by S. J. Watson
‘I don’t remember,’ I said. A panic began to rise within me.
Concern flashed on his face. ‘Have you slept at all today? Anything more than a quick doze?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no. Not at all. I just can’t remember. When was it? When?’
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Calm down. It’s probably nothing.’
‘But what if – I don’t—’
‘Christine, please. It doesn’t mean anything. You just forgot, that’s all. Everyone forgets things sometimes.’
‘But whole conversations? It must have only been a couple of hours ago!’
‘Yes,’ he said. He spoke softly, trying to calm me, but didn’t move from where he sat. ‘But you have been through a lot, lately. Your memory has always been variable. Forgetting one thing doesn’t mean that you’re deteriorating, that you won’t get better again. OK?’ I nodded, trying to believe him, desperate to. ‘You asked me here because you wanted to speak to Claire, but weren’t sure you could. And you wanted me to speak to Ben on your behalf.’
‘I did?’
‘Yes. You said you didn’t think you could do it yourself.’
I looked at him, thought of all the things I had written. I realized I didn’t believe him. I must have found my journal myself. I hadn’t asked him here today. I didn’t want him to talk to Ben. Why would I, when I had decided to say nothing to Ben myself yet? And why would I tell him I needed him here to help me speak to Claire, when I had already phoned her myself and left a message?
He’s lying. I wondered what other reasons he might have for coming. What he might not feel able to tell me.
I have no memory, but I am not stupid. ‘Why are you really here?’ I said. He shifted in his chair. Possibly he just wanted to see inside the place where I live. Or possibly to see me, one more time, before I speak to Ben. ‘Are you worried that Ben won’t let me see you after I tell him about us?’
Another thought comes. Perhaps he is not writing a research paper at all. Perhaps he has other reasons for wanting to spend so much of his time with me. I push it from my mind.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not it at all. I came because you asked me to. Besides, you’ve decided not to tell Ben that you’re seeing me. Not until you’ve spoken to Claire. Remember?’
I shook my head. I didn’t remember. I did not know what he was talking about.
‘Claire is fucking my husband,’ I said.
He looked shocked. ‘Christine,’ he said. ‘I—’
‘He’s treating me like I’m stupid,’ I said. ‘Lying to me about anything and everything. Well, I’m not stupid.’
‘I know you’re not stupid,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think—’
‘They’ve been fucking for years,’ I said. ‘It explains everything. Why he tells me she moved away. Why I haven’t seen her even though she’s supposedly my best friend.’
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘You’re not thinking straight.’ He came and sat beside me on the sofa. ‘Ben loves you. I know. I’ve spoken to him, when I wanted to persuade him to let me see you. He was totally loyal. Totally. He told me that he’d lost you once and didn’t want to lose you again. That he’d watched you suffer whenever people tried to treat you and wouldn’t see you in pain any more. He loves you. It’s obvious. He’s trying to protect you. From the truth, I suppose.’
I thought of what I had read this morning. Of the divorce. ‘But he left me. To be with her.’
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘You’re not thinking. If that was true, why would he bring you back? Back here? He would have just left you in Waring House. But he hasn’t. He looks after you. Every day.’
I felt myself collapse, folding in on myself. I felt as if I understood his words, yet at the same time didn’t. I felt the warmth his body gave off, saw the kindness in his eyes. He smiled as I looked at him. He seemed to become bigger, until his body was all I could see, his breathing all I could hear. He spoke, but I didn’t hear what he said. I heard only one word. Love.
I didn’t intend to do what I did. I didn’t plan it. It happened suddenly, my life shifting like a stuck lid that finally gives. In a moment all I could feel were my lips on his, my arms around his neck. His hair was damp and I neither understood nor cared why. I wanted to speak, to tell him what I felt, but I did not, because to do so would have been to stop kissing him, to end the moment that I wanted to go on for ever. I felt like a woman, finally. In control. Though I must have done so, I can remember – have written about no other time when I have kissed anyone but my husband; it might as well have been the first.
I don’t know how long it lasted. I don’t even know how it happened, how I went from sitting there, on the sofa next to him, diminished, so small that I felt I might disappear, to kissing him. I don’t remember willing it, which is not to say I don’t remember wanting it. I don’t remember it beginning. I remember only that I went from one state to another, with nothing in between, with no opportunity for conscious thought, no decision.
He did not push me away roughly. He was gentle. He gave me that, at least. He did not insult me by asking me what I was doing, much less what I thought I was doing. He simply removed first his lips from mine, then my hands from where they had come to rest on his shoulder, and, softly, said, ‘No.’
I was stunned. At what I had done? Or his reaction to it? I cannot say. It felt only that, for a moment, I had been somewhere else and a new Christine had stepped in, taken me over completely, and then vanished. I was not horrified, though. Not even disappointed. I was glad. Glad that, because of her, something had happened.
He looked at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and I couldn’t tell what he felt. Anger? Pity? Regret? Any of those things might be possible. Perhaps the expression I saw was a mixture of all three. He was still holding my hands and he put them back in my lap, then let them go. ‘I’m sorry, Christine,’ he said again.
I didn’t know what to say. What to do. I was silent, about to apologize myself, and then I said, ‘Ed. I love you.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Christine,’ he began, ‘I—’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Don’t. Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it too.’ He frowned. ‘You know you love me.’
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Please, you’re … you’re …’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Crazy?’
‘No. Confused. You’re confused.’
I laughed. ‘“Confused”?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You don’t love me. You remember we talked about confabulation? It’s quite common with people who—’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I know. I remember. With people who have no memory. Is that what you think this is?’
‘It’s possible. Perfectly possible.’
I hated him then. He thought he knew everything, knew me better than I did myself. All he really knew was my condition.
‘I’m not stupid,’ I said.
‘I know. I know that, Christine. I don’t think you are. I just think—’
‘You must love me.’
He sighed. I was frustrating him, now. Wearing his patience thin.
‘Why else have you been coming here so much? Driving me around London. Do you do that with all your patients?’
‘Yes,’ he began, then, ‘well, no. Not exactly.’
‘Then why?’
‘I’ve been trying to help you,’ he said.
‘Is that all?’
A pause, then he said, ‘Well, no. I’ve been writing a paper, too. A scientific paper—’
‘Studying me?’
‘Sort of,’ he said.
I tried to push what he was saying from my mind. ‘But you didn’t tell me that Ben and I were separated,’ I said. ‘Why? Why didn’t you do that?’
‘I didn’t know!’ he said. ‘No other reason. It wasn’t in your file and Ben didn’t tell me. I didn’t know!’ I was silent. He moved, as if to take my hands again, then stopped, scratching his forehead instead. ‘I would have told you. If I’d known.’
&
nbsp; ‘Would you?’ I said. ‘Like you told me about Adam?’
He looked hurt. ‘Christine, please.’
‘Why did you keep him from me?’ I said. ‘You’re as bad as Ben!’
‘Jesus, Christine,’ he said. ‘We’ve been through this. I did what I thought was best. Ben wasn’t telling you about Adam. I couldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t have been ethical.’
I laughed. A hollow, snorting laugh. ‘Ethical? What is ethical about keeping him from me?’
‘It was down to Ben to decide whether to tell you about Adam. Not me. I suggested you keep a journal, though. So that you could write down what you’d learned. I thought that was for the best.’
‘How about the attack, then? You were quite happy for me to go on thinking I’d been involved in a hit-and-run accident!’
‘Christine, no. No, I wasn’t. Ben told you that. I didn’t know that’s what he was saying to you. How could I?’
I thought of what I had seen. Orange-scented baths and hands around my throat. The feeling that I couldn’t breathe. The man whose face remained a mystery. I began to cry. ‘Then why did you tell me at all?’ I said.
He spoke kindly, but still didn’t touch me. ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I didn’t tell you that you were attacked. That, you remembered yourself.’ He was right, of course. I felt angry. ‘Christine, I—’
‘I want you to leave,’ I said. ‘Please.’ I was crying solidly now, yet felt curiously alive. I didn’t know what had just happened, could barely even remember what had been said, but it felt as if some awful thing had lifted, some dam within me finally burst.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please go.’
I expected him to argue. To beg me to let him stay. I almost wanted him to. But he did not. ‘If you’re sure?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I whispered. I turned towards the window, determined to not look at him again. Not today, which for me will mean that by tomorrow I might as well never have seen him at all. He stood up, walked to the door.
‘I’ll call you,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow? Your treatment. I—’
‘Just go,’ I said. ‘Please.’
He said nothing else. I heard the door close behind him.
I sat there for a while. A few minutes? Hours? I don’t know. My heart raced. I felt empty, and alone. Eventually I went upstairs. In the bathroom I looked at the photos. My husband. Ben. What have I done? I have nothing, now. No one I can trust. No one I can turn to. My mind raced, out of control. I kept thinking of what Dr Nash had said. He loves you. He’s trying to protect you.
Protect me from what, though? From the truth. I thought the truth more important than anything. Maybe I am wrong.
I went into the study. Ben has lied about so much, there is nothing he has told me I can believe. Nothing at all.
I knew what I had to do. I had to know. Know that I could trust him, about this one thing.
The box was where I had described it, locked, as I suspected. I didn’t get upset.
I began to look. I told myself I wouldn’t stop until I found the key. I searched the office first. The other drawers, the desk. I did it methodically. I replaced everything where I had found it, and when I had finished I went into the bedroom. I looked in the drawers, digging beneath his underwear, the handkerchiefs, neatly ironed, the vests and T-shirts. Nothing, and nothing in the drawers I used, either.
There were drawers in the bedside tables. I intended to look in each, starting with Ben’s side of the bed. I opened the top drawer and rooted through its contents – pens, a watch that had stopped, a blister pack of pills I didn’t recognize – before opening the bottom drawer.
At first I thought it was empty. I closed it gently, but as I did so I heard a tiny rattle, metal scraping on wood. I opened it again, my heart already beating fast.
A key.
I sat on the floor with the open box. It was full. Photographs, mostly. Of Adam, and me. Some looked familiar – I guess the ones he had shown me before – but many not. I found his birth certificate, the letter he had written to Santa Claus. Handfuls of photos of him as a baby – crawling, grinning, towards the camera, feeding at my breast, sleeping, wrapped in a green blanket – and as he grew. The photo of him dressed as a cowboy, the school photographs, the tricycle. They were all here, exactly as I had described them in my journal.
I lifted them all out and spread them across the floor, looking at each one. There were photographs of Ben and me, too; one in which we are in front of the Houses of Parliament, both smiling, but standing awkwardly, as if neither of us knows the other exists; another from our wedding, a formal shot. We are in front of a church under an overcast sky. We look happy, ridiculously so, and even more so in one that must have been taken later, on our honeymoon. We are in a restaurant, smiling, leaning in over a half-eaten meal, our faces flushed with love and the bite of the sun.
I stared at the photograph. Relief began to flood me. I stared at the photograph of the woman sitting there with her new husband, gazing out at a future she could not predict and did not want to, and thought about how much I share with her. But all of it is physical. Cells and tissue. DNA. Our chemical signature. But nothing else. She is a stranger. There is nothing linking her to me, no means to thread my way back to her.
Yet, she is me, and I her, and I could see that she was in love. With Ben. The man she has just married. The man I still wake up with, every day. He did not break the vows he made on that day in the tiny church in Manchester. He has not let me down. I looked at the photograph and love welled inside me again.
But still I put it down, carried on searching. I knew what I wanted to find, and what I dreaded finding also. The one thing that would prove my husband wasn’t lying, that would give me my partner even if, in doing so, it would deny me my son.
It was there. At the bottom of the box, inside an envelope. A photocopy of a news article, folded, its edges crisp. I knew what it was, almost before I opened it, but still I shook as I read. A British soldier who died escorting troops in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, has been named by the Ministry of Defence. Adam Wheeler, it said, was 19 years old. Born in London … Clipped to it was a photograph. Flowers, arranged on a grave. The inscription read, Adam Wheeler, 1987–2006.
The grief hit me then, with a force I doubt it can ever have had before. I dropped the paper and doubled up in pain, too much pain even to cry, and emitted a noise like a howl, like a wounded animal, starving, praying for its end to come. I closed my eyes, and saw it then. A brief flash. An image, hanging in front of me, shimmering. A medal, given to me in a black velvet box. A coffin, a flag. I looked away from it, and prayed that it would never return. There are memories I am better off without. Things better lost for ever.
I began to tidy the papers away. I should have trusted him, I thought. All along. I should have believed that he was keeping things from me only because they are too painful to face, fresh, every day. All he was doing was trying to spare me from this. This brutal truth. I put the photographs back, the papers, just as I had found them. I felt satisfied. I put the box back in the filing cabinet, the key back in the drawer. I can look whenever I want now, I thought. As often as I like.
There was only one more thing I still had to do. I had to know why Ben had left me. And I had to know what I had been doing in Brighton, all those years ago. I had to know who had stolen my life from me. I had to try once more.
For the second time today, I dialled Claire’s number.
Static. Silence. Then a two-tone ring. She will not answer, I thought. She has not responded to my message, after all. She has something to hide, something to keep from me.
I almost felt glad. This was a conversation I wanted to have only in theory. I could not see how it could be anything but painful. I prepared myself for another emotionless invitation to leave a message.
A click. Then a voice. ‘Hello?’
It was Claire. I knew it, instantly. Her voice felt as familiar as my own. ‘Hello?’ she said again.<
br />
I did not speak. Images flooded me, flashing. I saw her face, her hair cut short, wearing a beret. Laughing. I saw her at a wedding – my own, I suppose, though I cannot say – dressed in emerald, pouring champagne. I saw her holding a child, carrying him, giving him to me with the words Dinner time! I saw her sitting on the edge of a bed, talking to the figure lying in it, and realized the figure was me.
‘Claire?’ I said.
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Hello? Who is this?’
I tried to focus, to remind myself that we had been best friends once, no matter what had happened in the years since. I saw an image of her lying on my bed, clutching a bottle of vodka, giggling, telling me that men were fucking ridiculous.
‘Claire?’ I said. ‘It’s me. Christine.’
Silence. Time stretched so that it seemed to last for ever. At first I thought she wouldn’t speak, that she had forgotten who I was, or didn’t want to speak to me. I closed my eyes.
‘Chrissy!’ she said. An explosion. I heard her swallow, as if she had been eating. ‘Chrissy! My God. Darling, is that really you?’
I opened my eyes. A tear had begun its slow traverse down the unfamiliar lines of my face.
‘Claire?’ I said. ‘Yes. It’s me. It’s Chrissy.’
‘Jesus. Fuck,’ she said, and then again. ‘Fuck!’ Her voice was quiet. ‘Roger! Rog! It’s Chrissy! On the phone!’ Suddenly loud, she said, ‘How are you? Where are you?’ and then, ‘Roger!’
‘Oh, I’m at home,’ I said.
‘Home?’
‘Yes.’
‘With Ben?’
I felt suddenly defensive. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘With Ben. Did you get my message?’
I heard an intake of breath. Surprise? Or was she smoking? ‘Yep!’ she said. ‘I would have called you back but this is the landline and you didn’t leave a number.’ She hesitated, and for a moment I wondered if there were other reasons she had not returned my call. She went on. ‘Anyway, how are you, darling? It’s so good to hear your voice!’ I didn’t know how to answer, and when I didn’t reply Claire said, ‘Where are you living?’
