‘You’re sick,’ I say. ‘How fucking dare you! Of course I loved him. He was my son!’
‘Is. Is your son. But you wouldn’t recognize him if he walked in now, would you? You think that’s love? And where is he? And where is Ben? They walked out on you, Christine. Both of them. I’m the only one who never stopped loving you. Not even when you left me.’
It is then that it hits me, finally, properly. How else could he have known about this room, about so much of my past?
‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘It was you! It was you who did this to me! You who attacked me!’
He moves over to me then. He wraps his arms around me, as if to embrace me, and begins to stroke my hair. ‘Christine darling,’ he murmurs, ‘don’t say that. Don’t think about it. It’ll just upset you.’
I try to push him off me, but he is strong. He squeezes me tighter.
‘Let me go!’ I say. ‘Please, let me go!’ My words are lost in the folds of his shirt.
‘My love,’ he says. He has begun to rock me, as if soothing a baby. ‘My love. My sweet, my darling. You should never have left me. Don’t you see? None of this would have happened if you hadn’t gone.’
Memory comes again. We are sitting in a car, at night. I am crying, and he is staring out of the window, utterly silent. ‘Say something,’ I am saying. ‘Anything. Mike?’
‘You don’t mean it,’ he says. ‘You can’t.’
‘I’m sorry. I love Ben. We have our problems, yes, but I love him. He’s the person I am meant to be with. I’m sorry.’
I am aware that I am trying to keep things simple, so that he will understand. I have come to realize, over the past few months with Mike, that it is better this way. Complicated things confuse him. He likes order. Routine. Things mixing in precise ratios with predictable results. Plus I don’t want to get too mired in details.
‘It’s because I came round to your house, isn’t it? I’m sorry, Chris. I won’t do that again, I promise. I just wanted to see you, and I wanted to explain to your husband—’
I interrupt him. ‘Ben. You can say his name. It’s Ben.’
‘Ben,’ he says, as if trying the word for the first time and finding it unpleasant. ‘I wanted to explain things to him. I wanted to tell him the truth.’
‘What truth?’
‘That you don’t love him any more. That you love me, now. That you want to be with me. That was all I was going to say.’
I sigh. ‘Don’t you see that, even if it were true – which it isn’t – it’s not you who should be saying that to him? It’s me. You had no right to just turn up at the house.’
As I speak I think about what a lucky escape I have had.
Ben was in the shower, Adam playing in the dining room, and I was able to persuade Mike that he ought to go home before either of them were aware of his presence. That was the night I decided I had to end the affair.
‘I have to go now,’ I say. I open the car door, step out on to the gravel. ‘I’m sorry.’
He leans across to look at me. I think how attractive he is, that if he had been less damaged my marriage might have been in real trouble. ‘Will I see you again?’ he says.
‘No,’ I reply. ‘No. It’s over.’
Yet here we are now, all these years later. He is holding me again, and I understand that, no matter how scared I was of him, I was not scared enough. I begin to scream.
‘Darling,’ he says. ‘Calm down.’ He puts his hand over my mouth and I scream louder. ‘Calm down! Someone will hear you!’ My head smacks backwards, connects with the radiator behind me. There is no change in the music from the club next door – if anything it is louder now. They won’t, I think. They will never hear me. I scream again.
‘Stop it!’ he says. He has hit me, I think, or else shaken me. I begin to panic. ‘Stop it!’ My head hits the warm metal again and I am stunned into silence. I begin to sob.
‘Let me go,’ I say, pleading with him. ‘Please—’ He relaxes his grip a little, though not enough for me to wriggle free. ‘How did you find me? All these years later? How did you find me?’
‘Find you?’ he says. ‘I never lost you.’ My mind whirrs, uncomprehending. ‘I watched over you. Always. I protected you.’
‘You visited me? In those places? The hospital, Waring House?’ I begin. ‘But—’
He sighs. ‘Not always. They wouldn’t have let me. But I would sometimes tell them I was there to see someone else, or that I was a volunteer. Just so that I could see you, and make sure you were all right. At that last place it was easier. All those windows …’
I go cold. ‘You watched me?’
‘I had to know you were all right, Chris. I had to protect you.’
‘So you came back for me? Is that it? Wasn’t what you did here, in this room, enough?’
‘When I found out that bastard had left you, I couldn’t just leave you in that place. I knew you’d want to be with me. I knew it was the best thing for you. I had to wait for a while, wait until I knew there was no one still there to try and stop me, but who else would have looked after you?’
‘And they just let me go with you?’ I say. ‘Surely they wouldn’t have let me go with a stranger!’
I wonder what lies he must have told for them to let him take me, then remember reading what Dr Nash had told me about the woman from Waring House. She was so happy when she found out you’d gone back to live with Ben. An image forms, a memory. My hand in Mike’s as he signs a form. A woman behind a desk smiles at me. ‘We’ll miss you, Christine,’ she says. ‘But you’ll be happy at home.’ She looks at Mike. ‘With your husband.’
I follow her gaze. I don’t recognize the man whose hand I am holding, but I know he is the man I married. He must be. He has told me he is.
‘Oh my God!’ I say now. ‘How long have you been pretending to be Ben?’
He looks surprised. ‘Pretending?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Pretending to be my husband.’
He looks confused. I wonder if he has forgotten that he is not Ben. Then his face falls. He looks upset.
‘Do you think I wanted to do that? I had to. It was the only way.’
His arms relax, slightly, and an odd thing happens. My mind stops spinning, and, although I remain terrified, I am infused with a bizarre sense of complete calm. A thought comes from nowhere. I will beat him. I will get away. I have to.
‘Mike?’ I say. ‘I do understand, you know. It must have been difficult.’
He looks up at me. ‘You do?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m grateful to you for coming for me. For giving me a home. For looking after me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Just think where I’d be if you hadn’t. I couldn’t bear it.’ I sense him soften. The pressure on my arms and shoulder lessens and is accompanied by a subtle yet definite sensation of stroking that I find almost more distasteful but I know is more likely to lead to my escape. Because escape is all I can think of. I need to get away. How stupid of me, I think now, to have sat there on the floor while he was in the bathroom to read what he had stolen of my journal. Why hadn’t I taken it with me and left? Then I remember that it was not until I read the end of the journal that I had any real idea of how much danger I was in. That same small voice comes in again. I will escape. I have a son I cannot remember having met. I will escape. I move my head to face him, and begin to stroke the back of his hand where it rests on my shoulder.
‘Why not let me go, and then we can talk about what we should do?’
‘How about Claire, though?’ he says. ‘She knows I’m not Ben. You told her.’
‘She won’t remember that,’ I say, desperately.
He laughs, a hollow, choked sound. ‘You always treated me like I was stupid. I’m not, you know. I know what’s going to happen! You told her. You ruined everything!’
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can call her. I can tell her I was confused. That I’d forgotten who you were. I can tell her that I thought you were Be
n, but I was wrong.’
I almost believe he thinks this is possible, but then he says, ‘She’d never believe you.’
‘She would,’ I say, even though I know that she would not. ‘I promise.’
‘Why did you have to go and call her?’ His face clouds with anger, his hands begin to grip me tighter. ‘Why? Why, Chris? We were doing fine until then. Fine.’ He begins to shake me again. ‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why?’
‘Ben,’ I say. ‘You’re hurting me.’
He hits me then. I hear the sound of his hand against my face before I feel the flash of pain. My head twists round, my lower jaw cracks up, connecting painfully with its companion.
‘Don’t you ever fucking call me that again,’ he spits.
‘Mike,’ I say quickly, as if I can erase my mistake. ‘Mike—’
He ignores me.
‘I’m sick of being Ben,’ he says. ‘You can call me Mike, from now on. OK? It’s Mike. That’s why we came back here. So that we can put all that behind us. You wrote in your book that if you could only remember what happened here all those years ago then you’d get your memory back. Well, we’re here now. I made it happen, Chris. So remember!’
I am incredulous. ‘You want me to remember?’
‘Yes! Of course I do! I love you, Christine. I want you to remember how much you love me. I want us to be together again. Properly. As we should be.’ He pauses, his voice drops to a whisper. ‘I don’t want to be Ben any more.’
‘But—’
He looks back at me. ‘When we go back home tomorrow you can call me Mike.’ He shakes me again, his face inches from mine. ‘OK?’ I can smell sourness on his breath, and another smell, too. I wonder if he’s been drinking. ‘We’re going to be OK, aren’t we, Christine? We’re going to move on.’
‘Move on?’ I say. My head is sore, and something is coming out of my nose. Blood, I think, though I am not sure. The calmness disappears. I raise my voice, shouting as loud as I can. ‘You want me to go back home? Move on? Are you absolutely fucking crazy?’ He moves his hand to clamp it over my mouth, and I realize that has left my arm free. I hit out at him, catching him on the side of his face, though not hard. Still, it takes him by surprise. He falls backwards, letting go of my other arm as he does.
I stumble to my feet. ‘Bitch!’ he says, but I step forward, over him, and head towards the door.
I manage three steps before he grabs my ankle. I come crashing down. There is a stool sitting tucked under the dressing table and my head hits its edge as I go down. I am lucky; the stool is padded and breaks my fall, but it causes my body to twist awkwardly as I land. Pain shoots up my back and through my neck and I am afraid I have broken something. I begin to crawl towards the door but he still holds my ankle. He pulls me towards him with a grunt and then his crushing weight is on top of me, his lips inches from my ear.
‘Mike,’ I sob. ‘Mike—’
In front of me is the photograph of Adam and Helen, lying on the floor where he had dropped it. Even in the middle of everything else I wonder how he had got it, and then it hits me. Adam had sent it to me at Waring House and Mike had taken it, along with all the other photographs, when he’d come for me.
‘You stupid, stupid bitch,’ he says, spitting into my ear. One of his hands is round my throat, with the other he has grabbed a handful of my hair. He pulls my head back, jerking my neck up. ‘What did you have to go and do that for?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I sob. I cannot move. One of my hands is trapped beneath my body, the other clamped between my back and his leg.
‘Where did you think you were going to go, eh?’ he says. He is snarling now, an animal. Something like hate floods out of him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, because it is all I can think of to say. ‘I’m sorry.’ I remember the days when those words would always work, always be enough, be what was needed to get me out of whatever trouble I was in.
‘Stop saying you’re fucking sorry,’ he says. My head jerks back, and then slams forward. My forehead, nose, mouth all connect with the carpeted floor. There is a noise, a sickening crunch, and the smell of stale cigarettes. I cry out. There is blood in my mouth. I have bitten my tongue. ‘Where do you think you’re going to run to? You can’t drive. You don’t know anybody. You don’t even know who you are most of the time. You have nowhere to go, nowhere at all. You’re pathetic.’
I start to cry, because he is right. I am pathetic. Claire never came; I have no friends. I am utterly alone, relying totally on the man who did this to me, and tomorrow morning, if I survive, I will have forgotten even this.
If I survive. The words echo through me as I realize what this man is capable of, and that, this time, I may not get out of this room alive. Terror slams into me, but then I hear the tiny voice again. This is not the place you die. Not with him. Not now. Anything but that.
I arch my back painfully and manage to free my arm. Lunging forward I grab the leg of the stool. It is heavy and the angle of my body wrong, but I manage to twist round and heave it back over my head where I imagine Mike’s head will be. It strikes something with a satisfying crack, and there is a gasp in my ear. He lets go of my hair.
I look round. He has rocked backwards, his hand to his forehead. Blood is beginning to trickle between his fingers. He looks up at me, uncomprehending.
Later, I will think how I should have hit him again. With the stool, or with my bare hands. With anything. I should have made sure he was incapacitated, that I could get away, get downstairs, even far enough away that I could open the door and scream for help.
But I do not. I pull myself upright and then I stand, looking at him on the floor in front of me. No matter what I do now, I think, he has won. He will always have won. He has taken everything from me, even the ability to remember exactly what he did to me. I turn, and begin to move towards the door.
With a grunt he launches himself at me. His whole body collides with mine. Together we slam into the dresser, stumble towards the door. ‘Christine!’ he says. ‘Chris! Don’t leave me!’
I reach out. If I can just open the door, then surely, despite the noise from the club, someone will hear us, and come?
He clings to my waist. Like some grotesque, two-headed monster we inch forward, me dragging him. ‘Chris! I love you!’ he says. He is wailing, and this, plus the ridiculousness of his words, spurs me on. I am nearly there. Soon I will reach the door.
And then it happens. I remember that night, all those years ago. Me, in this room, standing in the same spot. I am reaching out a hand towards the same door. I am happy, ridiculously so. The walls resonate with the soft orange glow of the lit candles that were dotted around the room when I arrived, the air is tinged with the sweet smell of the roses in the bouquet that was on the bed. I’ll be upstairs around seven, my darling, said the note that was pinned to them, and though I wondered briefly what Ben was doing downstairs I am glad of the few minutes I have had alone before he arrives. It has given me the opportunity to gather my thoughts, to reflect on how close I came to losing him, what a relief it has been to end the affair with Mike, how fortunate I am that Ben and I are now set on a new trajectory. How could I have thought that I wanted to be with Mike? Mike would never have done what Ben has done: arrange a surprise night away in a hotel at the coast, to show me how much he loves me and that, despite our recent differences, this will never change. Mike was too inward-looking for that, I have learned. With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.
I am touching the handle of the door, twisting it, pulling it towards me. Ben has taken Adam to stay with his grandparents. We have a whole weekend in front of us, with nothing to worry about. Just the two of us.
‘Darling,’ I am starting to say, but the word is choked off in my throat. It’s not Ben at the door. It’s Mike. He is pushing past me, coming into the room, and even as I am asking him what he thinks he is
doing – what right he has to lure me here, to this room, what he thinks he can achieve – I am thinking, You devious bastard! How dare you pretend to be my husband. Do you have no pride left at all?
I think of Ben and Adam, at home. By now Ben will be wondering where I am. Possibly he will soon call the police. How stupid I was to get on a train and come here without mentioning it to anybody. How stupid to believe that a typewritten note, even one sprayed with my favourite perfume, was from my husband.
Mike speaks. ‘Would you have come, if you’d known it was to meet me?’
I laugh. ‘Of course not! It’s over. I told you that before.’
I look at the flowers, the bottle of champagne he still holds in his hand. Everything smacks of romance, of seduction. ‘My God!’ I am saying. ‘You really thought you could just lure me here, give me flowers and a bottle of champagne and that would be it? That I would just fall into your arms and everything would go back to being like it was before? You’re crazy, Mike. Crazy. I’m leaving now. Going back to my husband and my son.’
I don’t want to remember any more. I suppose that must have been when he first hit me, but, after that, I don’t know what happened, what led me from there to the hospital. And now I am here again, in this room. We have turned full circle, though for me all the days between have been stolen. It is as though I never left.
I cannot reach the door. He is pulling himself up. I begin to shout. ‘Help! Help!’
‘Quiet!’ he says. ‘Shut up!’
I shout louder, and he swings me round, at the same time pushing me backwards. I fall, and the ceiling and his face slide down in front of me like a curtain descending. My skull hits something hard and unyielding. I realize he has pushed me into the bathroom. I twist my head and see the tiled floor stretching away from me, the bottom of the toilet, the edge of the bath. There is a bar of soap on the floor, sticky and mashed. ‘Mike!’ I say. ‘Don’t …’ But he is crouching over me, his hands around my throat.
‘Shut up!’ he is saying, over and over, even though I am not saying anything now, just crying. I am gasping for breath, my eyes and mouth are wet, with blood and tears and I don’t know what else.