The bedroom looks like a crime scene.  A stocking hangs off the bedpost and twitches in the breeze from the open window like broken police tape.  The sheets are a tangled mess after our earlier incident.  Incriminating.

The room still smells of sex, in spite of the air breezing in from the street outside.  Our scents have mingled.  Your perfume is heavy, musky and expensive, and it doesn't suit you.  It overlays my sweat.  The sour-sweet salt smell of our fucking underpins everything else.

It occurs to me that you have no idea who I am. 

'Mind if I smoke?' I ask, but by now the cigarette's half-way to my lips: hard to say no. 

You nod your consent, get up for a moment - about to open the window when you realise that it's already open.  Instead you grab a glass, smudged with your lipstick, the nearest you can approximate to an ashtray at this short notice.  It's one of those short, stumpy glasses, a heavy base with a bubble in the middle.  It's cold in my hand, and when I flick the rim with a fingernail (chipped black varnish I couldn't be bothered to take off), the sound rings out, pure and resonant, mixing with the traffic noises of outside.

My Zippo lights on the second strike.  The petrol smell is sharp and real, as out of place in your bedroom as I am.

You mutter something about never having done anything like this before. 

'Neither have I,' I lie, as I breathe my pollution into your pot-pourri-perfect room. 

I don't know what you're talking about specifically, but I very much doubt it was a first for me, and you know it.  Not that you're in any position to moralise: you've got 'married' written all over you, as obvious as the ring you're not wearing. 

A breeze swells the flimsy curtains at the window and raises the hairs on your arms.  You haven't put your clothes back on yet.  You're in pretty good shape, especially for your age, but you looked better dressed.  You're self-conscious too - less comfortable with your own nakedness than I am.

My jeans are still by the door where I stepped out of them earlier.  I don't know what happened to my knickers, but figure I don't need them that much.  You can keep them as a reminder if you want to, or bin them, burn them.  I won't lose any sleep either way. 

I wonder how long I'll have to lie here with you before I can get my clothes on and leave.  I've got places to be and it's only a matter of time before we realise that we have nothing left to say to each other.  Our worlds very briefly overlapped, but already we're moving out of each other's orbit.  Different gravities are even now dragging us back to very different lives. 

The cigarette paper crackles as I draw in a breath.  If I listen carefully, I think I can hear the sound of the regrets falling into place in your head.  Now the adrenalin’s worn off and that post-climactic flush is fading from you, the guilt that’s been waiting in the wings all this time is getting ready to take centre-stage in your mind. 

If only you’d be able to forget about me as quickly and easily as I’ll forget about you.  

‘So,’ you say, ‘will I see you again?’, but I’ll guess you already know the answer to that.

‘I’m out of town for a while,’ I tell you.  There’s a pen and paper on the bedside table, so I scrawl down the number of a payphone at the end of a road I used to live on in Guildford.  I’ll never answer it, but that won’t matter because you’ll never call.  We both understand we’re just going through the motions.

I stub out the cigarette and the glass goes opaque as smoke fills it.  It’s time to take my leave. 

You watch me as I stand and dress again: ordinary, practical clothes, no style or flash.  As with all things, dressed or undressed, I’m everything you’re not. 

My belt buckle snaps into place.  Ready to go. 

 You make as if to get up, but I tell you there’s no need.  Instead I lean down and kiss you, hard on the mouth, one last time.  Then I’m out of the door and out of your life.

I check the time on my watch: 5:17 pm.

 The car is waiting on the corner of the street.  The engine’s a smooth, low throb, and the vehicle’s dim interior envelops me, cool and rich and leather-smelling. 

Safe, mundane suburbia drops away on the other side of the tinted windows.  The driver’s invisible to me behind a sheet of one-way glass, and doesn’t speak.  It feels as though the car is driving itself.  Pleasant, manicured estates give way to wide open fields as the car speeds out of the town, carrying me and my fresh and oddly precious cargo to our destination. 

The Institute of Consciousness and Recall Upload Science (or ICARUS) stretches in a shining futuristic sprawl across the rural English landscape.  The car glides in through the main gates and comes to an effortless, fluid stop outside the entrance.  I step out into warm evening sunshine.

Only a handful of people know what the Institute really does.  For the moment, I’m among the privileged few who do, but by the time I leave, that knowledge - amongst other things - will be gone.  ICARUS has, over the last fifteen years, been furthering the technology with which to translate human thoughts and memories into electronic information which can be uploaded onto a bank of insanely high-powered computers and then variously stored or transferred into the mind of another.   

The Institute believes that this new technology will become invaluable in the solving of crimes.  If you can tap into a suspect’s memories and upload the window of time during which a crime has been committed, trials and confessions will be irrelevant.

But that’s not what I’m here for. 

Your husband meets me at the entrance to the Institute.  A nod tells him everything he wants to know: I’ve done what he asked me to do; I have what he needs.

And he has what I need.  He leads me through a maze of corridors into a lab that smells sharply of research and disinfectant.  Beside the trolley he motions for me to sit on, there’s a slim briefcase.  He clicks the combination locks and opens the lid enough to reveal what’s inside. 

The needle stings a little when his assistant jams it into the vein on the back of my hand. 

‘Time?’ your husband asks me as I settle myself on the trolley. 

‘3:09 to 5:17,’ I reply, noticing that even when he’s speaking to me, he can’t bring himself to look at me.  I gave you everything he’s forgotten how to, and - as much as he wants my memories - part of him hates himself for it. 

The assistant pushes the plunger in the syringe down.  My peripheral vision is the first thing to go.  The next thing I lose is my hearing, replaced by this constant rushing, like rapids or the passage of trains.  Then everything slowly darkens, and I’m out. 

Waking on a hospital bed.  Through the window, it looks like I’m on the outskirts of Croydon.  There are a few things I think I recognise.  Not sure how I got here or why.  Still, it’s hardly like this is the first time that‘s happened.. 

My head hurts: a low, dull ache, like the hangovers I get on red wine.  There’s an IV drip in my arm, hooked up to a bag on a metal stand.  The label confirms that it’s saline solution, so I slide the plastic piping out from under my skin, a little surprised at how far it extends.  There’s a small bead of blood when I pull the length of tubing fully out.  I put my finger over the wound and apply steady pressure.   

I stand up gingerly, feeling a little shaky but more or less okay.  I try to remember what happened and how I got here, but there’s a gaping hole where the memories ought to be.  Nothing after about three o’ clock.

The chart on the end of the bed carries a series of scrawled figures that mean nothing to me.  At the top of the page there’s a string of spidery handwriting.  I can make out the word ‘mugging’ and another that looks like it might be ‘concussion’.  I reach a hand to the back of my head and wince a little.  There’s a painful lump and something sticky that feels like just-dried blood.  Well, that would explain a few things. 

My clothes are folded neatly on the chair by the bed.  I pull them on and notice that underneath them, there’s a slim leather briefcase.  The combination lock is set on one side to 309 and the other to 517, and the lid pops open when I trigger the catches.  Inside, there looks to be more money than I’ve ever seen in my life. 

309 and 517.  Those numbers sound like they should mean something.  There’s nearly something there, when I try really hard to reach for it, but as soon as I get close, it vanishes again.   

The corridors are empty.  There’s no one to ask or answer questions as I wander through identical-looking hallways and finally step out, feeling guilty and confused with the briefcase clasped in one hand, onto the street outside.  The sunlight makes my eyes water. 

 A glamorous-looking woman walks down the pavement past me.  She’s approaching middle-age, but wearing it well.  She’s arm-in-arm with an older man and looks disinterested enough in him for him to be her husband.  She gives me a look, and I can’t tell if it’s intrigue or disgust.  Maybe it’s both.

The husband just keeps his head bowed and hurries on.  Again, there’s that sense of losing something: forgetting something. 

I shake my head, hold tighter to the caseful of cash.  I guess it doesn’t matter that much.