Chapter One
His alarm pierced through his peaceful sleep, snapping him out of his slumber. His arm stretched out and clumsily slammed down on the snooze button as he lifted the pillow over his head to block out the harsh sunlight, lambasting himself for forgetting to shut the curtains the previous night.
As the alarm pierced through the silence again he hauled himself into a sitting position, switching the alarm off. Reaching into his bedside drawer he did as he did every morning for the past few years. He took out his tiny notebook that Dr Daniels had given him. Jot down everything he remembered he was told, but as he flicked through the empty pages his heart sank. Never had it occurred to him that there would be nothing at all, not since the first day he got out of hospital just over six years ago. If it weren't for this habitual morning ritual the book would be gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere, forgotten about entirely.
Retrograde Amnesia Dr Daniels had called it, and as far as he was concerned that's all they knew for certain. The doctors had been stumped when he said he no recollection of his own past, and even more so when they found he had the ability to be create and keep new memories. They spoke in great detail about nerve pathways and frontal lobes but none of them really understood. They had just handed him a notebook and sent him on his way in the hope that he would remember something eventually. The only contact he got from the hospital now was the odd occasion they would call as some doctor was hoping to put him in a medical journal. He had always politely declined.
He looked down at the notebook and gently fondled the sole word on the page. Carla. That was it. No surname, no image of a face or a remembrance of a smell, he didn't even know what she may have been to him if anything. It was the feeling he got when he heard the name, the way that one word just fell so effortlessly off his lips. Like he had spent his entire lifetime uttering that one word.
He had attempted to date over the past few years but nothing ever developed into something more serious. Conversation on a date dried up fast when there was nothing to say about himself, he couldn't remember what he did, what he liked, music, sport, it was all a blank. And whilst women found his story of amnesia somewhat endearing, if not just a line, the novelty soon wore off and all that was left was awkward silences. He'd given up eventually, finding he actually enjoyed being on his own more than the constant explanations of his mental state. His friend Joe had attempted to make light of his situation by suggesting he could completely reinvent himself, start a fresh, but this wasn't good enough for John. All he wanted was to be found.
What kind of person must he have been? That no one was interested to see where he had gone or what had happened to him? No one it seemed had cared enough to look for him in the last six years, what had he done that was so bad?
He made his way through to the kitchen, popping the leaky kettle on. Everything in the flat was breaking or broken, having cobbled together things from old charity shops to second hand goods from mates at work. It's not easy furnishing a flat with no money, starting from scratch at whatever age he was.
The walls were bare with only two exceptions, a wall filled with shelves of vinyl records and a solitary photo on the mantle piece that Joe's wife had insisted on him having to brighten the place up. A picture of himself with Joe and his daughter Caitlin. Even though it had been six years he still felt this was a temporary life. That one day he'd remember his own family, wife and child maybe, and he'd return to that home. What was the point in spending a fortune here? But the longer time went on the lonelier this flat felt. And as one woman claimed the bare walls just made him seem like some kind of serial killer.
There was a knock at the door snapping him out of his trance. A tall gangly man walked through the door as soon as it was opened for him, heading straight to the fridge.
"Mate you've got no beers in," he complained.
"Make yourself at home Joe," he sighed, setting himself back onto the sofa.
"I've got them missing persons reports, came in first thing this morning," he threw a folder at him. "Have you only just woken up?"
Liam grunted in reply, spreading the missing person reports across the kitchen counter.
Joe had interviewed him for the Wetherfield Gazette after his accident. It was him who had named him John Smith, because apparently he was most likely to be John Smith than any other name. Although the article was never published, no one wanted to read about a nobody that no one had come forward to find, Joe took him under his wing nevertheless, finding him a job in HR at the newspaper and a place to stay.
More recently Joe had picked up the missing persons ads that were sent into the paper for him in the hope that someone, somewhere had finally reported him missing. But today proved no different from any other, his picture never came up.
"No joy?"
"Nope," John sighed, scanning through the folder again to see if he had missed anything.
"No offence mate but do you not think that after this amount of time if someone was going to put forward a missing person report they would have done it by now?"
"You never know, someone may have woken up this morning and thought 'hey, I swear I had a son six years ago, I wonder what happened to him'," John replied dryly, his eyes still rechecking the reports for anything that matched his own description.
"Right mate, grab your coat."
"Why?"
"We're getting you out of your head, you can't just sit here on your day off flicking through the missing persons ads, it's tragic."
"I won't."
"Come on, I need a pint and you need the company."