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

I close my eyes. I think back to what I read about our son this afternoon and an image explodes in front of me — Adam as a toddler pushing the blue tricycle along a path. But even as I marvel at it I know it is not real. I know I am not remembering the thing that happened, I am remembering the image I formed in my mind this afternoon as I read about the thing, and even that was a recollection of an earlier memory. Memories of memories, most people’s going back through years, through decades, but, for me, just a few hours.

Failing to remember my son I do the next best thing, the only thing to quieten my sparking mind. I think of nothing. Nothing at all.

The smell of petrol, thick and sweet. There is a pain in my neck. I open my eyes. Up close I see the wet windscreen, misted with my breath, and beyond it there are distant lights, blurred, out of focus. I realize that I have been dozing. I am leaning against the glass, my head twisted awkwardly. The car is silent, the engine off. I look over my shoulder.

Ben is there, sitting next to me. He is awake, looking ahead, out of the window. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even seem to have noticed that I have woken up, but instead continues to stare, his expression blank, unreadable in the dark. I turn to see what he is looking at.

Beyond the rain-spattered windscreen is the bonnet of the car, and beyond that a low wooden fence, dimly illuminated in the glow from the street-lamps behind us. Beyond the fence I see nothing, a blackness, huge and mysterious, in the middle of which hangs the moon, full and low.

‘I love the sea,’ he says, without looking at me, and I realize we are parked on a cliff top, have made it as far as the coast.

‘Don’t you?’ He turns to me. His eyes seem impossibly sad. ‘You do love the sea, don’t you, Chris?’ he says.

‘I do,’ I say. ‘Yes.’ He is speaking as if he doesn’t know, as if we have never been to the coast before, as if we have never been on holiday together. Fear begins to burn within me, but I resist it. I try to stay here, in the present, with my husband. I try to remember all that I learned from my journal this afternoon. ‘You know that, darling.’

He sighs. ‘I know. You always used to, but I just don’t know any more. You change. You’ve changed, over the years. Ever since what happened. Sometimes I don’t know who you are. I wake up each day and I don’t know how you’re going to be.’

I am silent. I can think of nothing to say. We both know how senseless it would be for me to try to defend myself, to tell him that he is wrong. We both know that I am the last person who knows how much I change from day to day.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say at last.

He looks at me. ‘Oh, it’s all right. You don’t need to apologize. I know it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. I’m being unfair, I suppose. Thinking of myself.’

He looks back out to sea. There is a single light in the distance. A boat, on the waves. Light in a sea of treacly blackness. Ben speaks. ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, Chris?’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Of course we will. This is a new beginning for us. I have my journal now, and Dr Nash will help me. I’m getting better, Ben. I know I am. I think I’m going to start writing again. There’s no reason not to. I should be fine. And anyway, I’m in touch with Claire now, and she can help me.’ An idea comes to me. ‘We can all get together, don’t you think? Just like old times? Just like at university? The three of us. And her husband, I suppose — I think she said she had a husband. We can all meet up and spend time together. It’ll be fine.’ My mind fixes on the lies I have read, on all the ways I have not been able to trust him, but I force it away. I remind myself that all that has been resolved. It is my turn to be strong now. To be positive. ‘As long as we promise to always be honest with each other,’ I say, ‘then everything is going to be OK.’

He turns back to face me. ‘You do love me, don’t you?’

‘Of course. Of course I do.’

‘And you forgive me? For leaving you? I didn’t want to. I had no choice. I’m sorry.’

I take his hand. It feels both warm and cold at the same time, slightly damp. I try to hold it between my hands, but he neither assists nor resists my action. Instead his hand rests, lifeless, on his knee. I squeeze it, and only then does he seem to notice that I am holding it.

‘Ben. I understand. I forgive you.’ I look into his eyes. They too seem dull and lifeless, as if they have seen so much horror already that they cannot cope with any more.

‘I love you, Ben,’ I say.

His voice drops to a whisper. ‘Kiss me.’

I do as he asks, and then, when I have drawn back, he whispers, ‘Again. Kiss me again.’

I kiss him a second time. But, even though he asks me to, I cannot kiss him a third. Instead we gaze out over the sea, at the moonlight on the water, at the drops of rain on the windscreen reflecting back the yellow glow from the headlights of passing cars. Just the two of us, holding hands. Together.

We sit there for what feels like hours. Ben is beside me, staring out to sea. He scans the water, as if looking for something, some answer in the dark, and he doesn’t speak. I wonder why he has brought us here, what he is hoping to find.

‘Is it really our anniversary?’ I say. There is no answer. He doesn’t appear to have heard me, and so I say it again.

‘Yes,’ he replies softly.

‘Our wedding anniversary?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s the anniversary of the night we met.’

I want to ask him whether we are supposed to be celebrating, and to tell him that it doesn’t feel like a celebration, but it seems cruel.

The busy road behind us has quietened, the moon is rising high in the sky. I begin to worry that we will stay out all night, looking at the sea while the rain falls around us. I affect a yawn.

‘I’m sleepy,’ I say. ‘Can we go to our hotel?’

He looks at his watch. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Of course. Sorry. Yes.’ He starts the car. ‘We’ll go there right now.’

I am relieved. I am both craving sleep, and dreading it.

*

The coast road dips and rises as we skirt the edges of a village. The lights of another, larger town begin to draw nearer, tightening into focus through the damp glass. The road becomes busier, a marina appears with its moored boats and shops and nightclubs, and then we are in the town itself. On our right every building seems to be a hotel, advertising vacancies on white signs that blow in the wind. The streets are busy; it is not as late as I had thought, or else this is the kind of town which is alive night and day.

I look out to sea. A pier juts into the water, flooded with light and with an amusement park at its end. I can see a domed pavilion, a rollercoaster, a helter-skelter. I can almost hear the whoops and cries of the riders as they are spun above the pitch-black sea.

An anxiety I cannot name begins to form in my chest.

‘Where are we?’ I say. There are words over the entrance to the pier, picked out in bright white lights, but I can’t make them out through the rain-washed windscreen.

‘We’re here,’ says Ben, as we turn up a side street and stop outside a terraced house. There is lettering on the canopy over the door. Rialto Guest House , it says.

There are steps up to the front door, an ornate fence separating the building from the road. Beside the door is a small, cracked pot that would once have held a shrub but is now empty. I am gripped with an intense fear.

‘Have we been here before?’ I say. He shakes his head. ‘You’re sure? It looks familiar.’

‘I’m certain,’ he says. ‘We might have stayed somewhere near here once. You’re probably remembering that.’