It difficult, but watching it now all I could see was my wrinkled fingers and the glint of the wedding ring on my left hand. When I had finished he seemed

pleased. ‘You’re getting faster,’ he said on the video, then added that somewhere, deep, deep down, I must be remembering the effects of my weeks of

practice even if I did not remember the practice itself. ‘That means your long-term memory must be working on some level,’ he said. I smiled then, but did

not look happy. The film ended.

Dr Nash closed his computer. He said we have been meeting for the last few weeks, that I have a severe impairment of something called my

episodic memory. He explained that this means I can’t remember events, or autobiographical details, and told me that this is usually due to some kind of

neurological problem. Structural or chemical, he said. Or a hormonal imbalance. It is very rare, and I seem to be affected particularly badly. When I asked

him how badly he told me that some days I can’t remember much beyond my early childhood. I thought of this morning, when I had woken with no adult

memories at all.

‘Some days?’ I said. He didn’t answer, and his silence told me what he really meant:

Most days.

There are treatments for persistent amnesia, he said – drugs, hypnosis – but most have already been tried. ‘But you’re uniquely placed to help

yourself, Christine,’ he said, and, when I asked him why, he told me it was because I am different from most amnesiacs. ‘Your pattern of symptoms does

not suggest that your memories are lost for ever,’ he said. ‘You can recall things for hours. Right up until you go to sleep. You can even doze and still

remember things when you wake up, as long as you haven’t been in a deep sleep. That’s very unusual. Most amnesiacs lose their new memories every

few seconds …’

‘And?’ I said.

He slid a brown notebook across the desk towards me. ‘I think it might be worth you documenting your treatment, your feelings, any impressions or

memories that come to you. In here.’

I reached forward and took the book from him. Its pages were blank.

So this is my treatment? I thought. Keeping a journal? I want to remember things, not just record them.

He must have sensed my disappointment. ‘I’m also hoping the act of writing your memories might trigger some more,’ he said. ‘The effect might be

cumulative.’

I was silent for a moment. What choice did I have, really? Keep a journal or stay as I am, for ever.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ve written my numbers in the front of the book. Ring me if you get confused.’

I took the book from him and said I would. There was a long pause, and he said, ‘We’ve been doing some good work recently around your early

childhood. We’ve been looking at pictures. Things like that.’ I said nothing, and he took a photograph out of the file in front of him. ‘Today I’d like you to

take a look at this,’ he said. ‘Do you recognize it?’

The photograph was of a house. At first it seemed totally unfamiliar to me, but then I saw the worn step that led to the front door and suddenly knew.

It was the house in which I had grown up, the one that, this morning, I had thought I was waking up in. It had looked different, somehow less real, but was

unmistakable. I swallowed hard. ‘It’s where I lived as a child,’ I said.

He nodded, and told me that most of my early memories are unaffected. He asked me to describe the inside of the house.

I told him what I remembered: that the front door opened directly into the living room, that there was a small dining room at the back of the house,

that visitors were encouraged to use the alley that separated our house from the neighbours’ and go straight into the kitchen at the back.

‘More?’ he said. ‘How about upstairs?’

‘Two bedrooms,’ I said. ‘One at the front, one at the back. The bath and toilet were through the kitchen, at the very back of the house. They’d been

in a separate building until it was joined to the rest of the house with two brick walls and a roof of corrugated plastic.’

‘More?’

I didn’t know what he was looking for. ‘I’m not sure …’ I said.

He asked if I remembered any small details.

It came to me then. ‘My mother kept a jar in the pantry with the word Sugar written on it,’ I said. ‘She used to keep money in there. She’d hide it on

the top shelf. There were jams up there, too. She made her own. We used to pick the berries from a wood that we drove to. I don’t remember where. The

three of us would walk deep into the forest and pick blackberries. Bags and bags. And then my mother would boil them to make jam.’

‘Good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Excellent!’ He was writing in the file in front of him. ‘What about these?’

He showed me a couple more pictures. One of a woman who, after a few moments, I recognized as my mother. One of me. I told him what I could.

When I finished he put them away. ‘That’s good. You’ve remembered a lot more of your childhood than usual, I think because of the photographs.’ He

paused. ‘Next time I’d like to show you a few more.’