by S. J. Watson
I did not know. But I wanted him to be happy, and, on some level, I understood that I wanted to be the person to make him so. I must make more effort, I decided. Take control. This journal could be a tool to improve both our lives, not just mine.
I was about to ask how he was when it happened. I must have let go of the plate before he had gripped it; it clattered to the floor – accompanied by Ben’s muttered Shit! – and shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. ‘Sorry!’ I said, but Ben didn’t look at me. He sank to the floor, cursing under his breath. ‘I’ll do that,’ I said, but he ignored me and instead began snatching at the larger chunks, collecting them in his right hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I’m so clumsy!’
I don’t know what I expected. Forgiveness, I suppose, or the reassurance that it wasn’t important. But instead Ben said, ‘Fuck!’ He dropped the remains of the plate and began to suck the thumb of his left hand. Droplets of blood spattered the linoleum.
‘Are you OK?’ I said.
He looked up at me. ‘Yes, yes. I cut myself, that’s all. Stupid fucking—’
‘Let me see.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he said. He stood up.
‘Let me see,’ I said again. I reached for his hand. ‘I’ll go and get a bandage. Or a plaster. Do we—?’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he said, batting my hand away. ‘Just leave it! OK?’
I was stunned. I could see the cut was deep; blood welled at its edge and ran in a thin line down his wrist. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. He hadn’t shouted exactly, but neither had he made any attempt to hide his annoyance. We faced each other, in limbo, balanced on the edge of an argument, each waiting for the other to speak, both unsure what had happened, how much significance the moment held.
I couldn’t stand it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, even though part of me resented it.
His face softened. ‘It’s OK. I’m sorry too.’ He paused. ‘I just feel tense, I think. It’s been a very long day.’
I took a piece of kitchen roll and handed it to him. ‘You should clean yourself up.’
He took it from me. ‘Thanks,’ he said, dabbing the blood on his wrist and fingers. ‘I’ll just go upstairs. Take a shower.’ He bent forward, kissed me. ‘OK?’
He turned and left the room.
I heard the bathroom door close, a tap turn on. The boiler next to me fired to life. I gathered the rest of the pieces of the plate and put them in the bin, wrapping them in paper first, then swept up the tinier fragments before finally sponging up the blood. When I had finished I went into the living room.
The flip-top phone was ringing, muffled by my bag. I took it out. Dr Nash.
The TV was still switched on. Above me I could hear the creak of floorboards as Ben moved from room to room upstairs. I didn’t want him to hear me talking on a phone he doesn’t know I have. I whispered, ‘Hello?’
‘Christine,’ came the voice. ‘It’s Ed. Dr Nash. Can you speak?’
Where this afternoon he had sounded calm, almost reflective, now his voice was urgent. I began to feel afraid.
‘Yes,’ I said, lowering my voice still further. ‘What is it?’
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Have you spoken to Ben yet?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sort of. Why? What’s wrong?’
‘Did you tell him about your journal? About me? Did you invite him to Waring House?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was about to. He’s upstairs, I—What’s wrong?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s probably nothing to worry about. It’s just that someone from Waring House just called me. The woman I spoke to this morning? Nicole? She wanted to give me a phone number. She said that your friend Claire has apparently called there, wanting to talk to you. She left her number.’
I felt myself tense. I heard the toilet flush and the sound of water in the sink. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Recently?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was a couple of weeks after you left to go and live with Ben. When you weren’t there she took Ben’s number, but, well, they said she called again later and said she couldn’t get through to him. She asked them if they’d give her your address. They couldn’t do that, of course, but said that she could leave her number with them, in case you or Ben ever called. Nicole found a note in your file after we spoke this morning, and she rang back to give the number to me.’
I didn’t understand. ‘But why didn’t they just post it to me? Or to Ben?’
‘Well, Nicole said they did. But they never heard back from either of you.’ He paused.
‘Ben handles all the mail,’ I said. ‘He picks it up in the morning. Well, he did today, anyway …’
‘Has Ben given you Claire’s number?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No. He said we haven’t been in touch for years. She moved away, not long after we got married. New Zealand.’
‘OK,’ he said, and then, ‘Christine? You told me that before, and … well … it’s not an international number.’
I felt a billowing sense of dread, though still I could not say why.
‘So she moved back?’
‘Nicole said that Claire used to visit you all the time at Waring House. She was there almost as much as Ben was. Nicole never heard anything about her moving away. Not to New Zealand. Not anywhere.’
It felt as though everything was suddenly taking off, things moving too fast for me to keep up with them. I could hear Ben upstairs. The water had stopped running now, the boiler was silent. There must be a rational explanation, I thought. There has to be. I felt that all I had to do was to slow things down so that I could catch up, could work out what it was. I wanted him to stop talking, to undo the things he had said, but he did not.
‘There’s something else,’ said Nash. ‘I’m sorry, Christine, but Nicole asked me how you were doing, and I told her. She said she was surprised that you were back living with Ben. I asked why.’
‘OK,’ I heard myself say. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m sorry, Christine, but listen. She said that you and Ben were divorced.’
The room tipped. I gripped the arm of the chair as if to steady myself. It didn’t make sense. On the television a blonde woman was screaming at an older man, telling him she hated him. I wanted to scream, too.
‘What?’ I said.
‘She said that you and Ben were separated. Ben left you. A year or so after you moved to Waring House.’
‘Separated?’ I said. It felt as if the room was receding, becoming vanishingly small. Disappearing. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. Apparently. That’s what she said. She said she felt it might have had something to do with Claire. She wouldn’t say anything else.’
‘Claire?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. Even through my own confusion I could hear how difficult he was finding this conversation, the hesitancy in his voice, the slow picking through possibilities to decide the best thing to say. ‘I don’t know why Ben isn’t telling you everything,’ he said. ‘I did think he believed he was doing the right thing. Protecting you. But now? I don’t know. To not tell you that Claire is still local? To not mention your divorce? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right, but I suppose he must have his reasons.’ I said nothing. ‘I thought maybe you should speak to Claire. She might have some answers. She might even talk to Ben. I don’t know.’ Another pause. ‘Christine? Do you have a pen? Do you want the number?’
I swallowed hard. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, please.’
I reached for a corner of the newspaper on the coffee table, and the pen that was next to it, and wrote down the number that he gave me. I heard the bolt on the bathroom door slide open, Ben come on to the landing.
‘Christine?’ said Dr Nash. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t say anything to Ben. Not until we’ve figured out what’s going on. OK?’
I heard myself agree, say goodbye. He told me not to forget to write in this journal before I went to sleep. I wrote Claire next to the number, sti
ll not knowing what I was going to do. I tore it off and put it in my bag.
I said nothing when Ben came downstairs, nothing as he sat on the sofa across from me. I fixed my eyes on the television. A documentary about wildlife. The inhabitants of the ocean floor. A remote-controlled submersible craft was exploring an underwater trench with jerky twitches. Two lamps shone into places that had never known light before. Ghosts in the deep.
I wanted to ask him if I was still in touch with Claire, but did not want to hear another lie. A giant squid hung in the gloom, drifting in the gentle current. This creature has never been captured on film before, said the voiceover, to the accompaniment of electronic music.
‘Are you all right?’ he said. I nodded, without taking my eyes off the screen.
He stood up. ‘I have work to do,’ he said. ‘Upstairs. I’ll come to bed soon.’
I looked at him then. I didn’t know who he was.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Wednesday, 21 November
I have spent all morning reading this journal. Even so, I have not read it all. Some pages I have skimmed over, others I have read again and again, trying to believe them. And now I am in the bedroom, sitting in the bay, writing more.
I have the phone in my lap. Why does it feel so difficult to dial Claire’s number? Neuronal impulses, muscular contractions. That is all it will take. Nothing complicated. Nothing difficult. Yet it feels so much easier to take up a pen and write about it instead.
This morning I went into the kitchen. My life, I thought, is built on quicksand. It shifts from one day to the next. Things I think I know are wrong, things I am certain of, facts about my life, myself, belong to years ago. All the history I have reads like fiction. Dr Nash, Ben, Adam, and now Claire. They exist, but as shadows in the dark. As strangers, they criss-cross my life, connecting, disconnecting. Elusive, ethereal. Like ghosts.
And not just them. Everything. It is all invented. Conjured from nothing. I am desperate for solid ground, for something real, something that will not vanish as I sleep. I need to anchor myself.
I clicked open the lid of the bin. A warmth rose from it – the heat of decomposition and decay – and it smelled, faintly. The sweet, sick smell of rotting food. I could see a newspaper, the crossword part filled in, a solitary teabag soaking it brown. I held my breath and knelt down on the floor.
Inside the newspaper were shards of porcelain, crumbs, a fine white dust, and underneath it a carrier bag, knotted closed. I fished it out, thinking of dirty nappies, decided to tear it open later if I had to. Beneath it there were potato peelings and a near-empty plastic bottle that was leaking ketchup. I pushed both aside.
Eggshells – four or five – and a handful of papery onion skin. The remains of a de-seeded red pepper, a large mushroom, half rotten.
Satisfied, I replaced the things in the bin and closed it. It was true. Last night, we had eaten an omelette. A plate had been smashed. I looked in the fridge. Two pork chops lay in a polystyrene tray. In the hallway Ben’s slippers sat at the bottom of the stairs. Everything was there, exactly as I had described it in my journal last night. I hadn’t invented it. It was all true.
And that meant the number was Claire’s. Dr Nash had really called me. Ben and I had been divorced.
I want to call Dr Nash now. I want to ask him what to do, or, better, to ask him to do it for me. But for how long can I be a visitor in my own life? Passive? I need to take control. The thought crosses my mind that I may never see Dr Nash again – not now that I have told him of my feelings, my crush – but I don’t let it take root. Either way, I need to speak to Claire myself.
But what will I say? There seems to be so much for us to talk about, and yet so little. So much history between us, but none of it known to me.
I think of what Dr Nash had told me about why Ben and I separated. Something to do with Claire.
It all makes sense. Years ago, when I needed him most but understood him least, my husband divorced me, and now we are back together he is telling me that my best friend moved to the other side of the world before any of this happened.
Is that why I can’t call her? Because I am afraid that she might have more to hide than I have even begun to imagine? Is that why Ben seems less than keen for me to remember more? Is that even why he has been suggesting that any attempts at treatment are futile, so that I will never be able to link memory to memory and know what has been happening?
I cannot imagine he would do that. Nobody would. It is a ridiculous thing. I think of what Dr Nash told me about my time in the hospital. You were claiming the doctors were conspiring against you, he said. Exhibiting symptoms of paranoia.
I wonder if that is what I am doing again now.
Suddenly a memory floods me. It strikes almost violently, rising up from the emptiness of my past to send me tumbling back, but then just as quickly disappears. Claire and me, another party. ‘Christ,’ she is saying. ‘It’s so annoying! You know what I think is wrong? Everyone’s so bloody hung up on sex. It’s just animals copulating, y’know? No matter how much we try and dance round it and dress it up as something else. That’s all it is.’
Is it possible that with me stuck in my own hell Claire and Ben have sought solace in each other?
I look down. The phone lies dead in my lap. I have no idea where Ben really goes when he leaves every morning, or where he might stop off on the way home. It might be anywhere. And I have no opportunity to build suspicion on suspicion, to link one fact to another. Even if one day I were to discover Claire and Ben in bed, the next I would forget what I had seen. I am the perfect person on whom to cheat. Perhaps they are still seeing each other. Perhaps I have already discovered them, and forgotten.
I think this, and yet, somehow, I don’t think this. I trust Ben, and yet I don’t. It’s perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them.
But why would he lie? He just thinks he’s doing the right thing, I keep telling myself. He’s protecting you. Keeping from you the things that you don’t need to know.
I dialled the number, of course. There was no way I could have not done so. It rang for a while, and then there was a click, and a voice. ‘Hi,’ it said. ‘Please leave a message.’
I knew the voice at once. It was Claire’s. Unmistakable.
I left her a message. Please call me, I said. It’s Christine.
I went downstairs. I had done all I could do.
I waited. For an hour that turned into two. I spent the time writing in my journal, and when she didn’t ring I made a sandwich and ate it in the living room. While I was in the kitchen – wiping down the work surface, sweeping crumbs into my palm, preparing to empty them into the sink – the doorbell rang. The noise startled me. I put down the sponge, dried my hands on the teatowel that hung from the handle of the oven and went to see who it was.
Through the frosted glass I could see the outline of a man. Not uniformed, he was instead wearing what looked like a suit, a tie. Ben? I thought, before realizing he would still be at work. I opened the door.
It was Dr Nash. I knew, partly because it could be no one else, but partly because – though when I read about him this morning I couldn’t picture him, and though my husband had remained unfamiliar to me even once I had been told who he was – I recognized him. His hair was short, parted, his tie loose and untidy, a jumper sat beneath a jacket that it didn’t match.
He must have seen the look of surprise on my face. ‘Christine?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ I didn’t open the door more than a fraction.
‘It’s me. Ed. Ed Nash. Dr Nash?’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I …’
‘Did you read your journal?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
He lowered his voice. ‘Is Ben home?’
‘No. No, he’s not. It’s just, well, I wasn�
�t expecting you. Did we have a meeting arranged?’
He held back for a moment, a fraction of a second, enough to disrupt the rhythm of our exchange. We had not, I knew that. Or at least I had not written of one.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Did you not write it down?’
I hadn’t, but I said nothing. We stood across the threshold of the house that I still don’t think of as my home, looking at each other. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.
I didn’t answer at first. I wasn’t sure I wanted to invite him in. It seemed wrong somehow. A betrayal.
But of what? Ben’s trust? I didn’t know how much that mattered to me any more. Not after his lies. Lies that I had spent most of my morning reading.
‘Yes,’ I said. I opened the door. He nodded as he stepped into the house, glancing left and right as he did so. I took his jacket and hung it on the coat rack next to a mac that I guessed must be mine. ‘In there,’ I said, pointing to the living room, and he went through.
I made us both a drink, gave his to him, sat opposite with mine. He didn’t speak, and I took a slow sip, waiting as he did the same. He put his cup down on the coffee table between us.
‘You don’t remember asking me to come round?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘When?’
His answer chilled me. ‘This morning. When I rang to tell you where to find your journal.’
I could remember nothing of him calling that morning, and still can’t, even now he has gone.
I thought of other things I had written of. A plate of melon I couldn’t remember ordering. A cookie I hadn’t asked for.