Robert hart

From the Prologue – Excerpt from Rebecca’s Secrets

A few years ago, after visiting friends in Vancouver, my wife, Carole and I caught a ferry to Orcas – one of British Columbia’s beautiful Gulf Islands. After a day’s exploring we settled into our hotel and took dinner in the restaurant. I finished the meal with a wonderfully rich chocolate pudding.
Walking back to our room, I felt a little strange. My head was spinning. My vision was distorted at the periphery, like looking through a glass tube.

Carole asked, “What’s wrong?” and I said, “Where are we?”

Over the next few minutes it became clear that something was wrong with my memory. I knew who Carole was, but I had no clear recollection of anything prior to the last few hours. I knew I lived in a village in another country but I didn’t know the name of the village or even the country. I knew I had three children, but I couldn’t remember their names. I couldn’t count from one to five and I couldn’t spell anything. My words came out wrong. I called the sea birdsong and car park was a parrot camp. We vacillated between fascination at the weird incongruence of my language and fear of the possibility of a permanent wipeout of my past life.

After two hours my memory and language returned. It was a huge relief, but the experience shook me.

Just imagine if you lost your past forever and forgot what made you, what drives and inspires you. Imagine losing all that personal history – your childhood and growing up, all the people who touched you, hurt you, helped you and loved you. Imagine losing everything and everyone that contributed to who you are.

We learned later it was a migraine attack – just a foggy interlude. But worried that the fog might return and obscure the past again, I decided to write down some of this life, so if I ever lose my memory again I’ll know where to find it.

How do you begin to write a life? I soon realised the blindingly obvious – that you can’t, because all memory is fiction. So I’ve let this story become a fiction containing a great deal of truth. It’s about Tommy Angel, a boy like me growing up where I did in the East End of London in the Fifties, with a family like mine and friends like mine who had adventures just like we did. It’s about a curious boy who started to ask questions and shine a light on the dark mysteries of his childhood.