Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

My name is Christine Lucas. I am forty-seven. An amnesiac. I am sitting here, in this unfamiliar bed, writing my story dressed in a silk nightie that the man downstairs — who tells me that he is my husband, that he is called Ben — apparently bought me for my forty-sixth birthday. The room is silent and the only light comes from the lamp on the bedside table — a soft orange glow. I feel as if I am floating, suspended in a pool of light.

I have the bedroom door closed. I am writing this in private. In secret. I can hear my husband in the living room — the soft sigh of the sofa as he leans forward or stands up, an occasional cough, politely stifled — but I will hide this book if he comes upstairs. I will put it under the bed, or the pillow. I don’t want him to see I am writing in it. I don’t want to have to tell him how I got it.

I look at the clock on the bedside table. It is almost eleven; I must write quickly. I imagine that soon I will hear the TV silenced, a creak of a floorboard as Ben crosses the room, the flick of a light switch. Will he go into the kitchen and make a sandwich or pour himself a glass of water? Or will he come straight to bed? I don’t know. I don’t know his rituals. I don’t know my own.

Because I have no memory. According to Ben, according to the doctor I met this afternoon, tonight, as I sleep, my mind will erase everything I know today. Everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I am still a child. Thinking I still have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me.

And then I will find out, again, that I am wrong. My choices have already been made. Half my life is behind me.

The doctor was called Nash. He called me this morning, collected me in his car, drove me to an office. He asked me and I told him that I had never met him before; he smiled — though not unkindly — and opened the lid of the computer that sat on his desk.

He played me a film. A video clip. It was of me and him, sitting in different clothes but the same chairs, in the same office. In the film he handed me a pencil and asked me to draw shapes on a piece of paper, but by looking only in a mirror so that everything appeared backwards. I could see that I found it difficult, but watching it now all I could see was my wrinkled fingers and the glint of the wedding ring on my left hand. When I had finished he seemed pleased. ‘You’re getting faster,’ he said on the video, then added that somewhere, deep, deep down, I must be remembering the effects of my weeks of practice even if I did not remember the practice itself. ‘That means your long-term memory must be working on some level,’ he said. I smiled then, but did not look happy. The film ended.

Dr Nash closed his computer. He said we have been meeting for the last few weeks, that I have a severe impairment of something called my episodic memory. He explained that this means I can’t remember events, or autobiographical details, and told me that this is usually due to some kind of neurological problem. Structural or chemical, he said. Or a hormonal imbalance. It is very rare, and I seem to be affected particularly badly. When I asked him how badly he told me that some days I can’t remember much beyond my early childhood. I thought of this morning, when I had woken with no adult memories at all.

‘Some days?’ I said. He didn’t answer, and his silence told me what he really meant:

Most days.

There are treatments for persistent amnesia, he said — drugs, hypnosis — but most have already been tried. ‘But you’re uniquely placed to help yourself, Christine,’ he said, and, when I asked him why, he told me it was because I am different from most amnesiacs. ‘Your pattern of symptoms does not suggest that your memories are lost for ever,’ he said. ‘You can recall things for hours. Right up until you go to sleep. You can even doze and still remember things when you wake up, as long as you haven’t been in a deep sleep. That’s very unusual. Most amnesiacs lose their new memories every few seconds …’

‘And?’ I said.

He slid a brown notebook across the desk towards me. ‘I think it might be worth you documenting your treatment, your feelings, any impressions or memories that come to you. In here.’

I reached forward and took the book from him. Its pages were blank.

So this is my treatment? I thought. Keeping a journal? I want to remember things, not just record them.

He must have sensed my disappointment. ‘I’m also hoping the act of writing your memories might trigger some more,’ he said. ‘The effect might be cumulative.’

I was silent for a moment. What choice did I have, really? Keep a journal or stay as I am, for ever.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ve written my numbers in the front of the book. Ring me if you get confused.’

I took the book from him and said I would. There was a long pause, and he said, ‘We’ve been doing some good work recently around your early childhood. We’ve been looking at pictures. Things like that.’ I said nothing, and he took a photograph out of the file in front of him. ‘Today I’d like you to take a look at this,’ he said. ‘Do you recognize it?’

The photograph was of a house. At first it seemed totally unfamiliar to me, but then I saw the worn step that led to the front door and suddenly knew. It was the house in which I had grown up, the one that, this morning, I had thought I was waking up in. It had looked different, somehow less real, but was unmistakable. I swallowed hard. ‘It’s where I lived as a child,’ I said.

He nodded, and told me that most of my early memories are unaffected. He asked me to describe the inside of the house.

I told him what I remembered: that the front door opened directly into the living room, that there was a small dining room at the back of the house, that visitors were encouraged to use the alley that separated our house from the neighbours’ and go straight into the kitchen at the back.

‘More?’ he said. ‘How about upstairs?’

‘Two bedrooms,’ I said. ‘One at the front, one at the back. The bath and toilet were through the kitchen, at the very back of the house. They’d been in a separate building until it was joined to the rest of the house with two brick walls and a roof of corrugated plastic.’

‘More?’

I didn’t know what he was looking for. ‘I’m not sure …’ I said.

He asked if I remembered any small details.

It came to me then. ‘My mother kept a jar in the pantry with the word Sugar written on it,’ I said. ‘She used to keep money in there. She’d hide it on the top shelf. There were jams up there, too. She made her own. We used to pick the berries from a wood that we drove to. I don’t remember where. The three of us would walk deep into the forest and pick blackberries. Bags and bags. And then my mother would boil them to make jam.’

‘Good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Excellent!’ He was writing in the file in front of him. ‘What about these?’

He showed me a couple more pictures. One of a woman who, after a few moments, I recognized as my mother. One of me. I told him what I could. When I finished he put them away. ‘That’s good. You’ve remembered a lot more of your childhood than usual, I think because of the photographs.’ He paused. ‘Next time I’d like to show you a few more.’

I said yes. I wondered where he had got these photos, how much he knew of my life that I didn’t know myself.

‘Can I keep it?’ I said. ‘That picture of my old home?’

He smiled. ‘Of course!’ He passed it over and I slipped it between the pages of the notebook.

He drove me back. He’d already explained that Ben does not know we are meeting, but now he told me I ought to think carefully about whether I wanted to tell him about the journal I was to keep. ‘You might feel inhibited,’ he said. ‘Reluctant to write about certain things. I think it’s very important that you feel able to write whatever you want. Plus Ben might not be happy to find that you’ve decided to attempt treatment again.’ He paused. ‘You might have to hide it.’

‘But how will I know to write in it?’ I said. He said nothing. An idea came to me. ‘Will you remind me?’

He told me he would. ‘But you’ll have to tell me where you’re going to hide it,’ he said. We were pulling up in front of a house. A moment after he stopped the car I realized it was my own.

‘The wardrobe,’ I said. ‘I’ll put it in the back of the wardrobe.’ I thought back to what I’d seen this morning, as I dressed. ‘There’s a shoebox in there. I’ll put it in that.’

‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to write in it tonight. Before you go to sleep. Otherwise tomorrow it’ll be just another blank notebook. You won’t know what it is.’

I said I would, that I understood. I got out of the car.

‘Take care, Christine,’ he said.

Now I sit in bed. Waiting for my husband. I look at the photo of the home in which I grew up. It looks so normal, so mundane. And so familiar.

How did I get from there to here? I think. What happened? What is my history?

I hear the clock in the living room chime. Midnight. Ben is coming up the stairs. I will hide this book in the shoebox I have found. I will put it in the wardrobe, right where I have told Dr Nash it will be. Tomorrow, if he rings, I will write more.