Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

park.

There was a hut, in the middle of the grass. A cafe. I went in and bought myself coffee and then sat on one of the benches, warming my hands on the styrofoam cup. Opposite was a playground. A slide, swings, a roundabout. A small boy sat on a seat shaped like a ladybird that was fixed to the ground by a heavy spring. I watched him rock himself backwards and forwards, an ice cream in one hand despite the cold.

My mind flashed on a vision of myself and another young girl in the park. I saw the two of us, climbing stairs to a wooden cage from where we would glide to the ground on a metal slide. How high it had felt, all those years ago, yet looking at the playground now I saw that it must have been only a little higher than I am tall. We would muddy our dresses and be told off by our mothers, and skip home, clutching bags of penny chews or bright orange crisps.

Was this memory? Or invention?

I watched the boy. He was alone. The park seemed empty. Just the two of us, in the cold, under a sky roofed with dark cloud. I took a mouthful of my coffee.

‘Hey!’ said the boy. ‘Hey! Lady!’

I looked up, then down at my hands.

‘Hey!’ he shouted more loudly. ‘Lady! You help! You spin me!’

He got up and went over to the roundabout. ‘You spin me!’ he said. He tried to push the metal contraption but despite the effort evident in his face it barely moved. He gave up, looking disappointed. ‘Please?’ he said.

‘You’ll be OK,’ I called. I took a sip of my coffee. I would wait here, I decided, until his mother came back from wherever she was. I will keep an eye on him.

He climbed on to the roundabout, shifting himself until he stood right in its centre. ‘You spin me!’ he said again. His voice was lower. Pleading. I wished I had not come here, could make him go away. I felt removed from the world. Unnatural. Dangerous. I thought of the photos I had ripped off the wall and left scattered in the bathroom. I had come here for peace. Not this.

I looked at the boy. He had moved, was trying once again to push himself round, his legs barely reaching the ground from where he stood on the roundabout’s platform. He looked so fragile. Helpless. I went over to him.

‘You push me!’ he said. I put my coffee on the ground and grinned.

‘Hold tight!’ I said. I heaved my weight against the bar. It was surprisingly heavy, but I felt it begin to give, and walked round with it so that it gained speed. ‘Here we go!’ I said. I sat on the edge of the platform.

He grinned excitedly, clutching the metal bar with his hands as though we were spinning far more quickly than we were. His hands looked cold, almost blue. He was wearing a green coat that looked far too thin, a pair of jeans turned up at the ankle. I wondered who had sent him out without gloves, or a scarf or hat.

‘Where’s your mummy?’ I said. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your daddy?’

‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Mummy says Daddy’s gone. She says he doesn’t love us no more.’

I looked at him. He had said it with no sense of pain, or disappointment. For him it was a simple statement of fact. For a moment the roundabout felt perfectly still, the world spinning around the two of us rather than us within it.

‘I bet your mummy loves you, though?’ I said.

He was silent for a few seconds. ‘Sometimes,’ he said.

‘But sometimes she doesn’t?’

He paused. ‘I don’t think so.’ I felt a thudding in my chest, as if something was turning over. Or waking. ‘She says not. Sometimes.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said. I watched the bench I had been sitting on come towards us, then recede. We spun again, and again.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Alfie,’ he said. We were slowing down, the world coming to a halt behind his head. My feet connected with the ground and I kicked off, spinning us again. I said his name, as if to myself. Alfie.

‘Mummy says sometimes she’d be better off if I lived somewhere else,’ he said.

I tried to keep smiling, my voice cheery. ‘I bet she’s joking, though.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

My whole body tensed. I saw myself asking him if he would like to come with me. Home. To live. I imagined how his face would brighten, even as he said he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere with strangers. But I’m not a stranger, I would say. I would lift him up — he would be heavy and smell sweet, like chocolate — and together we would go into the cafe. What juice do you want? I would say, and he would ask for apple. I would buy him a drink, and some sweets too, and we would leave the park. He would be holding my hand as we walked back home, back to the house I shared with my husband, and that night I would cut his meat for him and mash his potatoes, and then, once he was in his pyjamas, I would read him a story before tucking the covers under his sleeping body and kissing him softly on the top of his head. And tomorrow—

Tomorrow? I have no tomorrow, I thought. Just as I had no yesterday.

‘Mummy!’ he called out. For a moment I thought he was talking to me, but he leapt off the roundabout and ran towards the cafe.

‘Alfie!’ I called out, but then I saw a woman walking towards us, clutching a plastic cup in each hand.

She crouched down as he reached her. ‘Y’all right, Tiger?’ she said as he ran into her arms, and she looked up, past him, at me. Her eyes were narrowed, her face set hard. I’ve done nothing wrong! I wanted to shout. Leave me alone!

But I didn’t. Instead I looked the other way and then, once she had led Alfie away, I got off the roundabout. The sky was darkening now, turning to an inky blue. I sat on a bench. I didn’t know what time it was, or how long I’d been out. I knew only that I couldn’t go home, not yet. I couldn’t face Ben. I couldn’t face having to pretend I knew nothing about Adam, that I had no idea I’d had a child. For a moment I wanted to tell him everything. About my journal, Dr Nash. Everything. But I pushed the thought from my mind. I did not want to go home, but had nowhere else to go.

I stood and began to walk as the sky turned black.

The house was in darkness. I didn’t know what to expect when I pushed open the front door. Ben would be missing me; he had said he would be home by five. I pictured him pacing up and down the living room — for some reason, even though I had not seen him smoke this morning, my imagination added a lit cigarette to this scene — or maybe he was out, driving the streets, looking for me. I imagined teams of police and volunteers out there, going from door to door with a photocopied picture of me, and felt guilty. I tried to tell myself that, even though I had no memory, I was not a child, I was not a missing person, not yet, but still I went into the house ready to make an apology.

I called out. ‘Ben?’ There was no answer, but I felt, rather than heard, movement. A creak of a floorboard somewhere above me, an almost imperceptible shift in the equilibrium of the house. I called out again, louder this time. ‘Ben?’

‘Christine?’ came a voice. It sounded weak, cracked open.

‘Ben,’ I said. ‘Ben, it’s me. I’m here.’

He appeared above me, standing at the top of the stairs. He looked as though he’d been sleeping. He was still wearing the clothes he’d put on that morning to go to work, but now his shirt was creased and hung loose from his trousers, and his hair stood out in all directions, emphasizing his look of shock with an almost comical hint of electricity. A memory floated through me — science lessons and Van de Graaff generators — but did not emerge.

He started to come down the stairs. ‘Chris, you’re home!’

‘I … I had to get some air,’ I said.

‘Thank God,’ he said. He came over to where I stood and took my hand. He gripped it, as if to shake it or to make sure it was real, but did not move it. ‘Thank God!’

He looked at me, his eyes wide, glowing. They glistened in the dim light as though he’d been crying. How much he loves me, I thought. My feeling of guilt intensified.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to—’