The Raw Shark Texts. Steven Hall

      “Leave?” I said. “And go where?”

      “Anywhere. There’s a very rare condition which we call fugue –”

      “What?”

      “It means ‘flight’. People suffering from it do just that; they take off, run away. From their lives, from their identities, from everything.” She made a vanished-in-a-puff-of-smoke gesture. “They just go. Before we go on, are you sure you haven’t felt a desire to do anything like that?”

      “I don’t think so,” I said, trying the idea for size. “No. I don’t think I want to go anywhere.”

      “Good. Can you give me a line from Casablanca?”

      “Sorry?”

      “A line from Casablanca.”

      I was in danger of being seriously left behind but I did what I was told.

      “‘Of all the gin joints in all the world, she has to walk into mine.’”

      “Good,” Randle nodded. “And who says that?”

      “Bogart. Rick. The character or the actor?”

      “It doesn’t matter. Can you picture him saying it?”

      “Yes.”

      “Is the film in colour or black and white?”

      “It’s black and white. He’s sitting with a drink at –”

      “And when was the last time you saw Casablanca?”

      My mouth opened and an almost-sound happened in the back of my throat. But I didn’t have an answer.

      “You see? All that seems to be missing, Eric, is you. And that’s a typically fugue-like state of affairs, I’m afraid.” Randle thought for a minute. “The truth is, I’m reluctant to pin this down with a final diagnosis. So much about your case is unusual. For instance, your amnesia didn’t even begin on the night of the accident. You appear to have shown no symptoms at all for almost twelve months.”

      “And how unusual is that?”

      Dr Randle lifted her eyebrows.

      “Right.”

      “When it finally happened, your memory loss related only to a single night – the night of the accident in Greece. You received three months of regular treatment for amnesia and you were even making some progress, but then you suffered your first recurrence.”

      “Which means?”

      “You suddenly lost more memories.” She left a break for me to take this in. “All the memories of your holiday in Greece had become patchy and there were little holes in memories from other parts of your life too, some of them quite unrelated.”

      Little holes. Little bits missing. Things nibbled away here and there.

      “And the holes kept getting bigger?”

      “I’m afraid so. With each recurrence, you remembered less.”

      I could feel the empty space inside me, in my skull, in my guts.

      “And now here I am with nothing.”

      “I know it doesn’t feel like it at the moment, Eric, but you have to keep focused on the fact that none of your memories are really lost. What you are suffering from – whatever the peculiarities of your case – is a purely psychological condition. It’s a type of memory suppression, not actual damage. Everything is still in your head somewhere and, one way or another, it will start to come back from wherever you’ve hidden it. The trick will be in working out what’s triggering the recurrences and finding a way to defuse it.”

      I nodded blankly.

      “I think that’s enough for today,” Randle said. “It’s a lot for you to take in all at once, isn’t it? Perhaps you should go home now, try to get some rest. Shall we meet up again tomorrow evening?”

      “Yes. Sure.” They ached; my eyes ached. I started to push myself up on the wicker chair arms.

      “Oh, before you go – one more thing.”

      I stopped.

      “Okay,” I said, for the hundred-thousandth time.

      “In the past, you’ve written and left letters for yourself to be read after a recurrence. I must ask you – and this is very important now, Eric – under no circumstances write or read anything like this. It could be incredibly destabilising for you, possibly even leading to another –”

      Something on my face gave me away. She stopped mid-sentence and chased my reaction.

      “Has something like this happened already?”

      “No.” It was a knee-jerk, things are complicated enough thing to say, nothing to do with what would be the best or not the best thing to do. Was it even really a lie? I smoothed over the bumps deciding I’d think about it later: “Well,” I said. “There was a note by the front door telling me to phone you and how to get here, just that kind of thing.”

      Half true. Less than half true: Good luck and sorry. The First Eric Sanderson.

      “Of course,” she said. “You should leave that in place in case you ever need it again. But please – if you should come across anything else, bring it straight to me. Don’t read it. I know what I’m asking you to do is difficult, but if I’m going to be able to help you, this is very, very important. Okay?”

      “Yes,” I said. “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

       2

       Kitchen Archaeology and Second Post

      In the deep dark, in the thousand-fathom black waters of ancestral memory and instinctive unconscious, where old gods and primitive responses float invisible and gigantic, something moves. The dust debris on the ocean floor, sediment a million years still, lifts and swirls in its wake

      I woke in a jump of panic, flailing around inside my head, but I could still remember. The bedroom carpet, Randle, her wicker chairs, the yellow Jeep, the house. Just one evening of memories, but it was enough to know it hadn’t happened again, I was still the same person I’d been the night before. I was lying on the sofa. I’d fallen asleep almost as soon as I’d got back from Dr Randle’s and the TV was still on, all colourful, cheerful and breezy and not at all worse for wear after such a long shift. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Breakfast television presenters with sculptured hair were talking to an American sitcom actor who’d just done the voice of an animated lion in a new film. I wondered how long a TV would carry on with this sort of thing if left on its own in an empty room and it bothered me that the answer was probably forever.

      This wasn’t my house. Being there, having made myself at home, it felt dangerously wrong. I was the tired burglar who’d stopped burgling for a quick forty winks and opened his eyes to see it was morning. I half expected the sound of the front door opening, for someone to walk in with bags of shopping or an overnight case, to stop in the doorway, look at me and scream. Only – it was my house. Eric’s house. Remember it or not, I was home and even if I spent the next hundred years tensed up on the sofa listening for a key in the lock, nobody at all was going to come. I decided the only way to shake these feelings would be to explore, to get to know all the rooms and spaces and things on my own terms. I’d have to break the ice. Breakfast would be a good start. In spite of everything, I was starving.

      The fridge was well stocked with all the makings of a full English. I clicked on the grill, found some plates, found