The Man Who Forgot His Wife by John O'Farrell

house. And I had it all to myself?’
    ‘Yeah – but you didn’t like it. It made you, like, really tense being responsible for all the fancy furniture and that. You were always like “Gary, don’t smoke dope indoors! Gary, stop borrowing his clothes! Gary, don’t piss on the herb garden!” Yeah, it seemed to make you a bit uptight, if you don’t mind me saying …’
    When I had disappeared, I had left my clothes and my belongings there, which were now in boxes round at Gary and Linda’s.
    ‘Yeah, there was some pretty hard-core porn in amongst all your stuff.’
    ‘Really?’ said a shocked Linda.
    ‘No,’ I said with a smile, already better at recognizing Gary’s wind-ups than his wife was.
    The family were apparently now back home, probably still picking the fag ends out of their tropical fish tank, so this private mansion was no longer an option for me.
    ‘And you don’t recognize that either? That is really amazing! So is there anything you can remember?’
    ‘Actually, there is this scene that keeps coming back to me. I have this vague memory of really laughing with a girl when I was younger. And we’re sheltering under a canopy or something but still getting wet, and we don’t mind. But I can’t remember who she was or what she looked like or where we were. I just remember being really, really happy.’
    Gary and Linda looked at one another but said nothing. We turned into a residential street just off Clapham Common. Rows of mid-size Victorian houses were interspersed with a few ugly 1950s blocks, where post-war builders had done a poor job of disguising which house numbers had been removed by the Luftwaffe. On the corner was number 27, which looked like the best house in the street, with dormer windows at the top and a little turret which gazed out over the London skyline.
    ‘Recognize this?’
    ‘Don’t tell me – it’s where I was born? Ah, but there’s no blue plaque.’
    ‘No – have another go.’
    ‘Did I stay here as well?’
    ‘Er, well, yeah, in a manner of speaking …’
    At that moment the front door opened and a striking redhead stepped out into the autumn sunshine and dropped a bag into the wheelie bin.
    ‘Wow! Who is that?’ I whispered. ‘She is gorgeous!’
    The woman stopped to remove a couple of dead geranium heads from the window box, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and paused as if to check the weather.
    ‘Was she living there when I was? Should we go and say hello?’
    ‘Blimey, Vaughan, you’ve gone bright red!’ said Linda. ‘Gary, we probably shouldn’t hang about. We don’t want her to see us here.’
    He was already putting the car in gear and pulling away.
    ‘Hang on, you haven’t explained anything … Where are we? Who is that beautiful woman?’
    ‘That, Vaughan, was the house you lived in for twenty years,’ said my tour guide. ‘And that was Madeleine. That was the woman you’re about to divorce.’

Chapter 5
    AS YOU CAME in the front door, the first thing you saw was a baby-gate across the foot of the stairs and a brand-new stroller folded up by the coat hooks. There were plastic safety covers over the electrical sockets and in the lounge was a big Thomas the Tank Engine rug with primary-coloured bricks stacked up against the wall.
    ‘Sorry, are you expecting
another
baby, or will this one be your first?’
    ‘No, it’s just the two of us at the moment,’ confirmed Gary. ‘It’s just that Linda likes buying all the stuff, you know.’
    ‘I always loved your home, Vaughan,’ enthused Linda, ‘brimming with children’s toys and everything. I said to Gary that I wanted our place to be just like that.’
    ‘Right. Well, it’s good to be prepared, I suppose …’
    ‘You see, this isn’t a
house
,’ she said meaningfully. ‘It’s a
home
.’
    ‘And it isn’t a
house
,’ added Gary, ‘because it’s a
flat
.’
    Linda proudly showed me into the room where I would be staying. In the corner was a brand-new cot,