Before I Go to Sleep (36 page)

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.

I am shaking, can barely breathe. I feel that I have not only lived an entire life in the last few hours, but I have changed. I am not the same person who met Dr Nash this morning, who sat down to read the journal. I have a past now. A sense of myself. I know what I have, and what I have lost. I realize I am crying.

I close the journal. I force myself to calm down, and the present begins to reassert itself. The darkening room in which I sit. The drilling I can still hear in the street outside. The empty coffee cup at my feet.

I look at the clock next to me and there is a jolt of shock. Only now do I realize that it is the same clock as the one in the journal that I have been reading, that I am in the same living room, am the same person. Only now do I fully understand that the story I have been reading is mine.

I take my journal and mug into the kitchen. There, on the wall, is the same wipe-clean board I had seen this morning, the same list of suggestions in neat capitals, the same note that I had added myself:
Pack bag for tonight?

I look at it. Something about it troubles me, but I can’t work out why.

I think of Ben. How difficult life must have been for him. Never knowing with whom he would wake. Never being certain how much I would remember, how much love I would be able to give him.

But now? Now I understand. Now I know enough for us to both live again. I wonder if I ever had the conversation with him that I had been planning. I must have, so certain was I that it was the right thing to do, but I have not written about it. I have written nothing for a week, in fact. Perhaps I gave my journal to Dr Nash before I had the opportunity. Perhaps I felt there was no need to write in my book, now that I had shared it with Ben.

I turn back to the front of the journal. There it is, in the same blue ink. Those three words, scratched on to the page beneath my name.
Don’t trust Ben
.

I take a pen and cross them out. Back in the living room I see the scrapbook on the table. Still there are no photographs of Adam. Still he didn’t mention him to me this morning. Still he hasn’t shown me what is in the metal box.

I think of my novel –
For the Morning Birds
– and then look at the journal I am holding. A thought comes, unbidden.
What if I made it all up?

I stand up. I need evidence. I need a link between what I have read and what I am living, a sign that the past I have been reading about is not one I have invented.

I put the journal in my bag and go out of the living room. The coat stand is there, at the bottom of the stairs, next to a pair of slippers. If I go upstairs will I find the office, the filing cabinet? Will I find the grey metal box in the bottom drawer, hidden underneath the towel? Will the key be in the bottom drawer by the bed?

And, if it is, will I find my son?

I have to know. I take the stairs two at a time.

*

The office is smaller than I imagined and even tidier than I expected, but the cabinet is there, gun-metal grey.

In the bottom drawer is a towel, and beneath it a box. I grip it, preparing to lift it out. I feel stupid, convinced it will be either locked or empty.

It is neither. In it I find my novel. Not the copy Dr Nash had given to me – there was no coffee ring on the front and the pages of this look new. It must be one Ben has been keeping all along. Waiting for the day when I know enough to own it again. I wonder where my copy is, the one that Dr Nash gave to me.

I take the novel out and underneath it is a single photograph. Me and Ben, smiling at the camera, though we both look sad. It looks recent, my face is the one I recognize from the mirror and Ben looks as he did when he left this morning. There is a house in the background, a gravel driveway, pots of bright-red geraniums. On the back someone has written
Waring House
. It must have been taken on the day he collected me, to bring me back here.

That’s it, though. There are no other photographs. None of Adam. Not even the ones I have found here before and described in my journal.

There is an explanation, I tell myself. There has to be. I look through the papers that are piled on the desk: magazines, catalogues advertising computer software, a school timetable with some sessions highlighted in yellow. There is a sealed envelope – which, on an impulse, I take – but there are no photographs of Adam.

I go downstairs and make myself a drink. Boiling water, a teabag. Don’t let it stew too long, and don’t compress the bag with the back of the spoon or you’ll squeeze out too much tannic acid and the tea will be bitter.
Why do I remember this yet I don’t remember giving birth?
A phone rings, somewhere in the living room. I retrieve it – not the one that flips open, but the one that my husband gave to me – from my bag and answer it. Ben.

‘Christine? Are you OK? Are you at home?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Have you been out today?’ he says. His voice sounds familiar, yet somehow cold. I think back to the last time we spoke. I don’t remember him mentioning that I had an appointment with Dr Nash. Perhaps he really doesn’t know, I think. Or perhaps he is testing me, wondering whether I will tell him. I think of the note written next to the appointment.
Don’t tell Ben
. I must have written that before I knew I could trust him.

I want to trust him now. No more lies.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’ve been to see a doctor.’ He doesn’t speak. ‘Ben?’ I say.

‘Sorry, yes,’ he says. ‘I heard.’ I register his lack of surprise. So he had known then, known that I was seeing Dr Nash. ‘I’m in traffic,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit tricky. Listen, I just wanted to make sure you’ve remembered to pack? We’re going away …’

‘Of course,’ I say, and then I add, ‘I’m looking forward to it!’ and I realize I am. It will do us good, I think, to get away. It can be another beginning for us.

‘I’ll be home soon,’ he says. ‘Can you try to have our bags packed? I’ll help when I get in, but it’d be better if we can set off early.’

‘I’ll try,’ I say.

‘There’re two bags in the spare bedroom. In the wardrobe. Use those.’

‘OK.’

‘I love you,’ he says, and then, after a moment too long, a moment in which he has already ended the call, I tell him that I love him too.

I go to the bathroom. I am a woman, I tell myself. An adult. I have a husband. One I love. I think back to what I have read. Of the sex. Of him fucking me. I had not written that I enjoyed it.

Can I enjoy sex? I realize I don’t even know that. I flush the toilet and step out of my trousers, my tights, my knickers. I sit on the edge of the bath. How alien my body is. How unknown to me. How can I be happy giving it to someone else, when I don’t recognize it myself?

I lock the bathroom door, then part my legs. Slightly at first, then more. I lift my blouse and look down. I see the stretch marks I saw the day I remembered Adam, the wiry shock of my pubic hair. I wonder if I ever shave it, whether I choose not to based on my preference or my husband’s. Perhaps those things don’t matter any more. Not now.

I cup my hand and place it over my pubic mound. My fingers rest on my labia, parting them slightly. I brush the tip of what must be my clitoris and press, moving my fingers gently as I do, already feeling a faint tingle. The promise of sensation, rather than sensation itself.

I wonder what will happen, later.

The bags are in the spare room, where he said they would be. Both are compact, sturdy, one a little larger than the other. I take them through, into the bedroom in which I woke this morning, and put them on the bed. I open the top drawer and see my underwear, next to his.

I select clothes for us both, socks for him, tights for me. I remember reading of the night we had sex and realize I must have stockings and suspenders somewhere. I decide it would be nice to find them now, to take them with me. It might be good for both of us.

I move to the wardrobe. I choose a dress, a skirt. Some trousers, a pair of jeans. I notice the shoebox on the floor – the one that must have hidden my journal – now empty. I wonder what kind of couple we are, when we go on holiday. Whether we spend our evenings in restaurants, or sitting in cosy pubs, relaxing in the rosy heat of a real fire. I wonder whether we walk, exploring the town and its surroundings, or drive to carefully selected venues. These are the things I don’t know, yet. These are the things I have the rest of my life to find out. To enjoy.

I select some clothes for both of us, almost randomly, and fold them, placing them in the cases. As I do I feel a jolt, a surge of energy, and I close my eyes. I see a vision, bright, but shimmering. It is unclear at first, as if hovering, out of both reach and focus, and I try to open my mind, to let it come.

I see myself standing in front of a bag; a soft suitcase in worn leather. I am excited. I feel young again, like a child about to go on holiday, or a teenager preparing for a date, wondering how it will go, whether he’ll ask me back to his house, whether we’ll fuck. I feel that newness, that anticipation, can taste it. I roll it on my tongue, savouring it, because I know it will not last. I open my drawers in turn, selecting blouses, stockings, underwear. Thrilling. Sexy. Underwear that is worn only with the anticipation of its removal. I put in a pair of heels in addition to the flat shoes I am wearing, take them out, put them in again. I don’t like them, but this night is about fantasy, about dressing up, about being other than what we are. Only then do I move on to the functional things. I take a quilted wash-bag in bright red leather and add perfume, shower gel, toothpaste. I want to look beautiful tonight, for the man I love, for the man I have been so close to losing. I add bath salts. Orange blossom. I realize I am remembering the night I packed to go to Brighton.