第 31 页

“Ben?” I say. “You know where I’ve been today.”

He looks at me. “Yes,” he says. “I know.”

“You know about Dr. Nash?”

He turns away from me. “Yes,” he says. “You told me.” I can see him, reflected in the mirrors arranged around the dresser. Three versions of the man I married. The man I love. “Everything,” he says. “You told me about it all. I know everything.”

“You don’t mind? About me seeing him?”

He does not look around. “I wish you’d told me. But no. No, I don’t mind.”

“And my journal? You know about my journal?”

“Yes,” he says. “You told me. You said it helped.”

A thought comes. “Have you read it?”

“No,” he says. “You said it was private. I would never look through your private things.”

“But you know about Adam? You know that I know about Adam?”

I see him flinch, as if my words have been hurled at him with violence. I am surprised. I was expecting him to be happy. Happy that he would no longer have to tell me about his death, over and over again.

He looks at me.

“Yes,” he says.

“There aren’t any pictures,” I say. He asks what I mean. “There are photos of me and you, but still none of him.”

He stands and comes over to where I am sitting, then sits on the bed beside me. He takes my hand. I wish he would stop treating me as if I am fragile, brittle. As if the truth would break me.

“I wanted to surprise you,” he says. He reaches under the bed and retrieves a photo album. “I’ve put them in here.”

He hands me the album. It is heavy, dark, bound in something meant to resemble black leather but does not. I open the cover, and inside it is a pile of photographs.

“I wanted to put them in properly,” he says. “To give to you as a present tonight, but I didn’t have time. I’m sorry.”

I look through the photographs. They are not in any order. There are photographs of Adam as a baby, a young boy. They must be the ones from the metal box. One stands out. In it, he is a young man, sitting next to a woman. “His girlfriend?” I say.

“One of them,” says Ben. “The one he was with the longest.”

She is pretty, blond, her hair cut short. She reminds me of Claire. In the photograph, Adam is looking directly at the camera, laughing, and she is looking half at him, her face a mixture of joy and disapproval. They have a conspiratorial air, as though they have shared a joke with whoever is behind the lens. They are happy. The thought pleases me. “What was her name?”

“Helen. She’s called Helen.”

I wince as I realize I had thought of her in the past tense, imagined that she had died, too. A thought stirs; what if she had died instead, but I force it down before it forms and finds a shape.

“Were they still together when he died?”

“Yes,” he says. “They were thinking of getting engaged.”

She looks so young, so hungry, her eyes full of possibility, of what is in store for her. She does not yet know the impossible amount of pain she still has to face.

“I’d like to meet her,” I say. Ben takes the picture from me. He sighs.

“We’re not in touch,” he says.

“Why?” I say. I had it planned in my head; we would be a support to each other. We would share something, an understanding, a love that pierced all others, if not for each other then at least for the thing we had lost.

“There were arguments,” he says. “Difficulties.”

I look at him. I can see that he does not want to tell me. The man who wrote the letter, the man who believed in me and cared for me, and who, in the end, loved me enough both to leave me and then to come back for me, seems to have vanished.

“Ben?”

“There were arguments,” he says.

“Before Adam died, or after?”

“Both.”

The illusion of support vanishes, replaced by a sick feeling. What if Adam and I had fought, too? Surely he would have sided with his girlfriend, over his mother?

“Were Adam and I close?” I say.

“Oh yes,” says Ben. “Until you had to go to the hospital. Until you lost your memory. Even then you were close, of course. As close as you could be.”

His words hit me like a punch. I realize that Adam was a toddler when he lost his mother to amnesia. Of course I had never known my son’s fiancée; every day I saw him would have been like the first.

I close the book.

“Can we bring it with us?” I say. “I’d like to look at it some more later.”

. . .

WE HAVE CUPS of tea that Ben made in the kitchen as I finished packing for the journey, and then we get into the car. I check that I have my handbag, my journal still within it. Ben has added a few things to the bag I packed for him, and he has brought another bag, too—the leather satchel that he left with this morning—as well as two pairs of walking boots from the back of the closet. I had stood by the door as he loaded these things into the trunk and then waited while he checked the doors were closed, the windows locked. Now, I ask him how long the journey might take.

He shrugs. “Depends on the traffic,” he says. “Not too long, once we’re out of London.”

A refusal to provide an answer, disguised as an answer itself. I wonder if this is what he is always like. I wonder if years of telling me the same thing have worn him down, bored him to the point where he can no longer bring himself to tell me anything.

He is a careful driver, that much I can see. He proceeds slowly, checking his mirror frequently, slowing down at the merest hint of an approaching hazard.

I wonder if Adam drove. I suppose he must have done so to be in the army, but did he ever drive when he was on leave? Did he pick me up, his invalid mother, and take me on trips, to places he thought I might like? Or did he decide there was no point, that whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof?

We are on the highway, heading out of the city. It has begun to rain; huge droplets smack into the windshield, hold their shape for a moment before beginning the swift slide down the glass. In the distance the lights of the city bathe the concrete and glass in a soft orange glow. It is beautiful and terrible, but I am struggling inside. I want so much to think of my son as something other than abstract, but without a concrete memory of him, I cannot. I keep coming back to the single truth: I cannot remember him, and so he might as well have never existed.

I close my eyes. I think back to what I read about our son this afternoon and an image explodes in front of me—Adam as a toddler pushing the blue tricycle along a path. But even as I marvel at it, I know it is not real. I know I am not remembering the thing that happened, I am remembering the image I formed in my mind this afternoon as I read about the thing, and even that was a recollection of an earlier memory. Memories of memories, most people’s going back through years, through decades, but, for me, just a few hours.

Failing to remember my son, I do the next best thing, the only thing to quiet my sparking mind. I think of nothing. Nothing at all.

The smell of gasoline, thick and sweet. There is a pain in my neck. I open my eyes. Up close, I see the wet windshield, misted with my breath, and beyond it there are distant lights, blurred, out of focus. I realize that I have been dozing. I am leaning against the glass, my head twisted awkwardly. The car is silent, the engine off. I look over my shoulder.

Ben is there, sitting next to me. He is awake, looking ahead, out of the window. He does not move, does not even seem to have noticed that I have woken up, but instead continues to stare, his expression blank, unreadable in the dark. I turn to see what he is looking at.

Beyond the rain-spattered windshield is the hood of the car, and beyond that a low wooden fence, dimly illuminated in the glow from the streetlamps behind us. Beyond the fence, I see nothing, a blackness, huge and mysterious, in the middle of which hangs the moon, full and low.

“I love the sea,” he says, without looking at me, and I realize we are parked on a cliff top, have made it as far as the coast.

“Don’t you?” He turns to me. His eyes seem impossibly sad. “You do love the sea, don’t you, Chris?” he says.

“I do,” I say. “Yes.” He is speaking as if he does not know, as if we have never been to the coast before, as if we have never been on holiday together. Fear begins to burn within me, but I resist it. I try to stay here, in the present, with my husband. I try to remember all that I learned from my journal this afternoon. “You know that, darling.”

He sighs. “I know. You always used to, but I just don’t know anymore. You change. You’ve changed, over the years. Ever since what happened. Sometimes I don’t know who you are. I wake up each day and I don’t know how you’re going to be.”

I am silent. I can think of nothing to say. We both know how senseless it would be for me to try to defend myself, to tell him that he is wrong. We both know that I am the last person who knows how much I change from day to day.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He looks at me. “Oh. It’s all right. You don’t need to apologize. I know it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. I’m being unfair, I suppose. Thinking of myself.”

He looks back out to sea. There is a single light in the distance. A boat, on the waves. Light in a sea of treacly blackness. Ben speaks. “We’ll be all right, won’t we, Chris?”

“Of course,” I say. “Of course we will. This is a new beginning for us. I have my journal now, and Dr. Nash will help me. I’m getting better, Ben. I know I am. I think I’m going to start writing again. There’s no reason not to. I should be fine. And anyway, I’m in touch with Claire now, and she can help me.” An idea comes to me. “We can all get together, don’t you think? Just like old times? Just like at university? The three of us. And her husband, I suppose—I think she said she had a husband. We can all meet up and spend time together. It’ll be fine.” My mind fixes on the lies I have read, on all the ways I have not been able to trust him, but I force it away. I remind myself that all that has been resolved. It is my turn to be strong now. To be positive. “As long as we promise to always be honest with each other,” I say. “Then everything is going to be okay.”

He turns back to face me. “You do love me, don’t you?”

“Of course. Of course I do.”

“And you forgive me? For leaving you? I didn’t want to. I had no choice. I’m sorry.”

I take his hand. It feels both warm and cold at the same time, slightly damp. I try to hold it between my hands, but he neither assists nor resists my action. Instead, his hand rests, lifeless, on his knee. I squeeze it, and only then does he seem to notice that I am holding him.

“Ben. I understand. I forgive you.” I look into his eyes. They, too, seem dull and lifeless, as if they have seen so much horror already that they cannot cope with any more.

“I love you, Ben,” I say.

His voice drops to a whisper. “Kiss me.”

I do as he asks, and then, when I have drawn back, he whispers, “Again. Kiss me again.”

I kiss him a second time. But, even though he asks me to, I cannot kiss him a third. Instead we gaze out over the sea, at the moonlight on the water, at the drops of rain on the windshield reflecting back the yellow glow from the headlights of passing cars. Just the two of us, holding hands. Together.

We sit there for what feels like hours. Ben is beside me, staring out to sea. He scans the water, as if looking for something, some answer in the dark, and he does not speak. I wonder why he has brought us here, what he is hoping to find.

“Is it really our anniversary?” I say. There is no answer. He does not appear to have heard me, and so I say it again.

“Yes,” he replies softly.

“Our wedding anniversary?”

“No,” he says. “It’s the anniversary of the night we met.”

I want to ask him whether we are supposed to be celebrating, and to tell him that it doesn’t feel like a celebration, but it seems cruel.

The busy road behind us has quieted, the moon is rising high in the sky. I begin to worry that we will stay out all night, looking at the sea while the rain falls around us. I affect a yawn.

“I’m sleepy,” I say. “Can we go to our hotel?”

He looks at his watch. “Yes,” he says. “Of course. Sorry. Yes.” He starts the car. “We’ll go there right now.”

I am relieved. I am both craving sleep and dreading it.

The coast road dips and rises as we skirt the edges of a village. The lights of another, larger town begin to draw nearer, tightening into focus through the damp glass. The road becomes busier, a marina appears, with its moored boats and shops and nightclubs, and then we are in the town itself. On our right, every building seems to be a hotel, advertising vacancies on white signs that blow in the wind. The streets are busy; it is not as late as I had thought, or else this is the kind of town that is alive night and day.

I look out to sea. A pier juts into the water, flooded with light and with an amusement park at its end. I can see a domed pavilion, a roller coaster. I can almost hear the whoops and cries of the riders as they are spun above the pitch-black sea.

An anxiety I cannot name begins to form in my chest.

“Where are we?” I say. There are words over the entrance to the pier, picked out in bright white lights, but I cannot make them out through the rain-washed windshield.

“We’re here,” says Ben, as we turn up a side street and stop outside a terraced house. There is lettering on the canopy over the door. RIALTO GUEST HOUSE, it says.

There are steps up to the front door, an ornate fence separating the building from the road. Beside the door is a small, cracked pot that would once have held a shrub but is now empty. I am gripped with an intense fear.

“Have we been here before?” I say. He shakes his head. “You’re sure? It looks familiar.”

“I’m certain,” he says. “We might have stayed somewhere near here, once. You’re probably remembering that.”

I try to relax. We get out of the car. There is a bar next to the guesthouse, and through its large windows I can see throngs of drinkers and a dance floor, pulsing at the back. Music thuds, muffled by the glass. “We’ll check in, and then I’ll come back for the luggage. Okay?”

I pull my coat tight around me. The wind is cold now, and the rain heavy. I rush up the steps and open the front door. There is a sign taped to the glass. NO VACANCIES. I go through and into the lobby.

“You’ve booked?” I say, when Ben joins me. We are standing in a hallway. Farther down, a door is ajar, and from behind it comes the sound of a television, its volume turned up, competing with the music next door. There is no reception desk, but instead a bell sits on a small table, a sign next to it inviting us to ring it to attract attention.

“Yes, of course,” says Ben. “Don’t worry.” He rings the bell.

For a moment, nothing happens, and then a young man comes from a room somewhere at the back of the house. He is tall and awkward, and I notice that, despite it being far too big for his frame, his shirt is untucked. He greets us as though he was expecting us, though not warmly, and I wait while he and Ben complete the formalities.