S. Watson - Before I Go to Sleep - A Novel

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking for a couple of days it might be wise. I had no idea that Ben’s version of the past would be so different from what you’re starting to remember. No idea how upsetting that might be. But it also occurs to me that we’re only really getting half the picture now. From what you’ve said, more and more of your repressed memories are beginning to emerge. It might be helpful for you to talk with Ben. About the past. It might help that process.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps keeping our work from Ben was a mistake. Plus I spoke to the staff at Waring House today. I wanted to get an idea of what things were like there. I spoke to a woman you became close to. One of the staff. Her name is Nicole. She told me that she’s only recently returned to work there, but she was so happy when she found out that you’d gone back to live at home. She said no one could have loved you more than Ben. He came to see you pretty much every day. She said he would sit with you, in your room, or the gardens. And he tried so hard to be cheerful, despite everything. They all got to know him very well. They looked forward to him coming.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Why don’t you suggest Ben comes with us when we go and visit?’ Another pause. ‘I probably ought to meet him anyway.’

‘You’ve never met?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We only spoke briefly on the phone when I first approached him about meeting you. It didn’t go too well …’

It struck me then. That was the reason he was suggesting I invite Ben. He wanted to meet him, finally. He wants to bring everything into the open, to make sure that the awkwardness of yesterday can never be repeated.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you think so.’

He said that he did. He waited for a long time, and then he said, ‘Christine? You said you’d read your journal?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He waited again. ‘I didn’t ring this morning. I didn’t tell you where it was.’

I realized it was true. I had gone to the wardrobe myself and, though I didn’t know what I would find inside it, I found the shoebox and opened it almost without thinking. I had found it myself. As if I had remembered it would be there.

‘That’s excellent,’ he said.

I am writing this in bed. It is late, but Ben is in his office, across the landing. I can hear him work, the clatter of the keyboard, the click of the mouse. I can hear an occasional sigh, the creak of his chair. I imagine him squinting at the screen, deep in concentration. I trust that I will hear him switch off his machine in readiness for bed, that I will have time to hide my journal when he does. Now, despite what I thought this morning and agreed with Dr Nash, I am certain that I don’t want my husband to find out what I have been writing.

I talked to him this evening, as we sat in the dining room. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said, and then, when he looked up, ‘Why did we never have children?’ I suppose I was testing him. I willed him to tell me the truth, to contradict my assertion.

‘It never seemed to be the right time,’ he said. ‘And then it was too late.’

I pushed my plate of food to the side. I was disappointed. He had got home late, called out my name as he came in, asked me how I was. ‘Where are you?’ he’d said. It had sounded like an accusation.

I shouted that I was in the kitchen. I was preparing dinner, chopping onions to fry in the olive oil I was heating on the hob. He stood in the doorway, as if hesitant to enter the room. He looked tired. Unhappy. ‘Are you OK?’ I said.

He saw the knife in my hand. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just cooking dinner,’ I said. I smiled, but he did not reciprocate. ‘I thought we could have an omelette. I found some eggs in the fridge, and some mushrooms. Do we have any potatoes? I couldn’t find any anywhere, I—’

‘I had planned for us to have pork chops,’ he said. ‘I bought some. Yesterday. I thought we could have those.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I—’

‘But no. An omelette is fine. If that’s what you want.’

I could feel the conversation slipping, down into a place I didn’t want it to go. He was staring at the chopping board, above which my hand hovered, clutching the knife.

‘No,’ I said. I laughed, but he didn’t laugh with me. ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t realize. I can always—’

‘You’ve chopped the onions now,’ he said. His words were flat. A statement of fact, unadorned.

‘I know, but … we could still have the chops?’

‘Whatever you think,’ he said. He turned round, to go into the dining room. ‘I’ll set the table.’

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what it was that I had done, if anything. I went back to the onions.

Now we sat opposite each other. We had eaten in near silence. I had asked him if everything was OK, but he had shrugged and said that it was. ‘It’s been a long day’ was all he would tell me, adding nothing but ‘At work,’ when I looked for more. Discussion was choked off before it had really begun, and I thought better of telling him about my journal, and Dr Nash. I picked at my food, tried not to worry — after all, I told myself, he is entitled to have bad days too — but anxiety gnawed at me. I could feel the opportunity to speak slipping away, and didn’t know whether I would wake tomorrow with the same conviction that it was the right thing to do. Eventually I could bear it no longer. ‘But did we want children?’ I said.

He sighed. ‘Christine, do we have to?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I still didn’t know what I was going to say, if anything. It might have been better to let it go. But I realized I couldn’t do that. ‘It’s just that the oddest thing happened today,’ I said. I was trying to inject levity into my voice, a breeziness I didn’t feel. ‘I just thought I’d remembered something.’

‘Something?’

‘Yes. Oh, I don’t know …’

‘Go on,’ he said. He leaned forward, suddenly eager. ‘What did you remember?’

My eyes fixed on the wall behind him. A picture hung there, a photograph. Petals of a flower, close up, but black and white, with beads of water still clinging to them. It looked cheap, I thought. As if it belonged in a department store, not someone’s home.

‘I remembered having a baby.’

He sat back in his chair. His eyes widened, and then closed completely. He took a breath, letting it out in a long sigh.

‘Is it true?’ I said. ‘Did we have a baby?’ If he lies now, I thought, then I don’t know what I will do. Argue with him, I suppose. Tell him everything in one uncontrolled, catastrophic outpouring. He opened his eyes and looked into mine.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s true.’

He told me about Adam, and relief flooded me. Relief, but tinged with pain. All those years, lost for ever. All those moments that I have no memory of, that I can never get back. I felt longing stir within me, felt it grow, so big that it might engulf me. Ben told me about Adam’s birth, his childhood, his life. Where he’d gone to school, the nativity play he’d been in; his skills on the football pitch and the running track, his disappointment in his exam results. Girlfriends. The time an indiscreet roll-up had been mistaken for a joint. I asked questions and he answered them; he seemed happy to be talking about his son, as if his mood was chased away by memory.

I found myself closing my eyes as he spoke. Images floated through me — images of Adam, and me, and Ben — but I couldn’t say whether they were memories or imaginings. When he finished I opened my eyes and for a moment was shocked at who I saw sitting in front of me, at how old he had become, how unlike the young father I had been imagining. ‘But there are no photographs of him,’ I said. ‘Anywhere.’