The Eternal Memory

What the mind forgets, the senses retain eternally.

Once upon a time, a third of a lifetime ago, I went to a party. It was a nice party, as most of them are when you're seventeen and feel like the world loves you, and a picture of that night was placed into my memory banks to occasionally pull out and smile over when I'm reminiscing with friends, or feeling lonely or stressed. Over the years, the picture faded, and what I was left with was a distant memory that sometimes makes me smile.

Lori, my lodger, has a cosmetics collection to rival Boots'. She works at Wilko, and every time a new bath product comes onto the shelves, before the ads are even on TV, it's been added to our bathroom collection. Sometimes her shelf gets so cluttered that things fall off into the bath, and a month or so ago I was knocked on the head by a can of Imperial Leather Foamburst Ocean Spa, which then fell into my bath and promptly released its fragrance from the little bit of foam that was left outside the can. Instantly I was catapulted back into that evening.

Part of me knows that I'm still sitting in the bath, but that's only the smallest part of me: most of what makes up Sati Marie Frost is back in a darkened hall in London Colney, watching the multicoloured lights on the DJ's box that give the room its only illumination. I can see and hear everything, clearer than it has been in the nine years since, perhaps even clearer than it was at the time. I can hear the boys singing karaoke to Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger", and I'm laughing and cheering along. I can feel the slightly scratchy gold spangles of my dress, and the comforting fleece of the ratty zip-up hoodie I have over the top, because I've only been back in England less than a month and I'm always cold. I can see my gold shoes, and my nails - one foot painted magenta, the other electric blue - and I can also see the long, elegant, tanned finger that's touching me just above my toes. And he smells like the ocean. I didn't even notice at the time, had forgotten all but the vaguest memories since, but now I smell that scent again I remember it as clear as day.

So I went out and bought myself a can. And now I lie here on my bed on this chilly summer's evening, and occasionally the breezes from the open window blow the vapours of sea kelp and birch bark off my legs and arms and into my nose, and every puff of air takes my breath away.