Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
Monday. Days meant nothing to me; each melted away, indistinguishable from the one that had preceded it.
‘I need to see you,’ I said. ‘Can you come over?’
She sounded surprised. ‘To your place?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Please? I want to talk to you.’
‘Is everything OK, Chrissy? You read the letter?’
I took a deep breath, and my voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Ben hit me.’ I heard a gasp of surprise.
‘What?’
‘The other night. I’m bruised. He told me I’d fallen, but I wrote down that he hit me.’
‘Chrissy, there is no way Ben would hit you. Ever. He just isn’t capable of it.’
Doubt flooded me. Was it possible I’d made it all up?
‘But I wrote it in my journal,’ I said.
She said nothing for a moment, and then, ‘But why do you think he hit you?’
I put my hands to my face, felt the swollen flesh around my eyes. I felt a flash of anger. It was clear she didn’t believe me.
I thought back to what I had written. ‘I told him that I’ve been keeping a journal. I said I had been seeing you, and Dr Nash. I told him I knew about Adam. I told him you’d given me the letter he’d written, that I’d read it. And then he hit me.’
‘He just hit you?’
I thought of all the things he’d called me, the things he’d accused me of. ‘He said I was a bitch.’ I felt a sob rise in my chest. ‘He – he accused me of sleeping with Dr Nash. I said I wasn’t, then—’
‘Then?’
‘Then he hit me.’
A silence, then Claire said, ‘Has he ever hit you before?’
I had no way of knowing. Perhaps he had? It was possible that ours had always been an abusive relationship. My mind flashed on Claire and me, marching, holding home-made placards – Women’s rights. No to domestic violence. I remembered how I had always looked down on women who found themselves with husbands who beat them and stayed put. They were weak, I thought. Weak, and stupid.
Was it possible that I had fallen into the same trap as they had?
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘It’s difficult to imagine Ben hurting anything, but I suppose it’s not impossible. Christ! He used to make even me feel guilty. Do you remember?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. I don’t remember anything.’
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot. It’s just so hard to imagine. He’s the one who convinced me that fish have as much right to life as an animal with legs. He wouldn’t even kill a spider!’
The wind gusts the curtains of the room. I hear a train in the distance. Screams from the pier. Downstairs, on the street, someone shouts ‘Fuck!’ and I hear the sound of breaking glass. I do not want to read on, but know that I must.
I felt a chill. ‘Ben was vegetarian?’
‘Vegan,’ she said, laughing. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know?’
I thought of the night he’d hit me. A lump of meat, I’d written. Peas floating in thin gravy.
I went over to the window. ‘Ben eats meat …’ I said, speaking slowly. ‘He’s not vegetarian … Not now, anyway. Maybe he’s changed?’
There was another long silence.
‘Claire?’ She said nothing. ‘Claire? Are you there?’
‘Right,’ she said. She sounded angry now. ‘I’m ringing him. I’m sorting this out. Where is he?’
I answered without thinking. ‘He’ll be at the school, I suppose. He said he wouldn’t be back until five o’clock.’
‘At the school?’ she said. ‘Do you mean the university? Is he lecturing now?’
Fear began to stir within me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘He works at a school near here. I can’t remember the name.’
‘What does he do there?’
‘A teacher. He’s head of chemistry, I think he said.’ I felt guilty at not knowing what my husband does for a living, not being able to remember how he earns the money to keep us fed and clothed. ‘I don’t remember.’
I looked up and caught sight of my swollen face reflected in the window in front of me. The guilt evaporated.
‘What school?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he told me.’
‘What, never?’
‘Not this morning, no,’ I said. ‘For me that might as well be never.’
‘I’m sorry, Chrissy. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that, well—’ I sensed a change of mind, a sentence aborted. ‘Could you find out the name of the school?’
I thought of the office upstairs. ‘I guess so. Why?’
‘I’d like to speak to Ben, to make sure he’ll be coming home when I’m there this afternoon. I wouldn’t want it to be a wasted journey!’
I noticed the humour she was trying to inject into her voice, but didn’t mention it. I felt out of control, couldn’t work out what was best, what I should do, and so decided to surrender to my friend. ‘I’ll have a look,’ I said.
I went upstairs. The office was tidy, piles of papers arranged across the desk. It did not take long to find some headed paper; a letter about a parents’ evening that had already taken place.
‘It’s St Anne’s,’ I said. ‘You want the number?’ She said she’d find it out herself.
‘I’ll call you back,’ she said. ‘Yes?’
Panic hit again. ‘What are you going to say to him?’ I said.
‘I’m going to sort this out,’ she said. ‘Trust me, Chrissy. There has to be an explanation. OK?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and ended the call. I sat down, my legs shaking. What if my first hunch had been correct? What if Claire and Ben were still sleeping together? Maybe she was calling him now, warning him. She suspects, she might be saying. Be careful.
I remembered reading my journal earlier. Dr Nash had told me that I had once shown symptoms of paranoia. Claiming the doctors were conspiring against you, he’d said. A tendency to confabulate. To invent things.
What if that’s all happening again? What if I am inventing this, all of it? Everything in my journal might be fantasy. Paranoia.
I thought of what they’d told me on the ward, and Ben in his letter. You were occasionally violent. I realized it might have been me who caused the fight on Friday night. Did I lash out at Ben? Perhaps he hit back and then, upstairs in the bathroom, I took a pen and explained it all away with a fiction.
What if all this journal means is that I’m getting worse again? That soon it really will be time for me to go back to Waring House?
I went cold, suddenly convinced that this was why Dr Nash had wanted to take me there. To prepare me for my return.
All I can do is wait for Claire to call me back.
Another gap. Is that what’s happening now? Will Ben try to take me back to Waring House? I look over to the bathroom door. I will not let him.
There is one final entry, written later that same day.
Monday, 26 November, 6.55 p.m.
Claire called me after less than half an hour. And now my mind oscillates. It swings from one thing to the other, then back again. I know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I know what to do. But there’s a third thought. I shudder as I realize the truth: I am in danger.
I turn to the front of this journal, intending to write Don’t trust Ben, but I find those words are already there.
I don’t remember writing them. But then I don’t remember anything.
A gap, and then it continues.
She sounded hesitant on the phone.
‘Chrissy,’ she said. ‘Listen.’
Her tone frightened me. I sat down. ‘What?’
‘I called Ben. At school.’
I had the overwhelming sensation of being on an uncontrollable journey, of being in unnavigable waters. ‘What did he say?’
‘I didn’t speak to him. I just wanted to make sure he worked there.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Don’t you trust him?’
‘He?
I had to agree. ‘But why did you think he’d tell me he worked somewhere if he didn’t?’ I said.
‘I was just surprised he was working in a school. You know he trained to be an architect? The last time I spoke to him he was looking into setting up his own practice. I just thought it was a bit odd he should be working in a school.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They said they couldn’t disturb him. He was busy, in a class.’ I felt relief. He hadn’t lied about that, at least.
‘He must have changed his mind,’ I said. ‘About his career.’
‘Chrissy? I told them I wanted to send him some documents. A letter. I asked for his official title.’
‘And?’ I said.
‘He’s not head of chemistry. Or science. Or anything else. They said he was a lab assistant.’
I felt my body jerk. I may have gasped; I don’t remember.
‘Are you sure?’ I said. My mind raced to think of a reason for this new lie. Was it possible he was embarrassed? Worried about what I would think if I knew he had gone from being a successful architect to a lab assistant in a local school? Did he really think I was so shallow that I would love him any more or less based on what he did for a living?
Everything made sense.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘It’s my fault!’
‘No!’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault!’
‘It is!’ I said. ‘It’s the strain of having to look after me. Of having to deal with me, day in and day out. He must be having a breakdown. Maybe he doesn’t even know himself what’s true and what’s not.’ I began to cry. ‘It must be unbearable,’ I said. ‘He even has to go through all that grief on his own, every day.’
The line was silent, and then Claire said, ‘Grief? What grief?’
‘Adam,’ I said. I felt pain at having to say his name.
‘What about Adam?’
It came to me. Wild. Unbidden. Oh God, I thought. She doesn’t know. Ben hasn’t told her.
‘He’s dead,’ I said.
She gasped. ‘Dead? When? How?’
‘I don’t know when, exactly,’ I said. ‘I think Ben told me it was last year. He was killed in the war.’
‘War? What war?’
‘Afghanistan.’
And then she said it. ‘Chrissy, what would he be doing in Afghanistan?’ Her voice was strange. She almost sounded pleased.
‘He was in the army,’ I said, but even as I spoke I was starting to doubt what I was saying. It was as if I was finally facing something I had known all along.
I heard Claire snort, almost as if she was finding something amusing. ‘Chrissy,’ she said. ‘Chrissy darling. Adam hasn’t been in the army. He’s never been to Afghanistan. He’s living in Birmingham, with someone called Helen. He works with computers. He hasn’t forgiven me, but I still ring him occasionally. He’d probably rather I didn’t, but I am his godmother, remember?’ It took me a moment to work out why she was still using the present tense, and even as I did so she said it.
‘I rang him after we met last week,’ she said. She was almost laughing, now. ‘He wasn’t there, but I spoke to Helen. She said she’d ask him to ring me back. Adam is alive.’
I stop reading. I feel light. Empty. I feel I might fall backwards, or else float away. Dare I believe it? Do I want to? I steady myself against the dresser and read on, only dimly aware that no longer do I hear the sound of Ben’s shower.
I must have stumbled, grabbed hold of the chair. ‘He’s alive?’ My stomach rolled, I remember vomit rising in my throat and having to swallow it down. ‘He’s really alive?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes!’
‘But—’ I began. ‘But – I saw a newspaper. A clipping. It said he’d been killed.’
‘It can’t have been real, Chrissy,’ she said. ‘It can’t have been. He’s alive.’
I began to speak, but then everything hit me at once, every emotion bound up in every other. Joy. I remember joy. The sheer pleasure of knowing that Adam is alive fizzed on my tongue, but mixed into it was the bitter, acid tang of fear. I thought of my bruises, of the force with which Ben must have struck me to cause them. Perhaps his abuse is not only physical, perhaps some days he takes delight in telling me that my son is dead so that he can see the pain that thought inflicts. Was it really possible that on other days, in which I remember the fact of my pregnancy, or giving birth to my baby, he simply tells me that Adam has moved away, is working abroad, living on the other side of town?
And if so, why did I never write down any of those alternative truths that he fed me?
Images entered my head, of Adam as he might be now, fragments of scenes I may have missed, but none would hold. Each image slid through me and then vanished. The only thing I could think was he’s alive. Alive. My son is alive. I can meet him.
‘Where is he?’ I said. ‘Where is he? I want to see him!’
‘Chrissy,’ Claire said. ‘Stay calm.’
‘But—’
‘Chrissy!’ she interrupted. ‘I’m coming round. Stay there.’
‘Claire! Tell me where he is!’
‘I’m really worried about you, Chrissy. Please—’
‘But—’
She raised her voice. ‘Chrissy, calm down!’ she said, and then a single thought pierced through the fog of my confusion: I am hysterical. I took a breath and tried to settle, as Claire began to speak again.
‘Adam is living in Birmingham,’ she said.
‘But he must know where I am now,’ I said. ‘Why doesn’t he come to see me?’
‘Chrissy …’ she began.
‘Why? Why doesn’t he visit me? Does he not get on with Ben? Is that why he stays away?’
‘Chrissy,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘Birmingham is a fair way away. He has a busy life …’
‘You mean—’
‘Maybe he can’t get down to London that often?’
‘But—’
‘Chrissy. You think Adam doesn’t visit. But I can’t believe that. Maybe he does come, when he can.’
I fell silent. Nothing made sense. Yet she was right. I have only been keeping my journal for a couple of weeks. Before that, anything could have happened.
‘I need to see him,’ I said. ‘I want to see him. Do you think that can be arranged?’
‘I don’t see why not. But if Ben is really telling you that he’s dead then we ought to speak to him first.’
Of course, I thought. But what will he say? He thinks that I still believe his lies.
‘He’ll be here soon,’ I said. ‘Will you still come over? Will you help me to sort this out?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course. I don’t know what’s going on. But we’ll talk to Ben. I promise. I’ll come now.’
‘Now? Right now?’
‘Yes. I’m worried, Chrissy. Something’s not right.’
Her tone bothered me, but at the same time I felt relieved, and excited at the thought that I might soon be able to meet my son. I wanted to see him, to see his photograph, right away. I remembered that we had hardly any, and those we did have were locked away. A thought began to form.
‘Claire,’ I said, ‘did we have a fire?’
She sounded confused. ‘A fire?’
‘Yes. We have hardly any photographs of Adam. And almost none of our wedding. Ben said we lost them in a fire.’
‘A fire?’ she said. ‘What fire?’
‘Ben said there was a fire in our old home. We lost lots of things.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. Years ago.’
‘And you have no photographs of Adam?’
I felt myself getting annoyed. ‘We have some. But not many. Hardly any of him other than when he was a baby. A toddler. And none of holidays, not even our honeymoon. None of Christmases. Nothing like that.’
‘Chrissy,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, measured. I thought I detected something in it, some new emotion. Fear. ‘
‘What?’
‘Describe him to me. Ben. What does he look like?’
‘What about the fire?’ I said. ‘Tell me about that.’