Steven Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

I don’t know what I expected to happen. Perhaps I thought he’d fall into my arms, sobbing with relief, and we would stand there, holding each other silently for as long as it took for us to relax, to feel our way back into each other again. And then we would sit, and talk things through. Perhaps I would go upstairs and get the letter that Claire had given me, and we would read it together, and begin the slow process of rebuilding our lives on a foundation of truth.

Instead, there was an instant in which nothing at all seemed to move and everything was quiet. There was no sound of breathing, no traffic from the road. I did not even hear the ticking of the clock. It was as if life was suspended, hovering on the cusp between one state and another.

And then it was over. Ben drew away from me. I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead I was aware of a blur out of the corner of my eye and my head cracked to one side. Pain radiated from my jaw. I fell, the sofa coming toward me, and the back of my head connected with something hard and sharp. I cried out. There was another blow, and then another. I closed my eyes, waiting for the next—but nothing came. Instead, I heard footsteps moving away, and a door slamming.

I opened my eyes and inhaled in an angry gasp. The carpet stretched away from me, now vertical. A smashed plate sat near to my head and gravy oozed onto the floor, soaking into the carpet. Green peas had been trodden into the weave of the rug, and the half-chewed lump of meat. The front door swung open, then slammed. Footsteps on the path. Ben had left.

I exhaled. I closed my eyes. I must not sleep , I thought. I must not .

I opened them again. Dark swirls in the distance and the smell of flesh. I swallowed, and tasted blood.

What have I done? What have I done?

I made sure he was gone, then came upstairs and found my journal. Blood dripped onto the carpet from my split lip. I don’t know what has happened. I don’t know where my husband is, or if he will come back, or whether I want him to.

But I need him to. Without him, I can’t live.

I am scared. I want to see Claire.

I stop reading and my hand goes to my forehead. It feels tender. The bruise I saw this morning, the one I covered up with makeup. Ben had hit me. I look back at the date. Friday, November 23. It was one week ago. One week, spent believing that everything is all right.

I stand up to look in the mirror. It is still there. A faint blue contusion. Proof that what I wrote was true. I wonder what lies I have been telling myself to explain my injury, or what lies he has been telling me.

But now I know the truth. I look at the pages in my hand and it hits me. He wanted me to find them. He knows that even if I read them today, I will have forgotten them tomorrow.

Suddenly I hear him on the stairs and, almost for the first time, realize fully that I am here, in this hotel room. With Ben. With the man who has hit me. I hear his key in the lock.

I have to know what happened, so I push the pages under the pillow, and lie on the bed. As he comes into the room, I close my eyes.

“Are you okay, darling?” he says. “Are you awake?”

I open my eyes. He is standing in the doorway, clutching a bottle. “I could only get Cava,” he says. “Okay?”

He puts the bottle on the dresser and kisses me. “I think I’ll take a shower,” he whispers. He goes into the bathroom and turns on the taps.

When he has closed the door, I pull out the pages. I don’t have long—surely he will not be more than five minutes—and so I must read as quickly as I can. My eyes flick down the page, not even registering all the words, but seeing enough.

That was hours ago. I have been sitting in the darkened hallway of our empty house, a slip of paper in one hand, a telephone in the other. Ink on paper. A number smudged. There was no answer, just an endless ringing. I wonder if she has turned off her answering machine, or if the tape is full. I try again. And again. I have been here before. My time is circular. Claire is not there to help me.

I looked in my bag and found the phone that Dr. Nash had given me. It is late, I thought. He won’t be at work. He’ll be with his girlfriend, doing whatever it is that the two of them do during their evenings. Whatever two normal people do. I have no idea what that is.

His home number was written in the front of my journal. It rang and rang, and then was silent. There was no recorded voice to tell me there was an error, no invitation to leave a message. I tried again. The same. His office number was now the only one I had.

I sat there for a while. Helpless. Looking at the front door, half-hoping to see Ben’s shadowy figure appear in the frosted glass and insert a key in the lock, half-fearing it.

Eventually, I could wait no more. I went upstairs and got undressed, and then I got into bed and wrote this. The house is still empty. In a moment, I will close this book and hide it, and then switch off the light and sleep.

And then I will forget, and this journal will be all that is left.

I look at the next page with dread, fearing I will find it blank, but it is not.

Monday, November 26 , it begins.

He hit me on Friday. Two days, and I have written nothing. For all that time, did I believe things were all right?

My face is bruised and sore. Surely I knew that something was not right?

Today he said that I fell. The biggest cliché in the book, and I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? He’d already had to explain who I was, and who he was, and how I’d come to be waking up in a strange house, decades older than I thought I should be, so why would I question his reason for my bruised and swollen eye, my cut lip?

And so, I went ahead with my day. I kissed him as he left for work. I cleared up our breakfast things. I ran a bath.

And then I came in here, found this journal, and learned the truth.

A gap. I realize I have not mentioned Dr. Nash. Had he abandoned me? Had I found the journal without his help?

Or had I stopped hiding it? I read on.

Later, I called Claire. The phone that Ben had given me did not work—the battery was probably dead, I thought—and so I used the one that Dr. Nash had given me. There was no answer, and so I sat in the living room. I could not relax. I picked up magazines, put them down again. I put the TV on and spent half an hour staring at the screen, not even noticing what was on. I looked at my journal, unable to concentrate, unable to write. I tried her again, several times, each time hearing the same message inviting me to leave one of my own. It was just after lunchtime when she answered.

“Chrissy,” she said. “How are you?” I could hear Toby in the background, playing.

“I’m okay,” I said, although I wasn’t.

“I was going to call you,” she said. “I feel like hell, and it’s only Monday!”

Monday. Days meant nothing to me; each melted away, indistinguishable from the one that had preceded it.

“I need to see you,” I said. “Can you come over?”

She sounded surprised. “To your place?”

“Yes,” I said. “Please? I want to talk to you.”

“Is everything okay, Chrissy? You read the letter?”

I took a deep breath, and my voice dropped to a whisper. “Ben hit me.” I heard a gasp of surprise.

“What?”

“The other night. I’m bruised. He told me I’d fallen, but I wrote down that he hit me.”

“Chrissy, there is no way Ben would hit you. Ever. He just isn’t capable of it.”

Doubt flooded me. Was it possible I’d made it all up?

“But I wrote it in my journal,” I said.

She said nothing for a moment, and then, “But why do you think he hit you?”