Page 32 of Forever is Now

Robert Hayden: So the island is sort of owned by a group of Aboriginal Australians. I can’t remember their group’s name, sorry. My memory’s awful, even now. But they found me. I... I was swept up on their shore. I was unconscious at that point, but they dragged me in. There was a broken wooden door or something near me and we think now that I’d been on that. That that’s how I got across the ocean from Indonesia. Must’ve taken weeks. I don’t know.

It’s so bizarre thinking about it. I don’t know how I survived.

But the locals thought I was this English photographer, Robert Hayden. That’s how I became him—and I really thought I was him. They showed me a photo of him, and while I had swelling on my face and all these cuts on my neck and arms, I did look like him. I had no reason to doubt that I wasn’t him.

I mean I couldn’t remember otherwise.

The photographer had apparently been visiting Bigge Island on his own, as he was solo traveling for a couple of years. He’d only been missing for a day or two. And then the locals found me, and they knew that there was this man missing. And I looked like him.

The locals looked after me for a few weeks, I think, treated my injuries with their bush plants. But I couldn’t remember a thing. There was a white man there as well, at one point—and he was the one who said I must be Robert. The locals had been calling me a different name up until then, but now I really believed IwasRobert. I thought this newcomer had recognized me, and it was such a relief. It was like finding myself.

I didn’t stay on Bigge Island for all that long though. When I got a bit stronger, I was back on the mainland, staying with a family that the Indigenous people on Bigge Island knew. One of them was a doctor, and he said I should go to the hospital for a CT scan or something.

So I did. We went there. But there was nothing. No problem.

I still couldn’t remember who I was, but everyone was saying I was Robert. The missing photographer. I used to literally tell myself that. “I am Robert Hayden. I’m thirty-one years old.” The doctors at the hospital said that my lack of memory was probably psychological. There was no physical reason for it. My brain scan was fine. And so that was that, really.

At some point, Robert’s possessions were brought over to me. I had my passport, an English driver’s license, bank cards, two rucksacks full of clothes, and a whole load of photography equipment that I had no idea how to use. I also didn’t know the password for the phone, or the PINs for the bank cards. But I knew what all of them were, like I knew how Western society worked. It was just anything to do with who I was that I didn’t know.

I stayed in contact with the people who’d found me, and with that family on the mainland too. They helped me loads, and one of them knew a tech guy. He got me into my phone and then I was able to go to the bank, get access again. I honestly hadn’t thought that that would work. But it did.

I expected that I’d feel more like myself—like Robert—as time went on. Everyone seemed to think that I’d start to get my memories back, but there was always just this nothingness. It’s so weird, when you can’t remember who you are. It’s like you start again, like learning to talk and learning to walk. Except you’re a grown man and you can talk and walk—only you wonder who taught you.

I pictured my parents often—these imaginary faces, faces that would change and mold. I’d spend hours looking in the mirror, trying to work out which of my features might be transferable to their faces. Were my eyebrows like my father’s? Did my mother and I share a nose?

It’s so strange, because I never really concentrated on my own face, on how I looked—because I was a stranger. I didn’t even recognize myself, that’s the extent of my amnesia. There was no recognition at all—even when photos would be taken of me, I’d look at them after, and there’d be this moment where I’d search for myself in it, but there’d never be that click. That moment of ‘Ah, that’s me.’ Instead, I’d work out where I was in the picture by a process of deduction.

Across the next six months, I moved around a bit. I had money in my accounts, and I thought I was a photographer, so that’s what I did. I was proper shit at it though. Like, really bad. So that didn’t last long. Instead, I ended up lodging with the Wilsons, a family that ran a surf school.

And that was how I met Mia. She’s their daughter.

Her whole family were just so, so kind. So welcoming to me. I ditched the photography, and I thought I’d do manual labour, but I just kept getting these headaches. Waking up in cold sweats in the night, really struggling to sleep properly. I was so drained and I just had no energy.

I kept thinking about that doctor that had said it was all psychological, and I knew that something must’ve happened. I’d been found half-drowned or something. So, yeah. [He laughs a little]

The Wilsons had originally been giving me reduced board rates in exchange for manual labour, but Rick realized I couldn’t do it all. He was kind though. He’s this big guy in his sixties. Really strong, muscular. I was chatting to him one evening about it all, that I just still couldn’t remember who I was. Of course he could see my scars on my face, but I showed him the ones on my sides too, and my back. “Something happened and I don’t know what,” I told him.

And he said something like, “Looks bad.”

We were smoking a couple joints by that point—all the Wilsons did. Usually in the evenings, after they’d closed up the surf school. Their place was directly on the beach, and Mia and her sisters would be out having fun in the water. Wetsuits. Long blond hair, they all had, apart from Mia’s. Hers was jet black. They all looked good, the Wilson sisters. Mia, Teyah, and Andi. So Mia’s the oldest. Then there’s Teyah—she’s really loud. Like, always talking. Andi’s quieter, more like Mia, I guess. But Mia’s got more confidence.

All three were late twenties, only like a year or so between each of them, and they were all just so relaxed. So happy. Always laughing. Like, in the evenings, I’d just hear them and it would bring a smile to my face.

But yeah, back to that evening, Rick said they were looking for someone to do admin in the office. Taking bookings for their lessons. That kind of thing. He offered it to me, and I was just so grateful. The idea of just traveling around again with a few bags just really scared me. I felt so unanchored, even though every family I’d stayed with was so welcoming, treating me like one of their own.

So I began working at the surf school, and of course that meant that me and Mia got closer. She was a trained lifeguard too, I discovered. She’d done some qualifications in it down at Bondi, I think. She was proper respected now, though she later told me she’d had some wild days when she was younger—a time when she’d really gone off the rails. But we’d hang out quite a bit. Especially once I started doing the admin work. I’d be at the office quite late, and usually once she’d finished teaching the teenagers, she’d pop back into the office.

She started bringing me a cup of coffee, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I couldn’t stand the taste of it. I just really liked talking to her. She’d still be in her wet suit, but she’d take the top half off, have it hanging around her waist. The wetsuit arms would fly about from her hips as she’d walk, and it was just mesmerizing. She’d have a bikini on underneath, of course, but I think it was pretty obvious that she knew I was interested in her.

How couldn’t I be? Damp hair hanging about her shoulders, in beautiful waves. Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear this, do you? You’re Summer’s friend.

Dante Fiore: I want to hear your story—whatever it is.

Robert Hayden: Okay, well, we got together. It was just fun at first, reassuring, warm—more and more, I realized that she was the person I just wanted to be spending more time with. Just being around her made me feel different, lighter. It made me forget that I had this past life I couldn’t remember, that I didn’t really know who I was, because when I was with Mia, we were making new memories, and although I was still struggling with forming new memories, there was always something of them that was left within me. I’d see her each day, recognize her, think fondly of the time we’d walked down on the beach together, or when we’d been listening to music in the office, or grabbing some food, and I’d feel this warmth. This reassurance. This sense of it just being right, you know?

Mia and I would hang out in the evenings at the pub too. I met all her friends. Sometimes her sisters would be there too, and she treated me like I was normal. That was the thing I really liked, really appreciated about her. How she saw me as Robert, not the man who can’t remember or the man who nearly drowned or the man who washed up on Bigge Island. I was justme. And it was like she knew who I was, even if I didn’t.

Mia’s pretty health-focused. I mean, all the Wilsons are. They may go down to the pub, but they don’t really drink all that much alcohol. Mia keeps track of what she drinks and eats, not to the extent that she’s logging calories in an app or anything, but she’s conscious of her body. Of what it needs.

---