The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith

No, ordinary human issues were not solved by ingenious schemes; in most cases, inaction was the solution, as it was here. Charlie would forget what he had said: he had thousands of new words to learn as he explored the world about him. He would hear things he did not understand, and things she did not want him to understand yet; but for the moment, he should not be lumbered with guilt. There would be quite enough guilt in the future; being human, we all had our share, except for those who never felt guilty about anything because they had no idea why they should. They are a special case, thought Isabel, and I shall get to them later on.

CHAPTER SIX

    W E ALL REMEMBER different things, don’t we?” Isabel said. “I may remember one thing and you may remember something else altogether. Even if we were both in the same place at the same time.”
    She was walking across the Meadows with Jane. The morning, having started with a cool breeze off the North Sea, was beginning to warm up as the wind shifted its direction. Now it was from the south-west, a more favourable quarter, and the clouds that had obscured the sun earlier had rapidly dispersed. Isabel had left the house wearing a lightweight raincoat, which she now carried slung over her arm. Beside her, Jane had removed her sweater to reveal a fawn-coloured linen blouse that left her arms bare. Isabel thought this optimistic; the wind could swing back to the east and the temperature could drop, Scottish weather being almost entirely unpredictable and quite capable of producing four seasons in the space of an hour—or even less.
    She made the remark about memory because that was what they were now embarking upon: a reconstruction of the past. When Isabel had offered to help Jane to trace her parents, she had not anticipated quite so enthusiastic a response: Jane had not only been effusive in her thanks, but had suggested they start immediately. This had inspired Isabel who, for all her frequent resolutions not to get involved in matters that did not concern her, actually enjoyed the business of intermeddling.
    And why not? she said to herself. Of course, helping somebody else, being virtuous, should be its own reward, but it undeniably brought satisfaction in so many other ways. Most of all, it gave the pleasure of discovery—an intellectual pleasure that naturally appealed to the philosopher in Isabel. And not just to the philosopher: within each of us, she felt, there was also an inner Sherlock Holmes, just as there was an inner Sigmund Freud, and an inner … She paused. An inner Napoleon?
    She had suggested to Jane that she might wish to be involved in the inquiry—though she pointed out that to call it an inquiry rather overstated the case; all she could offer was to use her knowledge of Edinburgh and its ways to piece together such facts as could be unearthed forty years on.
    “This isn’t exactly recent history,” she warned. “Forty years is, well, forty years. People forget. We can’t be sure that anybody will now know what you want to find out.”
    Jane had assured her that she understood and accepted this, but Isabel had her doubts. It seemed to her that, having declined in the past to seek out this information, the other woman was now feeling both impatient and unduly hopeful; hence the precautionary discussion of memory as they made their way across the park separating the Old Town of Edinburgh and its curtilage from the towering stone terraces of Marchmont and beyond.
    “Of course you’re right,” said Jane. “I suppose memory’s selective because we have to have a reason to remember something. If we don’t have a reason, then the mind doesn’t record the memory properly. That’s how memory works, isn’t it?”
    Isabel nodded. She had several books on the philosophical implications of memory and had actually read them, but was struggling to recall exactly what they said. There had been something about memory of dreams … Yes, that was it: