Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

I am writing this at home. The place I finally understand as mine, somewhere I belong. I have read this journal through, and I have seen Claire, and between them they have told me all I need to know. Claire has promised me that she is back in my life now and will not leave again. In front of me is a tatty envelope with my name on it. An artefact. One that completes me. At last my past makes sense.

Soon, my husband will be home, and I am looking forward to seeing him. I love him. I know that now.

I will get this story down and then, together, we will be able to make everything better.

It was a bright day as I got off the bus. The light was suffused with the blue coolness of winter, the ground hard. Claire had told me she would wait at the top of the hill, by the main steps up to the palace, and so I folded the piece of paper on which I had written her directions and began to climb the gentle incline as it arced around the park. It took longer than I expected, and, still unused to my body’s limitations, I had to rest as I neared the top. I must have been fit once, I thought. Or fitter than this, anyway. I wondered if I ought to get some exercise.

The park opened out to an expanse of mowed grass, criss-crossed with tarmac, dotted with litter bins and women with pushchairs. I realized I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. How could I? In the images I had of Claire she was wearing a lot of black. Jeans, T-shirts. I saw her in heavy boots and a trench coat. Or else she was wearing a long skirt, tie-dyed, made of some material that I suppose would be described as floaty. I could imagine neither vision representing her now — not at the age we have become — but had no idea what might have taken their place.

I looked at my watch. I was early. Without thinking, I told myself that Claire is always late, then instantly wondered how I knew, what residue of memory had reminded me. There is so much, I thought, just under the surface. So many memories, darting like silvery minnows in a shallow stream. I decided to wait on one of the benches.

Long shadows extended themselves lazily across the grass. Over the trees rows of houses stretched away from me, packed claustrophobically close. With a start I realized that one of the houses I could see was the one in which I now lived, looking indistinguishable from the others.

I imagined lighting a cigarette and inhaling an anxious lungful, tried to resist the temptation to stand and pace. I felt nervous, ridiculously so. Yet there was no reason. Claire had been my friend. My best friend. There was nothing to worry about. I was safe.

Paint was flaking off the bench and I picked at it, revealing more of the damp wood beneath. Someone had used the same method to scratch two sets of initials next to where I sat, then surrounded them with a heart and added the date. I closed my eyes. Will I ever get used to the shock of seeing evidence of the year in which I am living? I breathed in: damp grass, the tang of hot dogs, petrol.

A shadow fell across my face and I opened my eyes. A woman stood over me. Tall, with a shock of ginger hair, she was wearing trousers and a sheepskin jacket. A little boy held her hand, a plastic football in the crook of his other arm. ‘Sorry,’ I said, and shuffled along the bench to allow room for them both to sit beside me, but as I did so the woman smiled.

‘Chrissy!’ she said. The voice was Claire’s. Unmistakably so. ‘Chrissy darling! It’s me.’ I looked from the child to her face. It was furrowed where once it must have been smooth, her eyes had a downturn to them that was absent from my mental image, but it was her. There was no doubt. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’ She pushed the child towards me. ‘This is Toby.’

The boy looked at me. ‘Go on,’ said Claire. ‘Say hello.’ For a moment I thought she was talking to me, but then he took a step forward. I smiled. My only thought was, is this Adam? even though I knew it couldn’t be.

‘Hello,’ I said.

Toby shuffled his feet and murmured something I didn’t catch, then turned to Claire and said, ‘Can I go and play now?’

‘Don’t go out of sight, though. Yes?’ She stroked his hair and he ran over to the park.

I stood up and turned to face her. I didn’t know if I would have preferred to turn and run myself, so vast was the chasm between us, but then she held out her arms. ‘Chrissy darling,’ she said, the plastic bracelets that hung from her wrists clattering into each other. ‘I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so fucking much.’ The weight that had been pressing down on me somersaulted, lifted and vanished, and I fell sobbing into her arms.

For the briefest of moments I felt as if I knew everything about her, and everything about myself, too. It was as if the emptiness, the void that sat at the centre of my soul, had been lit with light brighter than the sun. A history — my history — flashed in front of me, but too quickly for me to do anything but snatch at it. ‘I remember you,’ I said. ‘I remember you,’ and then it was gone and the darkness swept in once more.

We sat on the bench and, for a long time, silently watched Toby playing football with a group of boys. I felt happy to be connected with my unknown past, yet there was an awkwardness between us that I could not shake. A phrase kept repeating in my head. Something to do with Claire.

‘How are you?’ I said in the end, and she laughed.

‘I feel like hell,’ she said. She opened her bag and took out a packet of tobacco. ‘You haven’t started again, have you?’ she said, offering it to me, and I shook my head, aware again of how she was someone else who knew so much more about me than I did myself.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

She began to roll her cigarette, nodding towards her son. ‘Oh, you know. Tobes has ADHD. He was up all night, and hence so was I.’

‘ADHD?’ I said.

She smiled. ‘Sorry. It’s a fairly new phrase, I suppose. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. We have to give him Ritalin, though I fucking hate it. It’s the only way. We’ve tried just about everything else, and he’s an absolute beast without it. A horror.’

I looked over at him, running in the distance. Another faulty, fucked-up brain in a healthy body.

‘He’s OK, though?’

‘Yes,’ she said, sighing. She balanced her cigarette paper on her knee and began sprinkling tobacco along its fold. ‘He’s just exhausting sometimes. It’s like the terrible twos never ended.’

I smiled. I knew what she meant, but only theoretically. I had no point of reference, no recollection of what Adam might have been like, either at Toby’s age or younger.

‘Toby seems quite young?’ I said.

She laughed. ‘You mean I’m quite old!’ She licked the gum of her paper. ‘Yes. I had him late. Pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen, so we were being careless …’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean …?’

She laughed again. ‘I wouldn’t say he was an accident, but let’s just say he was something of a shock.’ She put the cigarette in her mouth. ‘Do you remember Adam?’

I looked at her. She had her head turned away from me, shielding her lighter from the wind, and I couldn’t see her expression, or tell whether the move was deliberately evasive.

‘No,’ I said. ‘A few weeks ago I remembered that I had a son, and ever since I wrote about it I feel like I’ve been carrying the knowledge around, like a heavy rock in my chest. But no. I don’t remember anything about him.’

She sent a cloud of blue-tinged smoke skyward. ‘That’s a shame,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. Ben shows you pictures, though? Doesn’t that help?’

I weighed up how much I should tell her. They seemed to have been in touch, to have been friends, once. I had to be careful, but still I felt an increasing need to speak, as well as hear, the truth.

‘He does show me pictures, yes. Though he doesn’t have any up around the house. He says I find them too upsetting. He keeps them hidden.’ I nearly said locked away.

She seemed surprised. ‘Hidden? Really?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He thinks I would find it too disturbing if I were to stumble across a picture of him.’

Claire nodded. ‘You might not recognize him? Know who he is?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I imagine that might be true,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘Now that he’s gone.’

Gone, I thought. She said it as though he had just popped out for a few hours, had taken his girlfriend to the cinema, or to shop for a pair of shoes. I understood it, though. Understood the tacit agreement that we would not talk about Adam’s death. Not yet. Understood that Claire is trying to protect me, too.

I said nothing. Instead I tried to imagine what it must have been like, to have seen my child every day, back when the phrase every day had some meaning, before every day became severed from the one before it. I tried to imagine waking every morning knowing who he was, being able to plan, to look forward to Christmas, to his birthday.

How ridiculous, I thought. I don’t even know when his birthday is.

‘Wouldn’t you like to see him?’

My heart leapt. ‘You have photographs?’ I said. ‘Could I—’

She looked surprised. ‘Of course! Loads! At home.’

‘I’d like one,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But—’

‘Please. It’d mean so much to me.’

She put her hand on mine. ‘Of course. I’ll bring one next time, but—’

She was interrupted by a cry in the distance. I looked across the park. Toby was running towards us, crying, as, behind him, the game of football continued.

‘Fuck,’ said Claire under her breath. She stood up and called out. ‘Tobes! Toby! What happened?’ He kept running. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go and sort him out.’

She went to her son and crouched down to ask what was wrong. I looked at the ground. The path was carpeted with moss, and the odd blade of grass had poked through the tarmac, fighting towards the light. I felt pleased. Not only that Claire would give me a photograph of Adam, but that she had said she would do so next time we met. We were going to be seeing more of each other. I realized that every time would once again seem like the first. The irony: that I am prone to forgetting that I have no memory.

I realized, too, that something about the way she had spoken of Ben — some wistfulness — made me think that the idea of them having an affair was ridiculous.

She came back.

‘Everything’s fine,’ she said. She flicked her cigarette away and ground it out with her heel. ‘Slight misunderstanding over ownership of the ball. Shall we walk?’ I nodded, and she turned to Toby. ‘Darling! Ice cream?’

He said yes and we began to walk towards the palace. Toby was holding Claire’s hand. They looked so alike, I thought, their eyes lit with the same fire.

‘I love it up here,’ said Claire. ‘The view is so inspiring. Don’t you think?’

I looked out at the grey houses, dotted with green. ‘I suppose. Do you still paint?’

‘Hardly,’ she said. ‘I dabble. I’ve become a dabbler. Our own walls are chock-full of my pictures, but nobody else has one. Unfortunately.’

I smiled. I didn’t mention my novel, though I wanted to ask if she’d read it, what she thought. ‘What do you do now, then?’

‘I look after Toby mostly,’ she said. ‘He’s home-schooled.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Not through choice,’ she replied. ‘None of the schools will take him. They say he’s too disruptive. They can’t handle him.’

I looked at her son as he walked with us. He seemed perfectly calm, holding his mother’s hand. He asked if he could have his ice cream, and Claire told him he’d be able to soon. I couldn’t imagine him being difficult.

‘What was Adam like?’ I said.

‘As a child?’ she said. ‘He was a good boy. Very polite. Well behaved, you know?’

‘Was I a good mother? Was he happy?’

‘Oh, Chrissy,’ she said. ‘Yes. Yes. Nobody was more loved than that boy. You don’t remember, do you? You had been trying for a while. You had an ectopic pregnancy. You were worried you might not be able to get pregnant again, but then along came Adam. You were so happy, both of you. And you loved being pregnant. I hated it. Bloated like a fucking house, and such dreadful sickness. Frightful. But it was different with you. You loved every second of it. You glowed, for the whole time you were carrying him. You lit up rooms when you walked into them, Chrissy.’

I closed my eyes, even as we walked, and tried first to remember being pregnant, and then to imagine it. I could do neither. I looked at Claire.

‘And then?’

‘Then? The birth. It was wonderful. Ben was there, of course. I got there as soon as I could.’ She stopped walking, and turned to look at me. ‘And you were a great mother, Chrissy. Great. Adam was happy, and cared for, and loved. No child could have wished for more.’

I tried to remember motherhood, my son’s childhood. Nothing.

‘And Ben?’

She paused, then said, ‘Ben was a great father. Always. He loved that boy. He would race home from work every evening to see him. When Adam said his first word Ben called everyone up and told them. The same when he began to crawl, or took his first step. As soon as he could walk he was taking him to the park, with a football, whatever. And Christmas! So many toys! I think that was just about the only thing I ever saw you argue about — how many toys Ben would buy for Adam. You were worried he’d be spoilt.’

I felt a twinge of regret, an urge to apologize for ever having tried to deny my son anything.

‘I would let him have anything he wanted, now,’ I said. ‘If only I could.’

She looked at me sadly. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. But be happy knowing that he didn’t want for anything from you, ever.’

We carried on walking. A van was parked on the footpath, selling ice creams, and we turned towards it. Toby began to tug at his mother’s arm. She leaned down and gave him a note from her purse before letting him go. ‘Choose one thing!’ she shouted after him. ‘Just one! And wait for the change!’

I watched him run to the van. ‘Claire,’ I said, ‘how old was Adam when I lost my memory?’

She smiled. ‘He must have been three. Maybe four, just.’

I felt I was stepping into new territory now. Into danger. But it was where I had to go. The truth I had to discover. ‘My doctor told me I was attacked,’ I said. She didn’t reply. ‘In Brighton. Why was I there?’

I looked at Claire, scanning her face. She seemed to be making a decision, weighing up options, deciding what to do. ‘I don’t know, for sure,’ she said. ‘Nobody does.’

She stopped speaking, and we both watched Toby for a while. He had his ice cream now and was unwrapping it, a look of determined concentration scoring his face. Silence stretched in front of me. Unless I say something, I thought, this will last for ever.

‘I was having an affair, wasn’t I?’

There was no reaction. No intake of breath, no gasp of denial or look of shock. Claire looked at me steadily. Calmly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You were cheating on Ben.’

Her voice had no emotion. I wondered what she thought of me. Either then or now.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But let’s sit down. I’m just gasping for a coffee.’

We walked up to the main building.

The cafeteria doubled as a bar. The chairs were steel, the tables plain. Palm trees were dotted around, an attempt at atmosphere ruined by the cold air that blasted in whenever someone opened the door. We sat opposite each other across a table that swam with spilled coffee, warming our hands on our drinks.

‘What happened?’ I said again. ‘I need to know.’

‘It’s not easy to say,’ said Claire. She spoke slowly as if picking her way through difficult terrain. ‘I suppose it started not long after you had Adam. Once the initial excitement had worn off there was a period when things were extremely tough.’ She paused. ‘It’s so difficult, isn’t it? To see what’s going on when you’re in the absolute middle of something? It’s only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.’ I nodded, but didn’t understand. Hindsight is something I don’t have. She went on. ‘You cried, awfully. You worried you weren’t bonding with the baby. All the usual stuff. Ben and I did what we could, and your mother, when she was around, but it was tough. And even when the absolute worst was over you still found it hard. You couldn’t get back into your work. You’d call me up, in the middle of the day. Upset. You said you felt like a failure. Not a failure at motherhood — you could see how happy Adam was — but a failure as a writer. You thought you’d never be able to write again. I’d come round and see you, and you’d be in a mess. Crying, the works.’ I wondered what was coming next — how bad it would get — then she said, ‘You and Ben were arguing, too. You resented him, how easy he found life. He offered to pay for a nanny but, well …’

‘Well?’

‘You said that was typical of him. To throw money at the problem. You had a point, but … Perhaps you weren’t being terribly fair.’

Perhaps not, I thought. It struck me that back then we must have had money — more money than we had after I lost my memory, more money than I guess we have now. What a drain on our resources my illness must have been.

I tried to picture myself, arguing with Ben, looking after a baby, trying to write. I imagined bottles of milk, or Adam at my breast. Dirty nappies. Mornings in which getting both myself and my baby fed were the only ambitions I could reasonably have, and afternoons in which I was so exhausted the only thing I craved was sleep — sleep that was still hours away — and the thought of trying to write was pushed far from my mind. I could see it all, and feel the slow, burning resentment.

But that’s all they were. Imaginings. I remembered nothing. Claire’s story felt like it had nothing to do with me at all.

‘So I had an affair?’

She looked up. ‘I was free. I was doing my painting then. I said I’d look after Adam two afternoons a week, so you could write. I insisted.’ She took my hand in hers. ‘It was my fault, Chrissy. I even suggested you go to a café.’

‘A café?’ I said.

‘I thought it would be a good idea if you got out of the house. Gave yourself space. A few hours a week, away from everything. After a few weeks you seemed to get better. You were happier in yourself, you said your work was going well. You started going to the café almost every day, taking Adam when I couldn’t look after him. But then I noticed that you were dressing differently, too. The classic thing, though I didn’t realize what it was at the time. I thought it was just because you were feeling better. More confident. But then Ben called me, one evening. He’d been drinking, I think. He said you were arguing, more than ever, and he didn’t know what to do. You were off sex, too. I told him it was probably just because of the baby, that he was probably worrying unnecessarily. But—’

I interrupted. ‘I was seeing someone.’

‘I asked you. You denied it at first, but then I told you I wasn’t stupid, and neither was Ben. We had an argument, but after a while you told me the truth.’

The truth. Not glamorous, not exciting. Just the bald facts. I had turned into a living cliché, taken to fucking someone I’d met in a café while my best friend was babysitting my child and my husband was earning the money to pay for the clothes and underwear I was wearing for someone other than him. I pictured the furtive phone calls, the aborted arrangements when something unexpected came up and, on the days we could get together, the sordid, pathetic afternoons, spent in bed with a man who had temporarily seemed better — more exciting? attractive? a better lover? richer? — than my husband. Was this the man I had been waiting for in that hotel room, the man who would eventually attack me, leave me with no past and no future?

I closed my eyes. A flash of memory. Hands gripping my hair, around my throat. My head under water. Gasping, crying. I remember what I was thinking. I want to see my son. One last time. I want to see my husband. I should never have done this to him. I should never have betrayed him with this man. I will never be able to tell him I am sorry. Never.

I open my eyes. Claire was squeezing my hand. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘I don’t know whether—’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Tell me. Who was it?’

She sighed. ‘You said you’d met someone else who went to the café regularly. He was nice, you said. Attractive. You’d tried, but you hadn’t been able to stop yourself.’

‘What was his name?’ I said. ‘Who was he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must!’ I said. ‘His name at least! Who did this to me?’

She looked into my eyes. ‘Chrissy,’ she said, her voice calm, ‘you never even told me his name. You just said you’d met him in a coffee shop. I suppose you didn’t want me to know any details. Any more than I had to, at least.’

I felt another sliver of hope slip away, washed downstream in the river. I would never know who did this to me.

‘What happened?’

‘I told you that I thought you were being silly. There was Adam to think about, as well as Ben. I thought you ought to call it off. Stop seeing him.’

‘But I wouldn’t listen.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not at first. We fought. I told you that you were putting me in an impossible situation. Ben was my friend too. You were asking me to lie to him.’

‘What happened? How long did it go on for?’

She was silent, then said, ‘I don’t know. One day — it must have been only a few weeks — you announced that it was all over. You’d told this man that it wasn’t working, that you’d made a mistake. You said you were sorry, you’d been foolish. Crazy.’

‘I was lying?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. You and I didn’t lie to each other. We just didn’t.’ She blew across the top of her coffee. ‘A few weeks later you were found in Brighton,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what happened in that time.’

Perhaps it was those words — I have no idea what happened in that time — that set it off, the realization that I may never know how I came to be attacked, but a sound suddenly escaped me. I tried to clamp it down, but failed. Something between a gasp and a howl, it was the cry of an animal in pain. Toby looked up from his colouring book. Everyone in the café turned to stare at me, at the mad woman with no memory. Claire grabbed my arm.

‘Chrissy!’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

I was sobbing now, my body heaving, gasping for breath. Crying for all the years that I had lost, and for all those that I would continue to lose between now and the day that I died. Crying because, however hard it had been for her to tell me about the affair, and my marriage, and my son, she would have to do it all again tomorrow. Crying mostly, though, because I had brought all this on myself.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Claire stood up and came round the table. She crouched beside me, her arm around my shoulder, and I rested my head against hers. ‘There, there,’ she said as I sobbed. ‘It’s all right, Chrissy darling. I’m here now. I’m here.’

We left the café. As if unwilling to be outdone, Toby had become boisterously noisy after my own outburst — he threw his colouring book on the floor, along with a plastic cup of juice. Claire cleaned up and then said, ‘I need to get some air. Shall we?’

Now we sat on one of the benches that overlooked the park. Our knees were angled towards each other, and Claire held my hands in hers, stroking them as if they were cold.

‘Did I—’ I began. ‘Did I have lots of affairs?’

She shook her head. ‘No. None. We had fun at university, you know? But no more than most. And once you met Ben that stopped. You were always faithful to him.’

I wondered what had been so special about the man in the café. Claire had said that I’d told her he was nice. Attractive. Was that all it was? Was I really so shallow?

My husband was both of those things, I thought. If only I’d been content with what I had.

‘Ben knew I was having an affair?’

‘Not at first. No. Not until you were found. It was a dreadful shock for him. For all of us. At first it looked as though you might not even live. Later, Ben asked me if I knew why you’d been in Brighton. I told him. I had to. I’d already told the police all I knew. I had no choice but to tell Ben.’

Guilt punctured me once more as I thought of my husband, of the father of my son, trying to work out why his dying wife had turned up miles away from home. How could I do this to him?

‘He forgave you, though,’ said Claire. ‘He never held it against you, ever. All he cared about was that you lived, and that you got better. He would have given everything for that. Everything. Nothing else mattered.’

I felt a surge of love for my husband. Real. Unforced. Despite everything, he had taken me in. Looked after me.

‘Will you talk to him?’ I said.

She smiled. ‘Of course! But about what?’

‘He’s not telling me the truth,’ I said. ‘Or not always, anyway. He’s trying to protect me. He tells me what he thinks I can cope with, what he thinks I want to hear.’

‘Ben wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘He loves you. He always has.’

‘Well, he is,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t know I know. He doesn’t know I’m writing things down. He doesn’t tell me about Adam, other than when I remember him and ask. He doesn’t tell me he left me. He tells me you live on the other side of the world. He doesn’t think I can cope. He’s given up on me, Claire. Whatever he used to be like, he’s given up on me. He doesn’t want me to see a doctor because he doesn’t think I will ever get any better, but I’ve been seeing one, Claire. A Dr Nash. In secret. I can’t even tell Ben.’

Claire’s face fell. She looked disappointed. In me, I suppose. ‘That’s not good,’ she said. ‘You ought to tell him. He loves you. He trusts you.’

‘I can’t. He only admitted he was still in touch with you the other day. Until then he’d been saying he hadn’t spoken to you in years.’

Her expression of disapproval changed. For the first time I could see that she was surprised.

‘Chrissy!’

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I know he loves me. But I need him to be honest with me. About everything. I don’t know my own past. And only he can help me. I need him to help me.’

‘Then you should just talk to him. Trust him.’

‘But how can I?’ I said. ‘With all the things he’s lied to me about? How can I?’

She squeezed my hands in hers. ‘Chrissy, Ben loves you. You know he does. He loves you more than life itself. He always has.’

‘But—’ I began, but she interrupted.

‘You have to trust him. Believe me. You can sort everything out, but you have to tell him the truth. Tell him about Dr Nash. Tell him what you’ve been writing. It’s the only way.’

Somewhere, deep down, I knew she was right, but still I could not convince myself I should tell Ben about my journal.

‘But he might want to read what I’ve written.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘There’s nothing in there you wouldn’t want him to see, is there?’ I didn’t reply. ‘Is there? Chrissy?’

I looked away. We didn’t speak, and then she opened her bag.

‘Chrissy,’ she said. ‘I’m going to give you something. Ben gave it to me, when he decided he needed to leave you.’ She took out an envelope and handed it to me. It was creased, but still sealed. ‘He told me it explained everything.’ I stared at it. My name was written on the front in capitals. ‘He asked me to give it to you, if I ever thought you were well enough to read it.’ I looked up at her, feeling every emotion at once. Excitement, and fear. ‘I think it’s time you read it,’ she said.

I took it from her, and put it in my bag. Though I didn’t know why, I didn’t want to read it there, in front of Claire. Perhaps I was worried that she would be able to read its contents reflected in my face, and they would no longer be mine to own.

‘Thank you,’ I said. She did not smile.

‘Chrissy,’ she said. She looked down, at her hands. ‘There’s a reason Ben tells you I moved away.’ I felt my world begin to change, though in what way I was not yet certain. ‘I have to tell you something. About why we lost touch.’

I knew then. Without her saying anything, I knew. The missing piece of the puzzle, the reason Ben had gone, the reason my best friend had disappeared from my life and my husband had lied about why this had happened. I had been right. All along. I had been right.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Oh God. It’s true. You’re seeing Ben. You’re fucking my husband.’

She looked up, horrified. ‘No!’ she said. ‘No!’

A certainty overtook me. I wanted to shout Liar! but I did not. I was about to ask her again what she wanted to tell me when she wiped something from her eye. A tear? I don’t know.

‘Not now,’ she whispered, then looked back to the hands in her lap. ‘But we were once.’

Of all the emotions I might have expected to feel, relief wasn’t one of them. But it was true: I felt relieved. Because she was being honest? Because now I had an explanation for everything, one that I could believe? I’m not sure. But the anger that I may have felt was not there; neither was the pain. Perhaps I was happy to feel a tiny spark of jealousy, concrete proof that I loved my husband. Perhaps I was just relieved that Ben had an infidelity to go with my own, that we were equal now. Quits.

‘Tell me,’ I whispered.

She did not look up. ‘We were always close,’ she said, softly. ‘The three of us, I mean. You. Me. Ben. But there had never been anything between me and him. You must believe that. Never.’ I told her to go on. ‘After your accident I tried to help out in whatever way I could. You can imagine how terribly difficult it was for Ben. Just on a practical level if nothing else. Having to look after Adam … I did what I could. We spent a lot of time together. But we didn’t sleep together. Not then. I swear, Chrissy.’

‘So when?’ I said. ‘When did it happen?’

‘Just before you were moved to Waring House,’ she said.

‘You were at your worst. Adam was being difficult. Things were tough.’ She looked away. ‘Ben was drinking. Not too much, but enough. He wasn’t coping. One night we got back from visiting you. I put Adam to bed. Ben was in the living room crying. “I can’t do it,” he kept saying. “I can’t keep doing this. I love her, but it’s killing me.”’

The wind gusted up the hill. Cold. Biting. I pulled my coat around my body.

‘I sat next to him. And …’

I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

And then what? The fucking. On the sofa? The floor? I do not want to know.

‘And?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never wanted it to happen. But it did, and … I felt so bad. So bad. We both did.’

‘How long?’

‘What?’

‘How long did it go on for?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘I don’t know. Not long. A few weeks. We only … we only had sex a few times. It didn’t feel right. We both felt so bad, afterwards.’

‘What happened?’ I said. ‘Who ended it?’

She shrugged, then whispered, ‘Both of us. We talked. It couldn’t go on. I decided I owed it to you — and Ben — to stay away from then on. It was guilt, I suppose.’

An awful thought occurred to me.

‘Is that when he decided to leave me?’

‘Chrissy, no,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t think that. He felt awful, too. But he didn’t leave you because of me.’

No, I thought. Perhaps not directly. But you might have reminded him of just how much he was missing.

I looked at her. I still didn’t feel angry. I couldn’t. Perhaps if she had told me that they were still sleeping together I might have felt differently. What she had told me felt as though it belonged to another time. Prehistory. I found it hard to believe it had anything to do with me at all.

Claire looked up. ‘At first I was in touch with Adam, but then Ben must have told him what had happened. Adam said he didn’t want to see me again. He told me to stay away from him, and from you, too. But I couldn’t, Chrissy. I just couldn’t. Ben had given me the letter, asked me to keep an eye on you. So I carried on visiting. At Waring House. Every few weeks at first, then every couple of months. But it upset you. It upset you terribly. I know I was being selfish, but I couldn’t just leave you there. On your own. I carried on coming. Just to check you were all right.’

‘And you told Ben how I was?’

‘No. We weren’t in touch.’

‘Is that why you haven’t been visiting me lately? At home? Because you don’t want to see Ben?’

‘No. A few months ago I visited Waring House and they told me you’d left. You’d gone back to live with Ben. I knew Ben had moved. I asked them to give me your address but they wouldn’t. They said it would be a breach of confidentiality. They said they would give you my number and that if I wanted to write to you they would pass the letters on.’

‘So you wrote?’

‘I addressed the letter to Ben. I told him I was sorry, that I regretted what had happened. I begged him to let me see you.’

‘But he told you you couldn’t?’

‘No. You wrote back, Chrissy. You said that you were feeling much better. You said you were happy, with Ben.’ She looked away, across the park. ‘You said you didn’t want to see me. That your memory would sometimes come back and when it did you knew I had betrayed you.’ She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘You told me not to come anywhere near you, ever again. That it was better that you forgot me for ever, and that I forgot you.’

I felt myself go cold. I tried to imagine the anger I must have felt to write a letter like that, but at the same time realized maybe I hadn’t felt angry at all. To me, Claire would hardly have existed, any friendship between us forgotten.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I couldn’t imagine being able to remember her betrayal. Ben must have helped me write the letter.

She smiled. ‘No. Don’t apologize. You were right. But I didn’t stop hoping you’d change your mind. I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you the truth, to your face.’ I said nothing. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said then. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’

I took her hand. How could I be angry with her? Or with Ben? My condition has placed an impossible burden on us all.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. I forgive you.’

We left soon after. At the bottom of the slope she turned to face me.

‘Will I see you again?’ she said.

I smiled. ‘I hope so!’

She looked relieved. ‘I’ve missed you, Chrissy. You’ve no idea.’

It was true. I did have no idea. But with her, and this journal, there was a chance I could rebuild a life worth living. I thought of the letter in my bag. A message from the past. The final piece of the puzzle. The answers I need.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said. ‘Early next week. OK?’

‘OK,’ I said. She hugged me, and my voice was lost in the curls of her hair. She felt like my only friend, the only person I could rely on, along with Ben. My sister. I squeezed her hard. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth,’ I said. ‘Thank you. For everything. I love you.’ When we parted and looked at each other both of us were crying.

At home, I sat down to read Ben’s letter. I felt nervous — would it tell me what I needed to know? Will I finally understand why Ben left me? — but at the same time excited. I felt sure it would. Felt certain that with it, with Ben and Claire, I will have everything I need.

Darling Christine,

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Already I’ve kicked off with a cliché, but you know I’m not a writer — that was always you! — so I’m sorry, but I’ll do my best.

By the time you read this you’ll know, but I’ve decided I have to leave you. I can’t bear to write it, or even to think it, but I have to. I have tried so hard to find another way, but I can’t. Believe me.

You have to understand that I love you. I always have. I always will. I don’t care what has happened, or why. This isn’t about revenge, or anything like that. I haven’t met anybody else. When you were in that coma I realized just how much a part of me you are — I felt like I was dying every time I looked at you. I realized I didn’t care what you were doing that night in Brighton, or who you were seeing. I just wanted you to come back to me.

And then you did, and I was so happy. You will never know how happy I was, the day they told me you were out of danger, that you wouldn’t die. That you weren’t going to leave me. Or us. Adam was just little, but I think he understood.

When we realized you had no memory of what had happened I thought it was a good thing. Can you believe that? I feel ashamed now, but I thought it was for the best. But then we realized that you were forgetting other things too. Gradually, over time. At first it was the names of the people in the beds next to you, the doctors and nurses treating you. But you got worse. You forgot why you were in the hospital, why you weren’t allowed to come home with me. You convinced yourself that the doctors were experimenting on you. When I took you home for a weekend you didn’t recognize our street, our house. Your cousin came to see you and you had no idea who she was. We took you back to the hospital and you had no idea where you were going.

I think that’s when things started to get difficult. You loved Adam so much. It shone out of your eyes when we arrived, and he would run over to you and into your arms, and you would pick him up, and know who he was, straight away. But then — I’m sorry, Chris, but I have to tell you this — you started to believe that Adam had been away from you when he was a baby. Every time you saw him you thought that it was the first time since he was a few months old. I would ask him to tell you when he last saw you and he would say, ‘Yesterday, Mummy,’ or ‘Last week,’ but you didn’t believe him. ‘What have you been telling him?’ you’d say. ‘It’s a lie.’ You started accusing me of keeping you locked there. You thought another woman was raising Adam as her own while you were in the hospital.

One day I arrived and you didn’t recognize me. You became hysterical. You grabbed Adam when I wasn’t looking and ran to the door, to rescue him, I suppose, but he started screaming. He didn’t understand why you’d do that. I took him home and tried to explain, but he didn’t understand. He started being really frightened of you.

It got worse. One day I called the hospital. I asked them what you were like when I wasn’t there, when Adam wasn’t there. ‘Describe her, right now,’ I said. They said you were calm. Happy. You were sitting in the chair next to your bed. ‘What’s she doing?’ I said. They said you were talking to one of the other patients, a friend of yours. Sometimes you played cards together.

‘Played cards?’ I said. I couldn’t believe it. They said you were good at cards. They had to explain the rules to you every day, but then you could beat just about anybody.

‘Is she happy?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ they said. ‘Yes. She’s always happy.’

‘Does she remember me?’ I said. ‘Adam?’

‘Not unless you’re here,’ they said.

I think I knew then that one day I would have to leave you. I’ve found you a place where you can live for as long as you need to. Somewhere you can be happy. Because you will be happy, without me, without Adam. You won’t know us, and so you won’t miss us.

I love you so much, Chrissy. You must understand that. I love you more than I love anything. But I have to give our son a life, a life he deserves. Soon he will be old enough to understand what’s going on. I will not lie to him, Chris. I will explain the choice I have made. I will tell him that although he may want to see you very much it would be enormously upsetting for him to do so. Maybe he will hate me. Blame me. I hope not. But I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.

You’ve been in Waring House for a while now. You don’t panic any more. You have a sense of routine. That’s good. And so it’s time for me to go.

I’m going to give this letter to Claire. I’ll ask her to keep it for me, and to show it to you when you’re well enough to read it, and to understand it. I can’t keep it myself, I’ll just brood over it, and won’t be able to resist giving it to you next week, or next month, or even next year. Too soon.

I cannot pretend I don’t hope that one day we can be together again. When you are recovered. The three of us. A family. I have to believe that might happen. I have to, or else I will die from grief.

I am not abandoning you, Chris. I will never abandon you. I love you too much.

Believe me, this is the right thing, the only thing for me to do.

Don’t hate me. I love you.

Ben

X

I read it again now, and fold the paper. It feels crisp, as though it might have been written yesterday, but the envelope into which I slip it is soft, its edges frayed, with a sweet smell clinging to it, like perfume. Has Claire carried it with her, tucked in a corner of her bag? Or, more likely, has she stored it in a drawer at home, out of sight, but never quite forgotten? For years it waited for the right time to be read. Years that I spent not knowing who my husband was, not even knowing who I was. Years in which I could never have bridged the gap between us, because it was a gap I had never known existed.

I slip the envelope between the pages of my journal. I am crying as I write this, but I don’t feel unhappy. I understand everything. Why he left me, why he has been lying to me.

Because he has been lying to me. He has not told me about the novel I wrote so that I will not be devastated by the fact that I will never write another. He has been telling me my best friend moved away to protect me from the fact that the two of them betrayed me. Because he didn’t trust me to love them both far too much to not forgive them. He has been telling me that I was hit by a car, that this was an accident, so that I don’t have to deal with the fact that I was attacked and what happened to me was the result of a deliberate act of ferocious hatred. He has been telling me that we never had children, not only to protect me from the knowledge that my only son is dead, but to protect me, too, from having to deal with the grief of his death every single day of my life. And he has not told me that, after years of trying to find a way for our family to be together, he had to face the fact that we couldn’t be and take our son and leave in order to find happiness.

He must have thought that our separation would be for ever, when he wrote that letter, but he must also have hoped that it would not, or else why write it? What was he thinking, as he sat there, in his home, our home as it must once have been, and took out his pen and began to try to explain to someone who he could never expect to understand why he felt he had no option but to leave her? I am no writer, he said, and yet his words are beautiful to me, profound. They read as if he is talking about someone else, and yet, somewhere inside me, under the skin and bones, the tissue and blood, I know that he is not. He is talking about, and to, me. Christine Lucas. His broken wife.

But it has not been for ever. What he hoped for has happened. Somehow my condition has improved, or else he found separation from me even harder than he imagined, and he came back for me.

Everything seems different now. The room I am in looks no more familiar to me than it did this morning when I woke up and stumbled into it, trying to find the kitchen, desperate for a drink of water, desperate to piece together what happened last night. And yet it no longer seems shot through with pain, and sadness. It no longer seems emblematic of a life I cannot consider living. The ticking of the clock at my shoulder is no longer just marking time. It speaks to me. Relax, it says. Relax, and take what comes.

I have been wrong. I have made a mistake. Again and again and again I have made it; who knows how many times? My husband is my protector, yes, but also my lover. And now I realize that I love him. I have always loved him, and if I have to learn to love him again every day, then so be it. That is what I will do.

Ben will be home soon — already I can feel him approach — and when he arrives back I will tell him everything. I will tell him that I have met Claire — and Dr Nash, and even Dr Paxton — and that I have read his letter. I will tell him that I understand why he did what he did back then, why he left me, and that I forgive him. I will tell him that I know about the attack, but that I no longer need to know what happened, no longer care who did this to me.

And I will tell him that I know about Adam. I know what happened to him, and though the thought of facing it every day makes me cold with terror, that is what I must do. The memory of our son must be allowed to exist in this house, and in my heart, too, no matter how much pain that causes.

And I will tell him about this journal, that finally I am able to give myself a narrative, a life, and I will show it to him, if he asks to see it. And then I can continue to use it, to tell my story, my autobiography. To create myself from nothing.

‘No more secrets,’ I will say to my husband. ‘None. I love you, Ben, and I always will. We have wronged each other. But please forgive me. I am sorry that I left you all those years ago to be with somebody else, and I am sorry that we can never know who it was I went to see in that hotel room, or what I found there. But please know that I am determined to make this up to you now.’

And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.

I have called Dr Nash. ‘I want to see you one more time,’ I said. ‘I want you to read my journal.’ I think he was surprised, but he agreed.

‘When?’ he said.

‘Next week,’ I said. ‘Come for it next week.’

He said he would collect it on Tuesday.