Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

‘Yes, of course. I’m grateful to you for coming for me. For giving me a home. For looking after me.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Just think where I’d be if you hadn’t. I couldn’t bear it.’ I sense him soften. The pressure on my arms and shoulder lessens and is accompanied by a subtle yet definite sensation of stroking that I find almost more distasteful but I know is more likely to lead to my escape. Because escape is all I can think of. I need to get away. How stupid of me, I think now, to have sat there on the floor while he was in the bathroom to read what he had stolen of my journal. Why hadn’t I taken it with me and left? Then I remember that it was not until I read the end of the journal that I had any real idea of how much danger I was in. That same small voice comes in again. I will escape. I have a son I cannot remember having met. I will escape. I move my head to face him, and begin to stroke the back of his hand where it rests on my shoulder.

‘Why not let me go, and then we can talk about what we should do?’

‘How about Claire, though?’ he says. ‘She knows I’m not Ben. You told her.’

‘She won’t remember that,’ I say, desperately.

He laughs, a hollow, choked sound. ‘You always treated me like I was stupid. I’m not, you know. I know what’s going to happen! You told her. You ruined everything!’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can call her. I can tell her I was confused. That I’d forgotten who you were. I can tell her that I thought you were Ben, but I was wrong.’

I almost believe he thinks this is possible, but then he says, ‘She’d never believe you.’

‘She would,’ I say, even though I know that she would not. ‘I promise.’

‘Why did you have to go and call her?’ His face clouds with anger, his hands begin to grip me tighter. ‘Why? Why, Chris? We were doing fine until then. Fine.’ He begins to shake me again. ‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why?’

‘Ben,’ I say. ‘You’re hurting me.’

He hits me then. I hear the sound of his hand against my face before I feel the flash of pain. My head twists round, my lower jaw cracks up, connecting painfully with its companion.

‘Don’t you ever fucking call me that again,’ he spits.

‘Mike,’ I say quickly, as if I can erase my mistake. ‘Mike—’

He ignores me.

‘I’m sick of being Ben,’ he says. ‘You can call me Mike, from now on. OK? It’s Mike. That’s why we came back here. So that we can put all that behind us. You wrote in your book that if you could only remember what happened here all those years ago then you’d get your memory back. Well, we’re here now. I made it happen, Chris. So remember!’

I am incredulous. ‘You want me to remember?’

‘Yes! Of course I do! I love you, Christine. I want you to remember how much you love me. I want us to be together again. Properly. As we should be.’ He pauses, his voice drops to a whisper. ‘I don’t want to be Ben any more.’

‘But—’

He looks back at me. ‘When we go back home tomorrow you can call me Mike.’ He shakes me again, his face inches from mine. ‘OK?’ I can smell sourness on his breath, and another smell, too. I wonder if he’s been drinking. ‘We’re going to be OK, aren’t we, Christine? We’re going to move on.’

‘Move on?’ I say. My head is sore, and something is coming out of my nose. Blood, I think, though I am not sure. The calmness disappears. I raise my voice, shouting as loud as I can. ‘You want me to go back home? Move on? Are you absolutely fucking crazy?’ He moves his hand to clamp it over my mouth, and I realize that has left my arm free. I hit out at him, catching him on the side of his face, though not hard. Still, it takes him by surprise. He falls backwards, letting go of my other arm as he does.

I stumble to my feet. ‘Bitch!’ he says, but I step forward, over him, and head towards the door.

I manage three steps before he grabs my ankle. I come crashing down. There is a stool sitting tucked under the dressing table and my head hits its edge as I go down. I am lucky; the stool is padded and breaks my fall, but it causes my body to twist awkwardly as I land. Pain shoots up my back and through my neck and I am afraid I have broken something. I begin to crawl towards the door but he still holds my ankle. He pulls me towards him with a grunt and then his crushing weight is on top of me, his lips inches from my ear.

‘Mike,’ I sob. ‘Mike—’

In front of me is the photograph of Adam and Helen, lying on the floor where he had dropped it. Even in the middle of everything else I wonder how he had got it, and then it hits me. Adam had sent it to me at Waring House and Mike had taken it, along with all the other photographs, when he’d come for me.

‘You stupid, stupid bitch,’ he says, spitting into my ear. One of his hands is round my throat, with the other he has grabbed a handful of my hair. He pulls my head back, jerking my neck up. ‘What did you have to go and do that for?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I sob. I cannot move. One of my hands is trapped beneath my body, the other clamped between my back and his leg.

‘Where did you think you were going to go, eh?’ he says. He is snarling now, an animal. Something like hate floods out of him.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, because it is all I can think of to say. ‘I’m sorry.’ I remember the days when those words would always work, always be enough, be what was needed to get me out of whatever trouble I was in.

‘Stop saying you’re fucking sorry,’ he says. My head jerks back, and then slams forward. My forehead, nose, mouth all connect with the carpeted floor. There is a noise, a sickening crunch, and the smell of stale cigarettes. I cry out. There is blood in my mouth. I have bitten my tongue. ‘Where do you think you’re going to run to? You can’t drive. You don’t know anybody. You don’t even know who you are most of the time. You have nowhere to go, nowhere at all. You’re pathetic.’

I start to cry, because he is right. I am pathetic. Claire never came; I have no friends. I am utterly alone, relying totally on the man who did this to me, and tomorrow morning, if I survive, I will have forgotten even this.

If I survive. The words echo through me as I realize what this man is capable of, and that, this time, I may not get out of this room alive. Terror slams into me, but then I hear the tiny voice again. This is not the place you die. Not with him. Not now. Anything but that.

I arch my back painfully and manage to free my arm. Lunging forward I grab the leg of the stool. It is heavy and the angle of my body wrong, but I manage to twist round and heave it back over my head where I imagine Mike’s head will be. It strikes something with a satisfying crack, and there is a gasp in my ear. He lets go of my hair.

I look round. He has rocked backwards, his hand to his forehead. Blood is beginning to trickle between his fingers. He looks up at me, uncomprehending.

Later, I will think how I should have hit him again. With the stool, or with my bare hands. With anything. I should have made sure he was incapacitated, that I could get away, get downstairs, even far enough away that I could open the door and scream for help.

But I do not. I pull myself upright and then I stand, looking at him on the floor in front of me. No matter what I do now, I think, he has won. He will always have won. He has taken everything from me, even the ability to remember exactly what he did to me. I turn, and begin to move towards the door.

With a grunt he launches himself at me. His whole body collides with mine. Together we slam into the dresser, stumble towards the door. ‘Christine!’ he says. ‘Chris! Don’t leave me!’

I reach out. If I can just open the door, then surely, despite the noise from the club, someone will hear us, and come?

He clings to my waist. Like some grotesque, two-headed monster we inch forward, me dragging him. ‘Chris! I love you!’ he says. He is wailing, and this, plus the ridiculousness of his words, spurs me on. I am nearly there. Soon I will reach the door.

And then it happens. I remember that night, all those years ago. Me, in this room, standing in the same spot. I am reaching out a hand towards the same door. I am happy, ridiculously so. The walls resonate with the soft orange glow of the lit candles that were dotted around the room when I arrived, the air is tinged with the sweet smell of the roses in the bouquet that was on the bed. I’ll be upstairs around seven, my darling, said the note that was pinned to them, and though I wondered briefly what Ben was doing