‘There was no fire,’ she said.
‘But I wrote down that I remembered it,’ I said. ‘A chip pan. The phone rang …’
‘You must have been imagining it,’ she said.
‘But—’
I sensed her anxiety. ‘Chrissy! There was no fire. Not years ago. Ben would have told me. Now, describe Ben. What does he look like? Is he tall?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Black hair?’
My mind went blank. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. He’s beginning to go grey. He has a paunch, I think. Maybe not.’ I stood up. ‘I need to see his photograph.’
I went back upstairs. They were there, pinned around the mirror. Me and my husband. Happy. Together.
‘His hair looks kind of brown,’ I said. I heard a car pull up outside the house.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes,’ I said. The engine was switched off, the door slammed. A loud beep. I lowered my voice. ‘I think Ben’s home.’
‘Shit,’ said Claire. ‘Quick. Does he have a scar?’
‘A scar?’ I said. ‘Where?’
‘On his face, Chrissy. A scar, across one cheek. He had an accident. Rock climbing.’
I scanned the photographs, choosing the one of me and my husband sitting at a breakfast table in our dressing gowns. In it he was smiling happily and, apart from a hint of stubble, his cheeks were unblemished. Fear rushed to hit me.
I heard the front door open. A voice. ‘Christine! Darling! I’m home!’
‘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.
‘After that I used to go to the café almost every day. It’s always easier to do something when you’ve done it once. Sometimes I’d wait for you to arrive, or make sure you were there before I went in, but sometimes I’d just go in anyway. And you noticed me. I know you did. You began to say hello to me, or you’d comment on the weather. And then one time I was held up, and when I arrived you actually said, “You’re late today!” as I walked past holding my tea and my flapjack, and when you saw that there were no free tables you said, “Why don’t you sit here?” and you pointed to the chair at your table, opposite you. The baby wasn’t there that day, so I said, “Are you sure you don’t mind? I won’t disturb you?” and then I felt bad for saying that, and I dreaded you saying that, yes, actually, on second thoughts it would disturb you. But you didn’t, you said, “No! Not at all! To be honest, it’s not going too well anyway. I’d be glad of a distraction!” and that was how I knew that you wanted me to speak to you, rather than just have my drink and eat my cake in silence. Do you remember?’
I shake my head. I have decided to let him speak. I want to find out everything he has to say.
‘So I sat, and we chatted. You told me you were a writer. You said you’d had a book published but you were struggling with your second one. I asked what it was about, but you wouldn’t tell me. “It’s fiction,” you said, and then you said, “supposedly”, and you suddenly looked very sad, so I offered to buy you another cup of coffee. You said that would be nice, but that you didn’t have any money with you to buy me one. “I don’t bring my purse when I come here,” you said. “I just bring enough money to buy one drink and one snack. That way I’m not tempted to pig out!” I thought it was an odd thing to say. You didn’t look as though you needed to worry about how much you ate at all. You were always so slim. But anyway I was glad, as it meant you must be enjoying speaking to me, and you would owe me a drink, so we’d have to see each other again. I said that it didn’t matter about the money, or buying me one back, and I got us some more tea and coffee. After that we started to meet quite regularly.’
I begin to see it all. Though I have no memory, somehow I know how these things work. The casual meeting, the exchange of a drink. The appeal of talking to – confiding in – a stranger, one who doesn’t judge or take sides because he can’t. The gradual acceptance into confidence, leading … to what?
I have seen the photographs of the two of us, taken years ago. We look happy. It is obvious where those confidences led us. He was attractive, too. Not film-star handsome, but better-looking than most; it is not difficult to see what drew me. At some point I must have started scanning the door anxiously as I sat trying to work, thinking more carefully about what clothes I would wear when I went to the café, whether to add a dash of perfume. And, one day, one or the other of us must have suggested we go f
or a walk, or to a bar, or maybe even to catch a film, and our friendship slipped over a line, into something else, something infinitely more dangerous.
I close my eyes and try to imagine it, and as I do I begin to remember. The two of us, in bed, naked. Semen drying on my stomach, in my hair, me turning to him as he begins to laugh and kiss me again. ‘Mike!’ I am saying. ‘Stop it! You have to leave soon. Ben’s back later today and I have to pick Adam up. Stop it!’ But he doesn’t listen. Instead he leans in, his moustachioed face in mine, and we are kissing again, forgetting about everything, about my husband, about my child. With a sickening plunge I realize that a memory of this day has come to me before. That day, as I had stood in the kitchen of the house I once shared with my husband I had not been remembering my husband, but my lover. The man I was fucking while my husband was at work. That’s why he had to leave that day. Not just to catch a train – because the man I was married to would be returning home.
I open my eyes. I am back in the hotel room and he is still crouching in front of me.
‘Mike,’ I say. ‘Your name is Mike.’
‘You remember!’ he says. He is pleased. ‘Chris! You remember!’
Hate bubbles up in me. ‘I remember your name,’ I say. ‘Nothing else. Just your name.’
‘You don’t remember how much in love we were?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I could ever have loved you, or surely I would remember more.’
I say it to hurt him, but his reaction surprises me. ‘You don’t remember Ben, though, do you? You can’t have loved him. And not Adam, either.’