Remember Me?

“It’s nothing.” He shrugs. “It was stupid. We just had this…tradition. The first time we had sex you’d been munching on sunflower seeds. You planted one in a yogurt pot and I took it home. It was like our own private joke. Then we started doing it every time. As a memento. We called them our children.”

“We planted sunflowers?” I wrinkle my brow with interest. That rings a tiny bell.

“Uh-huh.” Jon nods, like he wants to change the subject. “Let me get you a drink.”

“So where are they?” I say as he pours out two glasses of wine. “Did you keep any of them?” I’m looking around the room for signs of seedlings in yogurt pots.

“It doesn’t matter.” He hands me a glass.

“Did you throw them away?”

“No, I didn’t throw them away.” He heads over to a CD player and puts on some low music, but I won’t be put off.

“Where are they, then?” A challenging note creeps into my voice. “We must have had sex a few times, if everything you say is true. So there should be a few sunflower plants.”

Jon takes a sip of his wine. Then without saying a word he turns on his heel and gestures for me to walk along a small corridor. We head through a sparsely decorated bedroom. There he pushes open double doors to a wide, decked balcony. And I catch my breath.

There’s a wall of sunflowers all the way around. From huge yellow monsters reaching up to the sky, down to young flowers, tethered to canes, down to spindly green shoots in tiny pots, just starting to open. Everywhere I look, I can see sunflowers.

This was it. This was us. From the very begi

“So, how long ago…I mean…” I jerk my head at the tiniest seedling, in a tiny painted pot, propped up with sticks. “Since we last…”

“Six weeks ago. The day before the crash.” Jon pauses, an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m kind of looking after that one.”

“Was that the last time I saw you before…” I bite my lip.

There’s a beat of silence, then Jon nods. “That’s the last time we were together.”

I sit down and gulp at my wine, feeling totally overwhelmed. There’s a whole story here. A whole relationship. Growing and thickening and turning into something so strong I was going to leave Eric.

“What about…the first time?” I say eventually. “How did it all start?”

“It was that weekend Eric was away. I was over and we were chatting. We were out on the balcony, drinking wine. Kind of like we are now.” Jon gestures around. “And then halfway through the afternoon we fell silent. And we knew.”

He lifts his dark eyes to mine and I feel a lurch, deep inside. He gets up and starts walking toward me. “We both knew it was inevitable,” he says softly.

I’m transfixed. Gently he removes the wineglass from my hand and takes hold of both my hands.

“Lexi…” He brings my hands up to his mouth, closing his eyes, gently kissing them. “I knew…” His voice is muffled against my skin. “You’d come back. I knew you’d come back to me.”

“Stop it!” I whip my hands away, my heart thudding in distress. “You don’t…you don’t know anything!”

“What’s wrong?” Jon looks as shell-shocked as though I’d hit him.

I almost don’t know what’s wrong myself. I want him so badly; my entire body’s telling me to go for it. But I can’t.

“What’s wrong is…I’m freaked.”

“By what?” He looks dumbfounded.

“By all this!” I gesture at the sunflowers. “It’s too much. You’re presenting me with this…this fully fledged relationship. But for me, it’s just the begi

“We’ll balance it,” he says quickly. “We’ll work it out. I’ll go back to the begi

“You can’t go back to the begi

“I don’t expect you to love me-”

“Yes, you do. You do! You expect me to be her.”

“You are her.” There’s a sudden streak of anger in his voice. “Don’t give me this bullshit. You’re the girl I love. Believe it, Lexi.”

“I don’t know!” My voice rises in agitation. “I don’t know if I am, okay? Am I her? Am I me?”

To my horror, tears are streaming down my face; I have no idea where they came from. I turn away and wipe my face, gulping, unable to stop the torrent.

I want to be her, I want to be the girl laughing on the tree trunk. But I’m not.

At last I manage to get a grip on myself and turn around. Jon is standing in exactly the same place as he was before, a bleakness on his face that makes my heart constrict.

“I look around at these sunflowers.” I swallow hard. “And the photos. And all my things here. And I can see that it happened. But it looks like a wonderful romance between two people I don’t know.”

“It’s you,” says Jon in a quiet voice. “It’s me. You know both of us.”

“I know it in my head. But I don’t feel it. I don’t know it.” I clench a fist on my chest, feeling the tears rising again. “If I could just remember one thing. If there was one memory, one thread…” I trail off in silence. Jon is gazing at the sunflowers as though rapt by every petal.

“So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying…I don’t know! I don’t know. I need time…I need…” I break off helplessly.

Spots of rain are starting to fall on the balcony. A breeze gusts past and the sunflowers sway against each other as though they’re nodding.

At last Jon breaks the silence. “A lift home?” He lifts his eyes to meet mine-and there’s no anger anymore.

“Yes.” I wipe my eyes and push my hair back. “Please.”

It only takes fifteen minutes to reach home. We don’t chat. I sit holding on to the blue folder and Jon changes gear, his jaw set. He pulls the Mercedes into my parking space, and for a moment neither of us moves. Rain is thundering against the roof by now and there’s a sudden crash of lightning.

“You’ll have to run straight in,” Jon says, and I nod.

“How will you get back?”

“I’ll be fine.” He hands me my keys, avoiding my eye. “Good luck with that.” He nods at the folder. “I mean it.”

“Thanks.” I run a hand over the cardboard, biting my lip. “Although I don’t know how I’m going to get to Simon Johnson to talk about it. I’ve been demoted. I’ve lost all my credibility. He won’t be interested.”

“You’ll do it.”

“If I can get in to speak to him, it’ll be fine. But I know I’ll be fobbed off. They have no time for me anymore.” I sigh and reach for the car door. The rain is totally sheeting down, but I can’t sit here all night.

“Lexi…”

I feel a flurry of nerves at Jon’s tone.

“Let’s…talk,” I say hurriedly. “Sometime.”

“Okay.” He holds my gaze for a moment. “Sometime. It’s a deal.” He gets out, lifting his hands ineffectually against the rain. “I’m going to find a cab. Go on, run.” He hesitates, then drops a kiss on my cheek and strides away.

I pelt through the rain to the entrance, nearly dropping the precious folder, then stand under the portico, gathering the papers together, feeling a fresh spasm of hope as I remember the details. Although what I said was true. If I can’t see Simon Johnson it will all be for nothing.

And all of a sudden I sag as the reality of my situation hits home. I don’t know what I’ve been thinking. Whatever I have in this folder, he’s never going to give me another chance, is he? I’m not the Cobra anymore. I’m not Lexi the talented whiz kid. I’m the memorily challenged, embarrassment-to-the-firm, total fuckup. Simon Johnson won’t even give me five minutes, let alone a full hearing.