Before I Go to Sleep Read Online Free PDF Page B

has a vertical stripe that clashes with the horizontal one on his pullover. I realize that he is only a few years older than I thought I was when I woke this morning. ‘Julie is your wife?’
    He smiles and shakes his head. ‘No, my girlfriend. Actually, my fiancée. We got engaged. I keep forgetting.’
    I smile back at him. These are the details I should remember, I suppose. The little things. Perhaps it is these trivialities I have been writing down in my book, these small hooks on which a whole life is hung.
    ‘Congratulations,’ I say, and he thanks me.
    I feel like I ought to ask more questions, ought to show more interest, but there is little point. Anything he tells me now I will have forgotten by the time I wake tomorrow. Today is all I have. ‘I ought to get back anyway,’ I say. ‘We’re going away this weekend. To the coast. I need to pack later …’
    He smiles. ‘Goodbye, Christine,’ he says. He turns to leave, but then looks back at me. ‘Your journal has my numbers written in it,’ he says. ‘At the front. Call me if you’d like to see me again. To carry on with your treatment, I mean. OK?’
    ‘If?’ I say. I remember my journal, the appointments that we had pencilled in between now and the end of the year. ‘I thought we had more sessions booked?’
    ‘You’ll understand when you read your book,’ he says. ‘It will all make sense. I promise.’
    ‘OK,’ I say. I realize I trust him, and I am glad. Glad that I don’t only have my husband to rely on.
    ‘It’s up to you, Christine. Call me, whenever you like.’
    ‘I will,’ I say, and then he waves and gets into his car and, checking over his shoulder, he pulls out into the road and is gone.
     
    I make a cup of coffee and carry it into the living room. From outside I hear the sound of whistling, punctured by heavy drilling and an occasional burst of staccato laughter, but even that recedes to a gentle buzz as I sit in the armchair. The sun shines weakly through the net curtains and I feel its dull warmth on my arms and thighs. I take the journal out of my bag.
    I feel nervous. I do not know what this book will contain. What shocks and surprises. What mysteries. I see the scrapbook on the coffee table. In that book is a version of my past, but one chosen by Ben. Does the book I hold contain another? I open it.
    The first page is unlined. I have written my name in black ink across its centre. Christine Lucas . It’s a wonder I haven’t written Private! beneath it. Or Keep out!
    Something has been added. Something unexpected, terrifying. More terrifying than anything else I have seen today. There, beneath my name, in blue ink and capital letters, are three words.
     
    DON’T TRUST BEN .
     
    There is nothing I can do but turn the page.
    I begin to read my history.

Part Two
     
    The Journal of Christine Lucas

Friday, 9 November
     
    My name is Christine Lucas. I am forty-seven. An amnesiac. I am sitting here, in this unfamiliar bed, writing my story dressed in a silk nightie that the man downstairs – who tells me that he is my husband, that he is called Ben – apparently bought me for my forty-sixth birthday. The room is silent and the only light comes from the lamp on the bedside table – a soft orange glow. I feel as if I am floating, suspended in a pool of light.
    I have the bedroom door closed. I am writing this in private. In secret. I can hear my husband in the living room – the soft sigh of the sofa as he leans forward or stands up, an occasional cough, politely stifled – but I will hide this book if he comes upstairs. I will put it under the bed, or the pillow. I don’t want him to see I am writing in it. I don’t want to have to tell him how I got it.
    I look at the clock on the bedside table. It is almost eleven; I must write quickly. I imagine that soon I will hear the TV silenced, a creak of a floorboard as Ben crosses the room, the flick of a light switch. Will he go into the kitchen and make a sandwich or