Forget to Remember

her purse and called a number. “Hello, Janet? Louise. You’ll never guess who I ran into at the Queens Arms…Aiko…I have no idea. She’s apparently lost her mind. She can’t even remember you or me…All right, I’ll send her over.”
    Louise disconnected. “I have to get back to my party, but Janet wants you to go to her cottage right now. Since you can’t remember anything, I’m going to give you specific directions on how to get there.”

    CHAPTER 29
    Louise’s directions were very precise. Carol was standing in front of the cottage within five minutes. The sun had set, but she could see with the aid of a couple of outside lights, including the light beside the front door, that the cottage was made of brick with a new dark brown door and matching trim. The steeply sloping roof was slate. It looked familiar. Something stirred inside her. A memory, perhaps? No, it couldn’t be.
    She was on the verge of finding out things about Cynthia. But, somehow, she and Cynthia had merged and become the same person. She knew that couldn’t be true. Maybe she was losing her mind. She was afraid of what was happening, but she couldn’t stop it. She went up to the door and rang the bell.
    The door was opened almost immediately, and a tomboyish woman with short hair like Louise’s swept Aiko into her arms. They hugged for what seemed like an eternity while Janet said, “You poor dear. What has happened to you?”
    Carol couldn’t say anything.
    Janet finally broke off the hug. “Come in and tell me everything.”
    She dragged Carol into the small house. In the hands of an irresistible force, Carol didn’t try to resist. Janet led her to a glass-enclosed room at the back that looked out onto a garden, sat her down in a padded chair, and poured her a glass of wine. Janet, who’d already been enjoying a glass, sat opposite her.
    Janet had the look of an athlete. She was trim but not skinny, and her movements showed a hidden strength. Carol could easily believe she walked the End-to-end. Her brown hair was lighter than Carol’s, and she had freckles that suggested her light skin was at odds with the sun. She also had a ready smile and an attentive look on her face.
    Carol took a sip of wine and burst into tears. She didn’t know where to start. Janet waited patiently. “Take your time.”
    “I have amnesia. I’m using the name Carol, but it isn’t my real name.”
    “All right, amnesia explains a lot. Keep going.”
    “I don’t think I’m Aiko or Cynthia.”
    “Same girl. Why not?”
    Faced with a good listener, the story erupted from Carol in a flood of words. She started from when she was found unconscious in the Dumpster and covered all the major events since then. Janet didn’t interrupt. Occasionally, she gave verbal nods such as ‘uh huh,’ encouraging Carol to go on with her story. When Carol came right up to the present moment, she collapsed in her chair, exhausted.
    Janet stood and refilled Carol’s glass. Then she sat down again and thought for a moment. “Wow. You’ve been through a lot. No wonder you’re confused. We’ll get to the issue of your identity in a moment. First, let me tell you what I know about what happened to Aiko, as she wanted to be called here, before she went back to the States.
    “I met Aiko two years ago when I was in London on holiday, through a mutual friend. Her boyfriend, Jacques, had just been killed in an auto accident, and she was at loose ends. I had finished teaching the summer term and had always wanted to walk the End-to-end, but I had never found the right partner to do it with. Aiko was young and in good shape. She had nothing tying her to London and didn’t want to go back to the States for reasons I’ll get to, so we did it together.”
    “You walked nine hundred miles together?”
    “Yes, although the route we followed wasn’t quite that far. We walked north to south for the rest of the summer, starting at John O’Groats in Northern Scotland, until I had to return here for the autumn term. We walked some more during school breaks, but we didn’t finish until the Christmas break. Fortunately, we were walking the southern part of the route in Cornwall by then, which tends to be a bit warmer than the rest of the UK, but we still got cold upon occasion.”
    “I would love to do that.” Carol caught herself. “Sorry. Go on.”
    “We stayed in B&Bs and saw the country. We slogged through Scotland’s rain, looked for Nessie on the north