In that bag there were also three CDs, a selection of magazines, April 15th's Daily Mail and two concert tickets.
The three CDs were all mine. Two albums and a single, which I'd made in the last year and a half. I listened to them, and I had to admit, they were fabulous. I'd been on a world tour.
Two days ago, I'd been involved in a car accident when I was driving from the recording studio to my apartment in London. Gareth, my doctor, explained to me that I had partial amnesia. In 2008, I'd fallen down some stairs when I was with Lauren but nothing bad had happened. It was just that the only memories I had were before that time.
They gave me my handbag, as well.
I had a new phone since I last remembered which I couldn't work, and lots of new make up. Seriously, there was loads of it, expensive to by the looks of things. I searched my purse and found more money than I'd ever seen in my life, and several credit cards. There was also a small diary, which I went through. Every day was taken up; I couldn't make much sense of the abbreviations written in what I recognised as my writing, which had barely changed. I seemed to have random people's names scrawled across every day, though I hardly say the name of anyone I recognised, except for 'Ronnie, 16:50' on one Wednesday. It surprised me that I seemed to have lost touch with everyone but Ronnie, we'd never been particularly close back at Britannia High, and I'd only really talked to her because everyone else did.
The names that came up were most were Adam, Paisley and Yvonne, who I didn't have any idea who they were. I found them all in my address book, I had all their numbers. I wasn't allowed to ring anyone in the hospital. I wasn't sure I could have got the courage to call any of these people anyway, not yet.
I wasn't allowed out of the hospital yet, and I wasn't allowed visitors until a few days. All I did to pass the time was talk to doctors and nurses and learn about my life, the two years I'd lost. By the end of my first week there, I could sing along with most of the songs on my album.
It was really, really weird. It felt like I'd just been moved from my old life to the life of this new, perfect, amazing person. I looked different; I'd grown my hair and lost weight. My skin seemed more flawless, my lips fuller, my eyes larger. I was beautiful. There was something about me in every magazine, all the doctors and nurses knew who I was, and not just because I was a patient. Because it was me they heard on the radio on the way to work, and me that was wearing the stuff they'd bought from fashion magazines and me that their daughters begged them for tickets to go see.
Gareth and the two other nurses almost became my friends, especially him. They were sort of all I had now, the only people I knew that I remembered, or the only people I remembered that I still knew. I told them stuff about when I was at Britannia High, and they told me about themselves too, but only ever if I asked.
Angela lived a little outside of London, she had twin girls but her husband had left three months ago, and she was staying with a friend. Angela was just the sort of woman I would have liked my mother to be, she was caring and I could sort of tell that wasn't just because she was paid to be. Diana, the other nurse, a trainee I found out, was quieter; she barely spoke to me if Angela wasn't there. I didn't think it was because she was mean, possibly just shy.
I sort of developed a little crush on the doctor, Gareth. Unlike Angela and Diana, he acted normal around me, not like I was someone he worked for. He was renting a flat a few streets away, he told me. There were no signs of a wife or girlfriend, though I didn't want to ask. He seemed to work late a lot, he always came into my room before he left and I went to sleep, I never really got tired but I slept to kill time.
I wasn't going to do anything about my feelings for Gareth. After all, there was probably some kind of rule against that. And I didn't want him to lose his job, he was really lovely. And he was a great doctor, the best I'd ever had.
He was the only one in the whole place who called me by my first name.