Steven Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

“Lots of things, Ben. I’ve written lots of things.”

“But why? Why have you been writing things down?”

I could not believe he had to ask me that question. “I want to make sense of my life,” I said. “I want to be able to link one day to the next, like you can. Like anybody can.”

“But why? Are you unhappy? Don’t you love me anymore? Don’t you want to be with me, here?”

The question threw me. Why did he feel that wanting to make sense of my fractured life meant that I wanted to change it in some way?

“I don’t know,” I said. “What is happiness? I’m happy when I wake up, I think, though if this morning is anything to go by, I’m confused. But I’m not happy when I look in the mirror and see that I’m twenty years older than I was expecting, that I have gray hairs and lines around my eyes. I’m not happy when I realize that all those years have been lost, taken from me. So, I suppose a lot of the time I’m not happy, no. But it’s not your fault. I’m happy with you. I love you. I need you.”

He came and sat next to me, then. His voice softened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hate the fact that everything was ruined, just because of that car accident.”

I felt anger rise in me again, but clamped it down. I had no right to be angry with him; he did not know what I had learned and what I hadn’t.

“Ben,” I said. “I know what happened. I know it wasn’t a car accident. I know I was attacked.”

He did not move. He looked at me, his eyes expressionless. I thought he hadn’t heard me, and then he said, “What attack?”

I raised my voice. “Ben!” I said. “Stop it!” I could not help it. I had told him I was keeping a journal, told him I was piecing together the details of my story, and yet here he was, still prepared to lie to me when it was obvious I knew the truth. “Don’t keep fucking lying to me! I know there was no car accident. I know what happened to me. There’s no point in trying to pretend it was anything other than what it was. Denying it doesn’t get us anywhere. You have to stop lying to me!”

He stood up. He looked huge, raised above me, blocking my vision.

“Who told you?” he said. “Who? Was it that bitch Claire? Did she go shooting her ugly fat mouth off, telling you lies? Interfering where she isn’t wanted?”

“Ben—” I began.

“She’s always hated me. She’d do anything to poison you against me. Anything! She’s lying, my darling. She’s lying!”

“It wasn’t Claire,” I said. I bowed my head. “It was somebody else.”

“Who?” he shouted. “Who?”

“I’ve been seeing a doctor,” I whispered. “We’ve been talking. He told me.”

He was perfectly motionless, apart from the thumb of his right hand, which was tracing slow circles on the knuckle of his left. I could feel the warmth of his body, hear the slow drawing in of his breath, the hold, the release. When he spoke, his voice was so low I struggled to make out the words.

“What do you mean, a doctor?”

“His name is Dr. Nash. Apparently, he contacted me a few weeks ago.” Even as I said it, I felt like I wasn’t telling my own story but that of someone else.

“Saying what?”

I tried to remember. Had I written about our first conversation?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I wrote down what he said.”

“And he encouraged you to write things down?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” he said.

“I want to get better, Ben.”

“And is it working? What have you been doing? Has he been giving you drugs?”

“No,” I said. “We’ve been doing some tests, some exercises. I had a scan—”

The thumb stopped moving. He turned to face me.

“A scan?” His voice was louder again.

“Yes. An MRI. He said it might help. They didn’t really have them when I was first ill. Or they weren’t as sophisticated as they are now—”

“Where? Where have you been doing these tests? Tell me!”

I was starting to feel confused. “In his office,” I said. “In London. The scan was there, too. I don’t remember exactly.”

“How have you been getting there? How did someone like you get to a doctor’s office?” His voice was pinched and urgent, now. “How?”

I tried to speak calmly. “He’s been collecting me from here,” I said. “And driving me—”

Disappointment flashed on his face, and then anger. I had never wanted the conversation to go like this, never intended it to become difficult.

I needed to try and explain things to him. “Ben—” I began.

What happened next was not what I was expecting. A dull moan began in Ben’s throat, somewhere deep. It built quickly until, unable to hold it in anymore, he let out a terrible screech, like nails on glass.

“Ben!” I said. “What’s wrong?”

He turned around, staggering as he did so, averting his face from me. I worried he was having some kind of attack. I stood up and put my hand out for him to hold on to. “Ben!” I said again, but he ignored it, steadying himself against the wall. When he turned back to me, his face was bright red, his eyes wide. I could see that spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth. It looked as though he had put on some kind of grotesque mask, so distorted were his features.

“You stupid fucking bitch,” he said, moving up against me as he did so. I flinched. His face was just inches from mine. “How long has this been going on?”

“I—”

“Tell me! Tell me, you slut. How long?”

“Nothing’s going on!” I said. Fear welled within me, rising up. It did a slow roll on the surface and then sank beneath. “Nothing!” I said again. I could smell the food on his breath. Meat and onion. Spittle flew, striking me in the face, the lips. I could taste his warm, wet anger.

“You’re sleeping with him. Don’t lie to me.”

The backs of my legs pressed against the edge of the sofa and I tried to move along it, to get away from him, but he grabbed my shoulders and shook them. “You’ve always been the same,” he said. “A stupid lying bitch. I don’t know what made me think you’d be any different with me. What have you been doing, eh? Sneaking off while I’ve been at work? Or have you been having him over here? Or maybe you’ve been doing it in a car, parked up on the heath?”

I felt his hands grip tight, his fingers and nails digging into my skin even through the cotton of my blouse.

“You’re hurting me!” I shouted, hoping to shock him out of his rage. “Ben! Stop it!”

He stopped shaking and loosened his grip a fraction. It did not seem possible that the man gripping my shoulders, his face a mixture of rage and hate, could be the same man who had written the letter that Claire had given me. How could we have reached this level of distrust? How much miscommunication must it have taken to bring us from there to here?

“I’m not sleeping with him,” I said. “He’s helping me. Helping me to get better so that I can live a normal life. Here, with you. Don’t you want that?”

His eyes began darting around the room. “Ben?” I said again. “Talk to me!” He froze. “Don’t you want me to get better? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, always hoped for?” He began to shake his head, rocking it from side to side. “I know it is,” I said. “I know it’s what you’ve wanted all this time.” Hot tears ran down my cheeks, but I spoke through them, my voice fracturing into sobs. He was still holding me, but gently now, and I put my hands on his.

“I met Claire,” I said. “She gave me your letter. I’ve read it, Ben. After all these years. I’ve read it.”

There is a stain there, on the page. Ink, mixed with water in a smudge that resembles a star. I must have been crying as I wrote. I carried on reading.