I looked there first. I pulled out the top drawer slowly, quietly. It was full of papers, in files labelled Home, Work, Finance. I flicked past the binders.

Behind them was a plastic bottle of pills, though I couldn’t make out the name in the semi-dark. The second drawer was full of stationery – boxes, pads of

paper, pens, Tipp-Ex – and I closed it gently before crouching down to open the bottom drawer.

A blanket, or a towel; it was difficult to tell in the dim light. I raised one corner, felt beneath, touched cold metal. I pulled it out. Underneath was the

metal box, larger than I had imagined it, so big it almost filled the drawer. I manoeuvred my hands around it and realized it was heavier than I expected,

too, and I almost dropped it as I lifted it out and set it on the floor.

The box sat in front of me. For a moment I didn’t know what I wanted to do, whether I even wanted to open it. What new shocks might it contain?

Like memory itself, it might hold truths that I couldn’t even begin to conceive of. Unimagined dreams and unexpected horrors. I was afraid. But, I realized,

these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them I am nothing. Nothing but an animal.

I breathed deeply, closing my eyes as I did so, and began to lift the lid.

It moved a little way but no further. I tried it again, thinking it was jammed, and then once more, before I realized. It was locked. Ben had locked it.

I tried to remain calm, but an anger came then, unbidden. Who was he to have locked this box of memories? To keep me from what was mine?

The key would be near, I was sure of it. I looked in the drawer. I opened out the towel and shook it loose. I stood up, tipped the pens and pencils out

of the mug on the desk, and looked in there. Nothing.

Desperate, I searched the other drawers as well as I could in the half-light. I could find no key, and realized it might be anywhere. Anywhere at all. I

sank to my knees.

A sound, then. A creak, so quiet I thought it might be my own body. But then another noise. Breathing. Or a sigh.

A voice. Ben’s. ‘Christine?’ it said, and then, louder, ‘Christine!’

What to do? I was sitting there, in his office, with the metal box that Ben thinks I have no memory of on the floor in front of me. I began to panic. A

door opened, the landing light flicked on, illuminating the crack around the door. He was coming.

I moved quickly. I put the box back and, sacrificing silence for speed, slammed the drawer closed.

‘Christine?’ he said again. Footsteps on the landing. ‘Christine, love? It’s me. Ben.’ I shoved the pens and pencils back in the mug on the desk and

then sank to the floor. The door began to open.

I didn’t know what I was about to do until I did it. I reacted instinctively, from a level lower than gut.

‘Help me!’ I said as he appeared at the open door. He was silhouetted against the light on the landing and for a moment I really did feel the terror

that I was affecting. ‘Please! Help me!’

He switched on the light and came towards me. ‘Christine! What’s wrong?’ he said. He began to crouch down.

I skirted back, away from him, until I was pressed against the wall under the window. ‘Who are you?’ I said. I found I had begun to cry, to shake

hysterically. I clawed at the wall behind me, clutched at the curtain that hung above me as if trying to pull myself upright. Ben stayed where he was, on the

other side of the room. He held out his hand to me, as if I was dangerous, a wild animal.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Your husband.’

‘My what?’ I said, and then, ‘What’s happening to me?’

‘You have amnesia,’ he said. ‘We’ve been married for years.’ And then, as he made me the cup of cocoa that still sits in front of me, I let him tell

me, from scratch, what I already knew.

Sunday, 18 November

That happened in the early hours of Saturday morning. Today is Sunday. Midday, or thereabouts. A whole day has gone, unrecorded. Twenty-four hours,

lost. Twenty-four hours spent believing everything Ben told me. Believing that I have never written a novel, never had a son. Believing it was an accident

that robbed me of my past.

Maybe, unlike today, Dr Nash didn’t call, and I didn’t find this journal. Or perhaps he did but I chose not to read it. I feel a chill. What would happen if

one day he decides never to call again? I would never find it, never read it, never even know it existed. I would not know my past.

It would be unthinkable. I know that now. My husband is telling me one version of how I came to have no memory, my feelings another. I wonder if I

have ever asked Dr Nash what happened. Even if I have, can I believe what he says? The only truth I have is what is written in this journal.

Written by me. I must remember that. Written by me.

I think back to this morning. I remember the sun slammed through the curtains, waking me suddenly. My eyes flicked open on an unfamiliar scene and I

was confused. Yet, though particular events didn’t come to me, I had the sense of looking back on a wealth of history, not just a few short years. And I

knew, however dimly, that that history contained a child of my own. In that fraction of a second before I was fully conscious, I knew that I was a mother. That

I had borne a child, that mine was no longer the only body that I had a duty to nurture and protect.

I turned over, aware of another body in the bed, an arm draped over my waist. I didn’t feel alarmed, but secure. Happy. I woke more fully and the

images and feelings began to coalesce into truth and memory. First I saw my little boy, heard myself calling his name – Adam – and saw him running

towards me. And then I remembered my husband. His name. I felt deeply in love. I smiled.

The feeling of peace didn’t last. I looked over at the man next to me and his face was not the one I expected to see. A moment later I realized that I

didn’t recognize the room in which I had slept, couldn’t remember getting there. And then, finally, I understood that I could remember nothing clearly. Those

brief, disconnected snatches had not been representative of my memories, but their sum total.

Ben explained it to me, of course. Or parts of it at least. And this journal explained the rest, once Dr Nash phoned me and I found it. I didn’t have

time to read it all – I had called down, feigning a headache, and then listened for the slightest movement downstairs, worried that Ben might come up at

any moment with an aspirin and a glass of water. But I read enough. The journal told me who I am, how I came to be here, what I have, and what I have

lost. It told me that all is not lost. That my memories are coming back, however slowly. Dr Nash told me so, on the day that I watched him read my journal.

You’re remembering lots of things, Christine, he’d said. There’s no reason that won’t continue. And the journal told me that the hit-and-run was a lie, that

somewhere, hidden deep, I can remember what happened to me on the night I lost my memory. That it doesn’t involve a car and icy roads, but

champagne and flowers and a knock on the door of a hotel room.

And now I have a name. The name of the person I had expected to see when I opened my eyes this morning was not Ben.

Ed. I woke expecting to be lying next to someone called Ed.

At the time I didn’t know who he was, this Ed. I thought perhaps he was nobody, it was a name I invented, plucked from nowhere. Or perhaps he

was an old lover, a one-night stand that I have not quite forgotten. But now I have read this journal. I have learned that I was assaulted in a hotel room. And

so I know who this Ed is.

He is the man who was waiting on the other side of the door that night. The man who attacked me. The man who stole my life.

This evening I tested my husband. I didn’t want to, didn’t even plan to, but I had spent the whole day worrying. Why had he lied to me? Why? And does he

lie to me every day? Is there only one version of the past that he tells me, or several? I need to trust him, I thought. I have no one else.

We were eating lamb; a cheap joint, fatty and overcooked. I was pushing the same forkful around my plate, dipping it in gravy, bringing it to my

mouth, putting it down again.

‘How did I get to be like this?’ I asked. I had tried to summon up the vision of the hotel room, but it had remained elusive, just out of reach. In a way I

was glad.

Ben looked up from his own plate, his eyes wide with surprise. ‘Christine,’ he said. ‘Darling. I don’t—’

‘Please,’ I interrupted him. ‘I need to know.’

He put his knife and fork down. ‘Very well,’ he said.

‘I need you to tell me everything,’ I said. ‘Everything.’

He looked at me, his eyes narrow. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I hesitated, but then I decided to say it. ‘Some people might think it would be better not to tell me all the details. Especially if they were

upsetting. But I don’t think that. I think you should tell me everything, so that I can decide for myself what to feel. Do you understand?’

‘Chris,’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’