Why are friends erasing me from their holiday memories?

After a sometimes fraught four-hour car journey, my wife and I and three friends arrive at a remote, sea-facing house in Greece.

- Tim Dowling

I’ve been here once before, but my memory of the place is fragmentary. I’ve remembered, for example, that you can’t get the car anywhere near the house - you have to lug your stuff across a beach and over rocks - and have packed accordingly. But the view from the top of the rocks still comes as a disheartening surprise.

“I forgot about the second beach,” I say, looking at the distant house.

“I didn’t,” my wife says. “Press on.” As we trudge along the sand, I think: how could I not remember this? Along with my bag, I am carrying my wife’s suitcase just as I did two years ago.

Once we're in the house my brain serves me no better: I have a memory of the layout, which is back-to-front. This will cause me to lose my way in the course of the coming week: seeking a terrace, I will end up on a balcony, and vice versa.

“It’s not that I don’t remember it,” I say to my wife the next morning.

“It’s that I’m remembering it wrong.”

“Do you remember getting up in the middle of the night to stand in the cupboard?” she says.

“Yes, I do remember that,” I say.