“She doesn’t remember Madison,” repeated Barbara in a hushed voice. She took a deep breath and put on a nervous, merry voice as if to jolly Alice out of all this silliness. “Well, I can understand you wanting to forget Madison at this particular moment, the little grumble-bum, although I’m sure she’ll snap out of it soon, but of course, you remember Tom and darling Olivia, don’t you? Well, I can’t believe I’m asking the question. Of course you do. You can’t forget your own children! That would be . . . unthinkable.”

There was a tremor of fear in her voice that Alice found strangely comforting. Yes, Mum, this is scary. Yes, this is unthinkable.

“Mum,” said Elisabeth again. “Please try and get your head around this. She doesn’t remember anything since 1998.”

“Nothing?”

“I’m sure it’s just temporary.”

“Oh! Of course. Temporary!”

Her mother lapsed into silence and ran a fingernail around the edge of her thickly lipsticked mouth.

Alice tried out this new fact in her mind: My mother married my husband’s father.

It was as unforgettable a fact as I have three children and My husband whom I adore has moved out of our house, but somehow she’d forgotten it.

None of it could be true. It must all be an absolutely huge, elaborate practical joke. It must be an incredibly realistic dream. A vivid hallucination. A nightmare that kept going and going.

Roger! What could have possessed her sweet, cautious mother to “fall madly in love” (Mum never said extravagant things like “madly in love”) with someone like Roger? Roger with his overpowering aftershave, his radio-announcer voice, and his habit of saying “methinks” and “mayhaps”? Roger, who after a few drinks at family parties would pin Alice in a corner and treat her to a monologue all about himself and his eternal fascination with the intricacies of his own personality. “Am I an athletic person? Yes, definitely. Am I an intellectual? Okay, maybe not in the strictest la-di-da Ph.D. sense of the word. But put it another way, am I an intelligent person? The answer would have to be yes; I’ve got a Ph.D. from the University of Real Life, Alice. You may well ask, am I a spiritual person? Methinks the answer would have to be yes, most certainly.”

Alice would be nodding helplessly, taking shallow breaths so she didn’t feel sick from the scent of his aftershave, until Nick would appear, saying, “Methinks the lady needs a drink, Dad.”

And what about Nick? What would he think about this development? He had such a weird, fragile relationship with his father. He imitated him mercilessly behind his back and there was something close to hatred in his voice when Nick spoke about the way his dad had treated his mother during their divorce, but at the same time Alice noticed that whenever he was in Roger’s company, his voice would become deeper, his shoulders squarer, and he would often casually bring up some big deal he’d negotiated at work, or some other accomplishment that Alice didn’t even know about, as if deep down he still wanted his dad’s approval, even though he would have denied this vehemently, angrily even.

Alice couldn’t think what his reaction would be to this news. And didn’t it mean she and Nick were related? He was her stepbrother! Her first thought was that she and Nick would have laughed themselves silly over that, turned it into a stupid game, made lecherous remarks about incest, and pretended they were Greg and Marcia Brady. But maybe it hadn’t been funny at all. He might have been angry on behalf of his mother, even though his mother seemed to treat her ex-husband like a bumbling distant uncle.

And what about Nick’s sisters, the Flakes? Oh God, the Flakes. Nick’s nutty sisters were now her stepsisters. There was no way they would have reacted calmly to this news; they didn’t react calmly to anything—they fainted, they sobbed, they stopped talking to each other, they were offended by the most innocuous comments. There was always at least one sister in the middle of a crisis. Alice had never realized family life could be so dramatic until she met Nick’s family, with all those sisters, in-laws, boyfriends, aunties, and cousins by the dozen. Her own quiet, polite, mini-sized family had seemed boring and sedate in comparison.

Alice said, “Is this why Nick and I are . . . ? Because he’s upset about his dad marrying Mum?”

“Of course not!” Her mother was reenergized. “This divorce is a terrible mystery to all of us, but it’s certainly got nothing to do with Roger and me! Roger would be devastated to hear you even thought about such a thing. Of course Roger does have his own theories about the divorce—”

Elisabeth cut in. “Mum and Roger got together years ago. You and Nick were a bit funny about it at the time, and the Flakes were all in hysterics of course, but it settled down and nobody thinks twice about it now. I promise you, Alice, all these things that seem so shocking aren’t really that shocking. When you get your memory back, you’ll be laughing at yourself.”

Alice did not want to get back a self who thought there was nothing shocking about the fact that she and Nick were divorcing; she couldn’t believe how casually her mother had referred to “the divorce,” as if it were something solid and real, as if it were a thing.

“Well, I’m not getting a divorce anymore, actually,” said Alice. “There is no divorce.”

“Oh!” Her mother clasped her hands together rapturously, as if in prayer. “Oh, but that’s wonderful—”