Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

other, and I realized he was sitting down to put on his slippers. The stair creaked again, and he came into the room.

‘Darling—’ he began, and he stopped. His eyes travelled over my face, down my body, back up to meet mine. I couldn’t tell what he thought.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You look—’ He shook his head.

‘I found these clothes,’ I said. ‘I thought I would dress up a little. It’s Friday night, after all. The weekend.’

‘Yes,’ he said, still standing in the doorway. ‘Yes. But …’

‘Do you want to go out somewhere?’

I stood up then, and went over to him. ‘Kiss me,’ I said, and, though I hadn’t exactly planned it, it felt like the right thing to do, and so I put my arms around his neck. He smelled of soap, and sweat, and work. Sweet, like crayons. A memory floated through me — kneeling on the floor with Adam, drawing — but it didn’t stick.

‘Kiss me,’ I said, again. His hands circled my waist.

Our lips met. Brushing, at first. A kiss goodnight or goodbye, a kiss for being in public, a kiss for your mother. I didn’t release my arms, and he kissed me again. The same.

‘Kiss me, Ben,’ I said. ‘Properly.’

‘Ben,’ I said, later. ‘Are we happy?’

We were sitting in a restaurant, one we’d been to before, he said, though I had no idea, of course. Framed photographs of people who I assumed were minor celebrities dotted the walls; an oven gaped at the back, awaiting pizza. I picked at the plate of melon in front of me. I couldn’t remember ordering it.

‘I mean,’ I continued, ‘we’ve been married … how long?’

‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘Twenty-two years.’ It sounded an impossibly long time. I thought of the vision I’d had as I got ready this afternoon. Flowers in a hotel room. I can only have been waiting for him.

‘Are we happy?’

He put down his fork and sipped the dry white wine he’d ordered. A family arrived and took their seats at the table next to us. Elderly parents, a daughter, in her twenties. Ben spoke.

‘We’re in love, if that’s what you mean. I certainly love you.’

And there it was; my cue to tell him that I loved him too. Men always say I love you as a question.

What could I say, though? He is a stranger. Love doesn’t happen in the space of twenty-four hours, no matter how much I might once have liked to believe that it does.

‘I know you don’t love me,’ he said. I looked at him, shocked for a moment. ‘Don’t worry. I understand the situation you’re in. We’re in. You don’t remember, but we were in love, once. Totally, utterly. Like in the stories, you know? Romeo and Juliet, all that crap.’ He tried to laugh, but instead looked awkward. ‘I loved you and you loved me. We were happy, Christine. Very happy.’

‘Until my accident.’

He flinched at the word. Had I said too much? I’d read my journal but was it today he’d told me about the hit-and-run? I didn’t know but, still, accident would have been a reasonable guess for anyone in my situation to make. I decided not to worry about it.

‘Yes,’ he said, sadly. ‘Until then. We were happy.’

‘And now?’

‘Now? I wish things could be different, but I’m not unhappy, Chris. I love you. I wouldn’t want anyone else.’

How about me? I thought. Am I unhappy?

I looked across at the table next to us. The father was holding a pair of glasses to his eyes, squinting at the laminated menu, while his wife arranged their daughter’s hat and removed her scarf. The girl sat without helping, looking at nothing, her mouth slightly open. Her right hand twitched under the table. A thin string of saliva hung from her chin. Her father noticed me watching and I looked away, back to my husband, too quickly to make it seem as if I hadn’t been staring. They must be used to that — to people looking away, a moment too late.

I sighed. ‘I wish I could remember what happened.’

‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Why?’

I thought of all the other memories that had come to me. They had been brief, transitory. They were gone, now. Vanished. But I had written them down; I knew they had existed — still did exist, somewhere. They were just lost.

I felt sure that there must be a key, a memory that would unlock all the others.

‘I just think that if I could remember my accident, then maybe I could remember other things, too. Not everything, maybe, but enough. Our wedding, for example, our honeymoon. I can’t even remember that.’ I sipped my wine. I had nearly said our son’s name before remembering that Ben didn’t know I had read about him. ‘Just to wake up and remember who I am would be something.’

Ben locked his fingers, resting his chin on his balled fist. ‘The doctors said that wouldn’t happen.’

‘But they don’t know, do they? Surely? They could be wrong?’

‘I doubt it.’

I put down my glass. He was wrong. He thought all was lost, that my past had vanished completely. Maybe this was the time to tell him about the snatched moments I still had, about Dr Nash. My journal. Everything.

‘But I am remembering things, occasionally,’ I said. He looked surprised. ‘I think things are coming back to me, in flashes.’

He unlaced his hands. ‘Really? What things?’

‘Oh, it depends. Sometimes nothing very much. Just odd feelings, sensations. Visions. A bit like dreams, but they seem too real for me to be making them up.’ He said nothing. ‘They must be memories.’

I waited, expecting him to ask me more, to want me to tell him everything I had seen, as well as how I even knew what memories I had experienced.

But he didn’t speak. He continued looking at me, sadly. I thought of the memories I had written about, the one in which he had offered me wine in the kitchen of our first home. ‘I had a vision of you,’ I said. ‘Much younger …’

‘What was I doing?’ he said.

‘Not much,’ I replied. ‘Just standing in the kitchen.’ I thought of the girl, her mother and father, sitting a few feet away. My voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Kissing me.’

He smiled then.

‘I thought that if I am capable of having one memory, then maybe I am capable of having lots—’

He reached across the table and took my hand. ‘But the thing is, tomorrow you won’t remember that memory. That’s the problem. You have no foundation on which to build.’

I sighed. What he was saying is true; I can’t keep writing down everything that happens to me for the rest of my life, not if I also have to read it every day.

I looked across at the family next to us. The girl spooned minestrone clumsily into her mouth, soaking the cloth bib that her mother had tucked around her neck. I could see their lives; broken, trapped by the role of care- giver, a role they had expected to be free of years before.

We are the same, I thought. I need to be spoon-fed, too. And, I realized, rather like them and their child, Ben loves me in a way that can never be reciprocated.

And yet, maybe, we were different. Maybe we still had hope.

‘Do you want me to get better?’ I said.

He looked surprised. ‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Please …’

‘Maybe if there was someone I could see? A doctor?’

‘We’ve tried before—’

‘But maybe it’s worth trying again? Things are improving all the time. Maybe there’s a new treatment?’

He squeezed my hand. ‘Christine, there isn’t. Believe me. We’ve tried everything.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘What have we tried?’

‘Chris, please. Don’t—’

‘What have we tried?’ I said. ‘What?’

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Everything. You don’t know what it was like.’ He looked uncomfortable. His eyes darted