Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

‘When I woke,’ I said, ‘I kind of knew that I was in bed with a man. I remembered a name. But it wasn’t Ben’s name. I wondered if it was the name of the person I’d been having the affair with. The one who attacked me.’

‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘It might have been the beginning of the repressed memory emerging. What was the name?’

Suddenly I didn’t want to tell him, to say it out loud. I felt that by doing so I would be making it real, conjuring my attacker back into existence. I closed my eyes.

‘Ed,’ I whispered. ‘I imagined waking up with someone called Ed.’

Silence. A heartbeat that seemed to last for ever.

‘Christine,’ he said. ‘That’s my name. I’m Ed. Ed Nash.’

My mind raced for a moment. My first thought was that he had attacked me. ‘What?’ I said, panicking.

‘That’s my name. I’ve told you that before. Maybe you’ve never written it down. My name is Edmund. Ed.’

I realized it could not have been him. He would barely have been born.

‘But—’

‘You may be confabulating,’ he said. ‘Like Dr Wilson explained?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I—’

‘Or maybe you were attacked by someone with the same name?’

He smiled awkwardly as he said it, making light of the situation, but in doing so revealed he had already worked out what only later — after he had driven me home, in fact — occurred to me. I had woken that morning happy. Happy to be in bed with someone called Ed. But it was not a memory. It was a fantasy. Waking with this man called Ed was not something I had done in the past but — even though my conscious, waking mind didn’t know who he was — something I wanted to do in the future. I want to sleep with Dr Nash.

And now, accidentally, inadvertently, I have told him. I have revealed the way I must feel about him. He was professional, of course. We both pretended to attach no significance to what had happened, and in doing so revealed just how much significance there was. We walked back to the car and he drove me home. We chatted about trivialities. The weather. Ben. There are few things we can talk about; there are whole arenas of experience from which I am utterly excluded. At one point he said, ‘We’re going to the theatre tonight,’ and I noted his careful use of the plural. Don’t worry, I wanted to say. I know my place. But I said nothing. I didn’t want him to think of me as bitter.

He told me he would call me tomorrow. ‘If you’re sure you want to continue?’

I know that I cannot stop now. Not until I have learned the truth. I owe myself that, otherwise I am living only half a life. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’ In any case, I need him to remind me to write in my journal.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good. Next time I think we should visit somewhere else from your past.’ He looked to where I sat. ‘Don’t worry. Not there. I think we should go to the care home you were moved to when you left Fisher Ward. It’s called Waring House.’ I said nothing. ‘It’s not too far from where you live. Shall I ring them?’

I thought for a moment, wondering what good it might do, but then realized there were no other options, and anything is better than nothing.

I said, ‘Yes. Yes. Ring them.’

Tuesday, 20 November

It is morning. Ben has suggested that I clean the windows. ‘I’ve written it on the board,’ he said, as he got into his car. ‘In the kitchen.’

I looked. Wash windows he had written, adding a tentative question mark. I wondered if he thought I might not have time, wondered what he thought I did all day. He doesn’t know I now spend hours reading my journal, and sometimes hours more writing in it. He does not know there are days when I see Dr Nash.

I wonder what I did before my days were taken up like this. Did I really spend all my time watching television, or going for walks, or doing chores? Did I spend hour after hour sitting in an armchair, listening to the ticking of the clock, wondering how to live?

Wash windows. Possibly some days I read things like that and feel resentful, seeing it as an effort to control my life, but today I viewed it with affection, as nothing more sinister than the desire to keep me occupied. I smiled to myself but, even as I did so, I thought how difficult it must be to live with me. He must go to extraordinary lengths to make sure I am safe, and even so must worry constantly that I will get confused, will wander off, or worse. I remembered reading about the fire that had destroyed most of our past, the one Ben has never told me that I started, even though I must have done so. I saw an image — a burning door, almost invisible in the thick smoke, a sofa, melting, turning to wax — that hovered, just out of reach, but refused to resolve itself into a memory, and remained a half-imagined dream. But Ben has forgiven me for that, I thought, just as he must have forgiven me for so much more. I looked out of the kitchen window, and through the reflection of my own face I saw the mowed lawn, the tidy borders, the shed, the fences. I realized that Ben must have known that I was having an affair — certainly once I’d been discovered in Brighton, even if not before. How much strength it must have taken to look after me — once I had lost my memory — even with the knowledge that I had been away from home, intending to fuck someone else, when it had happened. I thought of what I had seen, of the diary I had written. My mind had been fractured. Destroyed. Yet still he had stood by me, where another man might have told me that I deserved everything, left me to rot.

I turned away from the window and looked under the sink. Cleaning materials. Soap. Cartons of powder, plastic spray bottles. There was a red plastic bucket and I filled this with hot water, adding a squirt of soap and a tiny drop of vinegar. How have I repaid him? I thought. I took a sponge and began to soap the window, beginning at the top, working down. I have been sneaking around London, seeing doctors, having scans, visiting our old homes and the places I was treated after my accident, all without telling him. And why? Because I don’t trust him? Because he has made the decision to protect me from the truth, to keep my life as simple and easy as possible? I watched the soapy water run in tiny rivulets, pooling at the bottom, and then took another cloth and polished the window to a shine.

Now I know the truth is even worse. This morning I had woken with an almost overwhelming sense of guilt, the words You should be ashamed of yourself spinning in my head. You’ll be sorry. At first I’d thought I had woken with a man who was not my husband and it was only later I discovered the truth. That I have betrayed him. Twice. The first time years ago, with a man who would eventually take everything from me, and now I have done it again, with my heart if nothing else. I have developed a ridiculous, childish crush on a doctor who is trying to help me, trying to comfort me. A doctor who I can’t even begin to picture now, can’t remember having met before, but who I know is much younger than me, has a girlfriend. And now I have told him how I feel! Accidentally, yes, but still I have told him. I feel more than guilty. I feel stupid. I can’t even begin to imagine what must have brought me to this point. I am pathetic.

There, as I cleaned the glass, I make a decision. Even if Ben doesn’t share my belief that my treatment will work I can’t believe he would deny me the opportunity to see for myself. Not if it was what I wanted. I am an adult, he is not a monster; surely I can trust him with the truth? I sluiced the water down the sink and refilled the bucket. I will tell my husband. Tonight. When he gets home. This can’t go on. I continued to clean the windows.

I wrote that an hour ago, but now I am not so sure. I think about Adam. I have read about the photographs in the metal box, yet still there are no pictures of him on display. None. I can’t believe Ben — anyone — could lose a son and then remove all traces of him from his home. It doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem possible. Can I trust a man who can do that? I remembered reading about the day we sat on Parliament Hill when I had asked him straight. He had lied. I flick back through my journal now and read it again. We never had children? I said, and he had replied, No. No, we didn’t. Can he really have done that just to protect me? Can he really feel that is the best thing to do? To tell me nothing, other than what he must,