November 2nd, 1981
Lilly opened her eyes and saw nothing but a barren white ceiling. There was a faint beeping in her ear, like some kind of hospital monitor. She sat up and found that she was, in fact, in a hospital.
"Oh good, you're awake." A nurse came bustling over. "How do you feel? Are you in any pain? Do you know where you are right now?"
Lilly frowned. "I'm in a hospital. But—how did I get here? I was falling. Why was I falling, what was I doing?" She reached for the heart rate monitor attached to her chest and tried to pull it off.
"Leave that on, leave that on, it's important." The nurse cautioned. "A good Samaritan found you and your baby unconscious out on Tottenham Court Road and brought you in."
"My baby? My baby! Christina! Where is she?"
"She's in the pediatric ward. She dislocated her shoulder when she fell, but the doctor reset it and thinks she'll heal up fine. We're just monitoring her for any other things we may have missed."
Lilly felt herself relax a little. Christina was ok. But why had she fallen on Tottenham Court Road? Didn't she live somewhere else?
"The baby's fine." Said the nurse gently. "Do you know why you were out so late with a diaper bag and your baby? Were you escaping an abusive situation?"
Escape did sound right, though Lilly didn't know from who or what. "I don't remember."
"That's all right. You've had quite a nasty concussion. You may have trouble remembering lots of things for a while as your brain heals. Can you tell me what you do remember?"
"My name is Lilly. Christina and I were escaping . . . something. Someone bad. I think I left something important back home . . . I don't know where my home is."
The nurse picked up a clipboard and jotted some notes down. "Excellent. Do you know how old you are? You look like you might be in your late teens or early twenties. If you're under eighteen then that's very serious, because that makes you a minor.
"No, I'm of age. I know that. That was three years ago? Four? No, I'm twenty-one."
"And your daughter? The pediatrician says she's probably three or four weeks old, but maybe you know for sure."
"Three weeks sounds right."
"Ok. Now, do you know your last name? That's another piece of important information."
Lilly frowned again. Nothing was coming to mind. "I . . . I don't know."
"Do you remember the last time you wrote it down? Or someone calling you by it? Did you have a teacher or a schoolmate who might have used it?"
Lilly thought hard. She couldn't remember anyone calling her . . . but wait. Out of the dark depths of her brain, she heard a voice, a young male voice, calling over and over, Evans . . . Evans . . . hey Evans! That had to be it. "Evans. Lilly Evans. Oh, that sounds right. And Christina Evans is my daughter."
One week later Lilly and Christina were discharged from the hospital and given a list of women's shelters nearby. Lilly still didn't remember where she'd lived before, or what she'd left back at her old house. As far as she knew she had no family and no friends. The nurse had asked her if she knew any friend's phone number, but Lilly was adamant that she hadn't touched a telephone since she was eleven. She didn't know why. But she had decided that if she couldn't remember the past, she might as well focus on her future, raise Christina, and create a new life for them in London.