Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

The clock has just chimed four; it is beginning to get dark. Ben will not be home just yet but, as I sit and write, I listen for his car. The shoebox sits on the floor next to my feet, the tissue paper in which this journal was wrapped spilling out of it. If he comes in I will put my book in the wardrobe and tell him I have been resting. It is dishonest, but not terribly so, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to keep the contents of my journal a secret. I must write down what I have seen. What I have learned. But that doesn’t mean I want someone — anyone — to read it.

I saw Dr Nash today. We were sitting opposite each other, on either side of his desk. Behind him was a filing cabinet, on top of which sat a plastic model of the brain, sliced down the middle, parted like an orange. He asked me how I’d been getting on.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I suppose.’ It was a difficult question to answer — the few hours since I had woken that morning were the only ones I could clearly remember. I met my husband, as if for the first time though I knew it was not, was called by my doctor who told me about my journal. Then, after lunch, he picked me up and drove me here to his office.

‘I wrote in my journal,’ I said, ‘after you called. On Saturday.’

He seemed pleased. ‘Do you think it helped at all?’

‘I think so,’ I said. I told him about the memories I’d had. The vision of the woman at the party, of learning of my father’s illness. He made notes as I spoke.

‘Do you still remember those things now?’ he said. ‘Or did you when you woke up this morning?’

I hesitated. The truth was I did not. Or only some of it at least. This morning I had read my entry for Saturday — of the breakfast I shared with my husband, of the trip to Parliament Hill. It had felt as unreal as fiction, nothing to do with me, and I found myself reading and rereading the same section, over and over, trying to cement it in my mind, to fix it. It took me more than an hour.

I read of the things Ben had told me, of how we met and married, of how we lived, and I felt nothing. Yet other things stayed with me. The woman, for example. My friend. I could not recall specifics — the fireworks party, being on the roof with her, meeting a man called Keith — but her memory still existed within me and this morning, as I read and reread my entry for Saturday, more details had come. The vibrant red of her hair, the black clothes that she preferred, the studded belt, the scarlet lipstick, the way that she used to make smoking look as though it was the coolest thing in the world. I could not remember her name, but now recalled the night we met, in a room that was shrouded in a thick fug of cigarette smoke and alive with the whistles and bangs of pinball machines and a tinny jukebox. She had given me a light when I asked her for one, then introduced herself and suggested I join her and her friends. We drank vodka and lager and, later, she held my hair out of the toilet bowl as I vomited most of it back up. ‘I guess we’re definitely friends now!’ she said, laughing, as I pulled myself back to my feet. ‘I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, you know.’

I thanked her and, for no reason I knew, and as if it explained what I had just done, told her my father was dead. ‘Fuck …’ she said, and, in what must have been the first of her many switches from drunken stupidity to compassionate efficiency, she took me back to her room and we ate toast and drank black coffee, all the time listening to records and talking about our lives, until it began to get light.

She had paintings propped up against the wall and at the end of the bed, and sketch books littered the room. ‘You’re an artist?’ I said, and she nodded. ‘It’s why I’m here at university,’ she said. I remembered her telling me she was studying fine art. ‘I’ll end up a teacher, of course, but in the meantime one has to dream. Yes?’ I laughed. ‘What about you? What are you studying?’ I told her. English. ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘So do you want to write novels or teach, then?’ She laughed, not unkindly, but I didn’t mention the story I had worked on in my room before coming down. ‘Dunno,’ I replied instead. ‘I guess I’m the same as you.’ She laughed again. ‘Well, here’s to us!’ she said, and as we toasted each other with coffee I felt, for the first time in months, that things might finally be all right.

I remembered all this. It exhausted me, this effort of will to search the void of my memory, trying to find any tiny detail that might trigger a recollection. But my memories of my life with my husband? They had gone. Reading those words had not stirred even the smallest residue of memory. It was as if not only had the trip to Parliament Hill not happened, but neither had the things he told me there.

‘I remember some things,’ I said to Dr Nash. ‘Things from when I was younger, things that I remembered yesterday. They’re still there. And I can remember more details, too. But I can’t remember what we did yesterday at all. Or on Saturday. I can try to construct a picture of the scene I described in my journal, but I know it isn’t a memory. I know I’m just imagining it.’

He nodded. ‘Is there anything you remember from Saturday? Any small detail that you wrote down that you can still recall? The evening, for example?’

I thought of what I had written about going to bed. I realized I felt guilty. Guilty that, despite his kindness, I had not been able to give myself to my husband. ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Nothing.’

I wondered what he might have done differently for me to want to take him in my arms, to let him love me. Flowers? Chocolates? Does he need to make romantic overtures every time he’d like to have sex, as if it were the first time? I realized how closed the avenues of seduction are to him. He can’t even play the first song we danced to at our wedding, or recreate the meal we enjoyed the first time we ate out together, because I don’t remember what they are. And in any case, I am his wife; he should not have to seduce me as if we have only just met every time he wants us to have sex.

But is there ever a time when I let him make love to me, or perhaps, even, want to make love to him? Do I ever wake and know enough for desire to exist, unforced?

‘I don’t even remember Ben,’ I said. ‘I had no idea who he was this morning.’

He nodded. ‘You’d like to?’

I almost laughed. ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘I want to remember my past. I want to know who I am. Who I married. It’s all part of the same thing.’

‘Of course,’ he said. He paused, then leaned his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands in front of his face, as if thinking carefully about what to say, or how to say it. ‘What you’ve told me is encouraging. It suggests that the memories aren’t lost completely. The problem is not one of storage, but of access.’

I thought for a moment, then said, ‘You mean my memories are there, I just can’t get to them?’

He smiled. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

I felt frustrated. Eager. ‘So how do I remember more?’

He leaned back and looked in the file in front of him. ‘Last week,’ he said, ‘on the day I gave you your journal, did you write that I showed you a picture of your childhood home? I gave it to you, I think.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did.’

‘You seemed to remember much more, having seen that photo, than when I asked you about the place where you used to live without showing you a picture of it first.’ He paused. ‘Which, again, isn’t surprising. But I’d like to see what happens if I show you pictures from the period you definitely don’t remember. I want to see if anything comes back to you then.’

I was hesitant, unsure of where this avenue might lead, but certain it was a road I had no choice but to take.

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Good! We’ll look at just one picture today.’ He took a photograph from the back of the file and then walked round the desk to sit next to me. ‘Before we look, do you remember anything of your wedding?’

I already knew there was nothing there; as far as I was concerned, my marriage to the man I had woken up with this morning had simply not happened.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’

‘You’re sure?’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

He put the photograph on the desk in front of me. ‘You got married here,’ he said, tapping it. It was of a church. Small, with a low roof and a tiny spire. Totally unfamiliar.

‘Anything?’

I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. A vision of water. My friend. A tiled floor, black and white. Nothing else.

‘No. I don’t remember ever having seen it before.’

He looked disappointed. ‘You’re sure?’

I closed my eyes again. Blackness. I tried to think of my wedding day, tried to imagine Ben, me, in a suit and a wedding dress, standing on the grass in front of the church, but nothing came. No memory. Sadness rose in me. Like any bride I must have spent weeks planning my wedding, choosing my dress and waiting anxiously for the alterations, booking a hairdresser, thinking about my make-up. I imagined myself agonizing over the menu, choosing the hymns, selecting the flowers, all the time hoping that the day would live up to my impossible expectations. And now I have no way of knowing whether it did. It has all been taken from me, every trace erased. Everything apart from the man I married.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing.’

He put the photograph away. ‘According to the notes taken during your initial treatment, you were married in Manchester,’ he said. ‘The church is called St Mark’s. That was a recent photograph — it’s the only one I could get — but I imagine it looks pretty much the same now as it did then.’

‘There are no photographs of our wedding,’ I said. It was both a question and a statement.

‘No. They were lost. In a fire at your home apparently.’

I nodded. Hearing him say it cemented it somehow, made it seem more real. It was almost as if the fact he was a doctor gave his words an authority that Ben’s didn’t have.

‘When did I get married?’ I said.

‘It would have been in the mid-eighties.’

‘Before my accident.’

Dr Nash looked uncomfortable. I wondered if I had ever spoken to him about the accident that left me with no memory.

‘You know about what caused your amnesia?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I spoke to Ben. The other day. He told me everything. I wrote it in my journal.’

He nodded. ‘How do you feel about it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. The truth was that I had no memory of the accident, and so it didn’t seem real. All I had were its effects. The way it had left me. ‘I feel like I ought to hate the person who did this to me,’ I said. ‘Especially as they’ve never been caught, never been punished for leaving me like this. For ruining my life. But the odd thing is I don’t, really. I can’t. I can’t imagine them, or picture what they look like. It’s like they don’t even exist.’

He looked disappointed. ‘Is that what you think?’ he said. ‘That your life is ruined?’

‘Yes,’ I said after a few moments. ‘Yes. That’s what I think.’ He was silent. ‘Isn’t it?’

I don’t know what I expected him to do, or say. I suppose part of me wanted him to tell me how wrong I am, to try and convince me that my life is worth living. But he didn’t. He just looked straight at me. I noticed how striking his eyes are. Blue, flecked with grey.

‘I’m sorry, Christine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. But I’m doing everything I can, and I think I can help you. I really do. You have to believe that.’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘I do.’

He put his hand on top of mine, where it lay on the desk between us. It felt heavy. Warm. He squeezed my fingers, and for a second I felt embarrassed, for him, and also for me, but then I looked into his face, at the expression of sadness I saw there, and realized that his action was that of a young man comforting an older woman. Nothing more.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to use the bathroom.’

When I returned he had poured coffee and we sat on opposite sides of the desk, sipping at our drinks. He seemed reluctant to make eye contact, instead leafing through the papers on his desk, shuffling awkwardly. At first I thought he was embarrassed about squeezing my hand, but then he looked up and said, ‘Christine. I wanted to ask you something. Two things, really.’ I nodded. ‘First, I’ve decided to write up your case. It’s pretty unusual in the field, and I think it would be really beneficial to get the details out there in the wider scientific community. Do you mind?’

I looked at the journals, stacked in haphazard piles on the shelves around the office. Is this how he intended to further his career, or make it more secure? Is that why I am here? For a moment I considered telling him I’d rather he didn’t use my story, but in the end I simply shook my head and said, ‘No. It’s fine.’

He smiled. ‘Good. Thank you. Now, I have a question. More of a sort of idea, really. Something I’d like to try. Would you mind?’

‘What were you thinking?’ I said. I felt nervous, but relieved he was finally about to tell me what was on his mind.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘according to your files, after you and Ben were married you continued to live together in the house in east London that you shared.’ He paused. Out of nowhere came a voice that must have been my mother’s. Living in sin — a tut, a shake of her head that said everything. ‘And then after a year or so you moved to another house. You stayed there pretty much until you were hospitalized.’ He paused.

‘It’s quite near where you live now.’ I began to understand what he might be suggesting. ‘I thought we could leave now and visit it on the way home. What do you think?’

What did I think? I didn’t know. It was an almost unanswerable question. I knew it was a sensible thing to do, that it might help me in some undefinable way that neither of us could yet understand, but still I was reluctant. It was as if my past suddenly felt dangerous. A place it might be unwise to visit.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

‘You lived there for a number of years,’ he said.

‘I know, but—’

‘We can just go and look at it. We don’t have to go inside.’

‘Go inside?’ I said. ‘How—?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve written to the couple who live there now. We’ve spoken on the phone. They said that if it might help they’d be more than happy to let you have a look round.’

I was surprised by this. ‘Really?’ I said.

He looked slightly away — quickly, but enough for it to register as embarrassment. I wondered what he might be hiding. ‘Yes,’ he said, and then, ‘I don’t go to this much trouble for all my patients.’ I said nothing. He smiled. ‘I really think it might help, Christine.’

What else could I do?

On the way there I had intended to write in my journal, but the journey was not long and I had barely finished reading the last entry when we parked outside a house. I closed the book and looked up. The house was similar to the one we’d left that morning — the one that I had to remind myself I live in now — with its red brick and painted woodwork and the same bay window and well-tended garden. If anything this house looked bigger, and a window in the roof suggested a loft conversion that we did not have. I found it hard to understand why we’d left this place to move what must be only a couple of miles away to an almost identical house. After a moment I realized: memories. Memories of a better time, before my accident, when we were happy, living a normal life. Ben would have had them, even if I did not.

I felt suddenly positive that the house would reveal things to me. Reveal my past.

‘I want to go in,’ I said.

I pause, there. I want to write the rest, but it is important — too important to be rushed — and Ben will be home very soon. He is late already; the sky is dark, the street echoing to the sounds of slammed doors as people arrive home from work. Cars slow outside the house — soon one of them will be Ben’s. It is better if I finish now, if I put my book away, hide it safely in the wardrobe.

I will continue later.

I was replacing the lid of the shoebox when I heard Ben’s key in the lock. He called out when he came into the house, and I told him I would be down in a moment. Though I have no reason to pretend I have not been looking in the wardrobe, I closed its door softly, then went to see my husband.

The evening was fractured. My journal called to me. As we ate I wondered if I could write in it before washing up; as I washed up I wondered if I should feign a headache and write when I finished. But then, after I had tidied the kitchen, Ben said he had a little work to do and went into his office. I sighed, relieved, and told him I would go to bed.

That’s where I am now. I can hear Ben — the tap tap tap of his keyboard — and I admit the sound is comforting. I have read what I wrote before Ben got home and can now once again picture myself as I was this afternoon: sitting outside a house in which I once lived. I can take up my story.

It happened in the kitchen.

A woman — Amanda — had answered the doorbell’s insistent buzz, greeting Dr Nash with a handshake and me with a look that hovered between pity and fascination. ‘You must be Christine,’ she said, tilting her head to one side and holding out her manicured hand. ‘Do come in!’

She closed the door behind us. She was wearing a cream blouse, gold jewellery. She introduced herself and said, ‘Stay as long as you like, OK? As long as you need.’

I nodded, and looked around. We were standing in a bright, carpeted hallway. The sun streamed through the glass panels in the window to pick out a vase of red tulips that sat on a side table. The silence was long and uncomfortable. ‘It’s a lovely house,’ Amanda said eventually, and for a moment I felt as if Dr Nash and I were prospective purchasers and she an estate agent keen to negotiate a deal. ‘We bought it about ten years ago. We just adore it. It’s so bright. Do you want to go through into the living room?’

We followed her into the lounge. The room was sparse, tasteful. I felt nothing, not even a dull sense of familiarity; it could have been any room in any house in any city.

‘Thank you so much for letting us look round,’ said Dr Nash.

‘Oh, nonsense!’ she said, with a peculiar snort. I imagined her riding horses, or arranging flowers.

‘Have you done a lot of decorating since you were here?’ he said.

‘Oh, some,’ she said. ‘Bits and pieces.’

I looked at the sanded floorboards and white walls, at the cream sofa, the modern-art prints that hung on the wall. I thought of the house I had left this morning; it could not have been more different.

‘Do you remember how it looked when you moved in?’ said Dr Nash.

She sighed. ‘Only vaguely, I’m afraid. It was carpeted. A kind of biscuit colour, I think. And there was wallpaper. Sort of striped, if I remember.’ I tried to picture the room as she’d described it. Nothing came. ‘There was a fireplace we had removed, too. I wish we hadn’t, now. It was an original feature.’

‘Christine?’ said Dr Nash. ‘Anything?’ When I shook my head he said, ‘Do you think we could look round the rest of the house?’

We went upstairs. There were two bedrooms. ‘Giles works from home a good deal,’ she said as we went in the one at the front of the house. It was dominated by a desk, filing cabinets and books. ‘I think the previous owners must have used this as their bedroom.’ She looked at me, but I said nothing. ‘It’s a little bigger than the other room, but Giles can’t sleep in here. Because of the traffic.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s an architect.’ Again, I said nothing. ‘It’s quite a coincidence,’ she continued, ‘because the man we bought the house from was also an architect. We met him when we came round to look at the place. They got on quite well. I think we knocked him down by a few thousand just because of the connection.’ Another pause. I wondered if she was expecting to be congratulated. ‘Giles is setting up his own practice.’

An architect, I thought. Not a teacher, like Ben. These can’t have been the people that he sold the house to. I tried to imagine the room with a bed instead of the glass-topped desk, carpet and wallpaper replacing the stripped boards and white walls.

Dr Nash turned to face me. ‘Anything?’

I shook my head. ‘No. Nothing. I don’t remember anything.’

We looked in the other bedroom, the bathroom. Nothing came to me and so we went downstairs, into the kitchen. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ said Amanda. ‘It’s really not a problem. It’s made already.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said. The room was harsh. Hard-edged. The units were chrome and white, and the worktop looked like poured concrete. A bowl of limes provided the only colour. ‘I think we ought to leave soon,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Amanda. Her breezy efficiency seemed to have vanished, replaced by a look of disappointment. I felt guilty; she had obviously hoped that a visit to her home would be the miracle that cured me. ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ I said.

She brightened immediately. ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘Let me get you one!’ She handed me a glass and it was then, as I took it from her, that I saw it.

Amanda and Dr Nash had both disappeared. I was alone. On the worktop I saw an uncooked fish, wet and glistening, lying on an oval plate. I heard a voice. A man’s voice. It was Ben’s voice, I thought, but younger, somehow. ‘White wine,’ it said, ‘or red?’ and I turned and saw him coming into a kitchen. It was the same kitchen — the one I was standing in with Dr Nash and Amanda — but it had different-coloured paint on the walls. Ben was holding a bottle of wine in each hand, and it was the same Ben, but slimmer, with less grey in his hair, and he had a moustache. He was naked, and his penis was semi-erect, bobbing comically as he walked. His skin was smooth, taut over the muscles of his arms and chest, and I felt the sharp tug of lust. I saw myself gasp, but I was laughing.

‘White, I think?’ he said, and he laughed with me, and then he put both bottles down on the table and came over to where I stood. His arms encircled me, and then I was closing my eyes, and my mouth opened, as if involuntarily, and I was kissing him, and he me, and I could feel his penis pressing into my crotch and my hand moving towards it. And, even as I was kissing him, I was thinking, I must remember this, how this feels. I must put this in my book. This is what I want to write.

I fell into him then, pressing my body against his, and his hands began to tear at my dress, groping for the zip. ‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘Don’t—’ But even though I was saying no, asking him to stop, I felt as though I wanted him more than I had ever wanted anyone before. ‘Upstairs,’ I said, ‘quick.’ And then we were leaving the kitchen, tearing at our clothes as we went, and heading up to the bedroom with the grey carpet and blue-patterned wallpaper, and all the time I was thinking, Yes, this is what I ought to be writing about in my next novel, this is the feeling I want to capture.

I stumbled. The sound of breaking glass, and the image in front of me vanished. It was as if the spool of film had run through, the images on the screen replaced with a flickering light and the shadows of dust motes. I opened my eyes.

I was still there, in that kitchen, but now it was Dr Nash standing in front of me, and Amanda a little way past him, and they were both looking at me, concerned and anxious. I realized I had dropped the glass.

‘Christine,’ said Dr Nash. ‘Christine, are you OK?’

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to feel. It was the first time — as far as I knew — I had ever remembered my husband.

I closed my eyes and tried to will the vision back. I tried to see the fish, the wine, my husband with a moustache, naked, his penis bobbing, but nothing would come. The memory had gone, evaporated as if it had never existed, or had been burned away by the present.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. I—’

‘What’s wrong?’ said Amanda. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I remembered something,’ I said. I saw Amanda’s hands fly to her mouth, her expression change to one of delight.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘That’s wonderful! What? What did you remember?’

‘Please—’ said Dr Nash. He stepped forward, taking my arm. Broken glass crunched at his feet.

‘My husband,’ I said. ‘Here. I remembered my husband—’

Amanda’s expression fell. Is that all? she seemed to be saying.

‘Dr Nash?’ I said. ‘I remembered Ben!’ I began to shake.

‘Good,’ said Dr Nash. ‘Good! That’s excellent!’

Together, they led me through to the living room. I sat on the sofa. Amanda handed me a mug of hot tea, a biscuit on a plate. She doesn’t understand, I thought. She can’t. I have remembered Ben. Me, when I was young. The two of us, together. I know we were in love. I no longer have to take his word for it. It is important. Far more important than she can ever know.

I felt excited, all the way home. Lit with nervous energy. I looked at the world outside — the strange, mysterious, unfamiliar world — and in it I did not see threat, but possibility. Dr Nash told me he thought we were really getting somewhere. He seemed excited. This is good, he kept saying. This is good. I wasn’t sure whether he meant it was good for me or for him, for his career. He said he’d like to arrange a scan and, almost without thinking, I agreed. He gave me a mobile phone, too, telling me it used to belong to his girlfriend. It looked different from the one Ben had given me. It was smaller, and the casing flipped open to reveal a keypad and screen inside. A spare, he said. You can ring me any time. Any time it’s important. And keep it with you. I’ll call you on it to remind you about your journal. That was hours ago. Now I realize he gave it to me so that he could phone me without Ben knowing. He’d even said as much. I rang the other day and Ben answered. It might get awkward. This will make things easier. I took it without question.

I have remembered Ben. Remembered that I loved him. He will be home, soon. Perhaps later, when we go to bed, I will make amends for last night’s neglect. I feel alive. Buzzing with potential.