Before I Go to Sleep Read Online Free PDF Page A

are two main types of amnesia,’ he says. ‘Most commonly the affected person cannot recall past events, with more recent events being most severely affected. So if, for example, the sufferer has a motor accident, they may not remember the accident, or the days or weeks preceding it, but can remember everything up to, say, six months before the accident perfectly well.’
    I nod. ‘And the other?’
    ‘The other is rarer,’ he says. ‘Sometimes there is an inability to transfer memories from short-term storage into long-term storage. People with this condition live in the moment, able to recall only the immediate past, and then only for a small amount of time.’
    He stops talking, as if waiting for me to say something. It is as if we each have our lines, have rehearsed this conversation often.
    ‘I have both?’ I say. ‘A loss of the memories I had, plus an inability to form new ones?’
    He clears his throat. ‘Yes, unfortunately. It’s not common, but perfectly possible. What’s unusual in your case, however, is the pattern of your amnesia. Generally you have no consistent memory of anything that happened since your early childhood, but you seem to process new memories in a way I have never come across before. If I left this room now and returned in two minutes most people with anterograde amnesia would not remember having met me at all, certainly not today. But you seem to remember whole chunks of time – up to twenty-four hours – which you then lose. That’s not typical. To be honest, it doesn’t make any sense, considering the way we believe that memory works. It suggests you are able to transfer things from short-term to long-term storage perfectly well. I don’t understand why you can’t retain them.’
    I may be leading a shattered life, but at least it is shattered into pieces large enough for me to maintain a semblance of independence. I guess that means I am lucky.
    ‘Why?’ I say. ‘What has caused it?’
    He doesn’t say anything. The room goes quiet. The air feels still, and sticky. When he speaks his words seem to echo off the walls. ‘Many things can cause an impairment of memory,’ he says. ‘Either long-term or short-term. Disease, trauma, drug use. The exact nature of the impairment seems to differ, depending on the part of the brain that has been affected.’
    ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But what has caused mine?’
    He looks at me for a moment. ‘What has Ben told you?’
    I think back to our conversation in the bedroom. An accident , he had said. A bad accident .
    ‘He didn’t really tell me anything,’ I say. ‘Nothing specific, anyway. He just said I’d had an accident.’
    ‘Yes,’ he says, reaching for his bag that sits under the table. ‘Your amnesia was caused by trauma. That’s true, at least partly.’ He opens his bag and takes out a book. At first I wonder if he is going to consult his notes, but instead he passes it across the table to me. ‘Look. I want you to have this,’ he says. ‘It will explain everything. Better than I can. About what has caused your condition, especially. But other things as well.’
    I take it from him. It is brown, bound in leather, its pages held closed by an elastic band. I take that off and open it at random. The paper is heavy and faintly lined, with a red margin, and the pages filled with dense handwriting. ‘What is it?’ I say.
    ‘It’s a journal,’ he says. ‘One that you’ve been keeping over the past few weeks.’
    I am shocked. ‘A journal?’ I wonder why he has it.
    ‘Yes. A record of what we’ve been doing recently. I asked you to keep it. We’ve been doing a lot of work around trying to find out exactly how your memory behaves. I thought it might be helpful for you to keep a record of what we’ve been doing.’
    I look at the book in front of me. ‘So I’ve written this?’
    ‘Yes. I told you to write whatever you like in it. Many amnesiacs have tried similar things, but usually it’s not as helpful as