The Peacock Cloak

point in it unless I write everything down, is there? That’s why I wrote down about that porn movie I watched back on day 39 (and not just because there was a 99.1% chance that you’d remember it anyway, ha ha!!). If you remembered a thing and could see I hadn’t written it down, you’d wonder, wouldn’t you, what else I’d done that you didn’t remember? And that would worry you wouldn’t it?
    (Weird. I was going to say it would certainly worry me !)
    What did I do today? I lay in bed until 9 watching TV and playing screen games. I got up and went for a pool swim before breakfast. Then I had croissants and coffee and headed off down to town to get myself a new pair of swimming shorts, for no reason except something to do (seeing as the shorts can’t come with me to Lutania). I had another coffee in town and sat outside the café watching people go by: pretty girls on vacation, and not so pretty ones, migrant workers cleaning the streets and collecting the garbage. At one point a fire engine went by. They’re yellow here, for some reason, not red. Then I walked to that cliff-top place to get some lunch, and then back to the hotel to watch a movie.
    The movie was called War Hero. If you’ve forgotten it, which you probably have, don’t worry, you’ve not missed much. And then…

    Stephen read and re-read Day 29’s entry over and over. He could remember the beginning of that day, lying in bed watching TV. He remembered the croissants too, and the swimming shorts (they were green) and coffee in town, and an achingly pretty girl who walked by in a white bikini top and tiny shorts. But that was it. The yellow fire engine, the cliff-top lunch, the movie War Hero – he couldn’t remember them at all.
    And, worse than that, he couldn’t remember the frame of mind in which he wrote the entry. Why this coquettish teasing of his future self, offering reassurance but undermining it, acknowledging his fears yet deliberately provoking them? It seemed that the less this past self of his expected to be remembered, the less it cared about the person it would become.
    And that was Day 29. Even when he was writing that diary entry, he knew there was a small outside chance that he’d remember doing so. When it came to Day 28 that chance would have gone.
    Yes, and there was something else he remembered about Day 29. He remembered that when he was getting out of the pool to go for breakfast, he’d thought about the next day, Day 28, the day when forgetting was a certainty, and he’d felt a strange, dark thrill. And he remembered – he was pretty sure he remembered – that he had spoken out loud to that darkness.
    “No, not yet,” he’d said to it, as if to a demanding child.

    June 10th. Day 28: Oblivion time. No one can see me, not even you my future self. You’ll remember yourself before this time, and yourself after it, but not this. So who am I, eh? Who the crap am I?
    Well at least I can make a fool of myself and know I won’t be ashamed about it later. Not as long as I don’t write any of it down here, anyway. Ha ha. Only kidding.
    No point practicing my Luto now.
    Anyway, here’s my exciting day. Breakfast. Pool. Chess. TV channel hopping. Solo Agent. Lunch. Town. Beach. Coffee + watched girls. TV. Dinner. 3 beers. Movie: Casino Royale (3rd remake). Solo Agent. Bed.
    Yee-ha! Living the dream!

    There was a kind of surliness creeping in. The tone was of an adolescent asked what he had done at school that day. This became more evident as time went on.

    June 20th, Day 18: I’m sick of this diary. Why am I doing it? It’s for your benefit not mine. Okay, okay, keep your hair on. You’re me, I know, I know. Yawn.
    Breakfast. Beach. Bar. Lunch. Movie (too boring to remember its name). Pool. Beer. Dinner. TV. Solo Agent. Chess. TV. Bed. That do?

    The thing about surly adolescents was that, when pressed to tell, they only told the empty shell. What was inside, what was real to them, they kept back.

    Stephen’s Day 40 was marked at the Station by a stiff little farewell event. Leader Wilson made a speech. Everyone drank lukewarm Lutanian wine out of plastic cups and tried to think of nice things to say to a member of staff they hadn’t liked all that much. His colleagues tried to make polite conversation with him about what he’d be doing next. Helen Fu, who was one of those people who feel the need to keep a group together, hugged Stephen and apologised for nagging and trying to organise him. Stephen