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

He leans across to look at me. I think how attractive he is, that if he had been less damaged my marriage might have been in real trouble. ‘Will I see you again?’ he says .

‘ No,’ I reply. ‘No. It’s over .’

Yet here we are now, all these years later. He is holding me again, and I understand that, no matter how scared I was of him, I was not scared enough. I begin to scream.

‘Darling,’ he says. ‘Calm down.’ He puts his hand over my mouth and I scream louder. ‘Calm down! Someone will hear you!’ My head smacks backwards, connects with the radiator behind me. There is no change in the music from the club next door — if anything it is louder now. They won’t , I think. They will never hear me. I scream again.

‘Stop it!’ he says. He has hit me, I think, or else shaken me. I begin to panic. ‘Stop it!’ My head hits the warm metal again and I am stunned into silence. I begin to sob.

‘Let me go,’ I say, pleading with him. ‘Please—’ He relaxes his grip a little, though not enough for me to wriggle free. ‘How did you find me? All these years later? How did you find me?’

‘Find you?’ he says. ‘I never lost you.’ My mind whirrs, uncomprehending. ‘I watched over you. Always. I protected you.’

‘You visited me? In those places? The hospital, Waring House?’ I begin. ‘But—’

He sighs. ‘Not always. They wouldn’t have let me. But I would sometimes tell them I was there to see someone else, or that I was a volunteer. Just so that I could see you, and make sure you were all right. At that last place it was easier. All those windows …’

I go cold. ‘You watched me?’

‘I had to know you were all right, Chris. I had to protect you.’

‘So you came back for me? Is that it? Wasn’t what you did here, in this room, enough?’

‘When I found out that bastard had left you, I couldn’t just leave you in that place. I knew you’d want to be with me. I knew it was the best thing for you. I had to wait for a while, wait until I knew there was no one still there to try and stop me, but who else would have looked after you?’

‘And they just let me go with you?’ I say. ‘Surely they wouldn’t have let me go with a stranger!’

I wonder what lies he must have told for them to let him take me, then remember reading what Dr Nash had told me about the woman from Waring House. She was so happy when she found out you’d gone back to live with Ben . An image forms, a memory. My hand in Mike’s as he signs a form. A woman behind a desk smiles at me. ‘We’ll miss you, Christine,’ she says. ‘But you’ll be happy at home.’ She looks at Mike. ‘With your husband.’

I follow her gaze. I don’t recognize the man whose hand I am holding, but I know he is the man I married. He must be. He has told me he is.

‘Oh my God!’ I say now. ‘How long have you been pretending to be Ben?’

He looks surprised. ‘Pretending?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Pretending to be my husband.’

He looks confused. I wonder if he has forgotten that he is not Ben. Then his face falls. He looks upset.

‘Do you think I wanted to do that? I had to. It was the only way.’

His arms relax, slightly, and an odd thing happens. My mind stops spinning, and, although I remain terrified, I am infused with a bizarre sense of complete calm. A thought comes from nowhere. I will beat him. I will get away. I have to .

‘Mike?’ I say. ‘I do understand, you know. It must have been difficult.’

He looks up at me. ‘You do?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m grateful to you for coming for me. For giving me a home. For looking after me.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Just think where I’d be if you hadn’t. I couldn’t bear it.’ I sense him soften. The pressure on my arms and shoulder lessens and is accompanied by a subtle yet definite sensation of stroking that I find almost more distasteful but I know is more likely to lead to my escape. Because escape is all I can think of. I need to get away. How stupid of me, I think now, to have sat there on the floor while he was in the bathroom to read what he had stolen of my journal. Why hadn’t I taken it with me and left? Then I remember that it was not until I read the end of the journal that I had any real idea of how much danger I was in. That same small voice comes in again. I will escape. I have a son I cannot remember having met. I will escape . I move my head to face him, and begin to stroke the back of his hand where it rests on my shoulder.

‘Why not let me go, and then we can talk about what we should do?’

‘How about Claire, though?’ he says. ‘She knows I’m not Ben. You told her.’

‘She won’t remember that,’ I say, desperately.

He laughs, a hollow, choked sound. ‘You always treated me like I was stupid. I’m not, you know. I know what’s going to happen! You told her. You ruined everything!’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can call her. I can tell her I was confused. That I’d forgotten who you were. I can tell her that I thought you were Ben, but I was wrong.’

I almost believe he thinks this is possible, but then he says, ‘She’d never believe you.’

‘She would,’ I say, even though I know that she would not. ‘I promise.’

‘Why did you have to go and call her?’ His face clouds with anger, his hands begin to grip me tighter. ‘Why? Why, Chris? We were doing fine until then. Fine.’ He begins to shake me again. ‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why?’

‘Ben,’ I say. ‘You’re hurting me.’

He hits me then. I hear the sound of his hand against my face before I feel the flash of pain. My head twists round, my lower jaw cracks up, connecting painfully with its companion.

‘Don’t you ever fucking call me that again,’ he spits.

‘Mike,’ I say quickly, as if I can erase my mistake. ‘Mike—’

He ignores me.

‘I’m sick of being Ben,’ he says. ‘You can call me Mike, from now on. OK? It’s Mike. That’s why we came back here. So that we can put all that behind us. You wrote in your book that if you could only remember what happened here all those years ago then you’d get your memory back. Well, we’re here now. I made it happen, Chris. So remember!’

I am incredulous. ‘You want me to remember?’

‘Yes! Of course I do! I love you, Christine. I want you to remember how much you love me. I want us to be together again. Properly. As we should be.’ He pauses, his voice drops to a whisper. ‘I don’t want to be Ben any more.’

‘But—’

He looks back at me. ‘When we go back home tomorrow you can call me Mike.’ He shakes me again, his face inches from mine. ‘OK?’ I can smell sourness on his breath, and another smell, too. I wonder if he’s been drinking. ‘We’re going to be OK, aren’t we, Christine? We’re going to move on.’

‘Move on?’ I say. My head is sore, and something is coming out of my nose. Blood, I think, though I am not sure. The calmness disappears. I raise my voice, shouting as loud as I can. ‘You want me to go back home? Move on? Are you absolutely fucking crazy?’ He moves his hand to clamp it over my mouth, and I realize that has left my arm free. I hit out at him, catching him on the side of his face, though not hard. Still, it takes him by surprise. He falls backwards, letting go of my other arm as he does.

I stumble to my feet. ‘Bitch!’ he says, but I step forward, over him, and head towards the door.

I manage three steps before he grabs my ankle. I come crashing down. There is a stool sitting tucked under the dressing table and my head hits its edge as I go down. I am lucky; the stool is padded and breaks my fall, but it causes my body to twist awkwardly as I land. Pain shoots up my back and through my neck and I am afraid I have broken something. I begin to crawl towards the door but he still holds my ankle. He pulls me towards him with a grunt and then his crushing weight is on top of me, his lips inches from my ear.