Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
2019 - It's Hannah Greenshields's first day at Memory Lane, a memory clinic in the centre of Edinburgh. She soon learns that Memory Lane possesses advanced technology which allows clients to relive their favourite memories for a substantial fee. 1975 - John Valentine, a Memory Lane client, is reliving his wedding day over and over again, hoping to change one key event he can't forget. However, as proceedings become less and less familiar, John realises his memory isn't such a safe place after all. When Hannah and John's paths meet, they must work together to get John back to the real world before it's too late. In a departure from Ross's recent work - The Everliving Memory of John Valentine combines elements of speculative fiction in a novel that is all too believable...
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 467
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
THE EVERLIVING MEMORY OF JOHN VALENTINE
ROSS SAYERS
The Everliving Memory of John Valentine
© Ross Sayers 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identified
as the author of the work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Fledgling Press Ltd.
Cover illustration: Graeme Clarke
Published by:
Fledgling Press Ltd.
1 Milton Rd West
Edinburgh
EH15 1LA
www.fledglingpress.co.uk
Print ISBN 9781912280421
eBook ISBN 9781912280438
For my dad, Derek, who will think this is a bit far-fetched.
PrologueWalter - London, 1986
Trevor’s dead but Walter’s already paid his money, so he’s decided to stay. The management at Memory Lane are so tight-fisted, he doesn’t imagine he’ll be getting a refund for this. He chooses not to use the panic button resting in his trouser pocket. Instead, he sits on the bathroom floor with Trevor and strokes his hair. It’s just as soft as he remembers it, that day in 1986.
‘I’m sure I read that hair keeps growing after you die,’ he says to Trevor.
Trevor doesn’t respond, because he’s dead.
‘Maybe I’m thinking of fingernails,’ Walter goes on. ‘God, what a lot of blood comes out a person’s head.’
He inspects the pool of red around Trevor’s head. It quivers under the sharp white bulb above them. It’s no longer creeping over the tiles, so Walter thinks that’s the worst of it over now.
His wristwatch ticks and he turns it towards himself to check the time. Only a few minutes to go.
‘A hundred and twenty-five grand,’ Walter says. ‘A hundred and twenty-five grand for twelve stinking hours. I suppose that’s the kind of money you get to charge when you’ve got a monopoly on the market, eh, Trevor?’
Trevor doesn’t respond, because he’s still dead.
‘They never warned me this could happen,’ he goes on. ‘And it’s not like this is the first time we’ve done this, is it, Trevor? What’s this? Our twenty, twenty-first time? This is new. Wait ‘til I spread the word around Edinburgh that your friends can die in Memory Lane, that’ll lose them some business, no doubt.’
Walter knows he doesn’t have long left in the memory. He’s mostly glad, as sitting with the dead body of the man he once loved, if only for a day, isn’t what he paid for. But he does miss getting to see a young man’s reflection again.
He stands up and looks in the bathroom mirror. There are a few spots of blood on the sink from where Trevor hit his head. He avoids putting his hand near them.
‘I was thirty-one when me and you had our day together, Trevor,’ Walter says, mostly to his gorgeous, unwrinkled reflection. ‘To think I thought I was getting on a bit… I felt awkward at the club, being the old bastard. And look at me now. Well, you’ll never get to see what I’m like now. But, imagine this face, with thirty-three years on top. Scary thought, isn’t it? All those years, gone in a flash.’
He winks at himself in the mirror then sits back down. Trevor has a birthmark on his shoulder, ruby-coloured and shaped like a baked bean. Walter doesn’t remember noticing that in 1986, but if it’s here, before his eyes, then he must’ve remembered it.
He puts a finger on Trevor’s neck to check for a pulse again, the way he’s seen them do in films. There’s nothing there.
‘Sorry you died this time,’ Walter tells him. ‘But we had a good time up until you died, didn’t we?’
Trevor is non-committal, but Walter is certain they had. They’d done everything the same as normal, the same as they’d done that day, thirty-three years earlier, when Trevor ran after him, through the non-moving commuters of Paddington Station and handed him his wallet. Walter had insisted on paying him back, in the form of a drink in SoHo. They’d drunk all through the daylight hours, sung karaoke at teatime, had greasy chips in the street, then made love until the wee hours.
That’s why Walter can’t quite understand why Trevor’s dead. He’s read the Memory Lane client guidebook many times, and he’s certain there’s a bit in there about how memories can only change substantially if the client does something to set it off. For example, if Walter had whacked Trevor in the back of the head while he wasn’t looking, that would constitute a substantial change to the memory. But Trevor slipping when he got up to go for a piss and skelping his head on the sink? That wasn’t supposed to be able to happen.
Did he leave a few drops of water on the floor when he washed his hands? Walter can’t even pin down if he had washed his hands.
This isn’t the real Trevor next to him, he knows that, but it still seems like the respectful thing to do. Wait with him rather than running away. He’d only spent one perfect day with Trevor and then had never seen him again.
He’d never tell the staff at Memory Lane, but getting to live this day again, and all the other memories he’s relived? They’ve been the only thing Walter’s looked forward to in recent years. He’s not sure how many more times his bank balance will be able to afford it, though. And if Trevor dying is going to start becoming a common feature, that might put a dampener on the whole situation.
He doesn’t see it appear, but Walter finds the red button on his palm which tells him time is up and he can leave the memory. He’s never tried going over time. He’s never ignored the button and continued the memory. They send someone in, he’s sure, to kick you out. Memory bouncers, he’s heard them called.
Of all the times he’s relived this memory, he can’t think of one he’d want to spend extra time in less. He presses the button and the world starts to fade, as if the light is being dimmed. The bathroom and the sink and Trevor grow dark until all Walter can see is black. It stays like this for a few moments, until the familiar words appear.
Thank you for using Memory Lane, powered by Memorize technology. We hope you enjoyed your memory and we look forward to welcoming you back soon. A member of our staff will be with you shortly.
These words evaporate and the small room at Memory Lane comes into view. Walter is still on the bed, where he’s been lying for the last twelve hours, in this facility built into the ancient stone buildings of the Old Town. He raises a hand to his head and scratches the part of his ear which is stuck under the Memorize headset.
A few seconds later, a member of staff, a young Black woman with green hair, comes into the room. Yasmin. Walter’s dealt with her before. He likes seeing a familiar face.
She sits down at the computer by his bed.
‘Welcome back, Mr McQueen,’ she says. ‘Everything go okay?’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘Not really.’
‘Oh?’ Yasmin says, her eyes still on the screen, clicking through the program, looking at the stats from his memory. ‘What was wrong?’
‘Trevor died,’ Walter says. ‘He’s never died before. And I’m not blaming you, sweetheart, obviously, but I’d like to speak to the management about this.’
Walter doesn’t explicitly ask for a refund or discount at this point, but he hopes his tone of voice makes it clear that that’s what he’s after. You need to take anything you can get from these people.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Yasmin says. ‘Why didn’t you use your panic button? It would’ve flagged up a purple alert and someone would’ve come into the memory to assist you.’
Walter puts on his best ‘confused old man’ face.
‘I… I forgot,’ he says. ‘It was just so… traumatising.’
‘I completely understand,’ Yasmin says, closing the program so the computer screen goes black. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes to readjust and I’ll go and find my manager.’
As she leaves him alone in the room, Walter finds himself missing Trevor already. If Trevor could die in the memory, it wouldn’t be ideal, but he doesn’t think it would put him off paying for the memory again. He’d take his chances. Love didn’t really make sense, after all.
Are you longing for the past?
Interested in reliving one of your favourite memories?
Ready to meet your partner for the first time…again?
Desperate to attend that 1997 Hogmanay party?
Or maybe you’re curious if Springsteen actually played ‘Racing in the Street’ when you saw him in ’85?
Do you want to do it all over again?
Yes?
Then come pay us a visit at Memory Lane, where your past is our future.
(Powered by Memorize technology, terms and conditions apply.)
John - Stonecranning, 1975
In the lead up to his wedding, people had told John all sorts of things. Stereotypical comments and advice and such. He found that when people heard you were getting married, what they really heard was: please tell me any old nonsense you think about marriage and please make sure the horrible experience of your own loveless marriage influences your opinion.
They had told John it would be the fastest day of his life. You’ll be lucky if you get the chance to light up a fag or finish a pint. And, on that front, they’d been right. His wedding day had disappeared in a flash, and in the years that followed he couldn’t have told you for sure whether they had cut the cake before or after the meal, whether he’d had the soup or the melon to start, or whether he’d gone true Scotsman under his kilt.
But, as he had found in recent years, you never really enjoy any day the first time around. Now he gets to savour these memories, enjoying everything he had missed before.
John stands at the front of the Stonecranning Trinity Church, watching Agnes walk down the aisle. Her arm is linked with her dad, Ronnie. People always crack jokes about mother-in-laws, but they’d be better warning you about the father-in-laws, the Ronnies of the world. It didn’t matter that John married Agnes, he never became Ronnie’s son-in-law. He always remained just Agnes’s husband.
John’s best man, Gary, stands nearby, whispering blue comments to try and make him laugh.
‘Psst,’ he stage whispers. ‘John, don’t look now, but Ronnie’s got wood. Don’t look. You’ll only make him self conscious.’
In the real world, John isn’t good with names anymore. They slip from his mind, always disappearing as he’s about to say them out loud. When he forgets a name, it’s like firing a flare gun into the sky, alerting everyone around that he isn’t as sharp as he used to be. But in memories, the names come easy. For starters, he doesn’t have to learn any new ones. Memory Lane are always taking on new people to work the clerical jobs and, even though Philippa tells him not to worry about learning them because not many of them ever last longer than a day, it still hurts to know he probably couldn’t even if he tried.
Agnes unlinks her arm from Ronnie and he kisses her on the cheek. As he passes John, he gives him a look. A look that says: I may be giving away my daughter to you, John, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it or that you get my respect, even when you take my company to new heights never seen before over the course of the next forty years. John can admit he may be reading too much into the look.
In the pews, the guests are all smiles. Even his mum, who’s smiling through the tears.
John lifts the delicate veil from his bride’s face.
‘I thought we agreed you were going to shave that,’ Agnes says, raising a finger to his moustache.
John knew she was going to make the comment about his moustache. He gives her a cheeky grin, the one he knows she likes, where he only raises the corner of one side of his mouth. She really was the most beautiful woman he ever had the fortune of knowing.
‘What would everyone say?’ John says. ‘If I got rid of it the night before the wedding?’
‘They’d think you’d finally come to your senses.’
‘If you’d like to shave it now, I can ask the minister to hold off a minute. I think I have some shaving cream in my sporran, you know.’
He pretends to dig inside his sporran. Inside, there’s his wallet, his hip flask, his Memory Lane panic button. Nowadays, he’d put his mobile phone in there. That was another benefit to being in a memory from 1975. All of his friends sitting at peace, not trying to document the whole day.
‘Dad says to tell you you’re not supposed to do up the bottom button on your waistcoat,’ Agnes says, still inspecting him. ‘Gentlemen don’t do up the bottom button.’
‘Is that right? Gentlemen don’t do it up, aye? How would Ronnie know?’
That makes her smile, just like John knew it would. He had tried a few different responses over the course of the many times he’d repeated this day, but that seemed to be the one she liked best. And how would Ronnie know? He hadn’t said that at the actual wedding. He’d called Ronnie something along the lines of a ‘stupid bastard’ and the minister had overheard and coughed to show how displeased he was that John had sworn inside the church. Agnes hadn’t been best pleased either. One of these times he’s going to remember to ask Ronnie why a gentleman isn’t supposed to do up the bottom button of his waistcoat.
The minister starts talking and John scans the crowd. Everyone in their best attire. So funny how fashion changes over the years. Even John can admit it all seems a bit dated now. But now isn’t now, now is then. Hell, half of this stuff might be back ‘in’, out in the real world. There are parts of Edinburgh John walks through sometimes and he honestly doesn’t know if he’s travelled back in time.
No matter how long he stays in this memory, he needs to remember that this isn’t the real world. It’s important that he remembers. Otherwise, going back will be terrible. He had seen it happen to others. Clients who had stayed too long and couldn’t face coming back. That’s why they had put the twelve hour limit in place. For everyone but him, of course. He was a special case.
The board members had been delighted with the twelve hour limit actually. The shorter the memories, the more money they could make.
The longer this goes on, the harder it is to come back from, John knows that. But he’s not forgetting about the real world. When he feels himself slipping, he thinks about stepping out of Memory Lane on to the Royal Mile. Hearing the rumble of taxi wheels over the cobbles. Feeling the wind blow over his ears.
‘Will you, Agnes Irene McDuff, take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until you are parted by death?’
Listening back now, it seems to John the ‘parted by death’ line was a bit morbid and could’ve easily been omitted. But things were different back then. It wasn’t like now, where the couple decides everything, gets to write out the vows and put in their own little jokes. The minister said what the minister always said and he wasn’t going to learn new lines just for you. Weddings were impersonal affairs. Getting married was about the least special thing two people could do.
‘I will,’ Agnes says, and smiles at John.
He tries to take it all in, the last time she smiled at him before she became his wife. Every crinkle of skin around her lips and nose. The fact that she’s putting her tongue to the roof of her mouth because she thinks it brings out her jawline. The look in her eye that tells him she’s truly happy and isn’t thinking about anything else but this moment.
John misses some of what the minister says but hears:
‘…parted by death?’
And it’s his turn. He’s attempted jokes at this point in the past. They never go down well.
‘I will.’
Someone lets out a sarcastic ‘Way!’ from the crowd and John can’t turn quickly enough to see who it is. The minister brings the vows to a close, then gives John permission to kiss Agnes. Again, he has always found that a strange tradition. Did John need the minister’s permission to kiss her? Would he have been in trouble with the big man upstairs if he’d went in for a smooch without clearing it with the church first? John hasn’t spoken to the big man in quite some time.
With the minister’s blessing, he kisses Agnes. The kind of kiss you give your new wife when all your friends and family are watching. A safe one.
‘Hello, Mrs Valentine,’ he says to her.
He really wishes he had said this to her the first time. The real time. But that kind of smooth patter never came to John naturally, and he was too old now to believe it ever would. He has needed all these redos just to come up with ‘Hello, Mrs Valentine’, and even that isn’t exactly something out of a Ben Elton script. It doesn’t matter now, he supposes. This doesn’t really count, does it? Agnes won’t ever hear these new words. Just this representation of her in the memory. This combination of what he remembers about her and how the Memorize technology thinks she would react to things.
‘Oh God,’ Agnes says. ‘My hands are shaking, John.’
‘You did fine, love. That’s the hardest part over.’
‘I’m not so sure. I need to be your wife now.’
‘Fair point. And until we’re parted by death, the minister made that bit quite clear.’
This brings out her laugh. Her wonderful laugh. John can never tell if she laughs because his mind believes she would have, or whether the technology believes she would have. That’s how he had designed Memorize, so the clients got the best experience possible. It was just an added bonus that they could charge a ridiculous fee for this kind of realism.
But John isn’t paying anything for reliving this memory again and again, not in terms of money, at least.
Hannah - Edinburgh, 2019
The pen isn’t out of ink. Hannah can clearly see loads of the fucking stuff sitting right there inside the fucking clear tube, and yet when she presses it to the paper it barely squirts out a full stop. The pen is a liar.
‘Give up the fucking ink,’ she whispers to it.
She tests it again, digging it into her palm, until it comes to life and marks dark blue lines up and down the fleshy part of her hand.
‘And you’re sure you don’t want me to make you up a lunch to take in?’ Hannah’s mum says. ‘There’s a packet of cold meat open in the fridge. Marks and Spencer’s.’
Hannah doesn’t hear her, not properly, as she fills in the final details on the pre-contract Memory Lane sent her through the post. She had meant to do it last night but Sydney was fussy so she ended up sitting with him, watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on mute while he went in and out of sleep.
Have you ever created/joined/communicated with any radical terrorist organisations which attempted to or are currently attempting to overthrow one or several governments? Y / N
She wonders if this question has ever caught out a terrorist. Someone who wants to overthrow the government, or several governments, but thinks it’s only fair to let their new employer know. She resists circling the Y for a laugh and circles the N.
‘What was that, Mum?’ Hannah asks.
Behind her, her mum tears a banana from the bunch and hangs the rest back on the hook of the fruit bowl. Moving back in with her parents after Sydney was born had been good for Hannah money-wise, but not great everything-else-wise. For one thing, life has become one never-ending sequence of her mum forcing her to eat the fruit in the fruit bowl so it doesn’t go to waste, then her mum buying a whole load of new fruit the minute it’s empty. She finds she can’t even enjoy the fruit now, for fear of the fruit to come.
‘I asked, did you want a lunch made up?’ her mum says again.
‘Nah,’ Hannah says. ‘I’ll go out on my break and get something. It’s my first day, I dunno where the fridge is yet. I don’t want to be sitting there during the induction worrying about the ham piece in my bag stinking the room out.’
‘Turning her nose up at my M&S ham, very good. I’ll get the cheap stuff next time.’
Hannah turns over to the second page of the questionnaire.
Have you ever recreationally taken any hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs? Y / N
Again, Hannah wonders how many people own up to this sort of thing. She had smoked weed with Liam in halls during first year, but it didn’t make her hallucinate: it just made her sleepy, or on one night during Freshers, get super paranoid about the size of her knuckles. They’re all looking at my knuckles, Liam! I’m never shaking hands with anyone ever again!
She never touched anything like that after she found out she was pregnant with Sydney. He arrived during her second year and now she can’t imagine touching anything like that again. Maybe that makes her boring. That’s definitely what her friends seem to think of her now. She circles N and moves to the next question.
‘What’s the job again?’ her mum asks, coming to sit with her at the table.
Hannah’s mum squeezes the banana from the bottom to open it. It’s one of her strange eating habits that Hannah and her dad have long since given up questioning. It’s how the apes do it, and if there’s one thing apes know about, it’s eating bananas. Just need to watch out for black spider eggs. They lay them in bananas, look it up.
‘It’s called Memory Lane, it’s a memory clinic just off the Royal Mile. I hadn’t actually heard of it until the job went up on Indeed.’
‘I meant, what’s your job title? Samantha was asking.’
‘Technically, I’m a “Retrieval Assistant”, but don’t ask me what that means. Hopefully, I’ll know after today. Who’s Samantha, by the way?’
‘She’s the one that brings your dad his DPD deliveries.’
‘I didn’t realise we were that close with the DPD driver.’
‘We got her a bottle of wine and a box of Matchmakers at Christmas.’
‘Matchmakers? What flavour?’
‘Salted caramel.’
‘Say no more, she’s basically family then. What about the Hermes driver?’
Her mum snorts.
‘He’ll get a lump of coal across the head and he’ll like it.’
Can you think of any reason, not previously mentioned, why you would not be a suitable candidate to work at Memory Lane? Y / N
It would be easier to answer this question if they’d given her more information about what the job actually entails. She knows it’s a memory clinic and she knows she shouldn’t have got the job, but somehow she did.
The interview had gone okay, not great, but okay. The woman had asked generic, do you work well in a team style questions and Hannah had provided generic, well, actually funny that you mention that, yes I do work well in a team competency-based answers. The interview was held in the Starbucks on Princes Street which, of course, made her think it might be one of those fake jobs that she would later speak about on an ITV documentary, but the website and everything else was legit.
The woman who’d interviewed her, Philippa, had explained the security clearances and background checks to get into the actual Memory Lane building were extremely thorough and it wasn’t worth carrying them out just for interviewees. Hannah was impressed at their ability to make the job application process even more degrading than usual. They wouldn’t even let her in the building, just fantastic.
Hannah had messaged her friend, Erin, about the job advert. Erin had assured her that all these fancy places do the same these days: make the job sound super vague, make everyone think they’re suitable for the role, never rule anyone out for having a certain degree. That way they don’t have to specify that they actually want someone with a First in Computer Science who went to St Andrews (because Oxbridge graduates don’t have to come up to Scotland unless they’re desperate or their dad’s stepping down as CEO somewhere).
And yet Hannah, with her 2:2 in English Studies from Stirling, got the job. Or one of the jobs. Philippa had never stated exactly how many people they wanted to take on. Again, Hannah thinks, this is probably done not to discourage people. If there had only been one role, she’d probably not have applied at all. She’s never been number one at anything. She circles the N.
As she moves to the final question, she hears her dad’s unmistakable, thunderous footsteps coming down the stairs. He bursts into the kitchen, Sydney in his arms.
‘There’s Mummy!’ he says, pointing at Hannah, a silly lilt to his voice. ‘Yes, that’s right, that’s your mummy, Sydney, and guess what, she’s got a job. Yes, she’s got a job, can you believe it? Me either! But this very silly company called Memory… something or other, have agreed to give her a job and money, isn’t that silly of them? So, it’s just going to be me and you in the house during the day while the women are at work. The way it should be, if you ask me, and we’re going to have so much fun watching… Dora the Explorer!’
Sydney claps his hands and nods his head.
‘Dora!’ he confirms.
‘And Mr Tumble!’
‘Mr Tumble!’
‘And The Sopranos!’
Sydney doesn’t know how to respond to this.
‘Okay, well maybe we’ll keep that until you’re five or six.’
Hannah’s dad kneels and puts Sydney down. He toddles over to the corner where his Blaze monster truck toy lies on its side.
‘All set?’ her dad asks. ‘Need any help with the forms?’
‘Nope, all sorted.’
‘Good, ‘cause I can never remember your blood type... or birthday... or name. Anna, was it?’
He joins them at the table and pretends to wipe a tear from his eye.
‘Y’know they always tell you your kids grow up fast,’ he says. ‘One minute they’re going off to uni, the next they’re knocked up and coming back to live with you. And I guess you never really believe they’re going to get a proper job with an English degree. Sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional.’
‘Very good,’ Hannah says. ‘Were you rehearsing that upstairs?’
‘You can’t rehearse these kind of emotions, Hannah.’
Hannah walks over to where Sydney is sitting flipping through a Paw Patrol book, the Blaze toy abandoned after twelve seconds. She crouches by his side.
‘Mummy’s off to work now, Syd,’ she says. ‘You going to be a good boy for Grandad?’
Sydney nods, not taking his eyes off the dogs on the pages. Hannah stands back up. She’s not sure what she expected. That he’d weep and scream and demand that he couldn’t live another moment if his mummy wasn’t by his side? She didn’t want that, she didn’t want any reason that would stop her getting out the door. But would a few tears really hurt him?
‘Don’t worry,’ Hannah’s mum says. ‘He probably doesn’t think you’re actually, properly leaving. The real test is the second day.’
‘She’s right,’ her dad adds. ‘Sydney doesn’t believe you’ve managed to get a job either.’
Hannah grabs her bag from the counter and her jacket from the cupboard. In the mirror, she quickly checks her hair and face haven’t gone to shit since she sorted them fifteen minutes ago. She wasn’t sure how big to go with the make-up, since she’s not sure exactly what the average day in this job is going to be like. If she needs to submerge herself in one of those water sensory deprivation tanks, she may need a rethink for tomorrow.
‘Have a good day,’ her mum says. ‘And keep me updated on WhatsApp.’
‘I will,’ Hannah replies. ‘You’re working today, aren’t you?’
‘Backshift.’
‘Cool, stay safe. And Dad, don’t be feeding Sydney too many Squashies.’
Her dad is by the toaster, constantly popping the bread in and out of the thing to make sure the toast meets his standard and doesn’t go even the slightest bit past his preferred level of brown.
‘I can’t promise anything,’ he says. ‘Is Liam picking Sydney up tonight?’
‘He is, but I’ll be back by then.’
‘Grand,’ he says, switching back to his high, cutesy voice for Sydney’s benefit. ‘Cause we don’t like your daddy, do we, Sydney? He’s a silly billy, isn’t he?’
‘Dad, don’t slag him off in front of Sydney.’
‘He’ll need to learn his dad’s a waster one day. Forgive me for trying to toughen the boy up.’
Hannah’s not sure that’s an entirely accurate depiction of Liam, but she’s not going to argue. The break-up was relatively amicable, and they’d sorted out childcare without any need for getting third parties involved.
He properly freaked out at first, though. It definitely wasn’t in his plan to get a girl pregnant while he was studying for his Politics exam in his third year at uni. But then Sydney came, and everything changed. No one can resist Sydney. Everyone thinks their baby is the cutest, but Hannah knows for sure.
Hannah’s already opened the door when her mum calls her back.
‘Your forms,’ she says, rushing to the door and handing over the thin bundle of papers.
‘Aw, lifesaver.’
Hannah walks to the bus stop and looks over the papers to make sure she’s completed everything. It’s only then she notices she didn’t answer the final question.
Do you consider yourself a strong person, emotionally speaking? Capable of dealing with clients going through potentially intense memory experiences? Y / N
She doesn’t even know what that question’s asking. She leaves it blank. Surely they won’t care about her missing one question? The 44 arrives and she steps on, tapping her card to pay for her ticket. She goes upstairs and feels lucky to get a window seat. She may have had to move back in with her parents when Sydney was born, and she may have a relatively useless English degree, but she’s got her health, she’s got Sydney, and now she’s on her way to her first grown up job. She’s a grown up and no one can say otherwise. She draws a smiley face in the condensation on the window.
John - Stonecranning, 1975
They say, when you look back on the best days of your life, you only remember the good parts. When you remember an old flame, you remember the walks on the beach, the picnics in the park, the first time you had sex, maybe even the second and third time you had sex. You don’t remember the sand in your shoes, the wasps on your bread, the seemingly never-ending moments when you couldn’t get it up. Whoever ‘they’ are, John thinks they’re right. It wasn’t until he started reliving his wedding day that he realised how much of it was spent standing around, doing nothing at all. And everything stunk of smoke.
‘Okay, and now one with just the groom and the best man.’
Agnes and the rest of the bodies around John shuffle and scoot away from the line of fire of the camera.. Nowadays, the bride and groom are expected to take a trip in the middle of the wedding to go to a loch or some woods and do a lovey-dovey Vogue-cover-style fashion shoot, but back in his day, the side wall of the church was just fine.
Gary comes to stand by John’s side, the pair of them raising a hand to the sky to block out the worst of the sun.
‘Got lucky with the weather, mate,’ Gary says. ‘How you feeling?’
‘Good,’ John says. ‘As long as Agnes is happy, that’s all that matters.’
‘Jeez, she’s got you trained already.’
John and Gary stand with their hands clasped in front of them and smile and squint until they get the thumbs up from the photographer that they can relax. Photographer is probably going a bit far – he was just Agnes’s friend from work, Martin. She only invited him because he owned a camera.
‘That’ll be a nice one,’ Gary says. ‘Once it’s developed, can I get a copy?’
‘You’ll need to ask that Martin fella.’
John doesn’t remember where all the photos ended up. Agnes put up one of the pair of them in the living room, and the big one with all the guests was in a frame in the boxroom. The rest must’ve gone up the loft, then been accidentally chucked out at some point.
Back then, getting your photo taken was nothing to be sniffed at. You’d put on a decent shirt, a tie, sort your hair out. You wouldn’t want to waste film so you’d only get one chance at it. And you wouldn’t even know if it was any good or not until weeks later when you finally got it back from the shop. More often than not someone’s thumb was in the photo or the glare obscured your face. Now all the young ones take a hundred photos a day on their phones. They all think they need to be models. He doesn’t envy that, all the photos, constantly comparing yourself to your pals. He knew he was better looking than his best man, Gary, and he didn’t need comments under a photo to know that.
‘Soon as you’re free,’ Gary says. ‘Find me and I’ll get you your first pint, alright? Don’t take a drink off anyone else before me, promise?’
‘Promise.’
They shake hands and Gary disappears into the crowd. Agnes comes back to him slowly, her steps careful and considered across the grass. Onlookers from the high street gather and watch, delighted. There’s something about a wedding, John thinks, that makes people happy, even if they’re strangers. Everyone all dressed up, particularly in Scotland, with the novelty of kilts.
When he’d been a teenager, he’d hated the idea of kilts. Thought they made men look silly. None of the men in the films he’d see at the picturehouse ever wore kilts. They wore clean, sharp, black suits. He’d been obsessed with the Godfather films back then. He couldn’t imagine Don Corleone sitting at Connie’s wedding in a kilt. That phase had thankfully passed though. By the time the third film came out, the magic was gone, John was in his fifties and none of it seemed quite as cool anymore.
Kilts weren’t even the done thing back then, either. Normally too expensive for your average punter. John’s kilt was foisted on him by his new father-in-law, one of several wedding gifts which weren’t entirely practical but reminded everyone how much money Ronnie had at his disposal.
‘Are you worried about the speech?’ Agnes asks.
‘Gary’s?’ John says. ‘Have you not noticed me tossing and turning during the night?’
The weeks leading up to the big day, Gary had been winding John up no end. Hinting that he would bring up every time he’d made an arse of himself while full of the drink. Like the time he put Wild Night by Van Morrison on the jukebox in The Admiral, got up on the pool table, played the cue like a guitar, put a hole in the fabric with his heel and had to pay fifteen quid for them to get new felt. They never did buy new felt but they kept his fifteen quid.
Gary also hinted that he was going to bring up every girl that John had ever been with. It’ll take me about eight seconds. But John had still been worried, because Agnes really wasn’t a fan of his first girlfriend, Jeanie, who they still saw in the scheme every now and then. John had never thought Gary would have the brass neck to do it. But he did. John’s heard it a lot of times now and it never gets old. Not like him and Gary. They got older and kept on getting older. Gary had died a few years back. John spoke at the funeral. Seven people attended.
‘Nah, I’m kidding,’ John says. ‘I’m sure he’ll be on his best behaviour.’
‘I swear to God, if he mentions her,I’ll make him eat that speech.’
‘I think she’s here actually. I’m sure I saw her throwing rice as we walked out.’
‘Is that… is that a joke? I didn’t know I had married Tommy Cooper.’
‘I’m better-looking than him.’
‘That’s highly debatable.’
They kiss and the wedding party cheers and claps. Martin begins dismantling the camera and the onlookers wander off, back in the direction of the high street to continue getting their messages.
The Stonecranning high street is a sort of upside-down L shape. A steep slope then a left turn which takes you to the Roger Davidson Memorial clock tower at the end of the road. It’s always been a small town, never in with a chance of a Royal visit or anything like that, but the residents are proud of their clock tower. You can even climb the stairs to the roof if it’s a nice day and you can sneak up without getting caught. Well, in 1975 you could. John hasn’t tried it in a long time.
‘That’s the bus here,’ someone shouts.
The coach appears at the end of the road and drives up to the side of the church, coming to a stop with a rusty sigh. The guests get into a loose queue and file onto the bus, while John and Agnes hang back to get on last.
‘I’m looking forward to this meal,’ his old friend, Frank, says, being ushered towards the coach by his wife, Nina. ‘Mine’s is the beef, John. Can you make sure I get beef?’
John gives him a thumbs up.
‘Sure, Frank, it’s my number one priority. You going to keep that?’
John points at the tin stashed under Frank’s arm. The tin with the scatter money inside.
‘Och, there’s me nearly away with the scatter money. Lucky you remembered!’
On their wedding day there hadn’t been a scatter, because Frank, who was in charge of the scatter, got on the bus to the reception with the scatter money tucked safely under his arm. By the time they all realised, it was too late to go back, and the car park at the community hall was full and there were concerns the coins might scratch people’s cars if they went ahead with it there. Later in the night, the staff had to tell Frank he couldn’t keep paying for his drinks with coppers.
John takes the tin from Frank and walks to the front of the church, where the kids who haven’t given up hope still linger and perk up at the sight of him.
‘Everybody ready?’ he shouts.
They all whoop and cheer and bend their knees slightly to give them a faster start. He opens the tin and shoogles the heavy coins out. They land with a metallic smatter and the kids rush around his feet like hungry pigeons.
It’s a shame the scatter never actually happened on the day. It’s just a little thing, but all these little things add up over time. That’s the beauty of Memory Lane. It lets John live out all the little things he had to miss about this day, or any other day.
Not that Memorize was designed for such changes though. Its main purpose is for the client to relive the day exactly as they remember it. But a little change here and there is fine. That’s what The Valentine Variable is for. That’s the vital bit of code which allows the client to change parts of the memory more to their liking. John hadn’t planned to name it after himself but his son, Michael, insisted.
John follows Agnes to the coach, leaving behind the sound of kids scraping coppers off concrete.
Hannah - Edinburgh, 2019
She gets off the bus on South Bridge and takes a right when she gets to the Royal Mile. At this time of morning it’s mainly people on their way to work or tourists who managed to get out their beds early. The Mile is the kind of street you can walk up and down a thousand times and still find yourself saying things like, I haven’t seen that shop before, is that just opened? or Look at the state of that tat.
Memory Lane sent her a little map with a red line telling her where to turn off the Mile. It only takes her five minutes to reach it. A dim, shadowed alleyway, carved into the thick stone of the street. She walks through to find it brighter on the other side. A small square, dotted with a few, what look to be residential doors, and a large glass façade to the left. Its futuristic design doesn’t belong here.There’s no Memory Lane signage, but Hannah’s confident this must be the place.
Hannah hates first days. The feeling of being fresh meat. Inductions that cover health and safety and corporate policy but don’t cover actual relevant things, like when she should take her tea break or which is the closest roll shop.
She presses the button on the intercom and waits until a voice responds.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, I’m Hannah Greenshields. I’m here for my induction.’
‘Hi, Hannah, come through. Use your badge to scan through the next door.’
There’s a buzz and she presses against the heavy glass door. She walks through a small entrance area with two chairs and a potted plant before reaching another glass door. At the side of the door, a small black sensor. They had sent her her work pass in advance, dropped off by a courier. They even let her choose which photo she wanted online, rather than ambushing her on her first day. She taps her pass against the sensor and the little light blinks from red to green and she walks through.
This brings her to the reception desk, where a smiling guy, probably a couple of years younger than her, peeks his head over the top of the ledge.
‘Hannah, hi,’ he says. ‘Welcome to Memory Lane. I’m Cillian.’
As her dad kept reminding her, this is her first ‘grown up’ job, and even though she’s just in the door, it definitely feels like it. It’s the first workplace she’s ever walked into that wasn’t in the retail or service industry. Where the first colleague she met didn’t tell her to get out while she still can. Where they actually knew she was due to arrive. This guy, Cillian, is actually smiling, and it doesn’t seem like he’s doing it in a sarcastic way or because his manager is nearby.
‘Hi, Cillian,’ she says. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘Did you find us okay?
‘Yeah, it was fine. I live in Gorgie. I’ve never been through that little alleyway before, though.’
‘Right? The amount of little nooks in Edinburgh you walk past all the time and don’t even notice. Have you got your pre-contract and the questionnaire we sent you?’
She fetches it out her bag and slides it over to him.
‘Perfect,’ he says. ‘It’ll be Philippa that’s doing your induction today. She’ll be along soon, if you just want to take a seat over there.’
‘Thanks.’
Philippa was the one who interviewed her, so she already has at least two people she can name without having to apologise and awkwardly ask.
She turns and walks to the waiting area, where four seats flank another tall plant, surrounded by more thick glass windows, the morning sunshine beaming through and making every surface warm. In one of the chairs sits a man, reading a magazine. He has a Paul Rudd vibe about him, where she wouldn’t feel comfortable guessing his age.
‘Hi,’ he says, moving a hand from the magazine to smooth his tie. ‘I’m Xander.’
‘Hannah.’
They shake hands. Hannah leaves the seat beside him free and sits in the one next to that. She likes to think she is adept at social niceties.
‘Are you here for…?’ he says.
‘The induction. You?’
‘Yep. Congrats.’
‘Thanks, you too.’
So at least two of them were hired after the Starbucks interviews. That makes her feel a little more relaxed. Memory Lane aren’t pinning all their hopes on her.
‘You might think I’m stupid,’ Xander says. ‘But… do you know exactly what the job is? My wife keeps asking and I honestly don’t remember if she told us during the interview. Did Philippa interview you too?’
‘She did,’ Hannah says. ‘And, oh my God, I am so glad you said that. I’ve no clue what the job is. She definitely didn’t tell us.’
‘And I felt like it was my fault, ‘cause at the end when she said “Do you have any questions for me?”, I was just so glad I had got through the interview, I wasn’t thinking about what to ask. I considered asking her to buy me a caramel latte but thought that might be pushing it.’
Hannah laughs. So that’s Cillian on the desk, Philippa taking the induction and… oh God. She’s forgotten this guy’s name already. How is that possible? What an idiot. She tells herself to calm down and she’ll hear it when someone else says it. Not that it helps with the sweat that’s started to seep down her back.
Two men come in the entrance. One is tall, older, and says hello to Cillian at the desk before disappearing through a nearby door. The other introduces himself at the desk like Hannah did, then joins her and whatshisname in the waiting area. She’d put him in his early thirties.
‘Fellow newbies?’ the new man says, taking the end seat.
Her and whatshisname both nod.
‘I’m Andreas,’ he says.
‘Hannah.’
‘Xander.’
Xander, of course it’s Xander. Like Xander from Buffy, she thinks. She makes a mental note not to forget his name again. Then she makes a further mental note to watch an episode of Buffy when she gets back home tonight. One of the happier episodes. Something to look forward to during her first day.
The trio all shake hands then settle into a comfortable silence, checking phones, picking up and discarding magazines from the table, staring at murky reflections in the windows. There’s a radio playing quietly somewhere over at reception.
Xander rubs one of the plant leaves between his fingers.
‘What kind d’you think this is?’ he asks.
‘Ikea?’ Hannah answers.
‘I think you’re right.’
They both smile, but Andreas doesn’t. On the one hand, she feels sorry for him, that he arrived last and her and Xander already have this great bond. On the other, he should’ve arrived earlier.
‘So, do either of you know what the job entails exactly?’ Andreas asks.
There’s no time to reply, as Cillian arrives next to them.
‘All ready folks?’ he says. ‘I’ll just take you through to the induction room.’
They follow him past the desk and through a door, into a long white corridor. Everything feels clean, from the shiny door handles to the gleaming laminate flooring. It reminds Hannah of one of those private hospitals you see in TV adverts that no one born after 1980 can afford, but without the hospital smell, or the older people who smile and don’t seem to have any medical problems.
There’s another set of doors at the end of the corridor. Through the little windows they can see other staff members go by. Most of them pause to peer through and inspect the new recruits. A woman waves and Hannah waves back, the only one to raise her hand.
Cillian opens the third door on the left and ushers them inside. A standard conference room lies in darkness until they activate the motion sensor lights when they stride across the floor. The long table stretches almost the length of the room. The three of them take the furthest three seats from the projection on the wall, like schoolkids keeping their distance from the teacher. Hannah would’ve sat at the front but if the other two aren’t then she isn’t either.
‘There’s water on the table,’ Cillian tells them. ‘Philippa will just be a second. If anyone needs anything, I’ll be round at reception.’
He leaves and closes the door behind him. The room is quiet and without windows, though Hannah can hear the faint hum of the projector on the ceiling, which is displaying a slide on the wall. Memory Lane, where your past is our future. She’s not quite sure what that’s supposed to mean. We’re making money off your memory problems would probably be a more honest tagline, but she doesn’t imagine that would go down well with clients.
Come on, Hannah, she tells herself, don’t judge until you hear what you’re going to be doing. She checks her watch. 9.17 a.m. She hopes Sydney is doing okay. It’s his first time without her or Liam since, well, since she can remember. A whole day with just his grandad. What a fucking riot that’ll be.
‘Some strange questions in that questionnaire, or was that just me?’ Xander asks, and Hannah’s glad someone’s finally had the guts to fill the silence.
‘They asked if we did psychedelic drugs in the past,’ Andreas replies. ‘They didn’t say anything about us doing them in the future. Nice to keep my options open.’
The relaxed, conversational atmosphere that was threatening to break out dissolves the second the door opens and Philippa walks into the room.
When Hannah met her that day in Starbucks, she thought they both seemed out of place in there. Hannah had never felt she belonged in trendy coffee shops. She only liked coffee that was at least fifty percent milk, for one thing, and she couldn’t study with the sounds of machines whirring constantly. Philippa looked like a woman who owned a fashion brand in a bad yet rewatchable 90s comedy, completely out of place in the shop, with her black and white fur coat and Cruella DeVille vibes.
‘Darlings,’ she says, gliding across the floor to stand at the front, next to the laptop hooked up to the screen. ‘My three angels, yes you are. Glad you all made it. Oh, boy, what a morning already, sorry I’m late. If you ever come across a client called Walter McQueen, don’t let him open his mouth. I’m kidding. But don’t.’
The three new starts all shake their heads and make non-committal noises to signal she shouldn’t worry about being late.
‘First of all, let me say,’ she goes on. ‘Congratulations. You know how many applicants we had? Well, let’s just say it was… a lot. I’m not going to put a number on it but… it was two thousand, three hundred and twenty-six, give or take. So, basically, after being the winning sperm to get to the egg, this has been the luckiest moment of your life. I hope you all appreciate that.’
Philippa wiggles her finger over the laptop pad and the cursor springs into life on the screen.
‘Okay, let’s get this show on the road,’ she says, taking a sip from her coffee cup. ‘Mmm, that’s the stuff. I hate to be one of those “I’m not me until I’ve had my morning coffee” people, but… I’m not me until I’ve had my fourth morning coffee. Right, yes, let’s begin the induction.’
She clicks the mouse and the projection on the wall changes from the title page to a second slide.
Welcome to Memory Lane.
You are here because you have shown yourself to be the best suited candidates, so please be confident that you’re right for the role.
By the end of this induction, you should be well versed in our company and our values, and fully equipped to start your journey at Memory Lane.
Hannah feels a bit dizzy at the thought of somehow being one of the top three people out of two thousand, three hundred and twenty-something candidates. Her interview didn’t even go that well. It went okay but not amazing. Is it possible that everyone else out there is just as terrified and shit at interviews as her?
‘Before I go any further,’ Philippa says. ‘I should warn you. You’ve probably realised that we kept a lot of the details of the job under wraps during the recruitment process. This was done on purpose. What I’m about to tell you is not necessarily secret information. The government is well aware of our business and we share resources with them happily. But it may take a few minutes for you to accept that what we do at Memory Lane is real, and that’s totally fine. I didn’t believe it at first when I joined the company. Okay? Yes? So, let’s begin.’
