Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

right, but I suppose he must have his reasons.’ I said nothing. ‘I thought maybe you should speak to Claire. She might have some answers. She might even talk to Ben. I don’t know.’ Another pause. ‘Christine? Do you have a pen? Do you want the number?’

I swallowed hard. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, please.’

I reached for a corner of the newspaper on the coffee table, and the pen that was next to it, and wrote down the number that he gave me. I heard the bolt on the bathroom door slide open, Ben come on to the landing.

‘Christine?’ said Dr Nash. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t say anything to Ben. Not until we’ve figured out what’s going on. OK?’

I heard myself agree, say goodbye. He told me not to forget to write in this journal before I went to sleep. I wrote Claire next to the number, still not knowing what I was going to do. I tore it off and put it in my bag.

I said nothing when Ben came downstairs, nothing as he sat on the sofa across from me. I fixed my eyes on the television. A documentary about wildlife. The inhabitants of the ocean floor. A remote-controlled submersible craft was exploring an underwater trench with jerky twitches. Two lamps shone into places that had never known light before. Ghosts in the deep.

I wanted to ask him if I was still in touch with Claire, but did not want to hear another lie. A giant squid hung in the gloom, drifting in the gentle current. This creature has never been captured on film before, said the voiceover, to the accompaniment of electronic music.

‘Are you all right?’ he said. I nodded, without taking my eyes off the screen.

He stood up. ‘I have work to do,’ he said. ‘Upstairs. I’ll come to bed soon.’

I looked at him then. I didn’t know who he was.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Wednesday, 21 November

I have spent all morning reading this journal. Even so, I have not read it all. Some pages I have skimmed over, others I have read again and again, trying to believe them. And now I am in the bedroom, sitting in the bay, writing more.

I have the phone in my lap. Why does it feel so difficult to dial Claire’s number? Neuronal impulses, muscular contractions. That is all it will take. Nothing complicated. Nothing difficult. Yet it feels so much easier to take up a pen and write about it instead.

This morning I went into the kitchen. My life, I thought, is built on quicksand. It shifts from one day to the next. Things I think I know are wrong, things I am certain of, facts about my life, myself, belong to years ago. All the history I have reads like fiction. Dr Nash, Ben, Adam, and now Claire. They exist, but as shadows in the dark. As strangers, they criss-cross my life, connecting, disconnecting. Elusive, ethereal. Like ghosts.

And not just them. Everything. It is all invented. Conjured from nothing. I am desperate for solid ground, for something real, something that will not vanish as I sleep. I need to anchor myself.

I clicked open the lid of the bin. A warmth rose from it — the heat of decomposition and decay — and it smelled, faintly. The sweet, sick smell of rotting food. I could see a newspaper, the crossword part filled in, a solitary teabag soaking it brown. I held my breath and knelt down on the floor.

Inside the newspaper were shards of porcelain, crumbs, a fine white dust, and underneath it a carrier bag, knotted closed. I fished it out, thinking of dirty nappies, decided to tear it open later if I had to. Beneath it there were potato peelings and a near-empty plastic bottle that was leaking ketchup. I pushed both aside.

Eggshells — four or five — and a handful of papery onion skin. The remains of a de-seeded red pepper, a large mushroom, half rotten.

Satisfied, I replaced the things in the bin and closed it. It was true. Last night, we had eaten an omelette. A plate had been smashed. I looked in the fridge. Two pork chops lay in a polystyrene tray. In the hallway Ben’s slippers sat at the bottom of the stairs. Everything was there, exactly as I had described it in my journal last night. I hadn’t invented it. It was all true.

And that meant the number was Claire’s. Dr Nash had really called me. Ben and I had been divorced.

I want to call Dr Nash now. I want to ask him what to do, or, better, to ask him to do it for me. But for how long can I be a visitor in my own life? Passive? I need to take control. The thought crosses my mind that I may never see Dr Nash again — not now that I have told him of my feelings, my crush — but I don’t let it take root. Either way, I need to speak to Claire myself.

But what will I say? There seems to be so much for us to talk about, and yet so little. So much history between us, but none of it known to me.

I think of what Dr Nash had told me about why Ben and I separated. Something to do with Claire.

It all makes sense. Years ago, when I needed him most but understood him least, my husband divorced me, and now we are back together he is telling me that my best friend moved to the other side of the world before any of this happened.

Is that why I can’t call her? Because I am afraid that she might have more to hide than I have even begun to imagine? Is that why Ben seems less than keen for me to remember more? Is that even why he has been suggesting that any attempts at treatment are futile, so that I will never be able to link memory to memory and know what has been happening?

I cannot imagine he would do that. Nobody would. It is a ridiculous thing. I think of what Dr Nash told me about my time in the hospital. You were claiming the doctors were conspiring against you, he said. Exhibiting symptoms of paranoia.

I wonder if that is what I am doing again now.

Suddenly a memory floods me. It strikes almost violently, rising up from the emptiness of my past to send me tumbling back, but then just as quickly disappears. Claire and me, another party. ‘Christ,’ she is saying. ‘It’s so annoying! You know what I think is wrong? Everyone’s so bloody hung up on sex. It’s just animals copulating, y’know? No matter how much we try and dance round it and dress it up as something else. That’s all it is.’

Is it possible that with me stuck in my own hell Claire and Ben have sought solace in each other?

I look down. The phone lies dead in my lap. I have no idea where Ben really goes when he leaves every morning, or where he might stop off on the way home. It might be anywhere. And I have no opportunity to build suspicion on suspicion, to link one fact to another. Even if one day I were to discover Claire and Ben in bed, the next I would forget what I had seen. I am the perfect person on whom to cheat. Perhaps they are still seeing each other. Perhaps I have already discovered them, and forgotten.

I think this, and yet, somehow, I don’t think this. I trust Ben, and yet I don’t. It’s perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them.

But why would he lie? He just thinks he’s doing the right thing, I keep telling myself. He’s protecting you. Keeping from you the things that you don’t need to know.

I dialled the number, of course. There was no way I could have not done so. It rang for a while, and then there was a click, and a voice. ‘Hi,’ it said. ‘Please leave a message.’

I knew the voice at once. It was Claire’s. Unmistakable.

I left her a message. Please call me, I said. It’s Christine.

I went downstairs. I had done all I could do.

I waited. For an hour that turned into two. I spent the time writing in my journal, and when she didn’t ring I made a sandwich and ate it in the living room. While I was in the kitchen — wiping down the work surface, sweeping crumbs into my palm, preparing to empty them into the sink — the doorbell rang. The noise startled me. I put down the sponge, dried my hands on the teatowel that hung from the handle of the oven and went to see who