and gathers the last few pages that are still littering the floor and adds those. ‘We have to get rid of it,’ he says. ‘All of it. Once and for all.’
He takes a box of matches out of his pocket, strikes one, and retrieves a single page from the bin.
I look at him in horror. ‘No!’ I try to say; nothing comes but a muffled grunt. He doesn’t look at me as he sets fire to the single page and then drops it into the bin.
‘No!’ I say again, but this time it is a silent scream in my head. I watch my history begin to burn to ash, my memories reduced to carbon. My journal, the letter from Ben, everything. I am nothing without that journal, I think. Nothing. And he has won.
I do not plan to do what I do next. It is instinctive. I launch my body at the bin. With my hands tied I cannot break my fall and I hit it awkwardly, hearing something snap as I twist. Pain shoots from my arm and I think I will faint, but I don’t. The bin falls over, scattering burning paper across the floor.
Mike cries out — a shriek — and falls to his knees, slapping the ground, trying to put out the flames. I see that a burning shred has come to rest under the bed, unnoticed by Mike. Flames are beginning to lick at the edge of the bedspread but I can neither reach it nor cry out, and so I simply lie there, watching the bedspread catch fire. It begins to smoke, and I close my eyes. The room will burn, I think, and Mike will burn, and I will burn, and no one will ever really know what happened here, in this room, just like no one will ever really know what happened here all those years ago, and history will turn to ash and be replaced by conjecture.
I cough, a dry, heaving retch, swallowed by the sock balled in my throat. I am beginning to choke. I think of my son. I will never see him now, though at least I’ll die knowing I had one, and that he is alive, and happy. For that I am glad. I think of Ben. The man I married and then forgot. I want to see him. I want to tell him that now, at the end, I can remember him. I can remember meeting him at the rooftop party, and him proposing to me on a hill looking out over a city, and I can remember marrying him in the church in Manchester, having our photographs taken in the rain.
And, yes, I can remember loving him. I know that I do love him, and I always have.
Things go dark. I can’t breathe. I can hear the lap of flames, and feel their heat on my lips and eyes.
There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.
That is all right.
I am lying down. I have been asleep, but not for long. I can remember who I am, where I have been. I can hear noise, the roar of traffic, a siren that is neither rising nor falling in pitch but remaining constant. Something is over my mouth — I think of a balled sock — yet I find I can breathe. I am too frightened to open my eyes. I do not know what I will see.
But I must. I have no choice but to face whatever my reality has become.
The light is bright. I can see a fluorescent tube on the low ceiling, and two metal bars running parallel to it. The walls are close by on each side, and they are hard, shiny with metal and perspex. I can make out drawers and shelves stocked with bottles and packets, and there are machines, blinking. Everything is moving slightly, vibrating, including, I realize, the bed in which I am lying.
A man’s face appears from somewhere behind me, over my head. He is wearing a green shirt. I don’t recognize him.
‘She’s awake, everybody,’ he says, and then more faces appear. I scan them quickly. Mike is not among them, and I relax a little.
‘Christine,’ comes a voice. ‘Chrissy. It’s me.’ It’s a woman’s voice, one I recognize. ‘We’re on our way to the hospital. You’ve broken your collarbone, but you’re going to be all right. Everything’s going to be fine. He’s dead. That man is dead. He can’t hurt you any more.’
I see the person speaking, then. She is smiling and holding my hand. It’s Claire. The same Claire I saw just the other day, not the young Claire I might expect to see after just waking up, and I notice her earrings are the same pair that she had on the last time I saw her.
‘Claire—’ I say, but she interrupts.
‘Don’t speak,’ she says. ‘Just try to relax.’ She leans forward and strokes my hair, and whispers something in my ear, but I don’t hear what. It sounds like
‘I remember,’ I say. ‘I remember.’
She smiles, and then she steps back and a young man takes her place. He has a narrow face and is wearing thick-rimmed glasses. For a moment I think it is Ben, until I realize that Ben would be my age now.
‘Mum?’ he says. ‘Mum?’
He looks the same as he did in the picture of him and Helen, and I realize I remember him, too.
‘Adam?’ I say. Words choke in my throat as he hugs me.
‘Mum,’ he says. ‘Dad’s coming. He’ll be here soon.’
I pull him to me, and breathe in the smell of my boy, and I am happy.
I can wait no longer. It is time. I must sleep. I have a private room and so there is no need for me to observe the strict routines of the hospital, but I am exhausted, my eyes already beginning to close. It is time.
I have spoken to Ben. To the man I really married. We talked for hours, it seems, though it may only have been a few minutes. He told me that he flew in as soon as the police contacted him.
‘The police?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When they realized you weren’t living with the person Waring House thought you were they traced me. I’m not sure how. I suppose they had my old address and went from there.’
‘So where were you?’
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ve been in Italy for a few months,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working out there.’ He paused. ‘I thought you were OK.’ He took my hand. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ I said.
He looked away. ‘I left you, Chrissy.’
‘I know. I know everything. Claire told me. I read your letter.’
‘I thought it was for the best,’ he said. ‘I really did. I thought it would help. Help you. Help Adam. I tried to get on with my life. I really did.’ He hesitated. ‘I thought I could only do that if I divorced you. I thought it would free me. Adam didn’t understand, even when I explained to him that you wouldn’t even know, wouldn’t even remember being married to me.’
‘Did it?’ I said. ‘Did it help you to move on?’
He turned to me. ‘I won’t lie to you, Chrissy. There have been other women. Not many, but some. It’s been a long time, years and years. At first nothing serious, but then I met someone a couple of years ago. I moved in with her. But—’
‘But?’
‘Well, that ended. She said I didn’t love her. That I’d never stopped loving you …’
‘And was she right?’
He did not reply, and so, fearing his answer, I said, ‘So what happens now? Tomorrow? Will you take me back to Waring House?’
He looked up at me.
‘No,’ he said. ‘She was right. I never stopped loving you. And I won’t take you there again. Tomorrow, I want you to come home.’
Now I look at him. He sits in a chair next to me, and although he is already snoring, his head tipped forward at an awkward angle, he still holds my hand. I can just make out his glasses, the scar running down the side of his face. My son has left the room to phone his girlfriend and whisper a goodnight to his unborn daughter, and my best friend is outside in the car park, smoking a cigarette. No matter what, I am surrounded by the people I love.
Earlier, I spoke to Dr Nash. He told me I had left the care home almost four months ago, a little while after
