After a car accident I pretended to have amnesia as a joke. My husband looked at the floor and told me he was my brother — and it took me eleven days to work out that the only thing I had actually forgotten was the two hours before the crash, and that those two hours were the whole story.

PART 1

I woke up at Bellhaven Medical Center with a mild concussion, a cracked rib, and a face like a dropped plate.

Desmond was in the chair beside the bed. Three years married. A professor in the philosophy department at Carrow, a man so serious he barely smiles when he orders coffee, who once corrected a waiter’s grammar and then apologized for four days.

So I opened my eyes and said: who are you?

I was waiting for the eye-roll. I have made a joke at every frightening moment of my entire life. It is the only trick I have and I have never been able to put it down. I made one at my mother’s funeral.

He went completely still. He looked at the floor.

And then he said, very quietly: I’m your brother.

I nearly laughed out loud. Three whole years, and the man had finally decided to play.