Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

word Office next to it in brackets. It was Sunday. He wouldn’t be there.

The yellow paper was gummed along one edge, with dust and hair sticking to it, but otherwise blank. I was beginning to wonder what on earth had made me think, even for a moment, that Dr Nash would have given me his personal number, when I remembered reading that he had written his number in the front of my journal. Ring me if you get confused, he’d said.

I found it, then picked up both phones. I couldn’t remember which one Dr Nash had given me. The larger of the two I checked quickly, seeing that every call was from, or to, Ben. The second — the one that flipped open — had hardly been used. Why had Dr Nash given it to me, I thought, if not for this? What am I now, if not confused? I opened it and dialled his number, then pressed Call.

Silence for a few moments, and then a buzzy ring, interrupted by a voice.

‘Hello?’ he said. He sounded sleepy, though it wasn’t late. ‘Who is this?’

‘Dr Nash,’ I said, whispering. I could hear Ben downstairs where I had left him, watching some kind of talent show on the television. Singing, laughter, sprinkled with punches of applause. ‘It’s Christine.’

There was a pause. A mental readjustment.

‘Oh. OK. How—’

I felt an unexpected plunge of disappointment. He didn’t sound pleased to be hearing from me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I got your number from the front of my journal.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. How are you?’ I said nothing. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. The words fell out of me, one after another. ‘I need to see you. Now. Or tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow. I had a memory. Last night. I wrote it down. A hotel room. Someone knocked on the door. I couldn’t breathe. I … Dr Nash?’

‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Slow down. What happened?’

I took a breath. ‘I had a memory. I’m sure it has something to do with why I can’t remember anything. But it doesn’t make sense. Ben says I was hit by a car.’

I heard movement, as if he was adjusting his position, and another voice. A woman’s. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said quietly, and he muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.

‘Dr Nash?’ I said. ‘Dr Nash? Was I hit by a car?’

‘I can’t really talk right now,’ he said, and I heard the woman’s voice again, louder now, complaining. I felt something stir within me. Anger, or panic.

‘Please!’ I said. The word hissed out of me.

Silence at first, and then his voice again, now with authority. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m a little busy. Have you written it down?’

I didn’t answer. Busy. I thought of him and his girlfriend, wondered what it was that I’d interrupted. He spoke again. ‘What you’ve remembered — is it written in your journal? Make sure you write it down.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘but—’

He interrupted. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll call you, on this number. I promise.’

Relief, mixed with something else. Something unexpected. Hard to define. Happiness? Delight?

No. It was more than that. Part anxiety, part certainty, suffused with the tiny thrill of pleasure to come. I still feel it as I write this, an hour or so later, but now know it for what it is. Something I don’t know that I have ever felt before. Anticipation.

But anticipation of what? That he will tell me what I need to know, that he will confirm that my memories are beginning to trickle back to me, that my treatment is working? Or is it more?

I think of how I must have felt as he touched me in the car park, what I must have been thinking to ignore a call from my husband. Perhaps the truth is more simple. I’m looking forward to talking to him.

‘Yes,’ I had said when he told me he would call. ‘Yes. Please.’ But by then the line was already dead. I thought of the woman’s voice, realized they had been in bed.

I dismiss the thought from my mind. To chase it would be to go truly mad.

Monday, 19 November

The cafe was busy. One of a chain. Everything was green, or brown, and disposable, though — according to the posters that dotted the carpeted walls — in an environmentally friendly way. I drank my coffee out of a paper cup, dauntingly huge, as Dr Nash settled himself into the armchair opposite the one into which I had sunk.

It was the first time I’d had the chance to look at him properly; or the first time today at least, which amounts to the same thing. He had called — on the phone that flips open — not long after I had cleared away the remains of my breakfast and then picked me up an hour or so later, after I had read most of my journal. I stared out of the window as we drove to the coffee shop. I was feeling confused. Desperately so. This morning when I woke — even though I could not be certain I knew my own name — I knew somehow that I was both an adult and a mother, although I had no inkling that I was middle-aged and my son was dead. My day so far had been brutally disorientating, one shock after another — the bathroom mirror, the scrapbook, and then, later, this journal — culminating in the belief that I do not trust my husband. I had felt disinclined to examine anything else too closely.

Now, though, I could see that Dr Nash was younger than I had expected, and though I had written that he did not need to worry about watching his weight I could see that this did not mean he was as skinny as I had supposed. He had a solidness to him, emphasized by the too-large jacket that hung from his shoulders and out of which his surprisingly hairy forearms poked infrequently.

‘How are you feeling today?’ he said, once settled.

I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Confused, I suppose.’

He nodded. ‘Go on.’

I pushed away the biscuit that Dr Nash had given me though I hadn’t asked for it. ‘Well, I woke up kind of knowing that I was an adult. I didn’t realize I was married, but I wasn’t exactly surprised that there was somebody in bed with me.’

‘That’s good, though—’ he began.

I interrupted. ‘But yesterday I wrote that I woke up and knew I had a husband …’

‘You’re still writing in your book, then?’ he said, and I nodded. ‘Did you bring it today?’

I had. It was in my bag. But there were things in it I didn’t want him to read, didn’t want anyone to. Personal things. My history. The only history I have.

Things I had written about him. ‘I forgot,’ I lied. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can see it must be frustrating, that one day you remember something and the next it seems to have gone again. But it’s still progress. Generally you’re remembering more than you were.’

I wondered if what he’d said was still true. In the first few entries of this journal I had written of remembering my childhood, my parents, a party with my best friend. I had seen my husband when we were young and first in love, myself writing a novel. But since then? Lately I have been seeing only the son I have lost and the attack that left me like this. Things it might almost be better for me to forget.

‘You said you were worried about Ben? What he’s saying about the cause of your amnesia?’

I swallowed. What I had written yesterday had seemed distant, removed. Almost fictional. A car accident. Violence in a hotel bedroom. Neither had seemed like anything to do with me. Yet I had no choice but to believe that I had written the truth. That Ben had really lied to me about how I ended up like this.

‘Go on …’ he said.

I told him what I’d written down, starting with Ben’s story about the accident and finishing with my recollection of the hotel room, though I mentioned neither the sex we’d been in the middle of when the memory of the hotel room came to me nor the romance — the flowers, the candles and champagne — it had contained.

I watched him as I spoke. He occasionally murmured an encouragement and even scratched his chin and narrowed his eyes at one point, though the expression was more thoughtful than surprised.

‘You knew this, didn’t you?’ I said when I’d finished. ‘You knew all of this already?’