Before I Go to Sleep

by S. J. Watson

  Now, in my bedroom, I tried to convince myself I had done nothing wrong. I still felt guilty. Because I had enjoyed it. The attention, the feeling of connection. For a moment, in the middle of everything else that was going on, there had been a tiny pinprick of joy. I had felt attractive. Desirable.

  I went to my underwear drawer. There, tucked at the back, I found a pair of black silk knickers and a matching bra. I put them on – these clothes that I know must be mine even though they don’t feel as though they are – all the time thinking of my journal hidden in the wardrobe. What would Ben think, if he found it? If he read all that I had written, all that I had felt? Would he understand?

  I stood in front of the mirror. He would, I told myself. He must. I examined my body with my eyes and my hands. I explored it, ran my fingers over its contours and undulations as if it were something new, a gift. Something to be learned from scratch.

  Though I knew that Dr Nash had not been flirting with me, for that brief space in which I thought he was I had not felt old. I had felt alive.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. For me time stretches, is almost meaningless. Years have slipped through me, leaving no trace. Minutes don’t exist. I only had the chime of the clock downstairs to show me that time was passing at all. I looked at my body, at the weight in my buttocks and on my hips, the dark hairs on my legs, under my arms. I found a razor in the bathroom and soaped my legs, then drew the cold blade across my skin. I must have done this before, I thought, countless times, yet still it seemed an odd thing to be doing, faintly ridiculous. I nicked the skin on my calf – a tiny stab of pain and then a red plush welled, quivering before it began to trickle down my leg. I stemmed it with a finger, smearing the blood like treacle, brought it to my lips. The taste of soap and warm metal. It didn’t clot. I let it bleed down my skin, newly smooth, then mopped it with a damp tissue.

  Back in the bedroom I put on stockings, and a tight, black dress. I selected a gold necklace from the box on the dresser, a pair of matching earrings. I sat at the dresser and put on make-up, and curled and lacquered my hair. I sprayed perfume on my wrists and behind my ears. And all the time I did this a memory was floating through me. I saw myself rolling on stockings, snapping home the fasteners on a suspender belt, hooking up a bra, but it was a different me, in a different room. The room was quiet. Music played, but softly, and in the distance I could hear voices, doors opening and closing, the faint buzz of traffic. I felt calm, and happy. I turned to the mirror, examined my face in the glow of the candlelight. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all.

  The memory was just out of reach. It shimmered, under the surface, and while I could see details, snatched images, moments, it lay too deep for me to follow where it led. I saw a champagne bottle on a bedside table. Two glasses. A bouquet of flowers on the bed, a card. I saw that I was in a hotel room, alone, waiting for the man I love. I heard a knock, saw myself stand up, walk towards the door, but then it ended, as if I had been watching television and, suddenly, the aerial had been disconnected. I looked up and saw myself, back in my own home. Even though the woman I saw in the mirror was a stranger – and with the make-up and lacquered hair that unfamiliarity was even more pronounced than it must usually be – I felt ready. For what, I couldn’t say, but I felt ready. I went downstairs to wait for my husband, the man I married, the man I loved.

  Love, I remind myself. The man I love.

  I heard his key in the lock, the door pushed open, feet being wiped on the mat. A whistle? Or was that the sound of my breathing, hard and heavy?

  A voice. ‘Christine? Christine, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m in here.’

  A cough, the sound of his anorak being hung up, a briefcase being put down.

  He called upstairs. ‘Everything OK?’ he said. ‘I phoned you earlier. I left a message.’

  The creak of the stairs. For a moment I thought he was going straight up, to the bathroom or his study, without coming in to see me first, and I felt foolish, ridiculous to be dressed as I was, waiting for my husband of who-knows-how-many years in someone else’s clothes. I wished I could peel off the outfit, scrape away the make-up and transform myself back into the woman I am, but I heard a grunt as he levered a shoe off, and then the other, and I realized he was sitting down to put on his slippers. The stair creaked again, and he came into the room.

  ‘Darling—’ he began, and he stopped. His eyes travelled over my face, down my body, back up to meet mine. I couldn’t tell what he thought.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You look—’ He shook his head.

  ‘I found these clothes,’ I said. ‘I thought I would dress up a little. It’s Friday night, after all. The weekend.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, still standing in the doorway. ‘Yes. But …’

  ‘Do you want to go out somewhere?’

  I stood up then, and went over to him. ‘Kiss me,’ I said, and, though I hadn’t exactly planned it, it felt like the right thing to do, and so I put my arms around his neck. He smelled of soap, and sweat, and work. Sweet, like crayons. A memory floated through me – kneeling on the floor with Adam, drawing – but it didn’t stick.

  ‘Kiss me,’ I said, again. His hands circled my waist.

  Our lips met. Brushing, at first. A kiss goodnight or goodbye, a kiss for being in public, a kiss for your mother. I didn’t release my arms, and he kissed me again. The same.

  ‘Kiss me, Ben,’ I said. ‘Properly.’

  ‘Ben,’ I said, later. ‘Are we happy?’

  We were sitting in a restaurant, one we’d been to before, he said, though I had no idea, of course. Framed photographs of people who I assumed were minor celebrities dotted the walls; an oven gaped at the back, awaiting pizza. I picked at the plate of melon in front of me. I couldn’t remember ordering it.

  ‘I mean,’ I continued, ‘we’ve been married … how long?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘Twenty-two years.’ It sounded an impossibly long time. I thought of the vision I’d had as I got ready this afternoon. Flowers in a hotel room. I can only have been waiting for him.

  ‘Are we happy?’

  He put down his fork and sipped the dry white wine he’d ordered. A family arrived and took their seats at the table next to us. Elderly parents, a daughter, in her twenties. Ben spoke.

  ‘We’re in love, if that’s what you mean. I certainly love you.’

  And there it was; my cue to tell him that I loved him too. Men always say I love you as a question.

  What could I say, though? He is a stranger. Love doesn’t happen in the space of twenty-four hours, no matter how much I might once have liked to believe that it does.

  ‘I know you don’t love me,’ he said. I looked at him, shocked for a moment. ‘Don’t worry. I understand the situation you’re in. We’re in. You don’t remember, but we were in love, once. Totally, utterly. Like in the stories, you know? Romeo and Juliet, all that crap.’ He tried to laugh, but instead looked awkward. ‘I loved you and you loved me. We were happy, Christine. Very happy.’

  ‘Until my accident.’

  He flinched at the word. Had I said too much? I’d read my journal but was it today he’d told me about the hit-and-run? I didn’t know but, still, accident would have been a reasonable guess for anyone in my situation to make. I decided not to worry about it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sadly. ‘Until then. We were happy.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now? I wish things could be different, but I’m not unhappy, Chris. I love you. I wouldn’t want anyone else.’

  How about me? I thought. Am I unhappy?

  I looked across at the table next to us. The father was holding a pair of glasses to his eyes, squinting at the laminated menu, while his wife arranged their daughter’s hat and removed her scarf. The girl sat without helping, looking at nothing, her mouth slightly open. Her right hand twitched under the table. A thin string of saliva hung from her chin. Her father noticed me watching and I looked away, back
to my husband, too quickly to make it seem as if I hadn’t been staring. They must be used to that – to people looking away, a moment too late.

  I sighed. ‘I wish I could remember what happened.’

  ‘What happened?’ he said. ‘Why?’

  I thought of all the other memories that had come to me. They had been brief, transitory. They were gone, now. Vanished. But I had written them down; I knew they had existed – still did exist, somewhere. They were just lost.

  I felt sure that there must be a key, a memory that would unlock all the others.

  ‘I just think that if I could remember my accident, then maybe I could remember other things, too. Not everything, maybe, but enough. Our wedding, for example, our honeymoon. I can’t even remember that.’ I sipped my wine. I had nearly said our son’s name before remembering that Ben didn’t know I had read about him. ‘Just to wake up and remember who I am would be something.’

  Ben locked his fingers, resting his chin on his balled fist. ‘The doctors said that wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘But they don’t know, do they? Surely? They could be wrong?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  I put down my glass. He was wrong. He thought all was lost, that my past had vanished completely. Maybe this was the time to tell him about the snatched moments I still had, about Dr Nash. My journal. Everything.

  ‘But I am remembering things, occasionally,’ I said. He looked surprised. ‘I think things are coming back to me, in flashes.’

  He unlaced his hands. ‘Really? What things?’

  ‘Oh, it depends. Sometimes nothing very much. Just odd feelings, sensations. Visions. A bit like dreams, but they seem too real for me to be making them up.’ He said nothing. ‘They must be memories.’

  I waited, expecting him to ask me more, to want me to tell him everything I had seen, as well as how I even knew what memories I had experienced.

  But he didn’t speak. He continued looking at me, sadly. I thought of the memories I had written about, the one in which he had offered me wine in the kitchen of our first home. ‘I had a vision of you,’ I said. ‘Much younger …’

  ‘What was I doing?’ he said.

  ‘Not much,’ I replied. ‘Just standing in the kitchen.’ I thought of the girl, her mother and father, sitting a few feet away. My voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Kissing me.’

  He smiled then.

  ‘I thought that if I am capable of having one memory, then maybe I am capable of having lots—’

  He reached across the table and took my hand. ‘But the thing is, tomorrow you won’t remember that memory. That’s the problem. You have no foundation on which to build.’

  I sighed. What he was saying is true; I can’t keep writing down everything that happens to me for the rest of my life, not if I also have to read it every day.

  I looked across at the family next to us. The girl spooned minestrone clumsily into her mouth, soaking the cloth bib that her mother had tucked around her neck. I could see their lives; broken, trapped by the role of care-giver, a role they had expected to be free of years before.

  We are the same, I thought. I need to be spoon-fed, too. And, I realized, rather like them and their child, Ben loves me in a way that can never be reciprocated.

  And yet, maybe, we were different. Maybe we still had hope.

  ‘Do you want me to get better?’ I said.

  He looked surprised. ‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Please …’

  ‘Maybe if there was someone I could see? A doctor?’

  ‘We’ve tried before—’

  ‘But maybe it’s worth trying again? Things are improving all the time. Maybe there’s a new treatment?’

  He squeezed my hand. ‘Christine, there isn’t. Believe me. We’ve tried everything.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What have we tried?’

  ‘Chris, please. Don’t—’

  ‘What have we tried?’ I said. ‘What?’

  ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Everything. You don’t know what it was like.’ He looked uncomfortable. His eyes darted left and right as if he expected a blow and didn’t know from what direction it might come. I could have let the question go then, but I didn’t.

  ‘What, Ben? I need to know. What was it like?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Tell me!’

  He lifted his head, and swallowed hard. He looked terrified, his face red, his eyes wide. ‘You were in a coma,’ he said. ‘Everyone thought you were going to die. But not me. I knew you were strong, that you’d make it through. I knew you’d get better. And then, one day, the hospital called me and said you’d woken up. They thought it was a miracle, but I knew it wasn’t. It was you, my Chris, coming back to me. You were dazed. Confused. You didn’t know where you were, and couldn’t remember anything about the accident, but you recognized me, and your mother, though you didn’t really know who we were. They said not to worry, that memory loss was normal after such severe injuries, that it would pass. But then—’ He shrugged his shoulders, looked down to the napkin he held in his hands. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to continue.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Well, you seemed to get worse. I went in one day and you had no idea who I was. You presumed I was a doctor. And then you forgot who you were, too. You couldn’t remember your name, what year you were born. Anything. They realized that you had stopped forming new memories, too. They did tests, scans. Everything. But it was no good. They said your accident had damaged your memory. That it would be permanent. That there was no cure, nothing they could do.’

  ‘Nothing? They didn’t do anything?’

  ‘No. They said either your memory would come back or it wouldn’t, and that the longer you went without it coming back the less likely it was that it would. They told me that all I could do was look after you. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.’ He took both my hands in his, stroking my fingers, brushing the hard band of my wedding ring.

  He leaned forward, so that his head was only inches from mine. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, but I couldn’t reply, and we ate the rest of our meal in near silence. I could feel a resentment growing within me. An anger. He seemed so determined that I could not be helped. So adamant. Suddenly I didn’t feel so inclined to tell him about my journal, or Dr Nash. I wanted to keep my secrets for a little longer. I felt they were the only thing I had that I could say was mine.

  We came home. Ben made himself a coffee and I went to the bathroom. There I wrote as much as I could of the day so far, then took off my clothes and make-up. I put on my dressing gown. Another day was ending. Soon I will sleep, and my brain will begin to delete everything. Tomorrow I will go through it all again.

  I realized I do not have ambition. I cannot. All I want is to feel normal. To live like everybody else, with experience building on experience, each day shaping the next. I want to grow, to learn things, and from things. There, in the bathroom, I thought of my old age. I tried to imagine what it will be like. Will I still wake up, in my seventies or eighties, thinking myself to be at the beginning of my life? Will I wake with no idea that my bones are old, my joints stiff and heavy? I can’t imagine how I will cope, when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of recollection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories? How will I feel, when I look in a mirror and see the reflection of my grandmother? I don’t know, but I can’t allow myself to think of that now.

  I heard Ben go into the bedroom. I realized I would not be able to replace my journal in the wardrobe and so put it on the chair next to the bath, under my discarded clothes. I will move it later, I thought, once he is asleep. I switched off the light and went into the bedroom.

  Ben sat in bed, watching me. I said nothing, but climbed in next to him. I realized he was naked. ‘I love you, Christine,’ he said, and he began to kiss me, my neck, my cheek, my lips. His breath was hot and had
the bite of garlic. I didn’t want him to kiss me, but didn’t push him away. I have asked for this, I thought. By wearing that stupid dress, by putting on the make-up and perfume, by asking him to kiss me before we went out.

  I turned to face him and, though I didn’t want to, kissed him back. I tried to imagine the two of us in the house we had just bought together, tearing at my clothes on the way to the bedroom, our uncooked lunch spoiling in the kitchen. I told myself that I must have loved him then – or else why would I have married him? – and so there is no reason why I shouldn’t love him now. I told myself that what I was doing was important, an expression of love and of gratitude, and when his hand moved to my breast I didn’t stop him but told myself it was natural, normal. Neither did I stop him when he slipped his hand between my legs and cupped me, and only I knew that later, much later, when I began to moan softly, it wasn’t because of what he was doing. It wasn’t pleasure at all, it was fear, because of what I saw when I closed my eyes.

  Me, in a hotel room. The same one I had seen as I got ready earlier that evening. I see the candles, the champagne, the flowers. I hear the knock at the door, see myself put down the glass I have been drinking from, stand up to open it. I feel excitement, anticipation; the air is heavy with promise. Sex and redemption. I reach out, take the handle of the door, cold and hard. I breathe deeply. Finally things will be all right.

  A hole, then. A blank in my memory. The door, opening, swinging towards me, but I cannot see who is behind it. There, in bed with my husband, panic slammed into me, from nowhere. ‘Ben!’ I cried out, but he didn’t stop, didn’t even seem to hear me. ‘Ben!’ I said again. I closed my eyes and clung to him. I spiralled back into the past.

  He is in the room. Behind me. This man, how dare he! I twist around but see nothing. Pain, searing. A pressure on my throat. I cannot breathe. He is not my husband, not Ben, but still his hands are on me, all over, his hands and his flesh, covering me. I try to breathe, but cannot. My body, shuddering, pulped, turns to nothing, to ash and air. Water, in my lungs. I open my eyes, and see nothing but crimson. I am going to die, here, in this hotel room. Dear God, I think. I never wanted this. I never asked for this. Someone must help me. Someone must come. I have made a terrible mistake, yes, but I do not deserve this punishment. I do not deserve to die.