He has a name tag confirming that. He walks over to the heart monitor, looks at the screen, and nods. ‘Looking good,’ he says. ‘And your blood pressure is back to normal. You’re definitely on the mend. How do you feel?’

  ‘Tired. Achy. A bit disoriented, to be honest.’

  ‘The nurse says you’re having memory issues?’

  ‘I can’t remember who I am.’

  ‘Your records say that you’re James Connolly.’

  ‘That was randomly generated, I’m told. That and the date of birth.’

  ‘Do you remember your actual date of birth?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Do you remember where you were born?’

  ‘I’m sorry no. I don’t remember anything from the time before I opened my eyes today.’

  He picks up your chart from the bottom of the bed and looks at it. ‘Do you know what year it is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know who the prime minister is?’

  You frown because that is the sort of thing you should know, but it’s a blank. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The doctor smiles. ‘You don’t need to keep apologising. Can you name some prime ministers for me? Any at all?’

  ‘Winston Churchill,’ you say. ‘Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair. Boris Johnson. The Indian guy whose suits were always too small. Dishy Rishy.’

  The doctor smiles. ‘Rishi Sunak. Who came after Rishi Sunak?’

  You try to remember but the name escapes you. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you remember the last election? Do you remember voting?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘What about numbers. Can you count from one to ten?’

  That’s easy and you do it without thinking.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now do you know what prime numbers are?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay, so start at one and give me the prime numbers in order.’

  Again, you can do that easily. He lets me get to 23 before telling me to stop. ‘Can you tell me the colours of a rainbow?’

  ‘Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw a rainbow?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Your favourite food?’

  ‘I don’t remember any meal I’ve eaten in the past.’

  ‘Favourite band?’

  ‘Band?’

  ‘Music. Who do you like to listen to?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ You see him smile and you find yourself apologising for apologising.

  ‘Can you name some bands for me?’

  ‘Again that’s easy. Foo Fighters. Arctic Monkeys. Coldplay. The 1975. I know the bands and I know their songs but I can’t remember seeing any of them perform, live or on TV.’

  ‘But you don’t have a favourite?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Favourite colour?’

  You think about that for a while. ‘I want to say blue. But I’m not sure.’

  ‘Have you ever been abroad?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The doctor nods thoughtfully. ‘You definitely have memory issues,’ he says.

  A name flashes into your memory. ‘The Prime Minister is Keir Starmer,’ you say.

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘His middle name is Rodney.’

  ‘That I didn’t know,’ says the doctor. ‘And your name?’

  You shake your head. ‘Sorry. Still a blank. So is it common, memory loss after a car crash?’

  The doctor nods. ‘It happens, but I wouldn’t say it was common,’ he says. ‘Most people, providing their injuries aren’t too serious, might be disorientated for a minute or two, but yes, in some cases there can be more long lasting effects. The three most common types of memory loss after a car accident would be anterograde amnesia, post-traumatic amnesia and retrograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia stops people creating memories after a crash and is very unusual. I’ve certainly never come across a case in my career, but I have read papers on the subject. Post-traumatic amnesia blocks out memories of events instantly after a crash. It’s the way of the conscious mind protecting itself from trauma, basically blocking out memories that it would find upsetting. I wouldn’t say it was common but it certainly happens. It mainly depends on the severity of the crash and the individual's brain injury. Then there is retrograde amnesia which prevents recall of events that occurred before the crash. It can just be a few minutes or hours that are lost, but in your case it seems to be far more pronounced. What is unusual is that memory loss on that scale is usually associated with a concussion or traumatic brain injury resulting from the impact of the collision. But we had you in for a scan shortly after they brought you in and while there was some bruising on the brain there was no significant brain injury.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ you ask.

  ‘Well, it means that we couldn’t find any physical cause of your amnesia. What makes your case so interesting is that you only appear to have episodic retrograde amnesia with no semantic retrograde amnesia.’

  You force a smile. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Sorry, I appreciate that the technical jargon can be overwhelming,’ he says. ‘Semantic retrograde amnesia is loss of memory for factual knowledge and you don’t appear to have any of that. You can remember dates and people and facts.’

  ‘And animals,’ you say. ‘I know what a Xerus is.’

  ‘A Xerus?’

  ‘It’s a type of African ground squirrel. I know what it looks like and where it lives, but I have no idea if I have ever seen one in the flesh.’

  The doctor nods. ‘That’s episodic retrograde amnesia - loss of memory for personally experienced events. That’s what you have.’

  ‘And is there a cure?’

  ‘If the cause is a head injury, then as the injury heals the memories should return. In your case there doesn’t appear to need to be a significant injury which means the cause is probably psychological stress in which case I would expect recovery to be complete within 48 hours with a very low probability of recurrence.’

  ‘But I’ve been in hospital for longer than that.’

  ‘Memory isn’t an exact science, I’m afraid,’ says the doctor. ‘But I would expect you to recover your memories sooner rather than later.’

  ‘So I just wait?’

  The doctor smiles. ‘You know, we have all these medicines and therapies but often the body will fix itself given enough rest and time to heal.’ He grimaces. ‘Unless you’ve got cancer of course, that’s a whole different story.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Right, I have to get going, but I’ll pop in again later to check how you’re getting on.’ And then he’s gone, his white coat flapping behind him.

  Well, at least you don’t have cancer. That’s good news. You frown. Actually, you don’t know that. You don’t know what medical problems you have. For all you know, your body could be riddled with tumours and you’ve just forgotten about it. The memory loss means that you have forgotten the bad with the good, and when you do eventually start to remember, you’ll have to deal with both. Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad.

  CHAPTER 4

  You lose sense of time as you lie in your bed staring up at the ceiling. You run through all the things that are in your memory - dates, facts, quotes. You’re sure you’d be an asset to any pub quiz team but you’ve no memory of ever having been at a pub quiz. You can name dozens of pubs, but haven’t a single memory of going into a pub and drinking a pint of beer. In fact you have no idea what beer tastes like. Or whisky. Or cider. You know that cider probably tastes of apples but you have no idea what an apple tastes like.

  It feels strange to have lost so many years. From looking at your picture on Adeya’s phone you reckon you are probably about thirty years old, which means thirty years has been wiped from your memory. That’s 1,560 weeks, which is almost eleven thousand days which is more than a quarter of a million hours. All gone, as if they had never existed. It makes you realise just how amazing the human brain is, to weigh only a few pounds yet contain all that information. Except, of course, your brain doesn’t have any of that information. It’s all gone. You start to panic as you wonder if what has happened to you is the equivalent of wiping clean a hard drive? What if the memories have gone forever and you spend the rest of your life missing those thirty years?

  You hear your pulse monitor beeping faster and you try to take deep, steady breaths to calm yourself down. The door opens and you look over expecting to see Adeya but it’s a uniformed policeman. He’s about fifty years old with steel-grey hair cut short and a square chin with a dimple in the middle. He’s got metal-framed spectacles on, a flat cap and a hi-vis jacket over his stab vest and uniform. There is a name tag Velcroed to his vest. CONSTABLE CALDER.

  He closes the door and walks over to your bed, his boots squeaking on the linoleum. ‘Are you James Connolly?’ he asks. You know that he has an Essex accent, but how do you know that?

  ‘That’s a difficult question to answer.’

  ‘What do you mean? Either you are or you aren’t.’

  ‘It’s the name on my chart. It’s how the hospital refers to me.’

  ‘So it’s your name? Why are you making this so difficult?’

  ‘There was a nurse in before, she said the hospital gave me the name -and the date of birth - so that I wouldn’t be confused with any other patients who haven’t been identified.’

  ‘So what is your name? Your real name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ you say. You see the look of disbelief on his face. ‘Really, I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re going to use the amnesia defence, is that it? I’m sorry your honour, I don’t remember anything. That’s what you’re going to say, is it? Your memory is a blank?’

  ‘I was involved in an RTA.’

  ‘So you remember that? You remember crashing your car?’

  You shake your head and wince because it hurts. ‘I don’t remember the crash. It’s on my chart. I was involved in an RTA, that’s what it says. But I don’t remember anything.’

  The cop reaches for his belt and pulls a set of chrome handcuffs from a black nylon pouch. He moves to the bottom of the bed and slips the cuffs around your right ankle and then attaches them to the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ you ask.

  ‘We don’t want you running off.’

  ‘Why would I run? How would I run? I’m in hospital.’

  The cop steps away from the bed. ‘I don’t think the court is going to buy your amnesia story.’ he says.

  ‘Court? What court?’

  ‘I’m just here to secure you, to make sure that you don’t escape. Detectives are on their way to talk to you. Until they come, I’ll be waiting outside. Unless there’s something you want to tell me? In which case I’ll have to caution you.’

  ‘Officer, I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘That’s not a problem. We can wait for the detectives to get here.’ He looks at his watch. ‘The good news is that in two hours I'll be on overtime, and my wife is after a new sofa.’ He heads out and you go back to staring at the ceiling. The handcuffs are not good news, not good news at all.

  CHAPTER 5

  You drift in and out of sleep. Each time you wake up it’s with a feeling of panic, that maybe your memory has been wiped clean again. It takes a few seconds for you to run through a few of your recent memories - Adeya’s smile, the doctor’s Q&A, the handcuffs being attached to your ankle - and that reassures you that at least you are making new memories. But the past, all the years before you woke up from the coma, they’re still a complete blank.

  Dr Mackenzie seems certain that you’ll recover your lost memories but you’re not convinced. You’re happy enough to give him the benefit of the doubt but so far not a single memory has returned. It’s crazy that you don’t know your name or your date of birth and can’t remember the faces of your parents.

  The door opens and you smile when you see it’s Adeya. She’s carrying a tray. She puts the tray on the table and then swings it around so that it’s over the bed. ‘Can you sit up?’ she says.

  ‘I can try,’ you say and you try but it hurts so you lie back. ‘I’m sorry,’ you say.

  ‘Nothing to apologise for,’ she says and she helps you to sit up and slides a pillow behind your back.

  You thank her as you look down at the tray. There’s an omelette with some chips and a small salad, a bread roll with a single packet of butter, and a strawberry yoghurt. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were a meat-eater so I got you the vegetarian option to be on the safe side. I hope you’re not a vegan, but you look too healthy to be vegan.’

  ‘Vegans look unhealthy?’ you say.

  ‘Generally,’ she says. She nods at the tray. ‘It’s a cheese omelette. Cheddar. My favourite.’

  You nod and thank her and look at the food. Here’s the weird thing. You know what an omelette is and you know how to make one. You crack three eggs into a bowl, discard the shells, and whisk the eggs until the mixture is smooth. You add a pinch of salt and pepper. You put a small piece of butter into a hot non-stick frying pan on a medium heat and tilt the pan to coat the surface evenly. Once the butter is bubbling, you pour the eggs into the pan and spread them evenly. Once the eggs start to set, you add shredded cheese to one half, then you use a spatula to fold the omelette in half and let it cook for another half a minute before sliding it onto a plate. Easy. You know exactly how to make the perfect omelette. You know that you have almost certainly made omelettes, lots of them, and you’re sure that you’ve eaten them in the past, but you have no idea, no idea at all, what they taste like.

  ‘Is it okay?’ asks Adeya.

  ‘It’s fine.’ You force a smile. ‘It looks delicious.’ You lean closer to the plate and sniff it. ‘Smells good, too.’

  Adeya notices the handcuffs on your ankle. ‘Are you in trouble?’ she asks.

  ‘Is that policeman still outside?’ you ask.

  She nods. ‘He is.’

  ‘Then I guess I’m in trouble.’

  She examines the handcuffs. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It looks like it might be rubbing. I’ll bring in some plasters.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and I checked on your name. It was issued by the hospital because you arrived without one.’

  ‘I thought you said the paramedic gave it to them.’

  ‘I thought that’s what happened, but I was wrong. You were an unknown and like I said, they’re not allowed to call you unknown any more. They just pluck a name and date of birth from the air.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why it never felt like my name.’

  She nods at the handcuffs. ‘What do they think you did?’ she asks.

  ‘He didn’t say. Just that some detectives would be coming to talk to me.’

  ‘But you still have no memory of what happened?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe it’s a mistake,’ she says. ‘Mistakes happen, even in hospitals. I’m sure the detectives will clear it up when they get here. In the meantime, enjoy your dinner. Or lunch. Whatever you want to call it.’

  You weren’t lying. It looks and smells delicious, but you still have no idea what it tastes like. You pick up the fork and use it to break off a small piece and you pop it into your mouth. It is light and velvety with a slight bounce as you bite into it. The exterior has a crispy edge and the inside is soft and tender. The eggs are creamy and buttery and the melted cheese is rich and tangy with a nutty aftertaste. You can taste the black pepper as you swallow. It is delicious, and part of you recognises the taste and texture, but you still have no recollection of having eaten one before.

  You hadn’t realised how hungry you were and you devour the omelette in a couple of minutes, smear butter on the roll and swallow it in three bites, then gulp down the yoghurt.

  Adeya gives you a beaming smile when she comes back to collect your tray. ‘Well you certainly haven’t lost your appetite,’ she says.

  ‘It was good, thank you,’ you say.

  ‘Do you think you are a vegetarian?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Do you remember eating meat? Or fish?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘Being a vegetarian is definitely a good thing.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘Killing animals for food is just... wrong.’

  ‘I think you’re right. So why don’t we say that I’m a vegetarian?’

  She smiles. ‘I’ll make a note on your file.’ She picks up the tray and heads to the door.

  ‘Is he still there?’ you say. ‘The policeman?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I did ask him what they thought you had done and he said he didn’t know, he just had to make sure you didn’t escape. You’re not planning on escaping, are you?’

  ‘Where would I go?’ you ask. ‘I don’t even know who I am or where I live.’ I smile at her. ‘Do I look like a James?’

  She wrinkles her nose. ‘Not a James, no. And definitely not a Jimmy. But Jim, yes, maybe.’

  ‘What would you call me?’ you say.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah, you. What name do you think suits me?’

  She narrows her eyes as she looks at you. ‘Philip,’ she says. ‘Or Phil.’

  ‘Really?’

  She nods. ‘Yeah. You look like a Phil.’

  ‘Then I’m Phil,’ you say. ‘You can call me Phil.’

  CHAPTER 6

  About an hour after Adeya took your tray away, the door opens again. This time your visitor is a woman in her thirties, with dyed blonde hair tied back in a ponytail wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard. She smiles brightly. ‘Mr Connolly?’

  ‘That’s the name on my chart, but it’s the name the hospital uses to keep track of me,’ you say.

  ‘Because you can’t remember your name?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  She smiles again, showing perfect white teeth, accentuated by the bright red lipstick that matches her nail varnish. ‘Then I’m definitely in the right place,’ she says. ‘I’m Maggie, I’m with the hospital’s neurological disorders unit. NDU for short. I’ve been asked to drop by and give you an assessment, basically to see if there’s anything we can do to accelerate the healing process.’