shirt, not really caring what it looked like. “Why? Everyone else seems to hate me. God, I think I hate me.”
“I don’t know you well enough to hate you. I don’t know you at all. I can’t hate someone that I don’t know.”
She looked down at me and smiled. It seemed like the kind you give someone you actually care about. The kind of smile that I hadn’t seen in days, not since I’d kicked Noah out my apartment.
“So, what say we get to know each other a little? I could do with a cup of tea, and it looks like you could do with an ear to listen.”
We walked inside together. Her flat was a mirror image of mine in shape and size, but that was the only thing it mirrored. While mine was spartan and beige, hers was full and bursting with color. Porcelain dogs and swans and printer’s tray displays chock-a-block with trinkets. Spoons and thimbles and tiny jugs and miniature things and bright plates hanging on the walls. Coffee tables full of old tea sets and tins and just about every single bright thing a human could collect.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” I said, reaching out and running a finger over the slippery head of a bright pink porcelain dog.
“Thank you, dear,” she said from the open-plan kitchen, pulling down equally bright mugs and turning on the kettle.
“It’s so bright.” I wiped my hand over the floral couch before I sat down on it, moving one of the lace pink embroidered cushions out of the way.
“Oh, don’t sit there, dear. That’s where the cat sits, and since she’s not that fond of you—”
“Ppprrrr.” With a strange sound, the cat jumped up onto the couch next to me, as if she knew we were talking about her, and just as I was about to get up, the cat jumped onto my lap. I froze, and didn’t move again until she looked like she’d settled.
“She . . . she . . . oh, she likes me!” I looked up at my neighbor and beamed. An actual beam that burst out of my lips, and that I could feel throughout my entire body. I winced as the cat started kneading my thighs, her little claws digging into me ever so slightly, and purring like a machine. I reached out and touched the top of her head, and she nuzzled into my hand and wrist, the wrist where my watch was not. It was the watch! It wasn’t me.
My neighbor walked into the lounge carrying two cups of tea and placed them down on the coffee table in front of me.
“I just realized, I don’t know your name!” I said, taking the warm cup of tea and sipping it.
“Betty,” she said. “I did tell you that once, but . . .”
“Sorry, I’ve kind of lost my memory—well, not kind of, I have. Not all of it, but a lot. I had an accident in an elevator over a week ago.” I reached up and touched my head and her eyes went there. “I only remember parts of my life, and they’re not exactly the parts I particularly want to. In fact, everything I remember is not really something I care to.”
“What do you mean?” Betty looked at me over the rim of her teacup. She was really listening, I could see it, and I liked it. It reminded me of Noah.
“When I didn’t have any memories of who I was I built up this idea of the kind of person I was, and then when I got my memories back and realized who I actually was . . .” I shook my head and placed the teacup down, my hands shaking now. I laced my fingers together to stop them.
“Go on,” she urged me in the kindest tone, which broke my heart a little. I had been so cruel to her over the years and here she was showing me nothing but kindness.
“I don’t like the person I see. And I wasn’t this person a few days ago. I was the complete opposite. And then I came here, and I saw my apartment, and saw how people didn’t like me, saw how the people I’ve worked with for seven years didn’t even know me. That’s not the person I thought I was, and I can’t understand how I got it so wrong.”