Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel

‘Christine? Are you OK?’

I did not know how to answer, and so I said, ‘Yes. I think so.’

He smiled then, a look of relief, and I did the same. He looked older than in the pictures upstairs — his face carried more lines, his hair was beginning to grey and receding slightly at the temples — but this had the effect of making him more, rather than less, attractive. His jaw had a strength that suited an older man, his eyes shone mischief. I realized he resembled a slightly older version of my father. I could have done worse, I thought. Much worse.

‘You’ve seen the pictures?’ he said. I nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything. Why don’t you go through and sit down?’ He gestured back towards the hallway. ‘The dining room’s through there. I won’t be a moment. Here, take this.’

He handed me a pepper mill and I went through to the dining room. A few minutes later he followed me with two plates. A pale sliver of bacon swam in grease, an egg and some bread had been fried and sat on the side. As I ate he explained how I survive my life.

Today is Saturday, he said. He works during the week; he is a teacher. He explained about the phone I have in my bag, the board tacked on the wall in the kitchen. He showed me where we keep our emergency fund — two twenty-pound notes, rolled tightly and tucked behind the clock on the mantelpiece — and the scrapbook in which I can glimpse snatches of my life. He told me that, together, we manage. I was not sure I believed him, yet I must.

We finished eating and I helped him tidy away the breakfast things. ‘We should go for a stroll later,’ he said, ‘if you like?’ I said that I would and he looked pleased. ‘I’m just going to read the paper,’ he said. ‘OK?’

I came upstairs. Once I was alone, my head spun, full and empty at the same time. I felt unable to grasp anything. Nothing seemed real. I looked at the house I was in — the one I now knew was my home — with eyes that had never known it before. For a moment I felt like running. I had to calm myself.

I sat on the edge of the bed in which I had slept. I should make it, I thought. Tidy up. Keep myself busy. I picked up the pillow to plump it and as I did something began to buzz.

I wasn’t sure what it was. It was low, insistent. A tune, thin and quiet. My bag was at my feet and when I picked it up I realized the buzz seemed to come from there. I remembered Ben telling me about the phone I have.

When I found it, the phone was lit up. I stared at it for a long moment. Some part of me, buried deep, or somewhere at the very edge of memory, knew exactly what the call was about. I answered it.

‘Hello?’ A man’s voice. ‘Christine? Christine, are you there?’

I told him I was.

‘It’s your doctor. Are you OK? Is Ben around?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s— What’s this about?’

He told me his name and that we have been working together for a few weeks. ‘On your memory,’ he said, and when I didn’t reply he said, ‘I want you to trust me. I want you to look in the wardrobe in your bedroom.’ Another pause, then, before he went on, ‘There’s a shoebox on the floor in there. Have a look inside that. There should be a notebook.’

I glanced at the wardrobe in the corner of the room.

‘How do you know all this?’

‘You told me,’ he said. ‘I saw you yesterday. We decided you should keep a journal. That’s where you told me you’d hide it.’

I don’t believe you, I wanted to say, but it seemed impolite and was not entirely true.

‘Will you look?’ he said. I told him I would, then he added, ‘Do it now. Don’t say anything to Ben. Do it now.’

I did not end the call but went over to the wardrobe. He was right. Inside, on the floor, was a shoebox — a blue box with the word Scholl on the ill-fitting lid — and inside that a book wrapped in tissue.

‘Do you have it?’ said Dr Nash.

I lifted it out and unwrapped it. It was brown leather and looked expensive.

‘Christine?’

‘Yes. I have it.’

‘Good. Have you written in it?’

I opened it to the first page. I saw that I had. My name is Christine Lucas, it began. I am forty-seven. An amnesiac. I felt nervous, excited. It felt like snooping, but on myself.

‘I have,’ I said.

‘Excellent!’ Then he said he would phone me tomorrow and we ended the call.

I didn’t move. There, crouching on the floor by the open wardrobe, the bed still unmade, I began to read.

At first, I felt disappointed. I remembered nothing of what I had written. Not Dr Nash, nor the offices I claim that he took me to, the puzzles I say that we did. Despite having just heard his voice I couldn’t picture him, or myself with him. The book read like fiction. But then, tucked between two pages near the back of the book, I found a photograph. The house in which I had grown up, the one in which I expected to find myself when I woke this morning. It was real, this was my evidence. I had seen Dr Nash and he had given me this picture, this fragment of my past.

I closed my eyes. Yesterday I had described my old home, the sugar jar in the pantry, picking berries in the woods. Were those memories still there? Could I conjure more? I thought of my mother, my father, willing something else to come. Images formed, silently. A dull orange carpet, an olive-green vase. A yellow romper suit with a pink duck sewn on to the breast and press-studs up the middle. A plastic car seat in navy blue and a faded pink potty.

Colours and shapes, but nothing that described a life. Nothing. I want to see my parents, I thought, and it was then, for the first time, I realized that somehow I knew that they are dead.

I sighed and sat on the edge of the unmade bed. A pen was tucked between the pages of the journal and almost without thinking I took it out, intending to write more. I held it, poised over the page, and closed my eyes to concentrate.

It was then that it happened. Whether that realization — that my parents are gone — triggered others, I don’t know, but it felt as if my mind woke up from a long, deep sleep. It came alive. But not gradually; this was a jolt. A spark of electricity. Suddenly I was not sitting in a bedroom with a blank page in front of me but somewhere else. Back in the past — a past I thought I had lost — and I could touch and feel and taste everything. I realized I was remembering.

I saw myself coming home, to the house I grew up in. I am thirteen or fourteen, eager to get on with a story I am writing, but I find a note on the kitchen table. We’ve had to go out, it says. Uncle Ted will pick you up at six. I get a drink and a sandwich and sit down with my notebook. Mrs Royce has said that my stories are strong and moving; she thinks I could turn them into a career. But I can’t think what to write, can’t concentrate. I seethe in silent fury. It is their fault. Where are they? What are they doing? Why aren’t I invited? I screw up the paper and throw it away.

The image vanished, but straight away there was another. Stronger. More real. My father is driving us home. I am sitting in the back of the car, staring at a fixed spot on the windscreen. A dead fly. A piece of grit. I can’t tell. I speak, not sure what I am going to say.

‘When were you going to tell me?’

Nobody answers.

‘Mum?’

‘Christine,’ says my mother. ‘Don’t.’

‘Dad? When were you going to tell me?’ Silence. ‘Will you die?’ I ask, my eyes still focused on the spot on the window. ‘Daddy? Will you die?’