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

‘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.

‘What?’ I say, and he speaks more firmly, looking into my eyes as he does so.

‘You don’t need Adam. You have me now. We’re together. You don’t need Adam. You don’t need Ben.’

At his words I feel all the strength I had within me disappear and, as it goes, he seems to recover. I sink to the floor. He smiles.

‘Don’t be upset,’ he says, brightly. ‘What does it matter? I love you. That’s all that’s important, surely. I love you, and you love me.’

He crouches down, holding out his hands towards me. He is smiling, as if I am an animal that he is trying to coax out of the hole in which it has hidden.

‘Come,’ he says. ‘Come to me.’

I shift further back, sliding on my haunches. I hit something solid and feel the warm, sticky radiator behind me. I realize I am under the window at the far end of the room. He advances slowly.

‘Who are you?’ I say again, trying to keep my voice even, calm. ‘What do you want?’

He stops moving. He is crouched in front of me. If he were to reach out he could touch my foot, my knee. If he were to move closer I might be able to kick him, should I need to, though I am not sure I could reach and, in any case, am barefoot.

‘What do I want?’ he says. ‘I don’t want anything. I just want us to be happy, Chris. Like we used to be. Do you remember?’

That word again. Remember . For a moment I think perhaps he is being sarcastic.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ I say, near hysterical. ‘How can I remember? I’ve never met you before!’

His smile vanishes then. I see his face collapse in on itself with pain. There is a moment of limbo, as if the balance of power is shifting from him to me and for a fraction of a second it’s equal between us.

He becomes animated again. ‘But you love me,’ he says. ‘I read it, in your journal. You said you love me. I know you want us to be together. Why can’t you remember that?’

‘My journal!’ I say. I know he must have known about it — how else did he remove those vital pages? — but now I realize he must have been reading it for a while, at least since I first told him about it a week ago. ‘How long have you been reading my journal?’

He doesn’t seem to have heard me. He raises his voice, as if in triumph. ‘Tell me you don’t love me,’ he says. I say nothing. ‘See? You can’t, can you? You can’t say it. Because you do. You always have done, Chris. Always.’

He rocks back, and the two of us sit on the floor, opposite each other. ‘I remember when we met,’ he says. I think of what he’s told me — spilled coffee in the university library — and wonder what is coming now.

‘You were working on something. Always writing. You used to go to the same café every day. You always sat in the window, in the same seat. Sometimes you had a child with you, but usually not. You would sit with a notebook open in front of you, either writing or sometimes just looking out of the window. I thought you looked so beautiful. I used to walk past you, every day, on my way to catch the bus, and I started to look forward to my walk home so that I could catch a glimpse of you. I used to try and guess what you might be wearing, or whether you’d have your hair pulled back or loose, or whether you’d have a snack, a cake or a sandwich. Sometimes you’d have a whole flapjack in front of you, sometimes just a plate of crumbs or even nothing at all, just the tea.’

He laughs, shaking his head sadly, and I remember Claire telling me about the café and know that he is speaking the truth. ‘I would come past at exactly the same time every day,’ he says, ‘and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t work out how you decided when to eat your snack. At first I thought maybe it depended on the day of the week, but it didn’t seem to follow any pattern there, so then I thought perhaps it was related to the date. But that didn’t work either. I started to wonder what time you actually ordered your snack. I thought maybe that was related to the time that you got to the café, so I started to leave work earlier and run so that I could maybe see you arriving. And then, one day, you weren’t there. I waited until I saw you coming down the street. You were pushing a buggy, and when you got to the café door you seemed to have trouble getting it in. You looked so helpless and stuck, and without thinking I walked over the road and held the door for you. And you smiled at me, and said, “Thank you so much.” You looked so beautiful, Christine. I wanted to kiss you, there and then, but I couldn’t, and because I didn’t want you to think that I’d run across the road just to help you I went into the café too, and stood behind you in the queue. You spoke to me, as we waited. “Busy today, isn’t it?” you said, and I said, “Yes,” even though it wasn’t particularly busy for that time of day. I just wanted to carry on making conversation. I ordered a drink, and I had the same cake as you, too, and I wondered if I should ask you whether it would be OK for me to sit with you, but by the time I’d got my tea you were chatting to someone, one of the people who ran the café, I think, and so I sat on my own in the corner.