Chapter 11

                                    

                                          
Pittsburg, March 2000
The molecular biology of memory wasn't her specialist subject but she understood enough about brain storage to know memories can be reconstructed by piecing information together from its different parts: the hippocampus, neocortex and amygdala. Amy's memories of her dad were specific and concentrated around a few episodes such as birthdays, the occasional trip they'd had together and some of the visits she'd made after her mum died. Other than, like with most people, they were quite general. The words and photos in the diaries were helping put flesh on these bones but she needed to fill in the gaps in the stories in her mind in some way. She felt she'd been given a pirate's treasure map of an island with an X marks the spot. If she was going to find the treasure she needed to actually go to the island and start digging. The diaries intrigued her and what she badly needed was time to think about it properly and a break from work. When she'd emailed her Professor Yeung, her neuroscience boss, and suggested a short holiday he'd completely understood.
'Come back when you're ready,' he'd said.
The diaries pointed to a real island: England, with an X marks the spot somewhere in the north country. After clearing her desk and saying goodbye she'd gone home, booked a flight, packed the diaries and her bags and took a cab to the airport. Three hours later she was on an overnight out of Pittsburg, a red-eye to London, and needed a drink. She ordered a rum and coke with ice, a pirate's drink, pushed her seat back and took her glasses off. Time to think about her dad. She knew his family were Texans, from Houston and the surrounding area originally, ranchers turned liquid gold farmers. It was the oil money that enabled her dad to learn to fly before the war and it was flying that led dad to mum. He was crop dusting up north near Duncan, Oklahoma, in Great Plains Country, top dressing fertiliser from his silver and red, plywood and canvas Gipsy Moth biplane. A spluttering engine had forced him to circle and put his plane down on the fields of the Kerr family farm and he'd walked over to the farmhouse to ask for a lemonade and cup of tea. The Kerrs had farmed there for generations and although some had left to go west during the Dust Bowl years, Charlie and Edna Kerr had stayed, held on and seen the recovery. Their daughter Nancy was also there that day in 1938 and particularly remembered George's fair hair and cowboy boots. Nancy herself was medium height with blue eyes and freckles and laughed a lot. While Amy assumed she'd inherited her freckles from her mum she mostly wished she'd inherited her great sense of humour.
Nancy and George had exchanged awkward glances with each other across the kitchen table that day as her parents held polite conversation with the young flier until a pick-up arrived and took him away. Nancy was only sixteen and met George again when he came back a week later with a mechanic and spare parts. They'd eventually snatched some short conversations alone and stayed in touch, writing almost daily, until 1940 when storm clouds gathered over Europe and they got married. By then George had enlisted in the Navy and they'd moved to San Diego, the North Island Naval Air Station, and lived together in married quarters by the naval base. George joined the carrier USS Lexington, Lady Lex as she was called, and at the end of 1941 was halfway between Pearl Harbour and Midway Island, when the Japanese attached and war broke out. His luck continued during the war; he was shot down once and parachuted to safety and another time ran out of fuel at night and ditched close to the carrier and was rescued.
Amy slept fitfully until her plane landed at Heathrow Airport just as it was getting light and after clearing customs she shouldered her rucksack and dragged her case down the escalator into the underground. The train to Victoria station jolted along in the darkness and a flickering light caught her eye. For a moment she felt like a moth fluttering its wings towards a bright light but laughed out loud when she realised the light could be real trouble. London was wet and cold as she took the short walk from the station to the St. James' Court hotel near Buckingham Palace and checked in. The plan was to have a quick look at her parent's old apartment in Hendon and visit her dad's old law college at Inner Temple before heading north. But first of all she needed a soak and eventually lay back in a huge bath re-reading the diary entries for September 1971.