Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

The café was busy. One of a chain. Everything was green, or brown, and disposable, though — according to the posters that dotted the carpeted walls — in an environmentally friendly way. I drank my coffee out of a paper cup, dauntingly huge, as Dr Nash settled himself into the armchair opposite the one into which I had sunk.

It was the first time I’d had the chance to look at him properly; or the first time today at least, which amounts to the same thing. He had called — on the phone that flips open — not long after I had cleared away the remains of my breakfast and then picked me up an hour or so later, after I had read most of my journal. I stared out of the window as we drove to the coffee shop. I was feeling confused. Desperately so. This morning when I woke — even though I could not be certain I knew my own name — I knew somehow that I was both an adult and a mother, although I had no inkling that I was middle-aged and my son was dead. My day so far had been brutally disorientating, one shock after another — the bathroom mirror, the scrapbook, and then, later, this journal — culminating in the belief that I do not trust my husband. I had felt disinclined to examine anything else too closely.

Now, though, I could see that Dr Nash was younger than I had expected, and though I had written that he did not need to worry about watching his weight I could see that this did not mean he was as skinny as I had supposed. He had a solidness to him, emphasized by the too-large jacket that hung from his shoulders and out of which his surprisingly hairy forearms poked infrequently.

‘How are you feeling today?’ he said, once settled.

I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Confused, I suppose.’

He nodded. ‘Go on.’

I pushed away the biscuit that Dr Nash had given me though I hadn’t asked for it. ‘Well, I woke up kind of knowing that I was an adult. I didn’t realize I was married, but I wasn’t exactly surprised that there was somebody in bed with me.’

‘That’s good, though—’ he began.

I interrupted. ‘But yesterday I wrote that I woke up and knew I had a husband …’

‘You’re still writing in your book, then?’ he said, and I nodded. ‘Did you bring it today?’

I had. It was in my bag. But there were things in it I didn’t want him to read, didn’t want anyone to. Personal things. My history. The only history I have.

Things I had written about him. ‘I forgot,’ I lied. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can see it must be frustrating, that one day you remember something and the next it seems to have gone again. But it’s still progress. Generally you’re remembering more than you were.’

I wondered if what he’d said was still true. In the first few entries of this journal I had written of remembering my childhood, my parents, a party with my best friend. I had seen my husband when we were young and first in love, myself writing a novel. But since then? Lately I have been seeing only the son I have lost and the attack that left me like this. Things it might almost be better for me to forget.

‘You said you were worried about Ben? What he’s saying about the cause of your amnesia?’

I swallowed. What I had written yesterday had seemed distant, removed. Almost fictional. A car accident. Violence in a hotel bedroom. Neither had seemed like anything to do with me. Yet I had no choice but to believe that I had written the truth. That Ben had really lied to me about how I ended up like this.

‘Go on …’ he said.

I told him what I’d written down, starting with Ben’s story about the accident and finishing with my recollection of the hotel room, though I mentioned neither the sex we’d been in the middle of when the memory of the hotel room came to me nor the romance — the flowers, the candles and champagne — it had contained.

I watched him as I spoke. He occasionally murmured an encouragement and even scratched his chin and narrowed his eyes at one point, though the expression was more thoughtful than surprised.

‘You knew this, didn’t you?’ I said when I’d finished. ‘You knew all of this already?’

He put down his drink. ‘Not exactly, no. I knew that it wasn’t a car accident that caused your problems, although since reading your journal the other day I now know that Ben has been telling you that it was. I also knew that you must have been staying in a hotel on the night of your … of your … on the night you lost your memory. But the other details you mentioned are new. And as far as I know this is the first time you’ve actually remembered anything yourself. This is good news, Christine.’

Good news? I wondered if he thought I should be pleased. ‘So it’s true?’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a car accident?’

He paused, then said, ‘No. No, it wasn’t.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me Ben was lying? When you read my journal? Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’

‘Because Ben must have his reasons,’ he said. ‘And it didn’t feel right to tell you he was lying. Not then.’

‘So you lied to me, too?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve never lied to you. I never told you it was a car accident.’

I thought of what I had read this morning. ‘But the other day,’ I said. ‘In your office. We talked about it …’

He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t talking about an accident,’ he said. ‘You said that Ben had told you how it had happened, so I thought you knew the truth. I hadn’t read your journal then, don’t forget. We must have got ourselves mixed up …’

I could see how it might happen. Both of us skirting around an issue we didn’t want to mention by name.

‘So what did happen?’ I said. ‘In that hotel room? What was I doing there?’

‘I don’t know everything,’ he said.

‘Then tell me what you do know.’ The words emerged angrily, but it was too late to snatch them back. I watched as he brushed a non-existent crumb from his trousers.

‘You’re certain you want to know?’ he said.

I felt like he was giving me one final chance. You can still walk away, he seemed to be saying. You can go on with your life without knowing what I am about to tell you.

But he was wrong. I couldn’t. Without the truth I am living less than half a life.

‘Yes,’ I said.

His voice was slow. Faltering. He began sentences only to abort them a few words later. The story was a spiral, as if circling round something awful, something better left unsaid. Something that made a mockery of the idle chat I imagine the café is more used to.

‘It’s true. You were attacked. It was …’ He paused. ‘Well, it was pretty bad. You were discovered wandering in the street. Confused. You weren’t carrying any identification at all, and had no memory of who you were or what had happened. There were head injuries. The police initially thought you had been mugged.’ Another pause. ‘You were found wrapped in a blanket, covered in blood.’

I felt myself go cold. ‘Who found me?’ I said.

‘I’m not sure …’

‘Ben?’

‘No. Not Ben, no. A stranger. Whoever it was calmed you down. Called an ambulance. You were admitted to hospital, of course. There was some internal bleeding and you needed an emergency operation.’

‘But how did they know who I was?’

For an awful moment I thought perhaps they had never discovered my identity. Perhaps everything, an entire history, even my name, was given to me the day I was discovered. Even Adam.

Dr Nash spoke. ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ he said. ‘You’d checked into the hotel under your own name. And Ben had already contacted the police to report you as missing. Even before you were found.’

I thought of the man who had knocked on the door of that room, the man I had been waiting for.

‘Ben didn’t know where I was?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Apparently he had no idea.’

‘Or who I was with? Who did this to me?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nobody was ever arrested. There was very little evidence to work with, and of course you couldn’t really help the police with their investigations. It was assumed that whoever attacked you removed everything from the hotel room and then left you and fled. No one saw anyone go in, or leave. Apparently the hotel was busy that night — some kind of function in one of the rooms, lots of people coming and going. You were probably unconscious for some time after the attack. It was the middle of the night when you went downstairs and left the hotel. No one saw you go.’

I sighed. I realized the police would have closed the case, years ago. To everyone but me — even to Ben — this was old news, ancient history. I will never know who did this to me, and why. Not unless I remember.

‘What happened then?’ I said. ‘After I was taken to hospital?’

‘The operation was successful, but there were secondary effects. There was difficulty in stabilizing you after surgery. Your blood pressure in particular.’ He paused. ‘You lapsed into a coma for a while.’

‘A coma?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was touch and go, but, well, you were lucky. You were in the right place and they treated your condition aggressively. You came round. But then it became apparent that your memory had gone. At first they thought it might be temporary. A combination of the head injury and anoxia. It was a reasonable assumption—’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Anoxia?’ I had stumbled over the word.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Oxygen deprivation.’

I felt my head begin to swim. Everything started to shrink and distort, as though it were getting smaller, or me bigger. I heard myself speak. ‘Oxygen deprivation?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You had symptoms of a severe lack of oxygen to the brain. Consistent with carbon dioxide poisoning — though there was no other evidence for this — or strangulation. There were marks on your neck that suggested this. But the most likely explanation was thought to be near drowning.’ He paused as I absorbed what he was telling me. ‘Did you remember anything about almost drowning?’

I closed my eyes. I saw nothing but a card on a pillow upon which I see the words I love you. I shook my head.

‘You recovered, but your memory didn’t improve. You stayed in the hospital for a couple of weeks. In the intensive care unit at first and then the general ward. When you were well enough to be moved you were transported back to London.’

Back to London. Of course. I was found near a hotel; I must have been away from home. I asked where it was.

‘In Brighton,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea why you might have been there? Any connection to that area?’

I tried to think of holidays, but nothing came.

‘No,’ I said. ‘None. None that I know of, anyway.’

‘It might help to go there, at some point. To see if you remember.’

I felt myself go cold. I shook my head.

He nodded. ‘OK. Well, there could be any number of reasons why you’d be there, of course.’

Yes, I thought. But only one that incorporated flickering candles and bunches of roses but didn’t include my husband.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’ I wondered if either of us was going to mention the word affair, and how Ben must have felt when he realized where I had been, and why.

It struck me then. The reason Ben had not given me the real explanation for my amnesia. Why would he want to remind me that once, however briefly, I had chosen another man over him? I felt a chill. I had chosen someone over my husband, and look at the price I had paid.

‘What happened then?’ I said. ‘Did I move back in with Ben?’

He shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You were still very ill. You had to stay in the hospital.’

‘For how long?’

‘You were in the general ward at first. For a few months.’

‘And then?’

‘You were moved.’ He hesitated — I thought I would have to ask him to continue — and then said, ‘To a psychiatric ward.’

The word shook me. ‘A psychiatric ward?’ I imagined a fearful place, full of crazy people, howling, deranged. I could not see myself there.

‘Yes.’

‘But why? Why there?’

He spoke softly, but his tone betrayed annoyance. I felt suddenly convinced we had been through all this before, perhaps many times, presumably before I had begun to keep my journal. ‘It was more secure,’ he said. ‘You had made a reasonable recovery from your physical injuries by now, but your memory problems were at their worst. You didn’t know who you were, or where. You were exhibiting symptoms of paranoia, claiming the doctors were conspiring against you. You kept trying to escape.’ He waited. ‘You were becoming increasingly unmanageable. You were moved for your own safety, as well as the safety of others.’

‘Of others?’

‘You occasionally lashed out.’

I tried to imagine what it must have been like. I pictured someone waking up every day, confused, not sure who they were, or where, or why they’d been put in hospital. Asking for answers, and not getting them. Being surrounded by people who knew more about them than they did. It must have been hell.

I remembered that we were talking about me.

‘And then?’

He didn’t answer. I saw his eyes go up and he looked past me, towards the door, as if he were watching it, waiting. But there was no one there, it did not open, no one left or came in. I wondered if he was actually dreaming of escape.

‘Dr Nash,’ I said, ‘what happened then?’

‘You stayed there for a while,’ he said. His voice was almost a whisper now. He has told me this before, I thought, but this time he knows I will write it down and carry it with me for more than a few hours.

‘How long?’

He said nothing. I asked him again. ‘How long?’

He looked up at me, his face a mixture of sadness and pain. ‘Seven years.’

He paid, and we left the coffee shop. I felt numb. I don’t know what I was expecting, where I thought I had lived out the worst of my illness, but I didn’t think it would be there. Not in the middle of all that pain.

As we walked, Dr Nash turned to me. ‘Christine,’ he said, ‘I have a suggestion.’ I noticed how casually he spoke, as if he was asking which flavour of ice cream I would prefer. A casualness that can only be affected.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘I think it might be helpful for you to visit the ward where you were admitted,’ he said. ‘The place you spent all that time.’

My reaction was instant. Automatic. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘You’re experiencing memory,’ he said. ‘Think of what happened when we went to visit your old house.’ I nodded. ‘You remembered something then. I think it might happen again. We might trigger more.’

‘But—’

‘You don’t have to. But … look. I’ll be honest. I’ve already made the arrangements with them. They’d be happy to welcome you. Us. Any time. I only have to ring to let them know we’re on our way. I’d come with you. If you felt distressed or uncomfortable we could leave. It’ll be fine. I promise.’

‘You think it might help me to get better? Really?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But it might.’

‘When? When do you want to go?’

He stopped walking. I realized the car we were standing next to must be his.

‘Today,’ he said. ‘I think we should go today.’ And then he said something odd. ‘We don’t have time to lose.’

I didn’t have to go. Dr Nash didn’t force me to agree to the trip. But, though I can’t remember doing so — can’t remember much at all, in fact — I must have said yes.

The journey was not long, and we were silent. I could think of nothing. Nothing to say, nothing to feel. My mind was empty. Scooped out. I took my journal out of my bag — not caring that I had told Dr Nash I didn’t have it with me — and wrote that last entry in it. I wanted to record every detail of our conversation. I did it, silently, almost without thinking, and we didn’t speak as he parked the car, nor as we walked through the antiseptic corridors with their smell of stale coffee and fresh paint. People were wheeled past us on trolleys, attached to drips. Posters peeled off the walls. Overhead lights flickered and buzzed. I could think only of the seven years I had spent there. It felt like a lifetime; one I remembered nothing of.

We came to a stop outside a double door. Fisher Ward. Dr Nash pressed a button on an intercom mounted on the wall then mumbled something into it. He is wrong, I thought as the door swung open. I did not survive that attack. The Christine Lucas who opened that hotel-room door is dead.

Another double door. ‘You OK, Christine?’ he said as the first closed behind us, sealing us in. I said nothing. ‘This is a secure unit.’ I was hit with a sudden conviction that the door behind me was closing for ever, that I would not be leaving.

I swallowed. ‘I see,’ I said. The inner door began to open. I didn’t know what I would see beyond it, couldn’t believe I had ever been here before.

‘Ready?’ he said.

A long corridor. There were doors off each side and as we walked I could see that they opened into glass-windowed rooms. In each was a bed, some made, some unmade, some occupied, most not. ‘The patients here suffer from a variety of problems,’ said Dr Nash. ‘Many show schizoaffective symptoms, but there are those with bipolarity, acute anxiety, depression.’

I looked in one window. A girl was sitting on the bed, naked, staring at the television. In another a man sat on his haunches, rocking, his arms wrapped around his knees as if to shield himself from the cold.

‘Are they locked in?’ I said.

‘The patients here have been detained under the Mental Health Act. Also known as sectioning. They’re here for their own good, but against their wishes.’

‘“Their own good”?”

‘Yes. They’re a danger either to themselves or to others. They need to be kept secure.’

We carried on walking. A woman looked up as I passed her room, and though our eyes made contact hers betrayed no expression. Instead she slapped herself, still looking at me, and when I winced she did it again. A vision flitted through me — visiting a zoo as a child, watching a tiger pace up and down her cage — but I pushed it away and carried on, resolving to look neither left nor right.

‘Why did they bring me here?’ I said.

‘Before you were here you were in the general medical ward. In a bed, just like everybody else. You would spend some weekends at home, with Ben. But you became more and more difficult to manage.’

‘Difficult?’

‘You would wander off. Ben had to start locking the doors to the house. You became hysterical a couple of times, convinced that he had hurt you, that you were being locked in against your will. For a while you were OK when you got back to the ward, but then you started demonstrating similar behaviours there, too.’

‘So they had to find a way of locking me in,’ I said. We had reached a nursing station. A man in uniform sat behind a desk, entering something on a computer. He looked up as we approached and said the doctor would be with us soon. He invited us to take a seat. I scanned his face — the crooked nose, the gold-studded earring — hoping something would ignite a glimmer of familiarity. Nothing. The ward seemed utterly foreign.

‘Yes,’ said Dr Nash. ‘You’d gone missing. For something like four and a half hours. You were picked up by the police, down by the canal. Dressed only in pyjamas and a gown. Ben had to collect you from the station. You wouldn’t go with any of the nurses. They had no choice.’

He told me that right away Ben began to campaign to have me moved. ‘He felt that a psychiatric ward was not the best place for you. He was right, really. You weren’t dangerous, either to yourself or to others. It’s even possible that being surrounded by those who were more ill than you was making you worse. He wrote to the doctors, the head of the hospital, your MP. But nothing was available.

‘And then,’ he said, ‘a residential centre for people with chronic brain injuries opened. He lobbied hard, and you were assessed and thought to be suitable, though funding was an issue. Ben had had to take a break from work to look after you and couldn’t afford to fund it himself, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently he threatened to go to the press with your story. There were meetings and appeals and so on, but eventually he was successful and you were accepted as a patient, with the state agreeing to pay for your stay for as long as you were ill. You were moved there about ten years ago.’

I thought of my husband, tried to imagine him writing letters, campaigning, threatening. It didn’t seem possible. The man I had met that morning seemed humble, deferential. Not weak, exactly, but accepting. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to make waves.

I am not the only one, I thought, whose personality has changed because of my injury.

‘The home was fairly small,’ said Dr Nash. ‘A few rooms in a rehab centre. There weren’t many other residents. Lots of people to help look after you. You had a little more independence there. You were safe. You made improvements.’

‘But I wasn’t with Ben?’

‘No. He lived at home. He needed to carry on working, and he couldn’t do that and look after you. He decided—’

A memory flashed through me, tearing me suddenly back into the past. Everything was slightly out of focus and had a haze around it, and the images were so bright I almost wanted to look away. I saw myself, walking through these same corridors, being led back towards a room that I dimly understood as mine. I am wearing carpet slippers, a blue gown with ties up the back. The woman with me is black, wearing a uniform. ‘Here you go, hon,’ she says to me. ‘Look who’s here to see you!’ She lets go of my hand and guides me towards the bed.

A group of strangers are sitting around it, watching me. I see a man with dark hair and a woman wearing a beret, but I can’t make out their faces. I am in the wrong room, I want to say. There’s been a mistake. But I say nothing.

A child — four or five years old — stands up. He had been sitting on the edge of the bed. He comes towards me, running, and he says Mummy and I see that he is talking to me, and only then do I realize who he is. Adam. I crouch down and he runs into my arms, and I hold him and kiss the top of his head, and then I stand. ‘Who are you?’ I say to the group around the bed. ‘What are you doing here?’

The man looks suddenly sad, the woman with the beret stands and says, ‘Chris. Chrissy. It’s me. You know who I am, don’t you?’ and then comes towards me and I see that she is crying.

‘No,’ I say. ‘No! Get out! Get out!’ and I turn to leave the room and there is another woman there — standing behind me — and I don’t know who she is, or how she got there, and I start to cry. I begin to sink to the floor, but the child is there, holding on to my knees, and I don’t know who he is, but he keeps calling me Mummy, saying it over and over again, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, and I don’t know why, or who he is, or why he is holding me …

A hand touched my arm. I flinched as if stung. A voice.

‘Christine? Are you OK? Dr Wilson is here.’

I opened my eyes, looked around. A woman wearing a white coat stood in front of us. ‘Dr Nash,’ she said. She shook his hand, and then turned to me. ‘Christine?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘I’m Hilary Wilson.’ I took her hand. She was a little older than me; her hair was beginning to turn grey, and a pair of half-moon glasses dangled on a gold chain round her neck. ‘How d’you do?’ she said, and from nowhere I felt certain I had met her before. She nodded down the corridor. ‘Shall we?’

Her office was large, lined with books, piled with boxes of spilling papers. She sat behind a desk and indicated two chairs opposite it, into which Dr Nash and I sank. I watched her take a file from the pile on her desk and open it. ‘Now, my dear,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a look.’

Her image froze. I knew her. I had seen her picture as I lay in the scanner, and, though I hadn’t recognized it at the time, I did now. I had been here before. Many times. Sitting where I am now, in this chair or one like it, watching her making notes in a file as she peered through the glasses held delicately to her eyes.

‘I’ve met you before …’ I said. ‘I remember.’ Dr Nash looked over at me, then back to Dr Wilson.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you have. Though not that often.’ She explained that she’d only just started working here when I moved out and that at first I wasn’t even on her caseload. ‘It’s certainly most encouraging that you remember me, though,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long time since you were resident here.’ Dr Nash leaned forward and said it might help me to see the room in which I’d lived. She nodded and squinted in the file, then after a minute said she didn’t know which it was. ‘It’s possible that you moved around a fair old bit, in any case,’ she said. ‘Many of the patients do. Could we ask your husband? According to the file he and your son, Adam, visited you almost every day.’

I had read about Adam this morning and felt a flash of happiness at the mention of his name, and relief that I’d seen a little of him growing up, but shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d rather not ring Ben.’

Dr Wilson didn’t argue. ‘A friend of yours called Claire seemed to be something of a regular too. How about her?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re not in touch.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘What a pity. But never mind. I can tell you a little bit of what life was like here back then.’ She glanced at her notes, then clasped her hands together. ‘Your treatment was mostly handled by a consultant psychiatrist. You underwent sessions of hypnosis, but I’m afraid any success was limited and unsustained.’ She read further. ‘You didn’t receive a great deal of medication. A sedative, occasionally, though that was more to help you sleep — it can get quite noisy in here, as I’m sure you can understand,’ she said.

I recalled the howling I’d imagined earlier, wondering if that might have once been me. ‘What was I like?’ I said. ‘Was I happy?’

She smiled. ‘Generally, yes. You were well liked. You seemed to make friends with one of the nurses in particular.’

‘What was her name?’

She scanned her notes. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t say. You played a lot of solitaire.’

‘Solitaire?’

‘A card game. Perhaps Dr Nash can explain later?’ She looked up. ‘According to the notes you were occasionally violent,’ she said. ‘Don’t be alarmed. It’s not unusual in cases like this. People who have suffered severe head trauma will often exhibit violent tendencies, particularly when there has been damage to the part of the brain that allows self-restraint. Plus patients with amnesia such as yours often have a tendency to do something we call confabulation. Things around them don’t seem to make sense, and so they feel compelled to invent details. About themselves and other people around them, or about their history, what has happened to them. It’s thought to be due to the desire to fill gaps in the memory. Understandable in a way. But it can often lead to violent behaviour when the amnesiac’s fantasy is contradicted. Life must have been very disorientating for you. Particularly when you had visitors.’

Visitors. Suddenly I was afraid I might have hit my son.

‘What did I do?’

‘You occasionally lashed out at some of the staff,’ she said.

‘But not at Adam? My son?’

‘Not according to these notes, no.’ I sighed, not entirely relieved. ‘We have some pages from a sort of diary that you were keeping,’ she said. ‘Might it be helpful for you to take a look at them? You might find it easier to understand your confusion.’

This felt dangerous. I glanced at Dr Nash, and he nodded. She pushed a sheet of blue paper over to me and I took it, at first frightened even to look at it.

When I did I saw that it was covered in an unruly scrawl. At the top the letters were well formed, and kept neatly within the printed lines that ran across the page, but towards the bottom they were large and messy, inches tall, just a few words across. Though dreading what I might see I began to read.

8.15 a.m., read the first entry. I have woken up. Ben is here. Directly underneath I had written, 8.17 a.m. Ignore that last entry. It was written by someone else, and underneath that, 8.20 I am awake NOW. Before I was not. Ben is here.

My eyes flicked further down the page. 9.45 I have just woken up, FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME, and then, a few lines later, 10.07 NOW I am definitely awake. All these entries are a lie. I am awake NOW.

I looked up. ‘This was really me?’ I said.

‘Yes. For a long time it seemed that you were in a perpetual state of feeling that you had just woken up from a very long, very deep sleep. Look here.’ Dr Wilson pointed at the page in front of me, and began quoting entries from it. ‘I have been asleep for ever. It was like being DEAD. I have only just woken up. I can see again, for the first time. They apparently encouraged you to write down what you were feeling, in an effort to get you to remember what had happened before, but I’m afraid you just became convinced that all the preceding entries had been written by someone else. You began to think people here were conducting experiments on you, keeping you against your will.’

I looked at the page again. The whole sheet was filled with almost identical entries, each just a few minutes apart. I felt myself go cold.

‘Was I really this bad?’ I said. My words seemed to echo in my head.

‘For a while, yes,’ said Dr Nash. ‘Your notes indicate that you retained memory for only a few seconds. Sometimes a minute or two. That time has gradually lengthened over the years.’

I could not believe I had written this. It seemed to be the work of someone whose mind was completely fractured. Exploded. I saw the words again. It was like being DEAD.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t—’

Dr Wilson took the sheet from me. ‘I understand, Christine. It’s upsetting. I—’

Panic hit me then. I stood up, but the room began to spin. ‘I want to leave,’ I said. ‘This isn’t me. It can’t have been me, I–I would never hit people. I would never. I just—’

Dr Nash stood, too, and then Dr Wilson. She stepped forward, colliding with her desk, sending papers flying. A photograph spilled to the floor.

‘Dear God—’ I said, and she looked down, then crouched to cover it with another sheet. But I had seen enough. ‘Was that me?’ I said, my voice rising to a scream. ‘Was that me?’

The photograph was of the head of a young woman. Her hair had been pulled back from her face. At first it looked as though she was wearing a Halloween mask. One eye was open and looked at the camera, the other was closed by a huge, purple bruise, and both lips were swollen, pink, lacerated with cuts. Her cheeks were distended, giving her whole face a grotesque appearance. I thought of pulped fruit. Of plums, rotten and bursting.

‘Was that me?’ I screamed, even though, despite the swollen, distorted face, I could see that it was.

My memory splits there, fractured in two. Part of me was calm, quiet. Serene. It watched as the other part of me thrashed and screamed and had to be restrained by Dr Nash and Dr Wilson. You really ought to behave, it seemed to be saying. This is embarrassing.

But the other part was stronger. It had taken over, become the real me. I shouted out, again and again, and turned and ran for the door. Dr Nash came after me. I tore it open and ran, though where could I go? An image of bolted doors. Alarms. A man, chasing me. My son, crying. I have done this before, I thought. I have done all this before.

My memory blanks.

They must have calmed me down, somehow, persuaded me to go with Dr Nash; the next thing I can remember is being in his car, sitting next to him as he drove. The sky was beginning to cloud over, the streets grey, somehow flattened out. He was talking, but I couldn’t concentrate. It was as if my mind had tripped, fallen back into something else, and now couldn’t catch up. I looked out of the windows, at the shoppers and the dog-walkers, at the people with their prams and their push-bikes, and I wondered whether this — this search for truth — was really what I wanted. Yes, it might help me to improve, but how much can I hope to gain? I don’t expect that I will ever wake up knowing everything, as normal people do, knowing what I did the day before, what plans I have for the day that follows, what circuitous route has led me to here and now, to the person I am. The best I can hope for is that one day looking in the mirror will not be a total shock, that I will remember I married a man called Ben and lost a son called Adam, that I will not have to see a copy of my novel to know that I had written one.

But even that much seems unattainable. I thought of what I had seen in Fisher Ward. Madness, and pain. Minds that had been shattered. I am closer to that, I thought, than I am to recovery. Perhaps it would be best if I learned to live with my condition, after all. I could tell Dr Nash I don’t want to see him again and I could burn my journal, burying the truths I have already learned, hiding them as thoroughly as those I don’t yet know. I would be running away from my past, but I would have no regrets — in just a few hours I wouldn’t even know that either my journal or my doctor had ever existed — and then I could live simply. One day would follow another, unconnected. Yes, occasionally the memory of Adam would surface. I would have a day of grief and pain, would remember what I miss, but it would not last. Before long I would sleep and, quietly, forget. How easy that would be, I thought. So much easier than this.

I thought of the picture I’d seen. The image was burned into me. Who did that to me? Why? I remembered the memory I’d had of the hotel room. It was still there, just under the surface, just out of reach. I had read this morning that I had reason to believe I had been having an affair but now realized that — even if that were true — I didn’t know who it had been with. All I had was a single name, remembered as I woke just a few days ago, with no promise of ever remembering more, even if I wanted to.

Dr Nash was still talking. I had no idea what about, and interrupted him. ‘Am I getting better?’ I said.

A heartbeat, during which I thought he had no answer, then he said, ‘Do you think you are?’

Did I? I couldn’t say. ‘I don’t know. Yes. I suppose so. I can remember things from my past, sometimes. Flashes of memory. They come to me when I read my journal. They feel real. I remember Claire. Adam. My mother. But they’re like threads I can’t keep hold of. Balloons that float into the sky before I can catch them. I can’t remember my wedding. I can’t remember Adam’s first steps, his first word. I can’t remember him starting at school, his graduation. Anything. I don’t even know if I was there. Maybe Ben decided there was no point in taking me.’ I took a breath. ‘I can’t even remember learning he was dead. Or burying him.’ I began to cry. ‘I feel like I’m going crazy. Sometimes I don’t even think that he’s dead. Can you believe that? Sometimes I think that Ben’s lying to me about that, as well as everything else.’

‘Everything else?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My novel. The attack. The reason I have no memory. Everything.’

‘But why do you think he would do that?’

A thought came to me. ‘Because I was having an affair?’ I said. ‘Because I was unfaithful to him?’

‘Christine,’ he said. ‘That’s unlikely, don’t you think?’

I said nothing. He was right, of course. Deep down I didn’t believe his lies could really be a protracted revenge for something that had happened years and years ago. The explanation was likely to be much more mundane.

‘You know,’ said Dr Nash, ‘I think you are getting better. You’re remembering things. Much more often than when we first met. These snatches of memory? They’re definitely a sign of progress. They mean—’

I turned to him. ‘Progress? You call this progress?’ I was almost shouting now, anger spilling out of me as if I could no longer contain it. ‘If that’s what it is, then I don’t know if I want it.’ The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. ‘I don’t want it!’

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn’t feel ashamed. Dr Nash was talking to me, telling me first not to be upset, that things would be all right, and then to calm down. I ignored him. I could not calm down, and did not want to.

He stopped the car. Switched off the engine. I opened my eyes. We had left the main road and in front of me was a park. Through the blur of my tears I could see a group of boys — teenagers, I suppose — playing football, with two piles of coats for goal posts. It had begun to rain, but they didn’t stop. Dr Nash turned to face me.

‘Christine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps today was a mistake. I don’t know. I thought we might trigger other memories. I was wrong. In any case, you shouldn’t’ve seen that picture …’

‘I don’t even know if it was the picture,’ I said. I had stopped sobbing now, but my face was wet and I could feel a great looping mass of mucus escaping from my nose. ‘Do you have a tissue?’ I asked. He reached across me and looked in the glove compartment. ‘It was everything,’ I went on. ‘Seeing those people, imagining that I’d been like that, once. And the diary. I can’t believe that was me, writing that. I can’t believe I was that ill.’

He handed me a tissue. ‘But you’re not any more,’ he said. I took it from him and blew my nose.

‘Maybe it’s worse,’ I said, quietly. ‘I’d written that it was like being dead. But this? This is worse. This is like dying every day. Over and over. I need to get better,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine going on like this for much longer. I know I’ll go to sleep tonight and then tomorrow I will wake up and not know anything again, and the next day, and the day after that, for ever. I can’t imagine it. I can’t face it. It’s not life, it’s just an existence, jumping from one moment to the next with no idea of the past, and no plan for the future. It’s how I imagine animals must be. The worst thing is that I don’t even know what I don’t know. There might be lots of things, waiting to hurt me. Things I haven’t even dreamed about yet.’

He put his hand on mine. I fell into him, knowing what he would do, what he must do, and he did. He opened his arms and held me, and I let him embrace me. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’ I could feel his chest under my cheek and I breathed, inhaling his scent, fresh laundry and, faintly, something else. Sweat, and sex. His hand was on my back and I felt it move, felt it touch my hair, my head, lightly at first, but then more firmly as I sobbed again. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, whispering, and I closed my eyes.

‘I just want to remember what happened,’ I said, ‘on the night I was attacked. Somehow I feel that if I could only remember that, then I would remember everything.’

He spoke softly. ‘There’s no evidence that’s the case. No reason—’

‘But it’s what I think,’ I said. ‘I know it, somehow.’

He squeezed me. Gently, almost so gently that I couldn’t feel it. I felt his body, hard against mine, and breathed in deeply, and as I did so I thought of another time when I was being held. Another memory. My eyes are closed, just the same, and my body is being pressed up against that of another, though this is different. I do not want to be held by this man. He is hurting me. I am struggling, trying to get away, but he is strong and pulls me to him. He speaks. Bitch, he says. Slut. And though I want to argue with him I do not. My face is pressed against his shirt, and, just like with Dr Nash, I am crying, screaming. I open my eyes and see the blue fabric of his shirt, a door, a dressing table with three mirrors and a picture — a painting of a bird — above it. I can see his arm, strong, muscled, a vein running down its length. Let me go! I say, and then I am spinning, and falling, or the floor is rising to meet me, I cannot tell. He grabs a handful of my hair and drags me towards the door. I twist my head to see his face.

It is there that memory fails me again. Though I remember looking at his face, I cannot remember what I saw. It is featureless, a blank. As if unable to cope with this vacuum, my mind cycles through faces I know, through absurd impossibilities. I see Dr Nash. Dr Wilson. The receptionist at Fisher Ward. My father. Ben. I even see my own face, laughing as I raise a fist to strike.

Please, I cry, please don’t. But my many-faced attacker hits anyway, and I taste blood. He drags me along the floor, and then I am in the bathroom, on the cold tiles, black and white. The floor is damp with condensation, the room smells of orange blossom, and I remember how I had been looking forward to bathing, to making myself beautiful, thinking that maybe I would still be in the bath when he arrived, and then he could join me, and we would make love, making waves in the soapy water, soaking the floor, our clothes, everything. Because finally, after all these months of doubt, it has become clear to me. I love this man. Finally, I know it. I love him.

My head slams into the floor. Once, twice, a third time. My vision blurs and doubles, then returns. A buzzing in my ears, and he shouts something, but I can’t hear what. It echoes, as if there are two of him, both holding me, both twisting my arm, both grabbing handfuls of my hair as they kneel on my back. I beg him to leave me alone, and there are two of me, too. I swallow. Blood.

My head jerks back. Panic. I am on my knees. I see water, bubbles, already thinning. I try to speak but cannot. His hand is round my throat, and I cannot breathe. I am pitched forward, down, down, so quickly that I think I will never stop, and then my head is in the water. Orange blossom in my throat.

I heard a voice. ‘Christine!’ it said. ‘Christine! Stop!’ I opened my eyes. Somehow, I was out of the car. I was running. Across the park, as fast as I could, and running after me was Dr Nash.

We sat on a bench. It was concrete, crossed with wooden slats. One was missing, and the remainder sagged beneath us. I felt the sun against the back of my neck, saw its long shadows on the ground. The boys were still playing football, though the game must be finishing now; some were drifting off, others talked, one of the piles of jackets had been removed, leaving the goal unmarked. Dr Nash had asked me what had happened.

‘I remembered something,’ I said.

‘About the night you were attacked?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

‘You were screaming,’ he said. ‘You kept saying, “Get off me,” over and over.’

‘It was like I was there,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Please, don’t apologize. Do you want to tell me what you saw?’

The truth was I did not. I felt as if some ancient instinct was telling me that this was a memory best kept to myself. But I needed his help, knew I could trust him. I told him everything.

When I had finished he was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t remember what he looked like? The man who attacked you?’

‘No. I can’t see that at all.’

‘Or his name?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’ I hesitated. ‘Do you think it might help to know who did this to me? To see him? Remember him?’

‘Christine, there’s no real evidence to suggest that remembering the attack would help.’

‘But it might?’

‘It seems to be one of your most deeply repressed memories—’

‘So it might?’

He was silent, then said, ‘I’ve suggested it before, but it might help to go back there …’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. Don’t even say it.’

‘We can go together. You’d be fine, I promise. If you were there again … Back in Brighton—’

‘No.’

‘You might remember then—’

‘No! Please!’

‘It might help?’

I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap.

‘I can’t go back there,’ I said. ‘I just can’t.’

He sighed. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll talk about it again?’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK.’

He smiled, but seemed disappointed. I felt eager to give him something, to have him not give up on me. ‘Dr Nash?’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘The other day I wrote that something had come to me. Perhaps it’s relevant. I don’t know.’

He turned to face me.

‘Go on.’ Our knees touched. Neither of us drew away.

‘When I woke,’ I said, ‘I kind of knew that I was in bed with a man. I remembered a name. But it wasn’t Ben’s name. I wondered if it was the name of the person I’d been having the affair with. The one who attacked me.’

‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘It might have been the beginning of the repressed memory emerging. What was the name?’

Suddenly I didn’t want to tell him, to say it out loud. I felt that by doing so I would be making it real, conjuring my attacker back into existence. I closed my eyes.

‘Ed,’ I whispered. ‘I imagined waking up with someone called Ed.’

Silence. A heartbeat that seemed to last for ever.

‘Christine,’ he said. ‘That’s my name. I’m Ed. Ed Nash.’

My mind raced for a moment. My first thought was that he had attacked me. ‘What?’ I said, panicking.

‘That’s my name. I’ve told you that before. Maybe you’ve never written it down. My name is Edmund. Ed.’

I realized it could not have been him. He would barely have been born.

‘But—’

‘You may be confabulating,’ he said. ‘Like Dr Wilson explained?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I—’

‘Or maybe you were attacked by someone with the same name?’

He smiled awkwardly as he said it, making light of the situation, but in doing so revealed he had already worked out what only later — after he had driven me home, in fact — occurred to me. I had woken that morning happy. Happy to be in bed with someone called Ed. But it was not a memory. It was a fantasy. Waking with this man called Ed was not something I had done in the past but — even though my conscious, waking mind didn’t know who he was — something I wanted to do in the future. I want to sleep with Dr Nash.

And now, accidentally, inadvertently, I have told him. I have revealed the way I must feel about him. He was professional, of course. We both pretended to attach no significance to what had happened, and in doing so revealed just how much significance there was. We walked back to the car and he drove me home. We chatted about trivialities. The weather. Ben. There are few things we can talk about; there are whole arenas of experience from which I am utterly excluded. At one point he said, ‘We’re going to the theatre tonight,’ and I noted his careful use of the plural. Don’t worry, I wanted to say. I know my place. But I said nothing. I didn’t want him to think of me as bitter.

He told me he would call me tomorrow. ‘If you’re sure you want to continue?’

I know that I cannot stop now. Not until I have learned the truth. I owe myself that, otherwise I am living only half a life. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’ In any case, I need him to remind me to write in my journal.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good. Next time I think we should visit somewhere else from your past.’ He looked to where I sat. ‘Don’t worry. Not there. I think we should go to the care home you were moved to when you left Fisher Ward. It’s called Waring House.’ I said nothing. ‘It’s not too far from where you live. Shall I ring them?’

I thought for a moment, wondering what good it might do, but then realized there were no other options, and anything is better than nothing.

I said, ‘Yes. Yes. Ring them.’