Steven Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

My mind went blank. “Yes. No. I don’t know. He’s beginning to go gray. He has a paunch, I think. Maybe not.” I stood up. “I need to see his photograph.”

I went back upstairs. They were there, pinned around the mirror. Me and my husband. Happy. Together.

“His hair looks kind of brown,” I said. I heard a car pull up outside the house.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” I said. The engine was switched off, the door slammed. A loud beep. I lowered my voice. “I think Ben’s home.”

“Shit,” said Claire. “Quick. Does he have a scar?”

“A scar?” I said. “Where?”

“On his face, Chrissy. A scar, across one cheek. He had an accident. Rock climbing.”

I scanned the photographs, choosing the one of me and my husband sitting at a breakfast table in our dressing gowns. In it, he was smiling happily and, apart from a hint of stubble, his cheeks were unblemished. Fear rushed to hit me.

I heard the front door open. A voice. “Christine! Darling! I’m home!”

“No,” I said. “No, he doesn’t.”

A sound. Somewhere between a gasp and a sigh.

“The man you’re living with,” Claire said. “I don’t know who it is. But it’s not Ben.”

Terror hits. I hear the toilet flush, but can do nothing but read on.

I don’t know what happened then. I cannot piece it together. Claire began talking, almost shouting. “Fuck!” she said, over and over. My mind was spinning with panic. I heard the front door shut, the click of the lock.

“I’m in the bathroom,” I shouted to the man who I had thought was my husband. My voice sounded cracked. Desperate. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“I’ll come over,” said Claire. “I’m getting you out of there.”

“Everything okay, darling?” shouted the man who was not Ben. I heard his footsteps on the stairs and realized I had not locked the bathroom door. I lowered my voice.

“He’s here,” I said. “Come tomorrow. While he’s at work. I’ll pack my things. I’ll call you.”

“Shit,” she said. “Okay. But write in your journal. Write in it as soon as you can. Don’t forget.”

I thought of my journal, hidden in the closet. I must stay calm, I thought. I must pretend nothing is wrong, at least until I can get to it and write down the danger I am in.

“Help me,” I said. “Help me.”

I ended the call as he pushed open the bathroom door.

It ends there. Frantic, I riffle the last few pages, but they are blank, scored only with their faint blue lines. Waiting for the rest of my story. But there is no more. Ben had found the journal, removed the pages, and Claire had not come for me. When Dr. Nash collected the journal—on Tuesday, it must have been—I had not known anything was wrong.

In a single rush, I see it all, realize why the board in the kitchen so disturbed me. The handwriting. Its neat, even capitals looked totally different from the scrawl of the letter Claire had given me. Somewhere, deep down, I had known then that they were not written by the same person.

I look up. Ben, or the man pretending to be Ben, has come out of the shower. He is standing in the doorway, dressed as he was before, looking at me. I don’t know how long he has been there, watching me read. His eyes hold nothing more than a sort of vacant emptiness, as if he is barely interested in what he is seeing, as if it doesn’t concern him.

I hear myself gasp. I drop the papers. Unbound, they fan onto the floor.

“You!” I say. “Who are you?” He says nothing. He is looking at the papers in front of me. “Answer me!” I say. My voice has an authority to it, but one that I do not feel.

My mind reels as I try to work out who he could be. Someone from Waring House, perhaps. A patient? Nothing makes any sense. I feel the stirrings of panic as another thought begins to form and then vanishes.

He looks up at me then. “I’m Ben,” he says. He speaks slowly, as if trying to make me understand the obvious. “Ben. Your husband.”

I move back along the floor, away from him, as I fight to remember what I have read, what I know.

“No,” I say, and then again, louder. “No!”

He moves forward. “I am, Christine. You know I am.”

Fear takes me. Terror. It lifts me up, holds me suspended, and then slams me back into its own horror. Claire’s words come back to me. But it’s not Ben . A strange thing happens then. I realize I am not remembering reading about her saying those words, I am remembering the incident itself. I can remember the panic in her voice, the way she said fuck before telling me what she’d realized, and repeated, It’s not Ben .

I am remembering.

“You’re not,” I say. “You’re not Ben. Claire told me! Who are you?”

“Remember the pictures though, Christine? The ones from around the bathroom mirror? Look, I brought them, to show you.”

He takes a step toward me, and then reaches for his bag on the floor beside the bed. He picks out a few curled photographs. “Look!” he says, and when I shake my head, he takes the first one and, glancing at it, holds it up to me.

“This is us,” he says. “Look. Me and you.” The photograph shows us sitting on some sort of boat, on a river, or canal. Behind us there is dark, muddy water, with unfocused reeds beyond that. We both look young, our skin taut where now it sags, our eyes unlined and wide with happiness. “Don’t you see?” he says. “Look! That’s us. Me and you. Years ago. We’ve been together for years, Chris. Years and years.”

I focus on the picture. Images come to me; the two of us, a sunny afternoon. We’d hired a boat somewhere. I don’t know where.

He holds up another picture. We are much older now. It looks recent. We are standing outside a church. The day is overcast, and he is wearing a suit and shaking hands with a man, also in a suit. I am wearing a hat, which I seem to be having difficulty with; I am holding it as if it is in danger of blowing off in the wind. I am not looking at the camera.

“That was just a few weeks ago,” he says. “Some friends of ours invited us to their daughter’s wedding. You remember?”

“No,” I say angrily. “No, I don’t remember!”

“It was a lovely day,” he says, turning the picture back to look at it himself. “Lovely—”

I remember reading what Claire had said when I told her I had found a newspaper clipping about Adam’s death. It can’t have been real.

“Show me one of Adam,” I say. “Go on! Show me just one picture of him.”

“Adam is dead,” he says. “A soldier’s death. Noble. He died a hero—”

I shout, “You should still have a picture of him! Show me!”

He takes out the picture of Adam with Helen. The one I have already seen. Fury rises in me. “Show me just one picture of Adam with you in it. Just one. You must have some, surely? If you’re his father?”

He looks through the photographs in his hand, and I think he will produce a picture of the two of them, but he does not. His arms hang at his side. “I don’t have one with me,” he says. “They must be at the house.”

“You’re not his father, are you?” I say. “What father wouldn’t have pictures of himself with his son?” His eyes narrow, as if in rage, but I cannot stop. “And what kind of father would tell his wife that their son was dead when he isn’t? Admit it! You’re not Adam’s father! Ben is.” Even as I said the name, an image came to me. A man with narrow, dark-rimmed glasses and black hair. Ben . I say his name again, as if to lock the image in my mind. “Ben.”

The name has an effect on the man standing in front of me. He says something, but too quietly for me to hear it, and so I ask him to repeat it. “You don’t need Adam,” he says.