He told me he would call me tomorrow. “If you’re sure you want to continue?”
I know that I cannot stop now. Not until I have learned the truth. I owe myself that; otherwise, I am living only half a life. “Yes,” I said. “I do.” In any case, I need him to remind me to write in my journal.
“Okay,” he said. “Good. Next time I think we should visit somewhere else from your past.” He looked to where I sat. “Don’t worry. Not there. I think we should go to the care home you were moved to when you left Fisher Ward. It’s called Waring House.” I said nothing. “It’s not too far from where you live. Shall I call them?”
I thought for a moment, wondering what good it might do, but then realized there were no other options, and anything is better than nothing.
I said, “Yes. Yes. Call them.”
Tuesday, November 20
It is morning. Ben has suggested that I clean the windows. “I’ve written it on the board,” he said, as he got into his car. “In the kitchen.”
I looked. Wash windows he had written, adding a tentative question mark. I wondered if he thought I might not have time, wondered what he thought I did all day. He does not know I now spend hours reading my journal, and sometimes hours more writing in it. He does not know there are days when I see Dr. Nash.
I wonder what I did before my days were taken up like this. Did I really spend all my time watching television, or going for walks, or doing chores? Did I spend hour after hour sitting in an armchair, listening to the ticking of the clock, wondering how to live?
Wash windows. Possibly some days I read things like that and feel resentful, seeing it as an effort to control my life, but today I viewed it with affection, as nothing more sinister than the desire to keep me occupied. I smiled to myself but, even as I did, I thought how difficult it must be to live with me. He must go to extraordinary lengths to make sure I am safe, and even so must worry constantly that I will get confused, will wander off, or worse. I remembered reading about the fire that had destroyed most of our past, the one Ben has never told me that I started, even though I must have done so. I saw an image—a burning door, almost invisible in the thick smoke, a sofa, melting, turning to wax—that hovered, just out of reach, but refused to resolve itself into a memory, and remained a half-imagined dream. But Ben has forgiven me for that, I thought, just as he must have forgiven me for so much more. I looked out of the kitchen window, and through the reflection of my own face I saw the mowed lawn, the tidy borders, the shed, the fences. I realized that Ben must have known that I was having an affair—certainly once I’d been discovered in Brighton, even if not before. How much strength it must have taken to look after me—once I had lost my memory—even with the knowledge that I had been away from home, intending to fuck someone else, when it had happened. I thought of what I had seen, of the diary I had written. My mind had been fractured. Destroyed. Yet still he had stood by me, where another man might have told me that I deserved everything, left me to rot.
I turned away from the window and looked under the sink. Cleaning materials. Soap. Cartons of powders, plastic spray-bottles. There was a red plastic bucket and I filled this with hot water, adding a squirt of soap and a tiny drop of vinegar. How have I repaid him? I thought. I took a sponge and began to soap the window, beginning at the top, working down. I have been sneaking around London, seeing doctors, having scans, visiting our old homes and the places I was treated after my accident, all without telling him. And why? Because I don’t trust him? Because he has made the decision to protect me from the truth, to keep my life as simple and easy as possible? I watched the soapy water run in tiny rivulets, pooling at the bottom, and then took another cloth and polished the window to a shine.
Now I know the truth is even worse. This morning I had woken with an almost overwhelming sense of guilt, the words You should be ashamed of yourself spinning in my head. You’ll be sorry. At first I’d thought I had woken with a man who was not my husband and it was only later I discovered the truth. That I have betrayed him. Twice. The first time years ago, with a man who would eventually take everything from me, and now I have done it again, with my heart if nothing else. I have developed a ridiculous, childish crush on a doctor who is trying to help me, trying to comfort me. A doctor who I cannot even begin to picture now, cannot remember even having met before, but who I know is much younger than me, has a girlfriend. And now I have told him how I feel! Accidentally, yes, but still I have told him. I feel more than guilty. I feel stupid. I cannot even begin to imagine what must have brought me to this point. I am pathetic.
There, as I cleaned the glass, I made a decision. Even if Ben does not share my belief that my treatment will work, I cannot believe he would deny me the opportunity to see for myself. Not if it was what I wanted. I am an adult; he is not a monster; surely I can trust him with the truth? I sluiced the water down the sink and refilled the bucket. I will tell my husband. Tonight. When he gets home. This cannot go on. I continued to clean the windows.
I wrote that an hour ago, but now I am not so sure. I think about Adam. I have read about the photographs in the metal box, yet still there are no pictures of him on display. None. I can’t believe Ben—anyone—could lose a son and then remove all traces of him from his home. It does not seem right, does not seem possible. Can I trust a man who can do that? I remembered reading about the day we sat on Parliament Hill when I had asked him straight. He had lied. I flick back through my journal now and read it again. We never had children? I said, and he had replied, No. No we didn’t. Can he really have done that just to protect me? Can he really feel that is the best thing to do? To tell me nothing, other than what he must, what is convenient?
Whatever’s quickest, too. He must be so bored with telling me the same thing over and over again, every day. It occurs to me that the reason he shortens explanations and changes stories is not to do with me at all. Perhaps it’s so that he doesn’t drive himself crazy with the constant repetition.
I feel like I am going mad. Everything is fluid, everything shifts. I think one thing, and then, a moment later, the opposite. I believe everything my husband says, and then I believe nothing. I trust him, and then I don’t. Nothing feels real, everything invented. Even myself.
I wish I knew one thing for certain. One single thing that I have not had to be told, about which I do not need to be reminded.
I wish I knew who I was with, that day in Brighton. I wish I knew who did this to me.
Later. I have just finished speaking to Dr. Nash. I was dozing in the living room when the phone rang, the television was on, the sound turned down. For a moment, I could not tell where I was, whether I was asleep or awake. I thought I heard voices, getting louder. I realized one was mine, and the other sounded like Ben. But he was saying, You fucking bitch, and worse. I screamed at him, in anger and then in fear. A door slammed, the thud of a fist, breaking glass. It was then I realized I was dreaming.
I opened my eyes. A chipped mug of cold coffee sat on the table in front of me, a phone buzzed nervously next to it. The one that flips open. I picked it up.