She was glad to arrive at Reading after several long train hours and pass her children on to her mother. They soon came to her old house.

  As she walked inside she felt the weight of memories flood in on her. It had been her home for most of her life and, even though she had no memory of it since little, there was so much of her life from before then which came pouring into her mind again.

  Her Mum called out she was taking David and Anne to visit a neighbor who had promised a cake. She should follow over in half an hour when they were invited there for afternoon tea. Baby Vic had fed shortly before arrival and was now sleeping soundly so she placed him on a rug on the floor and asked her father if he would keep an eye on him while she set out to explore.

  She found her old bedroom, not so large and grand as she remembered, but with her familiar favorite teddy on the pillow. She picked it up and hugged it to herself. As she did more memories came back, some fully remembered. Others were little more than shadows that teased at the edge of her mind. Today she felt her mind was a place of sunshine and shadows, the remembered happy memories were like bright sunlit spaces. Alongside these were other places where she knew she should remember but saw only shadows with vague glimpses of things that had been. For the first time she felt her curiosity piqued, wanting to know about all that had gone to make her life from before, particularly in those missing years.

  She started rooting around in her drawers, looking at the clothes. None were what she remembered, tight denim jeans with a bright sparkly top, floral summer dresses, make up and accessories. None of these had belonged to a twelve year old.

  She opened the bottom drawer, searching for something that may be familiar. Instead under jumpers she found an expensive looking camera. It tore at her memory strings but with no clear knowledge that it had been hers. Still, as she picked it up, she instinctively knew how to use it, the controls familiar in her hands. She flipped the power on button. Surprisingly it still worked. She thought the batteries would be flat from years unused. The battery warning light was on but it still showed a bright back screen.

  She pushed the buttons to display the photos on the camera. One by one they flashed up. There were photos of her with friends and family, at home and on holidays. Apart from her family the only other person she knew was Anne. She saw photos of herself in a pale shaded bikini, holding the hand of a handsome blond tousle haired man; he must have been a past boyfriend though she could feel no trace of him left in her mind.

  It came to her that this camera would provide a solution to taking photos of the old book she needed to translate. It had lots of space on the memory card, just a new set of batteries were required and she could get to work. It would take a few hours tomorrow to photograph all the pages. Then she could print off some sample pages and go looking for someone to translate what was written.

  That evening she talked to her parents about her plan. After dinner her mother suggested she show them the book so they could think who might best be able to help her with deciphering it.

  Her father looked at the complex curls of the characters on each page and said, “I think it looks a bit like Arabic, so I think we should start there. If it is something else from the Middle East or India there is a good chance that they can direct us.”

  Her mother slightly knew a Professor of Arabic Languages at the Reading School of Literature and Languages. He had helped her with a project some years past about Arabic medicine from the time of the Moorish Empire. She took a few photos on her phone, saying she would show him these tomorrow and seek his advice.

  Her father found her some new batteries for the camera and it now showed fully charged. Susan’s other grandmother, who lived nearby, agreed to come over tomorrow and mind the children so Susan could have a few undisturbed hours to take photographs. She found she was looking forward to the challenge of doing something that felt important and complex.

  After breakfast next day she got to work. Her Gran was there early and the older children were keen to go with her to a nearby park, then head on visiting neighbors while Susan worked away. Vic had just fed and she would have several hours of solitude to work.

  So she opened the book and began at the front, doing it page by page, checking the quality of the first few photos was acceptable on a laptop her father had lent her before she continued. They were fine.

  As she returned the memory card to the camera she was seized by a powerful sense of déjà vu. It felt so familiar, using this camera to photograph this – the word ‘diary’ came unbidden into her head – she wondered where it had come from. It may in fact be a diary, but equally it could be something else like a religious book of devotions or transcribed stories.

  She told herself, no it is not a diary, it is a book. Yet, every time she turned the page and took another photo, her mind said, Now you have captured another page of the diary. She had a sense now it was not one book but two, this book in a strange language in her hand, and another book, a diary in neat but cramped English, with a bit of French thrown in. She could even picture a page of lovely flowing French cursive script though her mind did not have knowledge of its meaning.

  She shook her head to clear this complexity of layered pictures; it was like two sequences of images had got overlaid in her brain, one from now, one from some other time. She made a conscious effort to block out the extraneous thoughts and just concentrate on the task at hand – turn the page, focus, click, check image on back screen of camera, begin again.

  An hour passed and then two. Now she had all the pages captured. She just needed to check their quality in detail and label them on her computer, cross checking the accuracy of the sequence with the original book as she went. She began at the outside – Label - Outside Front Cover – correct. Inside Front Cover – correct. She clicked to the next image on her screen and reached for the book to open its cover again and compare. But now this dark brown cover with a few curly symbols transposed in her mind to a red brown cover with the words Mark B in clear hand writing.

  She shook her head. This was seriously weird.

  She pushed on, it was hard to concentrate. Each time she turned the page another image, different from the book in front of her, jumped into her mind for a few seconds before it faded.

  She forced herself to ignore these unwanted images and go on. As she was getting towards the end she saw a transposed page with the word Kate written on it. She tried to think of any Kate she knew but could not. A few pages later the word, Susan jumped out at her. Somehow she knew this half seen page in her mind was a page about her.

  She could not begin to imagine why she was seeing a book, actually diary, that had parts written about her. It was not written by her, she knew this writing belonged to someone else, an unknown man she thought. She also knew the lovely French script was written by another woman.

  The strange thing was that if she tried to see this other book more clearly it would fade and drift out of her mind. But if she looked at the book in front of her, its images were overlaid with sharp images of the other diary.

  At last she was finished and went to make herself a cup of tea, her head feeling overloaded with so many images. As she sipped her tea the jumble of pictures left her mind and only the ones of the book she had photographed today remained. It felt a relief to get her mind back under her control again.

  She looked at the clock. It was lunch time and she was hungry. Her Gran and the children should be home soon and Vic would wake hungry too. She set to work to make up sandwiches for the others when they arrived. As she worked the phone rang and it startled her out of her reverie.

  It was her mother, saying, “I have just met the Arabic Professor over our lunch break. He tells me the language of your book is not Arabic but it has some similarities. He thinks it may be in a language from the Indian subcontinent, something like a Kashmiri script. He is unable to work it out though he can guess the odd word. However he had a long standing Kashmiri friend in Wokingham who has offered to have a look. He rang this friend while I was there and the friend has kindly offered to meet you and I mid-morning tomorrow.

  “So I have blocked out the morning for this if it suits you to come. If Gran is there I will ask her to mind the children again. This man would like to see the original as well as the copied images. He said that if he can look carefully at the cover and binding it will help him to know exactly where it is from and the period when it was written.”

  Next morning, about half past nine, when the morning traffic rush had died down, they set out. It was seven miles to Wokingham. In less than half an hour they were coming into this lovely old town. It felt achingly familiar to Susan, but this was no surprise, she had probably been here many times in her lost memory period.

  They met an elderly Indian looking man who introduced himself. As they waited for coffees he reverently unwrapped the book from its covering.

  “Ah, it is beautiful, as I thought it is written in Kashmiri. It is a variant that is a different from the regular script. But I can read most words and, with a bit of practice and research, I will be able to transcribe it for you.

  “It is a book which has been written in over several generations. It covers at least two hundred years. It contains some religious tracts, but also family stories. The last part describes the journey of a young man who left his home and family and travelled to a faraway land, bringing camels with him.

  “It will take me a couple months to work my way through it but I would be honored to do this task if you will allow me. Could you tell me as to how you came by this book?”

  Susan described its history, handed down over generations through a part aboriginal family in Alice Springs, with an understanding that it had originally being owned by an Afghan Cameleer who brought it to Australia.

  “That is all I know, except that this Afghan man was my husband’s great grandfather. His Uncle has told me the book is to go to my husband and one day be passed on to our children to keep the old man’s memory alive. So, this Uncle would like to know what it says, the story of his ancestor, so he can pass this on too, the story to go along with the book.

  “So I am happy for you to do this but I would ask you to take care of it. It is the only surviving piece of family history of that man.”

  As she spoke these words she knew it was a silly request. The reverent way in which this man handled this book meant he gave it a value far higher than she had perceived.

  He nodded. “But of course, it is a very precious object and I will take great care. I understand you have photographed the pages. I will work off those images but I would still value having the original as I work. Sometimes it may help my understanding to hold it and look at it more closely.”

  So it was agreed, he would copy the memory card images onto his computer and she would retain a copy as well. Each week he would send her a letter with a copy of the pages that he had translated. She and her husband could read this story as it unfolded and send a copy back to Vic’s Uncle.

  It was now almost lunch time and Susan’s mother needed to go, as she had an afternoon appointment at the University. So, after shaking hands and thanking the man profusely for his help, they started to drive out of town, following a different road to the one they had come in on.

  As they left the shops of the town behind an industrial building came alongside them. Something buried deep in Susan’s mind screamed out. “Stop,” she said.

  Puzzled her mother pulled to the side of the road. “What is it?”

  Chapter 38– Contents of the Locked Box

  Susan said to her mother, “There is something inside there I need to get. I left it here before. It is inside a locked box.”

  She could feel herself tugged towards the building, it was here, she knew it; the diary she had seen. She walked off without reply, leaving her mother in the car. He mother parked the car and followed her.

  She found the front entrance and let herself in. A middle aged man came to the counter to help, “Yes, how may I assist?”

  The words came out unbidden, “It is Locked Box 972532, I need to open it and retrieve the contents. The security code is 679013.”

  The man looked up his list, wrote down the numbers she had given then nodded. As he went to speak Susan’s mother joined them, so he paused until she was alongside as well.

  The man said, “That box was in use with that security code for two years, until a bit over a year ago. However at the end of that rental period the owner had not returned to collect it. So its contents were removed. It is now in use again with a different security code.”

  Susan felt panic flood into her mind, It could not be possible that the contents were gone, she wanted, no she needed to see the diary that she knew was inside.

  She calmed herself. “Do you know what has happened to the contents since they were removed?”

  The man shook his head. “No, but I can find out. Generally we hold the contents for a further 12 months before we dispose of them. However in some cases where the contents are clearly valuable and we know that we can recover the cost if needed we will hold them for longer.”

  He picked up the phone and spoke a few words. In another minute they were joined by a lady of similar age who was introduced as the person who managed the recovered objects. This lady brought them into an office and keyed the details into a computer.

  “Yes,” she said, “I can see what happened. The security box had two things inside, a book that looked like an old diary and a pouch with some jewelry inside. Our preliminary estimate was that the diary is of no particular value but the jewelry is highly valuable. So we stored them in a new secure storage compartment in the off limits area. It is our policy to hold items of this value for five years before we consider disposing of them.”

  Susan could feel relief flooding into her. She did not know why these things were important but she knew they were. They were a vital part of her life from before and, even if she could not remember them, she needed to have them back and see what they told her.

  She asked, “So are we able to collect them now?”

  The lady looked carefully at her, as if assessing what to do. “Well there are two things to cover; one is to confirm your entitlement to the objects. The second is to pay the outstanding fees for their storage. You have confirmed you know the security code, so that is a start. In addition at the time you stored the objects we recorded your driver’s license number as an independent way of confirming your identity should the need arise.”

  Now Susan felt flummoxed again, she had no memory of a license.

  She said, “I don’t have my license with me, do you need to see it.”

  The lady shook her head. “No just the number will suffice.”

  Unbidden the number came into Susan’s head. She recited it and the lady wrote it down. It was checked against a field on the computer screen.

  “Well that is all correct. So there is just a matter of $300 pounds; that is for two further years of storage fees and an additional charge for the removal and storage in a new location.”

  Her mother pulled out her credit card and made the payment.

  In a five minutes Susan was holding these two objects in her hands.

  Her mother looked at her, curious, “Do you want to check the contents?”

  Susan shook her head, “No I just want to bring them home. I will look at them later.”

  Her mother shrugged and they drove home.

  *

  Susan sat alone in her room in the late night. She had suppressed her desire to look at the diary and the bag of stones that she had carried home. She knew it had been a subject of conversation with her mother and father and her Gran who had stayed for dinner, she had walked into the room as they were talking and felt the conversation fall into a lull on her entrance.

  Finally her father had blurted out, “Your Mum was just telling us about your visit to Wokingham today, meeting the Kashmiri man and his kind offer to translate the book, and also about your stop off at the storage place on the way home, how you remembered that you had left things there before you went away.”

  He stopped there, waiting for her to say something. A silence ensued. Finally, realizing she was being ungracious, she said. “I don’t really remember what it is. But I feel like I need to have a look with Vic before I show whatever it is to others. He may be able to help me understand what it means.

  “So I plan to bring it home tomorrow on the train and then we can have a look together. Once we do that I promise I will tell you about it.”

  They all nodded but she could see a disbelieving look on all faces. She felt bad. She could not remember lying deliberately before. Doing it to these people, who had been so wonderful to her, felt unworthy.

  But she could not bear to open something so significant and private with anyone else looking on, not even Vic. This book was a story of the life she had lost. She must know what it said, just she and only she, to begin with.

  After that no one raised the contents of the locked box any further. The night proceeded with laughter and humor, entertaining the children as her parents and Gran told stories about here when she was little. Now they were all gone to bed, the children in their own room, Vic lying in the crib alongside her bed, sleeping soundly.

  She sat on her bed with the book in her hands, looking at a reddish brown cover with only “Mark B”, handwritten, to distinguish it. It was just as she had remembered it from when she had photographed the other book. She knew that inside would be the words of writing her mind had glimpsed.

  She felt no real interest in the stones in the cloth pouch. The lady had said they were jewels, but they felt like small stones to her. One day soon, when she had read the book, she was happy to open the pouch and show the stones to others. She did not care about them. If they were valuable, all the better, but it was of minor importance. The story must come first. She knew, with a deep clarity, that this was her story, the key to unlocking a part of her mind. She held the book in her hands and immersed herself in its presence. It had its own presence, the essence of a vanished spirit, perhaps Mark B.