‘Well?’
‘You said that was typical of him. To throw money at the problem. You had a point, but … Perhaps you weren’t being terribly fair.’
Perhaps not, I thought. It struck me that back then we must have had money – more money than we had after I lost my memory, more money than I guess we have now. What a drain on our resources my illness must have been.
I tried to picture myself, arguing with Ben, looking after a baby, trying to write. I imagined bottles of milk, or Adam at my breast. Dirty nappies. Mornings in which getting both myself and my baby fed were the only ambitions I could reasonably have, and afternoons in which I was so exhausted the only thing I craved was sleep – sleep that was still hours away – and the thought of trying to write was pushed far from my mind. I could see it all, and feel the slow, burning resentment.
But that’s all they were. Imaginings. I remembered nothing. Claire’s story felt like it had nothing to do with me at all.
‘So I had an affair?’
She looked up. ‘I was free. I was doing my painting then. I said I’d look after Adam two afternoons a week, so you could write. I insisted.’ She took my hand in hers. ‘It was my fault, Chrissy. I even suggested you go to a café.’
‘A café?’ I said.
‘I thought it would be a good idea if you got out of the house. Gave yourself space. A few hours a week, away from everything. After a few weeks you seemed to get better. You were happier in yourself, you said your work was going well. You started going to the café almost every day, taking Adam when I couldn’t look after him. But then I noticed that you were dressing differently, too. The classic thing, though I didn’t realize what it was at the time. I thought it was just because you were feeling better. More confident. But then Ben called me, one evening. He’d been drinking, I think. He said you were arguing, more than ever, and he didn’t know what to do. You were off sex, too. I told him it was probably just because of the baby, that he was probably worrying unnecessarily. But—’
I interrupted. ‘I was seeing someone.’
‘I asked you. You denied it at first, but then I told you I wasn’t stupid, and neither was Ben. We had an argument, but after a while you told me the truth.’
The truth. Not glamorous, not exciting. Just the bald facts. I had turned into a living cliché, taken to fucking someone I’d met in a café while my best friend was babysitting my child and my husband was earning the money to pay for the clothes and underwear I was wearing for someone other than him. I pictured the furtive phone calls, the aborted arrangements when something unexpected came up and, on the days we could get together, the sordid, pathetic afternoons, spent in bed with a man who had temporarily seemed better – more exciting? attractive? a better lover? richer? – than my husband. Was this the man I had been waiting for in that hotel room, the man who would eventually attack me, leave me with no past and no future?
I closed my eyes. A flash of memory. Hands gripping my hair, around my throat. My head under water. Gasping, crying. I remember what I was thinking. I want to see my son. One last time. I want to see my husband. I should never have done this to him. I should never have betrayed him with this man. I will never be able to tell him I am sorry. Never.
I open my eyes. Claire was squeezing my hand. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘I don’t know whether—’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Tell me. Who was it?’
She sighed. ‘You said you’d met someone else who went to the café regularly. He was nice, you said. Attractive. You’d tried, but you hadn’t been able to stop yourself.’
‘What was his name?’ I said. ‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must!’ I said. ‘His name at least! Who did this to me?’
She looked into my eyes. ‘Chrissy,’ she said, her voice calm, ‘you never even told me his name. You just said you’d met him in a coffee shop. I suppose you didn’t want me to know any details. Any more than I had to, at least.’
I felt another sliver of hope slip away, washed downstream in the river. I would never know who did this to me.
‘What happened?’
‘I told you that I thought you were being silly. There was Adam to think about, as well as Ben. I thought you ought to call it off. Stop seeing him.’
‘But I wouldn’t listen.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not at first. We fought. I told you that you were putting me in an impossible situation. Ben was my friend too. You were asking me to lie to him.’
‘What happened? How long did it go on for?’
She was silent, then said, ‘I don’t know. One day – it must have been only a few weeks – you announced that it was all over. You’d told this man that it wasn’t working, that you’d made a mistake. You said you were sorry, you’d been foolish. Crazy.’
‘I was lying?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. You and I didn’t lie to each other. We just didn’t.’ She blew across the top of her coffee. ‘A few weeks later you were found in Brighton,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what happened in that time.’
Perhaps it was those words – I have no idea what happened in that time – that set it off, the realization that I may never know how I came to be attacked, but a sound suddenly escaped me. I tried to clamp it down, but failed. Something between a gasp and a howl, it was the cry of an animal in pain. Toby looked up from his colouring book. Everyone in the café turned to stare at me, at the mad woman with no memory. Claire grabbed my arm.
‘Chrissy!’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
I was sobbing now, my body heaving, gasping for breath. Crying for all the years that I had lost, and for all those that I would continue to lose between now and the day that I died. Crying because, however hard it had been for her to tell me about the affair, and my marriage, and my son, she would have to do it all again tomorrow. Crying mostly, though, because I had brought all this on myself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Claire stood up and came round the table. She crouched beside me, her arm around my shoulder, and I rested my head against hers. ‘There, there,’ she said as I sobbed. ‘It’s all right, Chrissy darling. I’m here now. I’m here.’
We left the café. As if unwilling to be outdone, Toby had become boisterously noisy after my own outburst – he threw his colouring book on the floor, along with a plastic cup of juice. Claire cleaned up and then said, ‘I need to get some air. Shall we?’
Now we sat on one of the benches that overlooked the park. Our knees were angled towards each other, and Claire held my hands in hers, stroking them as if they were cold.
‘Did I—’ I began. ‘Did I have lots of affairs?’
She shook her head. ‘No. None. We had fun at university, you know? But no more than most. And once you met Ben that stopped. You were always faithful to him.’
I wondered what had been so special about the man in the café. Claire had said that I’d told her he was nice. Attractive. Was that all it was? Was I really so shallow?
My husband was both of those things, I thought. If only I’d been content with what I had.
‘Ben knew I was having an affair?’
‘Not at first. No. Not until you were found. It was a dreadful shock for him. For all of us. At first it looked as though you might not even live. Later, Ben asked me if I knew why you’d been in Brighton. I told him. I had to. I’d already told the police all I knew. I had no choice but to tell Ben.’
Guilt punctured me once more as I thought of my husband, of the father of my son, trying to work out why his dying wife had turned up miles away from home. How could I do this to him?
‘He forgave you, though,’ said Claire. ‘He never held it against you, ever. All he cared about was that you lived, and that you got better. He would have given everything for that. Everything. Nothing else mattered.’
I felt a surge of love for my husband. Real. Unfor
ced. Despite everything, he had taken me in. Looked after me.
‘Will you talk to him?’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Of course! But about what?’
‘He’s not telling me the truth,’ I said. ‘Or not always, anyway. He’s trying to protect me. He tells me what he thinks I can cope with, what he thinks I want to hear.’
‘Ben wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘He loves you. He always has.’
‘Well, he is,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t know I know. He doesn’t know I’m writing things down. He doesn’t tell me about Adam, other than when I remember him and ask. He doesn’t tell me he left me. He tells me you live on the other side of the world. He doesn’t think I can cope. He’s given up on me, Claire. Whatever he used to be like, he’s given up on me. He doesn’t want me to see a doctor because he doesn’t think I will ever get any better, but I’ve been seeing one, Claire. A Dr Nash. In secret. I can’t even tell Ben.’
Claire’s face fell. She looked disappointed. In me, I suppose. ‘That’s not good,’ she said. ‘You ought to tell him. He loves you. He trusts you.’
‘I can’t. He only admitted he was still in touch with you the other day. Until then he’d been saying he hadn’t spoken to you in years.’
Her expression of disapproval changed. For the first time I could see that she was surprised.
‘Chrissy!’
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I know he loves me. But I need him to be honest with me. About everything. I don’t know my own past. And only he can help me. I need him to help me.’
‘Then you should just talk to him. Trust him.’
‘But how can I?’ I said. ‘With all the things he’s lied to me about? How can I?’
She squeezed my hands in hers. ‘Chrissy, Ben loves you. You know he does. He loves you more than life itself. He always has.’
‘But—’ I began, but she interrupted.
‘You have to trust him. Believe me. You can sort everything out, but you have to tell him the truth. Tell him about Dr Nash. Tell him what you’ve been writing. It’s the only way.’
Somewhere, deep down, I knew she was right, but still I could not convince myself I should tell Ben about my journal.
‘But he might want to read what I’ve written.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘There’s nothing in there you wouldn’t want him to see, is there?’ I didn’t reply. ‘Is there? Chrissy?’
I looked away. We didn’t speak, and then she opened her bag.
‘Chrissy,’ she said. ‘I’m going to give you something. Ben gave it to me, when he decided he needed to leave you.’ She took out an envelope and handed it to me. It was creased, but still sealed. ‘He told me it explained everything.’ I stared at it. My name was written on the front in capitals. ‘He asked me to give it to you, if I ever thought you were well enough to read it.’ I looked up at her, feeling every emotion at once. Excitement, and fear. ‘I think it’s time you read it,’ she said.
I took it from her, and put it in my bag. Though I didn’t know why, I didn’t want to read it there, in front of Claire. Perhaps I was worried that she would be able to read its contents reflected in my face, and they would no longer be mine to own.
‘Thank you,’ I said. She did not smile.
‘Chrissy,’ she said. She looked down, at her hands. ‘There’s a reason Ben tells you I moved away.’ I felt my world begin to change, though in what way I was not yet certain. ‘I have to tell you something. About why we lost touch.’
I knew then. Without her saying anything, I knew. The missing piece of the puzzle, the reason Ben had gone, the reason my best friend had disappeared from my life and my husband had lied about why this had happened. I had been right. All along. I had been right.
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Oh God. It’s true. You’re seeing Ben. You’re fucking my husband.’
She looked up, horrified. ‘No!’ she said. ‘No!’
A certainty overtook me. I wanted to shout Liar! but I did not. I was about to ask her again what she wanted to tell me when she wiped something from her eye. A tear? I don’t know.
‘Not now,’ she whispered, then looked back to the hands in her lap. ‘But we were once.’
Of all the emotions I might have expected to feel, relief wasn’t one of them. But it was true: I felt relieved. Because she was being honest? Because now I had an explanation for everything, one that I could believe? I’m not sure. But the anger that I may have felt was not there; neither was the pain. Perhaps I was happy to feel a tiny spark of jealousy, concrete proof that I loved my husband. Perhaps I was just relieved that Ben had an infidelity to go with my own, that we were equal now. Quits.
‘Tell me,’ I whispered.
She did not look up. ‘We were always close,’ she said, softly. ‘The three of us, I mean. You. Me. Ben. But there had never been anything between me and him. You must believe that. Never.’ I told her to go on. ‘After your accident I tried to help out in whatever way I could. You can imagine how terribly difficult it was for Ben. Just on a practical level if nothing else. Having to look after Adam … I did what I could. We spent a lot of time together. But we didn’t sleep together. Not then. I swear, Chrissy.’
‘So when?’ I said. ‘When did it happen?’
‘Just before you were moved to Waring House,’ she said.
‘You were at your worst. Adam was being difficult. Things were tough.’ She looked away. ‘Ben was drinking. Not too much, but enough. He wasn’t coping. One night we got back from visiting you. I put Adam to bed. Ben was in the living room crying. “I can’t do it,” he kept saying. “I can’t keep doing this. I love her, but it’s killing me.”’
The wind gusted up the hill. Cold. Biting. I pulled my coat around my body.
‘I sat next to him. And …’
I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.
And then what? The fucking. On the sofa? The floor? I do not want to know.
‘And?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never wanted it to happen. But it did, and … I felt so bad. So bad. We both did.’
‘How long?’
‘What?’
‘How long did it go on for?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘I don’t know. Not long. A few weeks. We only … we only had sex a few times. It didn’t feel right. We both felt so bad, afterwards.’
‘What happened?’ I said. ‘Who ended it?’
She shrugged, then whispered, ‘Both of us. We talked. It couldn’t go on. I decided I owed it to you – and Ben – to stay away from then on. It was guilt, I suppose.’
An awful thought occurred to me.
‘Is that when he decided to leave me?’
‘Chrissy, no,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t think that. He felt awful, too. But he didn’t leave you because of me.’
No, I thought. Perhaps not directly. But you might have reminded him of just how much he was missing.
I looked at her. I still didn’t feel angry. I couldn’t. Perhaps if she had told me that they were still sleeping together I might have felt differently. What she had told me felt as though it belonged to another time. Prehistory. I found it hard to believe it had anything to do with me at all.
Claire looked up. ‘At first I was in touch with Adam, but then Ben must have told him what had happened. Adam said he didn’t want to see me again. He told me to stay away from him, and from you, too. But I couldn’t, Chrissy. I just couldn’t. Ben had given me the letter, asked me to keep an eye on you. So I carried on visiting. At Waring House. Every few weeks at first, then every couple of months. But it upset you. It upset you terribly. I know I was being selfish, but I couldn’t just leave you there. On your own. I carried on coming. Just to check you were all right.’
‘And you told Ben how I was?’
‘No. We weren’t i
n touch.’
‘Is that why you haven’t been visiting me lately? At home? Because you don’t want to see Ben?’
‘No. A few months ago I visited Waring House and they told me you’d left. You’d gone back to live with Ben. I knew Ben had moved. I asked them to give me your address but they wouldn’t. They said it would be a breach of confidentiality. They said they would give you my number and that if I wanted to write to you they would pass the letters on.’
‘So you wrote?’
‘I addressed the letter to Ben. I told him I was sorry, that I regretted what had happened. I begged him to let me see you.’
‘But he told you you couldn’t?’
‘No. You wrote back, Chrissy. You said that you were feeling much better. You said you were happy, with Ben.’ She looked away, across the park. ‘You said you didn’t want to see me. That your memory would sometimes come back and when it did you knew I had betrayed you.’ She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘You told me not to come anywhere near you, ever again. That it was better that you forgot me for ever, and that I forgot you.’
I felt myself go cold. I tried to imagine the anger I must have felt to write a letter like that, but at the same time realized maybe I hadn’t felt angry at all. To me, Claire would hardly have existed, any friendship between us forgotten.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I couldn’t imagine being able to remember her betrayal. Ben must have helped me write the letter.
She smiled. ‘No. Don’t apologize. You were right. But I didn’t stop hoping you’d change your mind. I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you the truth, to your face.’ I said nothing. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said then. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’
I took her hand. How could I be angry with her? Or with Ben? My condition has placed an impossible burden on us all.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. I forgive you.’
We left soon after. At the bottom of the slope she turned to face me.