Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

Ben, I thought to myself. I can cling to Ben. He is strong.

‘What a mess,’ I said. ‘I just feel overwhelmed.’

He turned back to face me. ‘I wish I could do something to make this easier for you.’

He looked as though he really meant it, as though he would do anything he could to help me. There was a tenderness in his eyes, in the way he rested his hand on mine, and there, in the dim half-light of the underground car park, I found myself wondering what would happen if I put my hand on his, or moved my head slightly forward, holding his gaze, opening my mouth as I did so, just a touch. Would he too lean forward? Would he try to kiss me? Would I let him, if he did?

Or would he think me ridiculous? Absurd? I may have woken this morning thinking I am in my twenties, but I am not. I am almost fifty. Nearly old enough to be his mother. And so, instead, I looked at him. He sat perfectly still, looking at me. He seemed strong. Strong enough to help me. To get me through.

I opened my mouth to speak, without knowing what I was going to say, but the muffled ringing of a telephone interrupted me. Dr Nash didn’t move, other than to take his hand away, and I realized the phone must be one of mine.

I retrieved the ringing phone from my bag. It was not the one that flipped open, but the one my husband has given me. Ben, it said on the screen.

When I saw his name I realized how unfair I was being. He was bereaved, too. And he had to live with it every day, without being able to speak to me about it, without being able to come to his wife for support.

And he did all that for love.

And here was I, sitting in a car park with a man he barely knew existed. I thought of the photos I had seen that morning, in the scrapbook. Me and Ben, over and over again. Smiling. Happy. In love. If I were to go home and look at them now I might only see in them the thing that was missing. Adam. But they are the same pictures, and in them we look at each other as if no one else in the world exists.

We had been in love; it was obvious.

‘I’ll ring him back later,’ I said. I put the phone back in my bag. I will tell him tonight, I thought. About my journal. Dr Nash. Everything.

Dr Nash coughed. ‘We should go up to the office. Make a start.’

‘Of course,’ I said. I did not look at him.

I began to write that in the car as Dr Nash drove me home. Much of it is barely legible, a hasty scrawl. Dr Nash said nothing as I wrote, but I saw him glancing at me as I searched for the right word or a better phrase. I wondered what he was thinking — before we left his office he had asked me to consent to him discussing my case at a conference he had been invited to attend. ‘In Geneva,’ he said, unable to disguise a flash of pride. I said yes, and I imagined he would soon ask me if he could take a photocopy of my journal. For research.

When we arrived back at the house he said goodbye, adding, ‘I’m surprised you wanted to write your book in the car. You seem very … determined. I suppose you don’t want to miss anything out.’

I know what he meant, though. He meant frantic. Desperate. Desperate to get everything down.

And he is right. I am determined. Once I got in I finished the entry at the dining table and closed my journal and put it back in its hiding place before slowly undressing. Ben had left me a message on the phone. Let’s go out tonight, he’d said. For dinner. It’s Friday …

I stepped out of the navy-blue trousers I had found in the wardrobe that morning. I peeled off the pale-blue blouse that I had decided matched them best. I was bewildered. I had given Dr Nash my journal during our session — he’d asked if he could read it and I’d said yes. This was before he’d mentioned his invite to Geneva, and I wonder now if that’s why he asked. ‘This is excellent!’ he’d said when he finished. ‘Really good. You’re remembering lots of things, Christine. Lots of memories are coming back. There’s no reason that won’t continue. You should feel very encouraged …’

But I did not feel encouraged. I felt confused. Had I flirted with him, or he with me? It was his hand on mine, but I had let him put it there, and let him keep it. ‘You should continue to write,’ he said, when he gave me the journal back, and I told him that I would.

Now, in my bedroom, I tried to convince myself I had done nothing wrong. I still felt guilty. Because I had enjoyed it. The attention, the feeling of connection. For a moment, in the middle of everything else that was going on, there had been a tiny pinprick of joy. I had felt attractive. Desirable.

I went to my underwear drawer. There, tucked at the back, I found a pair of black silk knickers and a matching bra. I put them on — these clothes that I know must be mine even though they don’t feel as though they are — all the time thinking of my journal hidden in the wardrobe. What would Ben think, if he found it? If he read all that I had written, all that I had felt? Would he understand?

I stood in front of the mirror. He would, I told myself. He must. I examined my body with my eyes and my hands. I explored it, ran my fingers over its contours and undulations as if it were something new, a gift. Something to be learned from scratch.

Though I knew that Dr Nash had not been flirting with me, for that brief space in which I thought he was I had not felt old. I had felt alive.

I don’t know how long I stood there. For me time stretches, is almost meaningless. Years have slipped through me, leaving no trace. Minutes don’t exist. I only had the chime of the clock downstairs to show me that time was passing at all. I looked at my body, at the weight in my buttocks and on my hips, the dark hairs on my legs, under my arms. I found a razor in the bathroom and soaped my legs, then drew the cold blade across my skin. I must have done this before, I thought, countless times, yet still it seemed an odd thing to be doing, faintly ridiculous. I nicked the skin on my calf — a tiny stab of pain and then a red plush welled, quivering before it began to trickle down my leg. I stemmed it with a finger, smearing the blood like treacle, brought it to my lips. The taste of soap and warm metal. It didn’t clot. I let it bleed down my skin, newly smooth, then mopped it with a damp tissue.

Back in the bedroom I put on stockings, and a tight, black dress. I selected a gold necklace from the box on the dresser, a pair of matching earrings. I sat at the dresser and put on make-up, and curled and lacquered my hair. I sprayed perfume on my wrists and behind my ears. And all the time I did this a memory was floating through me. I saw myself rolling on stockings, snapping home the fasteners on a suspender belt, hooking up a bra, but it was a different me, in a different room. The room was quiet. Music played, but softly, and in the distance I could hear voices, doors opening and closing, the faint buzz of traffic. I felt calm, and happy. I turned to the mirror, examined my face in the glow of the candlelight. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all.

The memory was just out of reach. It shimmered, under the surface, and while I could see details, snatched images, moments, it lay too deep for me to follow where it led. I saw a champagne bottle on a bedside table. Two glasses. A bouquet of flowers on the bed, a card. I saw that I was in a hotel room, alone, waiting for the man I love. I heard a knock, saw myself stand up, walk towards the door, but then it ended, as if I had been watching television and, suddenly, the aerial had been disconnected. I looked up and saw myself, back in my own home. Even though the woman I saw in the mirror was a stranger — and with the make-up and lacquered hair that unfamiliarity was even more pronounced than it must usually be — I felt ready. For what, I couldn’t say, but I felt ready. I went downstairs to wait for my husband, the man I married, the man I loved.

Love, I remind myself. The man I love.

I heard his key in the lock, the door pushed open, feet being wiped on the mat. A whistle? Or was that the sound of my breathing, hard and heavy?

A voice. ‘Christine? Christine, are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m in here.’

A cough, the sound of his anorak being hung up, a briefcase being put down.

He called upstairs. ‘Everything OK?’ he said. ‘I phoned you earlier. I left a message.’

The creak of the stairs. For a moment I thought he was going straight up, to the bathroom or his study, without coming in to see me first, and I felt foolish, ridiculous to be dressed as I was, waiting for my husband of who-knows-how-many years in someone else’s clothes. I wished I could peel off the outfit, scrape away the make- up and transform myself back into the woman I am, but I heard a grunt as he levered a shoe off, and then the