks old enough to be an antique, and I wonder how we came to own such a clock. Perhaps it has no history, or none with us at least, but is simply something we saw once, in a shop or at a market, and one of us liked it. Probably Ben, I think. I realize I don’t like it.

I’ll see him just this once, I decide. And then, tonight, when he gets home, I will tell Ben. I cannot believe I am keeping something like this from him. Not when I rely so utterly on him.

But there is an odd familiarity to Dr. Nash’s voice. Unlike Ben, he does not seem entirely alien to me. I realize I almost find it easier to believe that I have met him before than I do my husband.

We’re making progress, he’d said. I need to know what kind of progress he means.

“Okay,” I say. “Come.”

. . .

WHEN HE ARRIVES, Dr. Nash suggests we go for a cup of coffee. “Are you thirsty?” he says. “I don’t think there’s much point in driving all the way to the office. I mostly wanted to talk to you today, anyway.”

I nod and say yes. I was in the bedroom when he arrived, and watched him park his car and lock it, saw him rearrange his hair, smooth his jacket, pick up his briefcase. Not him, I thought as he nodded to the workmen who were unloading tools from a van, but then he walked up the path to our house. He looked young——too young to be a doctor——and, though I don’t know what I had been expecting him to be wearing, it was not the sports jacket and gray corduroy trousers that he had on.

“There’s a park at the end of the street,” he says. “I think it has a café. We could go there?”