Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

I don’t know what happened after that. What did I do after Ben told me that it was his birthday? After I went upstairs and discovered the photographs, replaced just as they had been before I ripped them down? I don’t know. Perhaps I showered and got changed, maybe we went out, for a meal, to the cinema. I cannot say. I didn’t write it down and do not remember, despite it being only a few hours ago. Unless I ask Ben it is lost completely. I feel like I am going mad.

This morning, in the early hours, I woke with him lying next to me. A stranger, again. The room was dark, silent. I lay, rigid with fear, not knowing who, or where, I was. I could think only of running, of escape, but could not move. My mind felt scooped out, hollow, but then words floated to the surface. Ben. Husband. Memory. Accident. Death. Son.

Adam.

They hung in front of me, in and out of focus. I could not connect them. Did not know what they meant. They whirled in my mind, echoing, a mantra, and then the dream came back to me, the dream that must have woken me up.

I was in a room, in a bed. In my arms was a body, a man. He lay on top of me, heavy, his back broad. I felt peculiar, odd, my head too light, my body too heavy; the room rocked beneath me and when I opened my eyes its ceiling would not swim into focus.

I could not tell who the man was — his head was too close to mine for me to see his face — but I could feel everything, even the hairs on his chest, rough against my naked breasts. There was a taste on my tongue, furry, sweet. He was kissing me. He was too rough; I wanted him to stop, but said nothing. ‘I love you,’ he said, murmuring, his words lost in my hair, the side of my neck. I knew I wanted to speak — though I didn’t know what I wanted to say — but I could not understand how to do so. My mouth didn’t seem connected to my brain, and so I lay there as he kissed me and spoke into my hair. I remembered how I had both wanted him and wanted him to stop, how I had told myself, as he began to kiss me, that we would not have sex, but his hand had moved down the curve of my back to my buttocks and I had let it. And again, as he had lifted my blouse and put his hand beneath it, I thought, This, this is as far as I will let you go. I will not stop you, not now, because I am enjoying this. Because your hand feels warm on my breast, because my body is responding with tiny shudders of pleasure. Because, for the first time, I feel like a woman. But I will not have sex with you. Not tonight. This is as far as we will go, thus far and no further. And then he had taken off my blouse and unhooked my bra, and it was not his hand on my breast, but his mouth, and still I thought I would stop him, soon. The word no had even began to form, cemented itself in my mind, but by the time I had spoken it he was pushing me back towards the bed and sliding down my underwear and it had turned into something else, into a moan of something that I dimly recognized as pleasure.

I felt something between my knees. It was hard. ‘I love you,’ he said again, and I realized it was his knee, that he was forcing my legs apart with one of his own. I did not want to let him, but at the same time knew that somehow I ought to, that I had left it too late, watched my chances to say something, to stop this, disappear one by one. And now I had no choice. I had wanted it then, as he unzipped his trousers and stepped clumsily out of his underwear, and so I must still want it now, now that I am beneath his body.

I tried to relax. He arched up, and moaned — a low, startling noise that started deep within him — and I saw his face. I didn’t recognize it, not in my dream, but now I knew it. Ben. ‘I love you,’ he said, and I knew that I should say something, that he was my husband, even though I felt I had met him for the first time just that morning. I could stop him. I could trust him to stop himself.

‘Ben, I—’

He silenced me with his wet mouth, and I felt him tear into me. Pain, or pleasure. I could not tell where one ended and the other began. I clung to his back, moist with sweat, and tried to open myself to him, tried first to enjoy what was happening, and then, when I found I could not, tried to ignore it. I asked for this, I thought, at the same time as I never asked for this. Is it possible to both want and not want something at the same time? For desire to ride with fear?

I closed my eyes. I saw a face. A stranger, with dark hair, a beard. A scar down his cheek. He looked familiar, and yet I had no idea from where. As I watched him his smile disappeared and that was when I cried out, in my dream. That was the moment I woke up to find myself in a still, quiet bed, with Ben lying next to me and no idea where I was.

I got out of bed. To use the bathroom? To escape? I didn’t know where I was going, what I would do. If I had somehow known of its existence I would have opened the wardrobe door, as quietly as I could, and lifted out the shoebox that contained my journal, but I did not. And so I went downstairs. The front door was locked, the moonlight blue through the frosted glass. I realized I was naked.

I sat on the bottom of the stairs. The sun rose, the hall turned through blue to burnt orange. Nothing made sense; the dream least of all. It felt too real, and I had woken in the same bedroom I had dreamed myself in, next to a man I was not expecting to see.

And now, now I have read my journal after Dr Nash called me, a thought forms. Might it have been a memory? A memory I had retained from the previous night?

I do not know. If so then it is a sign of progress, I suppose. But also it means Ben forced himself on me and, worse, as he did so I saw an image of a bearded stranger, a scar running down his face. Of all possible memories this seems a cruel one to retain.

But perhaps it means nothing. It was just a dream. Just a nightmare. Ben loves me and the bearded stranger does not exist.

But how can I ever know for sure?

Later, I saw Dr Nash. We were sitting at traffic lights, Dr Nash tapping his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel, not quite in time to the music that played from the stereo — pop that I neither recognized nor enjoyed — while I stared ahead. I’d called him this morning, almost as soon as I had finished reading my journal, finished writing about the dream that might have been a memory. I had to speak to someone — the news that I was a mother had felt like a tiny rip in my life that now threatened to snag, tearing it apart — and he’d suggested we move our next meeting to today. He asked me to bring my journal. I hadn’t told him what was wrong, intending to wait until we were in his offices, but now didn’t know whether I could.

The lights changed. He stopped tapping and we jerked back into motion. ‘Why doesn’t Ben tell me about Adam?’ I heard myself say. ‘I don’t understand. Why?’

He glanced at me, but said nothing. We drove a little further. A plastic dog sat on the parcel shelf of the car in front of us, its head nodding comically, and beyond it I could see the blond hair of a toddler. I thought of Alfie.

Dr Nash coughed. ‘Tell me what happened.’

It was true, then. Part of me was hoping he would ask me what I was talking about, but as soon as I said the word Adam I realized how futile that hope had been, how misguided. Adam feels real. He exists, within me, within my consciousness, taking up space in a way that no one else does. Not Ben, or Dr Nash. Not even myself.

I felt angry. He had known all along.

‘And you,’ I said. ‘You gave me my novel. So why didn’t you tell me about Adam?’

‘Christine,’ he said, ‘tell me what happened.’

I stared out of the front window. ‘I had a memory,’ I said.

He glanced across at me. ‘Really?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Christine,’ he said, ‘I’m trying to help.’

I told him. ‘It was the other day,’ I said. ‘After you’d given me my novel. I looked at the photograph that you’d put with it and, suddenly, I remembered the day it was taken. I can’t say why. It just came to me. And I remembered that I’d been pregnant.’

He said nothing.

‘You knew about him?’ I said. ‘About Adam?’

He spoke slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did. It’s in your file. He was a couple of years old when you lost your memory.’ He paused. ‘Plus we’ve spoken about him before.’

I felt myself go cold. I shivered, despite the warmth in the car. I knew it was possible, even probable, that I had remembered Adam before, but this bare truth — that I had gone through all this before and would therefore go through it all again — shook me.

He must have sensed my surprise.

‘A few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘You told me you’d seen a child, out in the street. A little boy. At first you had the overwhelming sense that you knew him, that he was lost, but was coming home, to your house, and you were his mother. Then it came back to you. You told Ben, and he told you about Adam. Later that day you told me.’

I remembered nothing of this. I reminded myself that he was not talking about a stranger, but about me.

‘But you haven’t told me about him since?’

He sighed. ‘No—’

Without warning I remembered what I had read this morning, of the images they had shown me as I lay in the scanner.

‘There were pictures of him!’ I said. ‘When I had my scan! There were pictures …’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘From your file.’

‘But you didn’t mention him! Why? I don’t understand.’

‘Christine, you must accept that I can’t begin every session by telling you all the things I know but you don’t. Plus, in this case, I decided it wouldn’t necessarily benefit you.’

‘Benefit me?’

‘No. I knew it would be very upsetting for you to know that you had a child and have forgotten him.’

We were pulling into an underground car park. The soft daylight faded, replaced by harsh fluorescence and the smell of petrol and concrete. I wondered what else he might feel it unethical to tell me, what other time bombs I am carrying in my head, primed and ticking, ready to explode.

‘There aren’t any more—?’ I said.

‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘You only had Adam. He was your only child.’

The past tense. Then Dr Nash knew he was dead, too. I didn’t want to ask, but knew that I must.

‘You know he was killed?’

He stopped the car and turned off the engine. The car park was dim, lit only by pools of fluorescent light, and silent. I heard nothing but the occasional door slamming, the rattle of a lift. For a moment I thought there was still a chance. Maybe I was wrong. Adam was alive. My mind lit with the idea. Adam had felt real to me as soon as I read about him this morning, yet still his death did not. I tried to picture it, or to remember how it must have felt to be given the news that he had been killed, yet I could not. It did not seem right. Grief should surely overwhelm me. Every day would be filled with constant pain, with longing, with the knowledge that part of me has died and I will never be whole again. Surely my love for my son would be strong enough for me to remember my loss. If he really were dead, then surely my grief would be stronger than my amnesia.

I realized I didn’t believe my husband. I didn’t believe my son was dead. For a moment my happiness hung, balancing, but then Dr Nash spoke.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Excitement discharged within me like a tiny explosion, turned to its opposite. Something worse than disappointment. More destructive, shot through with pain.

‘How …?’ was all I could say.

He told me the same story as Ben. Adam, in the army. A roadside bomb. I listened, determined to find the strength to not cry. When he had finished there was a pause, a moment of stillness, before he put his hand on mine.

‘Christine,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him. He was leaning towards me. I looked down at his hand, covering mine, criss-crossed with tiny scratches. I saw him at home, later. Playing with a kitten, perhaps a small dog. Living a normal life.

‘My husband doesn’t tell me about Adam,’ I said. ‘He keeps all the photographs of him locked away in a metal box. For my own protection.’ Dr Nash said nothing. ‘Why would he do that?’

He looked out of the window. I saw the word cunt sprayed on to the wall in front of us. ‘Let me ask you the same question. Why do you think he would do that?’

I thought. I thought of all the reasons I could. So that he can control me. Have power over me. So that he can deny me this one thing that might make me feel complete. I realized I didn’t believe any of those were true. I was left only with the mundane fact. ‘I suppose it’s easier for him. Not to tell me, if I don’t remember.’

‘Why is it easier for him?’

‘Because I find it so upsetting? It must be a horrible thing to have to do, to tell me every day that not only have I had a child but that he has died. And in such a horrible way.’

‘Any other reasons, do you think?’

I was silent, and then realized. ‘Well, it must be hard for him, too. He was Adam’s father and, well …’ I thought how he must be managing his own grief, as well as mine.

‘This is difficult for you, Christine,’ he said. ‘But you must try to remember that it is difficult for Ben, too. More difficult, in some ways. He loves you very much, I expect, and—’

‘—and yet I don’t even remember he exists.’

‘True,’ he said.

I sighed. ‘I must have loved him, once. After all, I married him.’ He said nothing. I thought of the stranger I had woken up with that morning, of the photos of our lives together I had seen, of the dream — or the memory — I had had in the middle of the night. I thought of Adam, and of Alfie, of what I had done, or thought about doing. A panic rose in me. I felt trapped, as though there was no way out, my mind skittering from one thing to another, searching for freedom and release.

Ben, I thought to myself. I can cling to Ben. He is strong.

‘What a mess,’ I said. ‘I just feel overwhelmed.’

He turned back to face me. ‘I wish I could do something to make this easier for you.’

He looked as though he really meant it, as though he would do anything he could to help me. There was a tenderness in his eyes, in the way he rested his hand on mine, and there, in the dim half-light of the underground car park, I found myself wondering what would happen if I put my hand on his, or moved my head slightly forward, holding his gaze, opening my mouth as I did so, just a touch. Would he too lean forward? Would he try to kiss me? Would I let him, if he did?

Or would he think me ridiculous? Absurd? I may have woken this morning thinking I am in my twenties, but I am not. I am almost fifty. Nearly old enough to be his mother. And so, instead, I looked at him. He sat perfectly still, looking at me. He seemed strong. Strong enough to help me. To get me through.

I opened my mouth to speak, without knowing what I was going to say, but the muffled ringing of a telephone interrupted me. Dr Nash didn’t move, other than to take his hand away, and I realized the phone must be one of mine.

I retrieved the ringing phone from my bag. It was not the one that flipped open, but the one my husband has given me. Ben, it said on the screen.

When I saw his name I realized how unfair I was being. He was bereaved, too. And he had to live with it every day, without being able to speak to me about it, without being able to come to his wife for support.

And he did all that for love.

And here was I, sitting in a car park with a man he barely knew existed. I thought of the photos I had seen that morning, in the scrapbook. Me and Ben, over and over again. Smiling. Happy. In love. If I were to go home and look at them now I might only see in them the thing that was missing. Adam. But they are the same pictures, and in them we look at each other as if no one else in the world exists.

We had been in love; it was obvious.

‘I’ll ring him back later,’ I said. I put the phone back in my bag. I will tell him tonight, I thought. About my journal. Dr Nash. Everything.

Dr Nash coughed. ‘We should go up to the office. Make a start.’

‘Of course,’ I said. I did not look at him.

I began to write that in the car as Dr Nash drove me home. Much of it is barely legible, a hasty scrawl. Dr Nash said nothing as I wrote, but I saw him glancing at me as I searched for the right word or a better phrase. I wondered what he was thinking — before we left his office he had asked me to consent to him discussing my case at a conference he had been invited to attend. ‘In Geneva,’ he said, unable to disguise a flash of pride. I said yes, and I imagined he would soon ask me if he could take a photocopy of my journal. For research.

When we arrived back at the house he said goodbye, adding, ‘I’m surprised you wanted to write your book in the car. You seem very … determined. I suppose you don’t want to miss anything out.’

I know what he meant, though. He meant frantic. Desperate. Desperate to get everything down.

And he is right. I am determined. Once I got in I finished the entry at the dining table and closed my journal and put it back in its hiding place before slowly undressing. Ben had left me a message on the phone. Let’s go out tonight, he’d said. For dinner. It’s Friday …

I stepped out of the navy-blue trousers I had found in the wardrobe that morning. I peeled off the pale-blue blouse that I had decided matched them best. I was bewildered. I had given Dr Nash my journal during our session — he’d asked if he could read it and I’d said yes. This was before he’d mentioned his invite to Geneva, and I wonder now if that’s why he asked. ‘This is excellent!’ he’d said when he finished. ‘Really good. You’re remembering lots of things, Christine. Lots of memories are coming back. There’s no reason that won’t continue. You should feel very encouraged …’

But I did not feel encouraged. I felt confused. Had I flirted with him, or he with me? It was his hand on mine, but I had let him put it there, and let him keep it. ‘You should continue to write,’ he said, when he gave me the journal back, and I told him that I would.

Now, in my bedroom, I tried to convince myself I had done nothing wrong. I still felt guilty. Because I had enjoyed it. The attention, the feeling of connection. For a moment, in the middle of everything else that was going on, there had been a tiny pinprick of joy. I had felt attractive. Desirable.

I went to my underwear drawer. There, tucked at the back, I found a pair of black silk knickers and a matching bra. I put them on — these clothes that I know must be mine even though they don’t feel as though they are — all the time thinking of my journal hidden in the wardrobe. What would Ben think, if he found it? If he read all that I had written, all that I had felt? Would he understand?

I stood in front of the mirror. He would, I told myself. He must. I examined my body with my eyes and my hands. I explored it, ran my fingers over its contours and undulations as if it were something new, a gift. Something to be learned from scratch.

Though I knew that Dr Nash had not been flirting with me, for that brief space in which I thought he was I had not felt old. I had felt alive.

I don’t know how long I stood there. For me time stretches, is almost meaningless. Years have slipped through me, leaving no trace. Minutes don’t exist. I only had the chime of the clock downstairs to show me that time was passing at all. I looked at my body, at the weight in my buttocks and on my hips, the dark hairs on my legs, under my arms. I found a razor in the bathroom and soaped my legs, then drew the cold blade across my skin. I must have done this before, I thought, countless times, yet still it seemed an odd thing to be doing, faintly ridiculous. I nicked the skin on my calf — a tiny stab of pain and then a red plush welled, quivering before it began to trickle down my leg. I stemmed it with a finger, smearing the blood like treacle, brought it to my lips. The taste of soap and warm metal. It didn’t clot. I let it bleed down my skin, newly smooth, then mopped it with a damp tissue.

Back in the bedroom I put on stockings, and a tight, black dress. I selected a gold necklace from the box on the dresser, a pair of matching earrings. I sat at the dresser and put on make-up, and curled and lacquered my hair. I sprayed perfume on my wrists and behind my ears. And all the time I did this a memory was floating through me. I saw myself rolling on stockings, snapping home the fasteners on a suspender belt, hooking up a bra, but it was a different me, in a different room. The room was quiet. Music played, but softly, and in the distance I could hear voices, doors opening and closing, the faint buzz of traffic. I felt calm, and happy. I turned to the mirror, examined my face in the glow of the candlelight. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all.

The memory was just out of reach. It shimmered, under the surface, and while I could see details, snatched images, moments, it lay too deep for me to follow where it led. I saw a champagne bottle on a bedside table. Two glasses. A bouquet of flowers on the bed, a card. I saw that I was in a hotel room, alone, waiting for the man I love. I heard a knock, saw myself stand up, walk towards the door, but then it ended, as if I had been watching television and, suddenly, the aerial had been disconnected. I looked up and saw myself, back in my own home. Even though the woman I saw in the mirror was a stranger — and with the make-up and lacquered hair that unfamiliarity was even more pronounced than it must usually be — I felt ready. For what, I couldn’t say, but I felt ready. I went downstairs to wait for my husband, the man I married, the man I loved.

Love, I remind myself. The man I love.

I heard his key in the lock, the door pushed open, feet being wiped on the mat. A whistle? Or was that the sound of my breathing, hard and heavy?

A voice. ‘Christine? Christine, are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m in here.’

A cough, the sound of his anorak being hung up, a briefcase being put down.

He called upstairs. ‘Everything OK?’ he said. ‘I phoned you earlier. I left a message.’

The creak of the stairs. For a moment I thought he was going straight up, to the bathroom or his study, without coming in to see me first, and I felt foolish, ridiculous to be dressed as I was, waiting for my husband of who-knows-how-many years in someone else’s clothes. I wished I could peel off the outfit, scrape away the make-up and transform myself back into the woman I am, but I heard a grunt as he levered a shoe off, and then the other, and I realized he was sitting down to put on his slippers. The stair creaked again, and he came into the room.

‘Darling—’ he began, and he stopped. His eyes travelled over my face, down my body, back up to meet mine. I couldn’t tell what he thought.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You look—’ He shook his head.

‘I found these clothes,’ I said. ‘I thought I would dress up a little. It’s Friday night, after all. The weekend.’

‘Yes,’ he said, still standing in the doorway. ‘Yes. But …’

‘Do you want to go out somewhere?’

I stood up then, and went over to him. ‘Kiss me,’ I said, and, though I hadn’t exactly planned it, it felt like the right thing to do, and so I put my arms around his neck. He smelled of soap, and sweat, and work. Sweet, like crayons. A memory floated through me — kneeling on the floor with Adam, drawing — but it didn’t stick.

‘Kiss me,’ I said, again. His hands circled my waist.

Our lips met. Brushing, at first. A kiss goodnight or goodbye, a kiss for being in public, a kiss for your mother. I didn’t release my arms, and he kissed me again. The same.

‘Kiss me, Ben,’ I said. ‘Properly.’

‘Ben,’ I said, later. ‘Are we happy?’

We were sitting in a restaurant, one we’d been to before, he said, though I had no idea, of course. Framed photographs of people who I assumed were minor celebrities dotted the walls; an oven gaped at the back, awaiting pizza. I picked at the plate of melon in front of me. I couldn’t remember ordering it.

‘I mean,’ I continued, ‘we’ve been married … how long?’

‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘Twenty-two years.’ It sounded an impossibly long time. I thought of the vision I’d had as I got ready this afternoon. Flowers in a hotel room. I can only have been waiting for him.

‘Are we happy?’

He put down his fork and sipped the dry white wine he’d ordered. A family arrived and took their seats at the table next to us. Elderly parents, a daughter, in her twenties. Ben spoke.

‘We’re in love, if that’s what you mean. I certainly love you.’

And there it was; my cue to tell him that I loved him too. Men always say I love you as a question.

What could I say, though? He is a stranger. Love doesn’t happen in the space of twenty-four hours, no matter how much I might once have liked to believe that it does.

‘I know you don’t love me,’ he said. I looked at him, shocked for a moment. ‘Don’t worry. I understand the situation you’re in. We’re in. You don’t remember, but we were in love, once. Totally, utterly. Like in the stories, you know? Romeo and Juliet, all that crap.’ He tried to laugh, but instead looked awkward. ‘I loved you and you loved me. We were happy, Christine. Very happy.’

‘Until my accident.’

He flinched at the word. Had I said too much? I’d read my journal but was it today he’d told me about the hit-and-run? I didn’t know but, still, accident would have been a reasonable guess for anyone in my situation to make. I decided not to worry about it.

‘Yes,’ he said, sadly. ‘Until then. We were happy.’

‘And now?’

‘Now? I wish things could be different, but I’m not unhappy, Chris. I love you. I wouldn’t want anyone else.’

How about me? I thought. Am I unhappy?

I looked across at the table next to us. The father was holding a pair of glasses to his eyes, squinting at the laminated menu, while his wife arranged their daughter’s hat and removed her scarf. The girl sat without helping, looking at nothing, her mouth slightly open. Her right hand twitched under the table. A thin string of saliva hung from her chin. Her father noticed me watching and I looked away, back to my husband, too quickly to make it seem as if I hadn’t been staring. They must be used to that — to people looking away, a moment too late.

I sighed. ‘I wish I could remember what happened.’

‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Why?’

I thought of all the other memories that had come to me. They had been brief, transitory. They were gone, now. Vanished. But I had written them down; I knew they had existed — still did exist, somewhere. They were just lost.

I felt sure that there must be a key, a memory that would unlock all the others.

‘I just think that if I could remember my accident, then maybe I could remember other things, too. Not everything, maybe, but enough. Our wedding, for example, our honeymoon. I can’t even remember that.’ I sipped my wine. I had nearly said our son’s name before remembering that Ben didn’t know I had read about him. ‘Just to wake up and remember who I am would be something.’

Ben locked his fingers, resting his chin on his balled fist. ‘The doctors said that wouldn’t happen.’

‘But they don’t know, do they? Surely? They could be wrong?’

‘I doubt it.’

I put down my glass. He was wrong. He thought all was lost, that my past had vanished completely. Maybe this was the time to tell him about the snatched moments I still had, about Dr Nash. My journal. Everything.

‘But I am remembering things, occasionally,’ I said. He looked surprised. ‘I think things are coming back to me, in flashes.’

He unlaced his hands. ‘Really? What things?’

‘Oh, it depends. Sometimes nothing very much. Just odd feelings, sensations. Visions. A bit like dreams, but they seem too real for me to be making them up.’ He said nothing. ‘They must be memories.’

I waited, expecting him to ask me more, to want me to tell him everything I had seen, as well as how I even knew what memories I had experienced.

But he didn’t speak. He continued looking at me, sadly. I thought of the memories I had written about, the one in which he had offered me wine in the kitchen of our first home. ‘I had a vision of you,’ I said. ‘Much younger …’

‘What was I doing?’ he said.

‘Not much,’ I replied. ‘Just standing in the kitchen.’ I thought of the girl, her mother and father, sitting a few feet away. My voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Kissing me.’

He smiled then.

‘I thought that if I am capable of having one memory, then maybe I am capable of having lots—’

He reached across the table and took my hand. ‘But the thing is, tomorrow you won’t remember that memory. That’s the problem. You have no foundation on which to build.’

I sighed. What he was saying is true; I can’t keep writing down everything that happens to me for the rest of my life, not if I also have to read it every day.

I looked across at the family next to us. The girl spooned minestrone clumsily into her mouth, soaking the cloth bib that her mother had tucked around her neck. I could see their lives; broken, trapped by the role of care-giver, a role they had expected to be free of years before.

We are the same, I thought. I need to be spoon-fed, too. And, I realized, rather like them and their child, Ben loves me in a way that can never be reciprocated.

And yet, maybe, we were different. Maybe we still had hope.

‘Do you want me to get better?’ I said.

He looked surprised. ‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Please …’

‘Maybe if there was someone I could see? A doctor?’

‘We’ve tried before—’

‘But maybe it’s worth trying again? Things are improving all the time. Maybe there’s a new treatment?’

He squeezed my hand. ‘Christine, there isn’t. Believe me. We’ve tried everything.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘What have we tried?’

‘Chris, please. Don’t—’

‘What have we tried?’ I said. ‘What?’

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Everything. You don’t know what it was like.’ He looked uncomfortable. His eyes darted left and right as if he expected a blow and didn’t know from what direction it might come. I could have let the question go then, but I didn’t.

‘What, Ben? I need to know. What was it like?’

He said nothing.

‘Tell me!’

He lifted his head, and swallowed hard. He looked terrified, his face red, his eyes wide. ‘You were in a coma,’ he said. ‘Everyone thought you were going to die. But not me. I knew you were strong, that you’d make it through. I knew you’d get better. And then, one day, the hospital called me and said you’d woken up. They thought it was a miracle, but I knew it wasn’t. It was you, my Chris, coming back to me. You were dazed. Confused. You didn’t know where you were, and couldn’t remember anything about the accident, but you recognized me, and your mother, though you didn’t really know who we were. They said not to worry, that memory loss was normal after such severe injuries, that it would pass. But then—’ He shrugged his shoulders, looked down to the napkin he held in his hands. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to continue.

‘Then what?’

‘Well, you seemed to get worse. I went in one day and you had no idea who I was. You presumed I was a doctor. And then you forgot who you were, too. You couldn’t remember your name, what year you were born. Anything. They realized that you had stopped forming new memories, too. They did tests, scans. Everything. But it was no good. They said your accident had damaged your memory. That it would be permanent. That there was no cure, nothing they could do.’

‘Nothing? They didn’t do anything?’

‘No. They said either your memory would come back or it wouldn’t, and that the longer you went without it coming back the less likely it was that it would. They told me that all I could do was look after you. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.’ He took both my hands in his, stroking my fingers, brushing the hard band of my wedding ring.

He leaned forward, so that his head was only inches from mine. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, but I couldn’t reply, and we ate the rest of our meal in near silence. I could feel a resentment growing within me. An anger. He seemed so determined that I could not be helped. So adamant. Suddenly I didn’t feel so inclined to tell him about my journal, or Dr Nash. I wanted to keep my secrets for a little longer. I felt they were the only thing I had that I could say was mine.

We came home. Ben made himself a coffee and I went to the bathroom. There I wrote as much as I could of the day so far, then took off my clothes and make-up. I put on my dressing gown. Another day was ending. Soon I will sleep, and my brain will begin to delete everything. Tomorrow I will go through it all again.

I realized I do not have ambition. I cannot. All I want is to feel normal. To live like everybody else, with experience building on experience, each day shaping the next. I want to grow, to learn things, and from things. There, in the bathroom, I thought of my old age. I tried to imagine what it will be like. Will I still wake up, in my seventies or eighties, thinking myself to be at the beginning of my life? Will I wake with no idea that my bones are old, my joints stiff and heavy? I can’t imagine how I will cope, when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of recollection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories? How will I feel, when I look in a mirror and see the reflection of my grandmother? I don’t know, but I can’t allow myself to think of that now.

I heard Ben go into the bedroom. I realized I would not be able to replace my journal in the wardrobe and so put it on the chair next to the bath, under my discarded clothes. I will move it later, I thought, once he is asleep. I switched off the light and went into the bedroom.

Ben sat in bed, watching me. I said nothing, but climbed in next to him. I realized he was naked. ‘I love you, Christine,’ he said, and he began to kiss me, my neck, my cheek, my lips. His breath was hot and had the bite of garlic. I didn’t want him to kiss me, but didn’t push him away. I have asked for this, I thought. By wearing that stupid dress, by putting on the make-up and perfume, by asking him to kiss me before we went out.

I turned to face him and, though I didn’t want to, kissed him back. I tried to imagine the two of us in the house we had just bought together, tearing at my clothes on the way to the bedroom, our uncooked lunch spoiling in the kitchen. I told myself that I must have loved him then — or else why would I have married him? — and so there is no reason why I shouldn’t love him now. I told myself that what I was doing was important, an expression of love and of gratitude, and when his hand moved to my breast I didn’t stop him but told myself it was natural, normal. Neither did I stop him when he slipped his hand between my legs and cupped me, and only I knew that later, much later, when I began to moan softly, it wasn’t because of what he was doing. It wasn’t pleasure at all, it was fear, because of what I saw when I closed my eyes.

Me, in a hotel room. The same one I had seen as I got ready earlier that evening. I see the candles, the champagne, the flowers. I hear the knock at the door, see myself put down the glass I have been drinking from, stand up to open it. I feel excitement, anticipation; the air is heavy with promise. Sex and redemption. I reach out, take the handle of the door, cold and hard. I breathe deeply. Finally things will be all right.

A hole, then. A blank in my memory. The door, opening, swinging towards me, but I cannot see who is behind it. There, in bed with my husband, panic slammed into me, from nowhere. ‘Ben!’ I cried out, but he didn’t stop, didn’t even seem to hear me. ‘Ben!’ I said again. I closed my eyes and clung to him. I spiralled back into the past.

He is in the room. Behind me. This man, how dare he! I twist around but see nothing. Pain, searing. A pressure on my throat. I cannot breathe. He is not my husband, not Ben, but still his hands are on me, all over, his hands and his flesh, covering me. I try to breathe, but cannot. My body, shuddering, pulped, turns to nothing, to ash and air. Water, in my lungs. I open my eyes, and see nothing but crimson. I am going to die, here, in this hotel room. Dear God, I think. I never wanted this. I never asked for this. Someone must help me. Someone must come. I have made a terrible mistake, yes, but I do not deserve this punishment. I do not deserve to die.

I feel myself disappear. I want to see Adam. I want to see my husband. But they are not here. No one is here, but me, and this man, this man who has his hands around my throat.

I am sliding, down, down. Towards blackness. I must not sleep. I must not sleep. I. Must. Not. Sleep.

The memory ended, suddenly, leaving a terrible, empty void. My eyes flicked open. I was back in my own home, in bed, my husband inside me. ‘Ben!’ I cried out, but it was too late. With tiny, muffled grunts he ejaculated. I clung to him, holding him as tight as I could, and then, after a moment, he kissed my neck and told me again that he loved me, and then said, ‘Chris, you’re crying …’

The sobs came, uncontrollable. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Did I hurt you?’

What could I say to him? I shook as my mind tried to process what it had seen. A hotel room full of flowers. Champagne and candles. A stranger with his hands around my neck.

What could I say? All I could do was cry harder, and push him away, and then wait. Wait until he slept, and I could creep out of bed and write it all down.