Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

next to your bed. ‘What’s she doing?’ I said. They said you were talking to one of the other patients, a friend of yours. Sometimes you played cards together.

‘Played cards?’ I said. I couldn’t believe it. They said you were good at cards. They had to explain the rules to you every day, but then you could beat just about anybody.

‘Is she happy?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ they said. ‘Yes. She’s always happy.’

‘Does she remember me?’ I said. ‘Adam?’

‘Not unless you’re here,’ they said.

I think I knew then that one day I would have to leave you. I’ve found you a place where you can live for as long as you need to. Somewhere you can be happy. Because you will be happy, without me, without Adam. You won’t know us, and so you won’t miss us.

I love you so much, Chrissy. You must understand that. I love you more than I love anything. But I have to give our son a life, a life he deserves. Soon he will be old enough to understand what’s going on. I will not lie to him, Chris. I will explain the choice I have made. I will tell him that although he may want to see you very much it would be enormously upsetting for him to do so. Maybe he will hate me. Blame me. I hope not. But I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.

You’ve been in Waring House for a while now. You don’t panic any more. You have a sense of routine. That’s good. And so it’s time for me to go.

I’m going to give this letter to Claire. I’ll ask her to keep it for me, and to show it to you when you’re well enough to read it, and to understand it. I can’t keep it myself, I’ll just brood over it, and won’t be able to resist giving it to you next week, or next month, or even next year. Too soon.

I cannot pretend I don’t hope that one day we can be together again. When you are recovered. The three of us. A family. I have to believe that might happen. I have to, or else I will die from grief.

I am not abandoning you, Chris. I will never abandon you. I love you too much.

Believe me, this is the right thing, the only thing for me to do.

Don’t hate me. I love you.

Ben

X

I read it again now, and fold the paper. It feels crisp, as though it might have been written yesterday, but the envelope into which I slip it is soft, its edges frayed, with a sweet smell clinging to it, like perfume. Has Claire carried it with her, tucked in a corner of her bag? Or, more likely, has she stored it in a drawer at home, out of sight, but never quite forgotten? For years it waited for the right time to be read. Years that I spent not knowing who my husband was, not even knowing who I was. Years in which I could never have bridged the gap between us, because it was a gap I had never known existed.

I slip the envelope between the pages of my journal. I am crying as I write this, but I don’t feel unhappy. I understand everything. Why he left me, why he has been lying to me.

Because he has been lying to me. He has not told me about the novel I wrote so that I will not be devastated by the fact that I will never write another. He has been telling me my best friend moved away to protect me from the fact that the two of them betrayed me. Because he didn’t trust me to love them both far too much to not forgive them. He has been telling me that I was hit by a car, that this was an accident, so that I don’t have to deal with the fact that I was attacked and what happened to me was the result of a deliberate act of ferocious hatred. He has been telling me that we never had children, not only to protect me from the knowledge that my only son is dead, but to protect me, too, from having to deal with the grief of his death every single day of my life. And he has not told me that, after years of trying to find a way for our family to be together, he had to face the fact that we couldn’t be and take our son and leave in order to find happiness.

He must have thought that our separation would be for ever, when he wrote that letter, but he must also have hoped that it would not, or else why write it? What was he thinking, as he sat there, in his home, our home as it must once have been, and took out his pen and began to try to explain to someone who he could never expect to understand why he felt he had no option but to leave her? I am no writer, he said, and yet his words are beautiful to me, profound. They read as if he is talking about someone else, and yet, somewhere inside me, under the skin and bones, the tissue and blood, I know that he is not. He is talking about, and to, me. Christine Lucas. His broken wife.

But it has not been for ever. What he hoped for has happened. Somehow my condition has improved, or else he found separation from me even harder than he imagined, and he came back for me.

Everything seems different now. The room I am in looks no more familiar to me than it did this morning when I woke up and stumbled into it, trying to find the kitchen, desperate for a drink of water, desperate to piece together what happened last night. And yet it no longer seems shot through with pain, and sadness. It no longer seems emblematic of a life I cannot consider living. The ticking of the clock at my shoulder is no longer just marking time. It speaks to me. Relax, it says. Relax, and take what comes.

I have been wrong. I have made a mistake. Again and again and again I have made it; who knows how many times? My husband is my protector, yes, but also my lover. And now I realize that I love him. I have always loved him, and if I have to learn to love him again every day, then so be it. That is what I will do.

Ben will be home soon — already I can feel him approach — and when he arrives back I will tell him everything. I will tell him that I have met Claire — and Dr Nash, and even Dr Paxton — and that I have read his letter. I will tell him that I understand why he did what he did back then, why he left me, and that I forgive him. I will tell him that I know about the attack, but that I no longer need to know what happened, no longer care who did this to me.

And I will tell him that I know about Adam. I know what happened to him, and though the thought of facing it every day makes me cold with terror, that is what I must do. The memory of our son must be allowed to exist in this house, and in my heart, too, no matter how much pain that causes.

And I will tell him about this journal, that finally I am able to give myself a narrative, a life, and I will show it to him, if he asks to see it. And then I can continue to use it, to tell my story, my autobiography. To create myself from nothing.

‘No more secrets,’ I will say to my husband. ‘None. I love you, Ben, and I always will. We have wronged each other. But please forgive me. I am sorry that I left you all those years ago to be with somebody else, and I am sorry that we can never know who it was I went to see in that hotel room, or what I found there. But please know that I am determined to make this up to you now.’

And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.

I have called Dr Nash. ‘I want to see you one more time,’ I said. ‘I want you to read my journal.’ I think he was surprised, but he agreed.

‘When?’ he said.

‘Next week,’ I said. ‘Come for it next week.’

He said he would collect it on Tuesday.

Part Three

Today

I turn the page, but there is no more. The story ends there. I have been reading for hours.