Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

He interrupted me. ‘Oh, let’s not worry about that, shall we?’

He brought my hand to his lips. His expression changed, became one of pleasure, of happiness. All traces of anxiety disappeared. He kissed me.

‘But—’

‘You’re back now. That’s the main thing.’ He flicked on the light and then smoothed his hair into a semblance of order. ‘Right!’ he said, tucking in his shirt. ‘What say you go and freshen up? And then I thought we could go out? What do you think?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I—’

‘Oh, Christine. We should! You look like you need cheering up!’

‘But, Ben, I don’t feel like it.’

‘Please?’ he said. He took my hand again, squeezing it gently. ‘It would mean a lot to me.’ He took my other hand and brought them both together, between his. ‘I don’t know if I told you this morning. It’s my birthday today.’

*

What could I do? I didn’t want to go out. But then, I didn’t want to do anything. I told him I would do as he asked, would freshen up, and then see how I felt. I went upstairs. His mood had disturbed me. He had seemed so concerned, but, as soon as I appeared safe and well, that concern evaporated. Did he really love me so much? Trust me so much that all he cared about was that I was safe, not where I had been?

I went into the bathroom. Perhaps he hadn’t seen the photos scattered all over the floor, genuinely believed I had been out for a walk. There was still time for me to cover my tracks. To hide my anger, and my grief.

I locked the door behind me. I pulled the cord and turned on the light. The floor had been swept clean. There, arranged around the mirror as if they had never been moved, were the photographs, every one perfectly restored.

I told Ben I would be ready in half an hour. I sat in the bedroom and, as quickly as I could, wrote this.

Friday, 16 November

I don’t know what happened after that. What did I do after Ben told me that it was his birthday? After I went upstairs and discovered the photographs, replaced just as they had been before I ripped them down? I don’t know. Perhaps I showered and got changed, maybe we went out, for a meal, to the cinema. I cannot say. I didn’t write it down and do not remember, despite it being only a few hours ago. Unless I ask Ben it is lost completely. I feel like I am going mad.

This morning, in the early hours, I woke with him lying next to me. A stranger, again. The room was dark, silent. I lay, rigid with fear, not knowing who, or where, I was. I could think only of running, of escape, but could not move. My mind felt scooped out, hollow, but then words floated to the surface. Ben. Husband. Memory. Accident. Death. Son.

Adam.

They hung in front of me, in and out of focus. I could not connect them. Did not know what they meant. They whirled in my mind, echoing, a mantra, and then the dream came back to me, the dream that must have woken me up.

I was in a room, in a bed. In my arms was a body, a man. He lay on top of me, heavy, his back broad. I felt peculiar, odd, my head too light, my body too heavy; the room rocked beneath me and when I opened my eyes its ceiling would not swim into focus.

I could not tell who the man was — his head was too close to mine for me to see his face — but I could feel everything, even the hairs on his chest, rough against my naked breasts. There was a taste on my tongue, furry, sweet. He was kissing me. He was too rough; I wanted him to stop, but said nothing. ‘I love you,’ he said, murmuring, his words lost in my hair, the side of my neck. I knew I wanted to speak — though I didn’t know what I wanted to say — but I could not understand how to do so. My mouth didn’t seem connected to my brain, and so I lay there as he kissed me and spoke into my hair. I remembered how I had both wanted him and wanted him to stop, how I had told myself, as he began to kiss me, that we would not have sex, but his hand had moved down the curve of my back to my buttocks and I had let it. And again, as he had lifted my blouse and put his hand beneath it, I thought, This, this is as far as I will let you go. I will not stop you, not now, because I am enjoying this. Because your hand feels warm on my breast, because my body is responding with tiny shudders of pleasure. Because, for the first time, I feel like a woman. But I will not have sex with you. Not tonight. This is as far as we will go, thus far and no further. And then he had taken off my blouse and unhooked my bra, and it was not his hand on my breast, but his mouth, and still I thought I would stop him, soon. The word no had even began to form, cemented itself in my mind, but by the time I had spoken it he was pushing me back towards the bed and sliding down my underwear and it had turned into something else, into a moan of something that I dimly recognized as pleasure.

I felt something between my knees. It was hard. ‘I love you,’ he said again, and I realized it was his knee, that he was forcing my legs apart with one of his own. I did not want to let him, but at the same time knew that somehow I ought to, that I had left it too late, watched my chances to say something, to stop this, disappear one by one. And now I had no choice. I had wanted it then, as he unzipped his trousers and stepped clumsily out of his underwear, and so I must still want it now, now that I am beneath his body.

I tried to relax. He arched up, and moaned — a low, startling noise that started deep within him — and I saw his face. I didn’t recognize it, not in my dream, but now I knew it. Ben. ‘I love you,’ he said, and I knew that I should say something, that he was my husband, even though I felt I had met him for the first time just that morning. I could stop him. I could trust him to stop himself.

‘Ben, I—’

He silenced me with his wet mouth, and I felt him tear into me. Pain, or pleasure. I could not tell where one ended and the other began. I clung to his back, moist with sweat, and tried to open myself to him, tried first to enjoy what was happening, and then, when I found I could not, tried to ignore it. I asked for this, I thought, at the same time as I never asked for this. Is it possible to both want and not want something at the same time? For desire to ride with fear?

I closed my eyes. I saw a face. A stranger, with dark hair, a beard. A scar down his cheek. He looked familiar, and yet I had no idea from where. As I watched him his smile disappeared and that was when I cried out, in my dream. That was the moment I woke up to find myself in a still, quiet bed, with Ben lying next to me and no idea where I was.

I got out of bed. To use the bathroom? To escape? I didn’t know where I was going, what I would do. If I had somehow known of its existence I would have opened the wardrobe door, as quietly as I could, and lifted out the shoebox that contained my journal, but I did not. And so I went downstairs. The front door was locked, the moonlight blue through the frosted glass. I realized I was naked.

I sat on the bottom of the stairs. The sun rose, the hall turned through blue to burnt orange. Nothing made sense; the dream least of all. It felt too real, and I had woken in the same bedroom I had dreamed myself in, next to a man I was not expecting to see.

And now, now I have read my journal after Dr Nash called me, a thought forms. Might it have been a memory? A memory I had retained from the previous night?

I do not know. If so then it is a sign of progress, I suppose. But also it means Ben forced himself on me and, worse, as he did so I saw an image of a bearded stranger, a scar running down his face. Of all possible memories this seems a cruel one to retain.

But perhaps it means nothing. It was just a dream. Just a nightmare. Ben loves me and the bearded stranger does not exist.

But how can I ever know for sure?