Before I Go to Sleep (44 page)

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, he doesn’t.’

A sound. Somewhere between a gasp and a sigh.

‘The man you’re living with,’ Claire said. ‘I don’t know who it is. But it’s not Ben.’

Terror hits. I hear the toilet flush, but can do nothing but read on.

I don’t know what happened then. I can’t piece it together. Claire began talking, almost shouting. ‘Fuck!’ she said, over and over. My mind was spinning with panic. I heard the front door shut, the click of the lock.

‘I’m in the bathroom,’ I shouted to the man I had thought was my husband. My voice sounded cracked. Desperate. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

‘I’ll come round,’ said Claire. ‘I’m getting you out of there.’

‘Everything OK, darling?’ shouted the man who is not Ben. I heard his footsteps on the stairs and realized I had not locked the bathroom door. I lowered my voice.

‘He’s here,’ I said. ‘Come tomorrow. While he’s at work. I’ll pack my things. I’ll call you.’

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘OK. But write in your journal. Write in it as soon as you can. Don’t forget.’

I thought of my journal, hidden in the wardrobe. I must stay calm, I thought. I must pretend nothing is wrong, at least until I can get to it and write down the danger I am in.

‘Help me,’ I said. ‘Help me.’

I ended the call as he pushed open the bathroom door.

It ends there. Frantic, I fan through the last few pages, but they are blank, scored only with their faint blue lines. Waiting for the rest of my story. But there is no more. Ben had found the journal, removed the pages, and Claire had not come for me. When Dr Nash collected the journal – on Tuesday 27th, it must have been – I had not known anything was wrong.

In a single rush I see it all, realize why the board in the kitchen so disturbed me. The handwriting. Its neat, even capitals looked totally different from the scrawl of the letter Claire had given me. Somewhere, deep down, I had known then that they were not written by the same person.

I look up. Ben, or the man pretending to be Ben, has come out of the shower. He is standing in the doorway, dressed as he was before, looking at me. I don’t know how long he has been there, watching me read. His eyes hold nothing more than a sort of vacancy, as if he is barely interested in what he is seeing, as if it doesn’t concern him.

I hear myself gasp. I drop the papers. Unbound, they slide on to the floor.

‘You!’ I say. ‘Who are you?’ He says nothing. He is looking at the papers in front of me. ‘Answer me!’ I say. My voice has an authority to it, but one that I do not feel.

My mind reels as I try to work out who he could be. Someone from Waring House, perhaps. A patient? Nothing makes any sense. I feel the stirrings of panic as another thought begins to form and then vanishes.

He looks up at me then. ‘I’m Ben,’ he says. He speaks slowly, as if trying to make me understand the obvious. ‘Ben. Your husband.’

I move back along the floor, away from him, as I fight to remember what I have read, what I know.

‘No,’ I say, and then again, louder. ‘No!’

He moves forward. ‘I am, Christine. You know I am.’

Fear takes me. Terror. It lifts me up, holds me suspended, and then slams me back into its own horror. Claire’s words come back to me.
But it’s not Ben
. A strange thing happens then. I realize I am not remembering reading about her saying those words, I am remembering the incident itself. I can remember the panic in her voice, the way she said
fuck
before telling me what she’d realized, and repeated the words
It’s not Ben
.

I am remembering.

‘You’re not,’ I say. ‘You’re not Ben. Claire told me! Who are you?’

‘Remember the pictures though, Christine? The ones from around the bathroom mirror? Look, I brought them to show you.’

He takes a step towards me, and then reaches for his bag on the floor beside the bed. He picks out a few curled photographs. ‘Look!’ he says, and when I shake my head he takes the first one and, glancing at it, holds it up to me.

‘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.