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

‘You say we’ve been meeting for a few weeks,’ I say to Dr Nash. ‘So what have we been doing?’

‘Do you remember anything of our previous sessions? Anything at all?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Nothing. As far as I know I am meeting you for the first time today.’

‘Forgive me asking,’ he says. ‘As I said, you have flashes of memory, sometimes. It seems you know more on some days than on others.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I have no memory of ever meeting you before, or of what happened yesterday, or the day before, or last year, for that matter. Yet I can remember some things from years ago. My childhood. My mother. I remember being at university, just. I don’t understand how these old memories could have survived when everything else has been wiped clean.’

He nods throughout my question. I don’t doubt he has heard it before. Possibly I ask the same thing every week. Possibly we have exactly the same conversation.

‘Memory is a complex thing,’ he says. ‘Human beings have a short-term memory that can store facts and information for about a minute or so, but also a long-term memory. Here we can store huge quantities of information, and retain it for a seemingly indefinite length of time. We now know that these two functions seem to be controlled by different parts of the brain, with some neural connections between them. There is also a part of the brain which seems to be responsible for taking short-term, transient memories and coding them as long-term memories for recall much later.’

He speaks easily, quickly, as if he is now on solid territory. I would have been like that once, I suppose; sure of myself.

‘There are two main types of amnesia,’ he says. ‘Most commonly the affected person cannot recall past events, with more recent events being most severely affected. So if, for example, the sufferer has a motor accident, they may not remember the accident, or the days or weeks preceding it, but can remember everything up to, say, six months before the accident perfectly well.’

I nod. ‘And the other?’

‘The other is rarer,’ he says. ‘Sometimes there is an inability to transfer memories from short-term storage into long-term storage. People with this condition live in the moment, able to recall only the immediate past, and then only for a small amount of time.’

He stops talking, as if waiting for me to say something. It is as if we each have our lines, have rehearsed this conversation often.

‘I have both?’ I say. ‘A loss of the memories I had, plus an inability to form new ones?’

He clears his throat. ‘Yes, unfortunately. It’s not common, but perfectly possible. What’s unusual in your case, however, is the pattern of your amnesia. Generally you have no consistent memory of anything that happened since your early childhood, but you seem to process new memories in a way I have never come across before. If I left this room now and returned in two minutes most people with anterograde amnesia would not remember having met me at all, certainly not today. But you seem to remember whole chunks of time — up to twenty-four hours — which you then lose. That’s not typical. To be honest, it doesn’t make any sense, considering the way we believe that memory works. It suggests you are able to transfer things from short-term to long-term storage perfectly well. I don’t understand why you can’t retain them.’

I may be leading a shattered life, but at least it is shattered into pieces large enough for me to maintain a semblance of independence. I guess that means I am lucky.

‘Why?’ I say. ‘What has caused it?’

He doesn’t say anything. The room goes quiet. The air feels still, and sticky. When he speaks his words seem to echo off the walls. ‘Many things can cause an impairment of memory,’ he says. ‘Either long-term or short-term. Disease, trauma, drug use. The exact nature of the impairment seems to differ, depending on the part of the brain that has been affected.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But what has caused mine?’

He looks at me for a moment. ‘What has Ben told you?’

I think back to our conversation in the bedroom. An accident , he had said. A bad accident .

‘He didn’t really tell me anything,’ I say. ‘Nothing specific, anyway. He just said I’d had an accident.’

‘Yes,’ he says, reaching for his bag that sits under the table. ‘Your amnesia was caused by trauma. That’s true, at least partly.’ He opens his bag and takes out a book. At first I wonder if he is going to consult his notes, but instead he passes it across the table to me. ‘Look. I want you to have this,’ he says. ‘It will explain everything. Better than I can. About what has caused your condition, especially. But other things as well.’

I take it from him. It is brown, bound in leather, its pages held closed by an elastic band. I take that off and open it at random. The paper is heavy and faintly lined, with a red margin, and the pages filled with dense handwriting. ‘What is it?’ I say.

‘It’s a journal,’ he says. ‘One that you’ve been keeping over the past few weeks.’

I am shocked. ‘A journal?’ I wonder why he has it.

‘Yes. A record of what we’ve been doing recently. I asked you to keep it. We’ve been doing a lot of work around trying to find out exactly how your memory behaves. I thought it might be helpful for you to keep a record of what we’ve been doing.’

I look at the book in front of me. ‘So I’ve written this?’

‘Yes. I told you to write whatever you like in it. Many amnesiacs have tried similar things, but usually it’s not as helpful as you might think as they have such a small window of memory. But as there are some things that you can remember for the whole day, I didn’t see why you shouldn’t jot down some notes in a book every evening. I thought it might help you to maintain a thread of memory from one day to the next. Plus I felt that memory might be like a muscle, something that can be strengthened through exercise.’

‘And you’ve been reading it, as we’ve been going along?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ve been writing it in private.’

‘But how—?’ I begin, and then say, ‘Ben’s been reminding me to write in it?’

He shakes his head. ‘I suggested that you keep it secret,’ he says. ‘You’ve been hiding it, at home. I’ve been calling you to tell you where it’s hidden.’

‘Every day?’

‘Yes. More or less.’

‘Not Ben?’

He pauses, then says, ‘No. Ben hasn’t read it.’

I wonder why not, what it might contain that I do not want my husband to see. What secrets might I have? Secrets I don’t even know myself.

‘But you’ve read it?’

‘You left it with me a few days ago,’ he says. ‘You said you wanted me to read it. That it was time.’

I look at the book. I am excited. A journal. A link back to a lost past, albeit only recent.

‘Have you read it all?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Most of it. I think I’ve read everything important, anyway.’ He pauses and looks away from me, scratching the back of his neck. Embarrassed, I think. I wonder if he is telling me the truth, what the book contains. He drains the last of his mug of coffee, and says, ‘I didn’t force you to let me see it. I want you to know that.’

I nod, and finish the rest of my drink in silence, flicking through the pages of the book as I do so. On the inside of the front cover is a list of dates. ‘What are these?’ I say.

‘They’re the dates we’ve been meeting,’ he says. ‘As well as the ones we had planned. We’ve been arranging them as we go along. I’ve been calling to remind you, asking you to look in your journal.’

I think of the yellow note tucked between the pages of my diary today. ‘But today?’