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

She squeezed my hands in hers. ‘Chrissy, Ben loves you. You know he does. He loves you more than life itself. He always has.’

‘But—’ I began, but she interrupted.

‘You have to trust him. Believe me. You can sort everything out, but you have to tell him the truth. Tell him about Dr Nash. Tell him what you’ve been writing. It’s the only way.’

Somewhere, deep down, I knew she was right, but still I could not convince myself I should tell Ben about my journal.

‘But he might want to read what I’ve written.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘There’s nothing in there you wouldn’t want him to see, is there?’ I didn’t reply. ‘Is there? Chrissy?’

I looked away. We didn’t speak, and then she opened her bag.

‘Chrissy,’ she said. ‘I’m going to give you something. Ben gave it to me, when he decided he needed to leave you.’ She took out an envelope and handed it to me. It was creased, but still sealed. ‘He told me it explained everything.’ I stared at it. My name was written on the front in capitals. ‘He asked me to give it to you, if I ever thought you were well enough to read it.’ I looked up at her, feeling every emotion at once. Excitement, and fear. ‘I think it’s time you read it,’ she said.

I took it from her, and put it in my bag. Though I didn’t know why, I didn’t want to read it there, in front of Claire. Perhaps I was worried that she would be able to read its contents reflected in my face, and they would no longer be mine to own.

‘Thank you,’ I said. She did not smile.

‘Chrissy,’ she said. She looked down, at her hands. ‘There’s a reason Ben tells you I moved away.’ I felt my world begin to change, though in what way I was not yet certain. ‘I have to tell you something. About why we lost touch.’

I knew then. Without her saying anything, I knew. The missing piece of the puzzle, the reason Ben had gone, the reason my best friend had disappeared from my life and my husband had lied about why this had happened. I had been right. All along. I had been right.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Oh God. It’s true. You’re seeing Ben. You’re fucking my husband.’

She looked up, horrified. ‘No!’ she said. ‘No!’

A certainty overtook me. I wanted to shout Liar! but I did not. I was about to ask her again what she wanted to tell me when she wiped something from her eye. A tear? I don’t know.

‘Not now,’ she whispered, then looked back to the hands in her lap. ‘But we were once.’

Of all the emotions I might have expected to feel, relief wasn’t one of them. But it was true: I felt relieved. Because she was being honest? Because now I had an explanation for everything, one that I could believe? I’m not sure. But the anger that I may have felt was not there; neither was the pain. Perhaps I was happy to feel a tiny spark of jealousy, concrete proof that I loved my husband. Perhaps I was just relieved that Ben had an infidelity to go with my own, that we were equal now. Quits.

‘Tell me,’ I whispered.

She did not look up. ‘We were always close,’ she said, softly. ‘The three of us, I mean. You. Me. Ben. But there had never been anything between me and him. You must believe that. Never.’ I told her to go on. ‘After your accident I tried to help out in whatever way I could. You can imagine how terribly difficult it was for Ben. Just on a practical level if nothing else. Having to look after Adam … I did what I could. We spent a lot of time together. But we didn’t sleep together. Not then. I swear, Chrissy.’

‘So when?’ I said. ‘When did it happen?’

‘Just before you were moved to Waring House,’ she said.

‘You were at your worst. Adam was being difficult. Things were tough.’ She looked away. ‘Ben was drinking. Not too much, but enough. He wasn’t coping. One night we got back from visiting you. I put Adam to bed. Ben was in the living room crying. “I can’t do it,” he kept saying. “I can’t keep doing this. I love her, but it’s killing me.”’

The wind gusted up the hill. Cold. Biting. I pulled my coat around my body.

‘I sat next to him. And …’

I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

And then what? The fucking. On the sofa? The floor? I do not want to know.

‘And?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never wanted it to happen. But it did, and … I felt so bad. So bad. We both did.’

‘How long?’

‘What?’

‘How long did it go on for?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘I don’t know. Not long. A few weeks. We only … we only had sex a few times. It didn’t feel right. We both felt so bad, afterwards.’

‘What happened?’ I said. ‘Who ended it?’

She shrugged, then whispered, ‘Both of us. We talked. It couldn’t go on. I decided I owed it to you — and Ben — to stay away from then on. It was guilt, I suppose.’

An awful thought occurred to me.

‘Is that when he decided to leave me?’

‘Chrissy, no,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t think that. He felt awful, too. But he didn’t leave you because of me.’

No, I thought. Perhaps not directly. But you might have reminded him of just how much he was missing.

I looked at her. I still didn’t feel angry. I couldn’t. Perhaps if she had told me that they were still sleeping together I might have felt differently. What she had told me felt as though it belonged to another time. Prehistory. I found it hard to believe it had anything to do with me at all.

Claire looked up. ‘At first I was in touch with Adam, but then Ben must have told him what had happened. Adam said he didn’t want to see me again. He told me to stay away from him, and from you, too. But I couldn’t, Chrissy. I just couldn’t. Ben had given me the letter, asked me to keep an eye on you. So I carried on visiting. At Waring House. Every few weeks at first, then every couple of months. But it upset you. It upset you terribly. I know I was being selfish, but I couldn’t just leave you there. On your own. I carried on coming. Just to check you were all right.’

‘And you told Ben how I was?’

‘No. We weren’t in touch.’

‘Is that why you haven’t been visiting me lately? At home? Because you don’t want to see Ben?’

‘No. A few months ago I visited Waring House and they told me you’d left. You’d gone back to live with Ben. I knew Ben had moved. I asked them to give me your address but they wouldn’t. They said it would be a breach of confidentiality. They said they would give you my number and that if I wanted to write to you they would pass the letters on.’

‘So you wrote?’

‘I addressed the letter to Ben. I told him I was sorry, that I regretted what had happened. I begged him to let me see you.’

‘But he told you you couldn’t?’

‘No. You wrote back, Chrissy. You said that you were feeling much better. You said you were happy, with Ben.’ She looked away, across the park. ‘You said you didn’t want to see me. That your memory would sometimes come back and when it did you knew I had betrayed you.’ She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘You told me not to come anywhere near you, ever again. That it was better that you forgot me for ever, and that I forgot you.’

I felt myself go cold. I tried to imagine the anger I must have felt to write a letter like that, but at the same time realized maybe I hadn’t felt angry at all. To me, Claire would hardly have existed, any friendship between us forgotten.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I couldn’t imagine being able to remember her betrayal. Ben must have helped me write the letter.