Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

‘Christine—’

‘I have to know,’ I said. ‘I mean, how did I cope? With a child? He must have been very little when I—’

‘—had your accident?’ he interrupted. ‘He was two. You were a wonderful mother, though. Until then. Afterwards, well—’

He stopped talking, letting the rest of the sentence disappear, and turned away. I wondered what it was he was leaving unsaid, what he’d thought better of telling me.

I knew enough to fill in some of the blanks. I might not be able to remember that time, but I can imagine it. I can see myself being reminded every day that I was married and a mother, being told that my husband and son were coming to visit me. I can imagine myself greeting them both every day as if I had never seen them before, slightly frostily, perhaps, or simply bewildered. I can see the pain we must have been in. All of us.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

‘You couldn’t look after yourself. You were too ill for me to look after you at home. You couldn’t be left alone, even for a few minutes. You would forget what you were doing. You used to wander off. I was worried you might run yourself a bath and leave the water running, or try and cook yourself some food and forget you’d started it. It was too much for me. So I stayed at home and looked after Adam. My mother helped. But every evening we would come and see you, and—’

I took his hand.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just find it hard, thinking of that time.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know. How about my mother, though? Did she help? Did she enjoy being a grandmother?’ He nodded, and looked about to speak. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ I said.

He squeezed my hand. ‘She died a few years ago. I’m sorry.’

I had been right. I felt my mind begin to close down, as if it couldn’t process any more grief, any more of this scrambled past, but I knew I would wake up tomorrow and remember none of this.

What could I write in my journal that would get me through tomorrow, the next day, the one after that?

An image floated in front of me. A woman, with red hair. Adam in the army. A name came, unbidden. What will Claire think?

And there it was. The name of my friend. Claire.

‘And Claire?’ I said. ‘My friend Claire. Is she still alive?’

‘Claire?’ said Ben. He looked puzzled for a long moment, and then his face changed. ‘You remember Claire?’

He seemed surprised. I reminded myself that — according to my journal at least — it had been a few days since I had told him I had remembered her at the party on the roof.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We were friends. What happened to her?’

Ben looked at me, sadly, and for a moment I froze. He spoke slowly, but his news was not as bad as I feared. ‘She moved away,’ he said. ‘Years ago. Must be nearly twenty years, I think. Just a few years after we got married, in fact.’

‘Where to?’

‘New Zealand.’

‘Are we in touch?’

‘You were for a while, but no. Not any more.’

It doesn’t seem possible. My best friend, I had written, after remembering her on Parliament Hill, and I had felt the same sensation of closeness when I had thought of her today. Otherwise, why would I care what she thought?

‘We argued?’

He hesitated, and again I sensed a calculation, an adjustment. I realized that of course Ben knows what will upset me. He has had years to learn what I will find acceptable and what is dangerous ground for us to tread. After all, this is not the first time he has had this conversation. He has had the opportunity to practise, to learn how to navigate routes that will not rip through the landscape of my life and send me tumbling somewhere else.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. You didn’t argue. Or not that you ever told me anyway. I think you just drifted apart, and then Claire met someone, and she married him and they moved away.’

An image came then. Claire and I joking that we would never marry. ‘Marriage is for losers!’ she was saying as she raised a bottle of red wine to her lips, and I was agreeing, though at the same time I knew that one day I would be her bridesmaid, and she mine, and we would sit in hotel rooms, dressed in organza, sipping champagne from a flute while someone did our hair.

I felt a sudden flush of love. Though I have barely remembered any of our time, our life, together — and tomorrow even that will have gone — I sensed somehow that we are still connected, that for a while she had meant everything to me.

‘Did we go to the wedding?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he nodded, opening the box on his lap and digging through it. ‘There are a couple of photos here.’

They were wedding pictures, though not formal shots; these were blurred and dark, taken by an amateur. By Ben, I guessed. I approached the first one cautiously.

She was as I had imagined her. Tall, thin. More beautiful, if anything. She was standing on a clifftop, her dress diaphanous, blowing in the breeze, the sun setting over the sea behind her. I put the picture down and looked through the rest. In some she was with her husband — a man I didn’t recognize — and in others I had joined them, dressed in pale-blue silk, looking only slightly less beautiful. It was true; I had been a bridesmaid.

‘Are there any of our wedding?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘They were in a separate album,’ he said. ‘It was lost.’

Of course. The fire.

I handed the photos back to him. I felt like I was looking at another life, not my own. I desperately wanted to get upstairs, to write about what I had discovered.

‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I need to rest.’

‘Of course,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘Here.’ He took the bundle of photographs from me and put them back in the box.

‘I’ll keep these safe,’ he said, closing the lid, and I came up here to my journal, and wrote this.

Midnight. I am in bed. Alone. Trying to make sense of all that has happened today. All that I have learned. I don’t know whether I can.

I decided to take a bath before dinner. I locked the bathroom door behind me and looked quickly at the pictures arranged around the mirror, now seeing only what was missing. I turned on the hot tap.

Most days I realize I don’t remember Adam at all, yet today he had come to me after I saw just one picture. Are these photographs selected so they will anchor me in myself without reminding me of what I have lost?

The room began to fill with hot steam. I could hear my husband downstairs. He had turned on the radio and the sound of jazz floated up to me, hazy and indistinct. Beneath it I could hear the rhythmic slice of a knife on a board; he would be chopping carrots, onions, peppers. Making dinner, as if this were a normal day.

For him it is a normal day, I realized. I am filled with grief, but not Ben.

I don’t blame him for not telling me, every day, about Adam, my mother, Claire. In his position I would do the same. These things are painful, and if I can go a whole day without remembering them then I am spared the sorrow and he the pain of causing it. How tempting it must be for him to keep quiet, and how difficult life must be for him, knowing that I carry these jagged shards of memory with me always, everywhere, like tiny bombs, and at any moment one might pierce the surface and force me to go through the pain as if for the first time, taking him with me.

I undressed slowly, folded my clothes, placed them on the chair by the side of the bath. Naked, I stood in front of the mirror and stared at my alien body. I forced myself to look at the wrinkles in my skin, at my sagging breasts. I do not know myself, I thought. I recognize neither my body nor my past.

I stepped closer to the mirror. They were there, across my stomach, on my buttocks and breasts. Thin, silvery streaks, the jagged scars of history. I had not seen them before, because I hadn’t looked for them. I pictured myself charting their growth, willing them to disappear as my body expanded. Now I am glad they are there; a