What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [22]
Part of her wanted to scream with the sheer terror of this situation, and part of her wanted to roar with laughter because it was so ridiculous. An impossible joke. A hilarious story she would be telling for years—“And then, I ring Nick and this woman tells me he’s in Portugal! And I’m thinking, Portugal!?”
She picked up the phone gingerly, as if it were an explosive device, and considered calling somebody else: Elisabeth? Mum? Frannie?
No. She didn’t want any more strange voices telling her things she didn’t know about the people she loved.
Her body felt weak and heavy. She would do nothing. Nothing at all. Eventually something would happen; somebody would come. The doctors would fix her head and everything would be okay. She began shoving things back into the rucksack. As she picked up the leather-bound diary, a photo fell out.
It was a photo of three children in school uniforms. It was obviously a posed shot because they were sitting in a row on a step with their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hands. There were two girls and a boy.
The boy was in the middle. He had messy white-blond hair, ears that stuck out, and a turned-up nose. He had tipped his head to one side and clenched his teeth together in a grotesque grimace that Alice knew was meant to be a smile. She knew this because she must have seen at least a hundred photos of her sister pulling an identical face. “Why do I do that?” Elisabeth would say sadly when she saw the photo.
On the boy’s left side was a girl who looked older. She was a chunky, stolid-looking girl with a long face and straight brown hair in a ponytail that had fallen over one shoulder. She was slumped forward in a way that clearly said, “I do not want to sit in this ridiculous position.” Her mouth was compressed in a straight line and she was looking grimly off to the right of the camera. She had a nasty graze on one chunky knee, and both her shoelaces were undone. There was nothing remotely familiar about her.
To the boy’s right was a little girl with blond curls bunched together in fat pigtails on either side of her head. She was smiling ecstatically with a dimple denting her cherubic cheeks. There was something stuck to both the shirt collars of her uniform; Alice held the photo up closer. They were shiny dinosaur stickers just like the one on Alice’s own shirt.
Alice turned the photo over and saw there was a typewritten label stuck to the back. It said:
Children (left to right): Olivia Love (Kindergarten), Tom Love (Yr4B), Madison Love (Yr5M)
Parent: Alice Love
Number of copies ordered: 4
Alice turned the photo back over and looked again at the three children.
I have never seen you before in my life.
There was a distant buzzing sound in her ears; she could feel herself breathing short, shallow breaths, her chest rising and falling quickly as if she were at high altitude. (Oh, it was so funny! So, I’m looking at this photo, right, of three kids? And it’s my own children! And I don’t even recognize them! Hilarious!)
Another nurse Alice hadn’t seen before came into the room, glanced briefly at Alice, and picked up the clipboard at the end of her stretcher. “I’m so sorry we’re still keeping you waiting. The powers that be assure me it should only be a few more minutes and we’ll have a bed free for you. How are you feeling?”
Alice put crazily trembling fingertips to her head. “The thing is, I don’t actually remember the last ten years of my life.” There was a quiver of hysteria in her voice.
“I think we might try and organize a nice cup of tea and sandwiches for you.” The nurse looked at the photo lying in Alice’s lap and said, “Your kids?”
“Apparently,” said Alice, and gave a little laugh that turned into a sob, and the taste of tears in her mouth felt so familiar, and the thought came into her head, Stop it! I’m so sick, sick, sick of crying, but what did that mean, because she hadn’t cried like this since she was little, and anyway