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

‘Today I had your journal,’ he says. ‘So we wrote a note instead.’

I nod, and look through the rest of the book. It is filled with a dense handwriting that I don’t recognize. Page after page. Days and days of work.

I wonder how I found the time, but then think of the board in the kitchen and the answer is obvious; I have had nothing else to do.

I put it back on the table. A young man wearing jeans and a T-shirt comes in and glances over to where we sit, before ordering a drink and settling at a table with the newspaper. He doesn’t look up at me again, and the twenty-year-old me is upset. I feel as though I am invisible.

‘Shall we go?’ I say.

We walk back the way we had come. The sky has clouded over and a thin mist hangs in the air. The ground feels soggy underfoot; it feels like walking on quicksand. On the playground I see a roundabout, turning slowly even though no one is riding it.

‘We don’t normally meet here?’ I say, when we reach the road. ‘In the café, I mean?’

‘No. No, we normally meet in my office. We do exercises. Tests and things.’

‘So why here today?’

‘I really just wanted to give you your book back,’ he says. ‘I was worried about you not having it.’

‘I’ve come to rely on it?’ I say.

‘In a way, yes.’

We cross the road, and walk back down to the house I share with Ben. I can see Dr Nash’s car, still parked where he left it, the tiny garden outside our window, the short path and neat flower beds. I still can’t quite believe this is the place where I live.

‘Do you want to come in?’ I say. ‘Another drink?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. No, I won’t, thanks. I have to get going. Julie and I have plans this evening.’

He stands for a moment, looking at me. I notice his hair, cut short, neatly parted, and the way his shirt has a vertical stripe that clashes with the horizontal one on his pullover. I realize that he is only a few years older than I thought I was when I woke this morning. ‘Julie is your wife?’

He smiles and shakes his head. ‘No, my girlfriend. Actually, my fiancée. We got engaged. I keep forgetting.’

I smile back at him. These are the details I should remember, I suppose. The little things. Perhaps it is these trivialities I have been writing down in my book, these small hooks on which a whole life is hung.

‘Congratulations,’ I say, and he thanks me.

I feel like I ought to ask more questions, ought to show more interest, but there is little point. Anything he tells me now I will have forgotten by the time I wake tomorrow. Today is all I have. ‘I ought to get back anyway,’ I say. ‘We’re going away this weekend. To the coast. I need to pack later …’

He smiles. ‘Goodbye, Christine,’ he says. He turns to leave, but then looks back at me. ‘Your journal has my numbers written in it,’ he says. ‘At the front. Call me if you’d like to see me again. To carry on with your treatment, I mean. OK?’

‘If?’ I say. I remember my journal, the appointments that we had pencilled in between now and the end of the year. ‘I thought we had more sessions booked?’

‘You’ll understand when you read your book,’ he says. ‘It will all make sense. I promise.’

‘OK,’ I say. I realize I trust him, and I am glad. Glad that I don’t only have my husband to rely on.

‘It’s up to you, Christine. Call me, whenever you like.’

‘I will,’ I say, and then he waves and gets into his car and, checking over his shoulder, he pulls out into the road and is gone.

I make a cup of coffee and carry it into the living room. From outside I hear the sound of whistling, punctured by heavy drilling and an occasional burst of staccato laughter, but even that recedes to a gentle buzz as I sit in the armchair. The sun shines weakly through the net curtains and I feel its dull warmth on my arms and thighs. I take the journal out of my bag.

I feel nervous. I do not know what this book will contain. What shocks and surprises. What mysteries. I see the scrapbook on the coffee table. In that book is a version of my past, but one chosen by Ben. Does the book I hold contain another? I open it.

The first page is unlined. I have written my name in black ink across its centre. Christine Lucas . It’s a wonder I haven’t written Private! beneath it. Or Keep out!

Something has been added. Something unexpected, terrifying. More terrifying than anything else I have seen today. There, beneath my name, in blue ink and capital letters, are three words.

DON’T TRUST BEN .

There is nothing I can do but turn the page.

I begin to read my history.

My name is Christine Lucas. I am forty-seven. An amnesiac. I am sitting here, in this unfamiliar bed, writing my story dressed in a silk nightie that the man downstairs — who tells me that he is my husband, that he is called Ben — apparently bought me for my forty-sixth birthday. The room is silent and the only light comes from the lamp on the bedside table — a soft orange glow. I feel as if I am floating, suspended in a pool of light.

I have the bedroom door closed. I am writing this in private. In secret. I can hear my husband in the living room — the soft sigh of the sofa as he leans forward or stands up, an occasional cough, politely stifled — but I will hide this book if he comes upstairs. I will put it under the bed, or the pillow. I don’t want him to see I am writing in it. I don’t want to have to tell him how I got it.

I look at the clock on the bedside table. It is almost eleven; I must write quickly. I imagine that soon I will hear the TV silenced, a creak of a floorboard as Ben crosses the room, the flick of a light switch. Will he go into the kitchen and make a sandwich or pour himself a glass of water? Or will he come straight to bed? I don’t know. I don’t know his rituals. I don’t know my own.

Because I have no memory. According to Ben, according to the doctor I met this afternoon, tonight, as I sleep, my mind will erase everything I know today. Everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I am still a child. Thinking I still have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me.

And then I will find out, again, that I am wrong. My choices have already been made. Half my life is behind me.

The doctor was called Nash. He called me this morning, collected me in his car, drove me to an office. He asked me and I told him that I had never met him before; he smiled — though not unkindly — and opened the lid of the computer that sat on his desk.

He played me a film. A video clip. It was of me and him, sitting in different clothes but the same chairs, in the same office. In the film he handed me a pencil and asked me to draw shapes on a piece of paper, but by looking only in a mirror so that everything appeared backwards. I could see that I found it difficult, but watching it now all I could see was my wrinkled fingers and the glint of the wedding ring on my left hand. When I had finished he seemed pleased. ‘You’re getting faster,’ he said on the video, then added that somewhere, deep, deep down, I must be remembering the effects of my weeks of practice even if I did not remember the practice itself. ‘That means your long-term memory must be working on some level,’ he said. I smiled then, but did not look happy. The film ended.

Dr Nash closed his computer. He said we have been meeting for the last few weeks, that I have a severe impairment of something called my episodic memory. He explained that this means I can’t remember events, or autobiographical details, and told me that this is usually due to some kind of neurological problem. Structural or chemical, he said. Or a hormonal imbalance. It is very rare, and I seem to be affected particularly badly. When I asked him how badly he told me that some days I can’t remember much beyond my early childhood. I thought of this morning, when I had woken with no adult memories at all.