- •I close my eyes. Even as my mind tries to reject this information I know, somewhere, that it is true. I hear myself start to cry again, and as I do so this
- •I follow him down. He shows me a living room – a brown sofa and matching chairs, a flat screen bolted to the wall which he tells me is a television –
- •I say yes, and we walk into the park. A path circles its edge, and there is a children’s playground nearby, next to a hut from which I see people
- •I smile, and look down, at my hands holding the hot drink, at the gold wedding band, at the short nails, at my legs, crossed politely. I don’t recognize
- •If that was what it took. I said I would explain to you why I wanted you to come and see me, and what I thought I could offer you.’
- •I don’t say anything. I take a sip of my drink and look around the café. It is almost empty. There are voices from a small kitchen at the back, the
- •I nod. ‘And the other?’
- •It difficult, but watching it now all I could see was my wrinkled fingers and the glint of the wedding ring on my left hand. When I had finished he seemed
- •I said yes. I wondered where he had got these photos, how much he knew of my life that I didn’t know myself.
- •In grease, an egg and some bread had been fried and sat on the side. As I ate he explained how I survive my life.
- •I look at my watch. If I write quickly I should have time.
- •I said nothing. The city sprawled before us under the low cloud. It seemed peaceful. And smaller than I imagined; I could see all the way across it to
- •I laughed. ‘Really?’ I couldn’t imagine myself as intimidating.
- •I tried to picture the scene, to remember the two of us, young, in a library, surrounded by soggy papers, laughing. I could not, and felt the hot stab of
- •I laugh. ‘ok. Whatever.’ I wander off, into the kitchen.
- •I thanked her and, for no reason I knew, and as if it explained what I had just done, told her my father was dead. ‘Fuck …’ she said, and, in what
- •I remembered all this. It exhausted me, this effort of will to search the void of my memory, trying to find any tiny detail that might trigger a
- •I nodded. Hearing him say it cemented it somehow, made it seem more real. It was almost as if the fact he was a doctor gave his words an
- •I don’t know what I expected him to do, or say. I suppose part of me wanted him to tell me how wrong I am, to try and convince me that my life is
- •I looked at the journals, stacked in haphazard piles on the shelves around the office. Is this how he intended to further his career, or make it more
- •I said goodbye, then came upstairs to write this.
- •In front of him. I felt awkward. Unsure how much to say.
- •It had felt true, though. I told myself that. Plus I could touch-type. Or I had written that I could …
- •I pull on my jeans. ‘No,’ I say, reaching for a t-shirt. ‘Get up. Please?’
- •I swallowed hard. What would they show me? Who? How bad could it be?
- •In my hand.
- •I nodded. An old friend. I knew that, of course – it was her name I so wanted.
- •I felt my mind begin to close down, to empty itself, to retreat into nothingness. ‘I never even knew him,’ I said.
- •I don’t know why, but as I read it my world seemed to collapse. Grief exploded in my chest like a grenade. I had been feeling calm – not happy, not
- •It doesn’t seem possible. My best friend, I had written, after remembering her on Parliament Hill, and I had felt the same sensation of closeness
- •I felt a sudden flush of love. Though I have barely remembered any of our time, our life, together – and tomorrow even that will have gone – I sensed
- •I looked at the boy. He had moved, was trying once again to push himself round, his legs barely reaching the ground from where he stood on the
- •I looked at him. He had said it with no sense of pain, or disappointment. For him it was a simple statement of fact. For a moment the roundabout
- •I tried to keep smiling, my voice cheery. ‘I bet she’s joking, though.’
- •It. ‘Thank God!’
- •I did this a memory was floating through me. I saw myself rolling on stockings, snapping home the fasteners on a suspender belt, hooking up a bra, but it
- •I heard his key in the lock, the door pushed open, feet being wiped on the mat. A whistle? Or was that the sound of my breathing, hard and heavy?
- •I stood up then, and went over to him. ‘Kiss me,’ I said, and, though I hadn’t exactly planned it, it felt like the right thing to do, and so I put my arms
- •I realized I do not have ambition. I cannot. All I want is to feel normal. To live like everybody else, with experience building on experience, each day
- •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.
- •I looked away. My eyes rested on the photograph of the two of us that sat on the sideboard. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I know I wasn’t always like this.
- •I didn’t have to go. Dr Nash didn’t force me to agree to the trip. But, though I can’t remember doing so – can’t remember much at all, in fact – I must have
- •I thought of the picture I’d seen. The image was burned into me. Who did that to me? Why? I remembered the memory I’d had of the hotel room. It
- •I read my journal. They feel real. I remember Claire. Adam. My mother. But they’re like threads I can’t keep hold of. Balloons that float into the sky before I
- •It is there that memory fails me again. Though I remember looking at his face, I cannot remember what I saw. It is featureless, a blank. As if unable
- •I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap.
- •I realized it could not have been him. He would barely have been born.
- •I wrote that an hour ago, but now I am not so sure. I think about Adam. I have read about the photographs in the metal box, yet still there are no pictures of
- •I found myself closing my eyes as he spoke. Images floated through me – images of Adam, and me, and Ben – but I couldn’t say whether they were
- •It was there. At the bottom of the box, inside an envelope. A photocopy of a news article, folded, its edges crisp. I knew what it was, almost before I
- •I began to tidy the papers away. I should have trusted him, I thought. All along. I should have believed that he was keeping things from me only
- •I must have sounded upset, because she said, ‘Chrissy darling, whatever’s wrong?’
- •I felt relieved. I had had the idea that our talk might limp to a halt, end with a polite goodbye and a vague promise to speak again in the future, and
- •I wondered what she meant, but didn’t ask her. It can wait, I thought. There were more important things I needed to know.
- •I told her it was. It would have to be. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. She told me which buses I would need and I wrote the details on a slip of paper. Then, after
- •I had been looking for it.
- •I stood up and turned to face her. I didn’t know if I would have preferred to turn and run myself, so vast was the chasm between us, but then she held
- •I said nothing. Instead I tried to imagine what it must have been like, to have seen my child every day, back when the phrase every day had some
- •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.
- •I interrupted. ‘I was seeing someone.’
- •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
- •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
- •I felt a surge of love for my husband. Real. Unforced. Despite everything, he had taken me in. Looked after me.
- •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
- •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
- •I think that’s when things started to get difficult. You loved Adam so much. It shone out of your eyes when we arrived, and he would run
- •I have been wrong. I have made a mistake. Again and again and again I have made it; who knows how many times? My husband is my protector,
- •I go downstairs and make myself a drink. Boiling water, a teabag. Don’t let it stew too long, and don’t compress the bag with the back of the spoon
- •I want to trust him now. No more lies.
- •I look at him. I can see that he doesn’t want to tell me. The man who wrote the letter, the man who believed in me and cared for me, and who, in the
- •I close the book.
- •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
- •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
- •I tried to remember. Had I written about our first conversation?
- •I felt his hands grip tight, his fingers and nails digging into my skin even through the cotton of my blouse.
- •Images entered my head, of Adam as he might be now, fragments of scenes I may have missed, but none would hold. Each image
- •I fell silent. Nothing made sense. Yet she was right. I have only been keeping my journal for a couple of weeks. Before that, anything
- •I focus on the picture. Images come to me; the two of us, a sunny afternoon. We’d hired a boat somewhere. I don’t know where.
- •Image came to me. A man with narrow, dark-rimmed glasses and black hair. Ben. I say his name again, as if to lock the image in my mind. ‘Ben.’
- •I shift further back, sliding on my haunches. I hit something solid and feel the warm, sticky radiator behind me. I realize I am under the window at the
- •It for a while, at least since I first told him about it a week ago. ‘How long have you been reading my journal?’
- •I wanted to kiss you, there and then, but I couldn’t, and because I didn’t want you to think that I’d run across the road just to help you I went into the café too,
- •I shake my head. I have decided to let him speak. I want to find out everything he has to say.
- •I am incredulous. ‘You want me to remember?’
- •I still don’t know what he wants from me.
- •I cough, a dry, heaving retch, swallowed by the sock balled in my throat. I am beginning to choke. I think of my son. I will never see him now, though
- •I am lying down. I have been asleep, but not for long. I can remember who I am, where I have been. I can hear noise, the roar of traffic, a siren that is
- •I don’t want to think about where I’d be.
- •I think of this man discovering my journal, reading it every day. Why didn’t he destroy it?
- •I lay back. I felt tired. Exhausted. I wanted only to sleep, but was frightened to. Frightened of what I might forget.
- •I shook my head. ‘He burned it. That’s what caused the fire.’
- •I look at my sleeping husband, silhouetted in the dim room. I remember us meeting, that night of the party, the night I watched the fireworks with
I have been wrong. I have made a mistake. Again and again and again I have made it; who knows how many times? My husband is my protector,
yes, but also my lover. And now I realize that I love him. I have always loved him, and if I have to learn to love him again every day, then so be it. That is
what I will do.
Ben will be home soon – already I can feel him approach – and when he arrives back I will tell him everything. I will tell him that I have met Claire – and Dr
Nash, and even Dr Paxton – and that I have read his letter. I will tell him that I understand why he did what he did back then, why he left me, and that I
forgive him. I will tell him that I know about the attack, but that I no longer need to know what happened, no longer care who did this to me.
And I will tell him that I know about Adam. I know what happened to him, and though the thought of facing it every day makes me cold with terror,
that is what I must do. The memory of our son must be allowed to exist in this house, and in my heart, too, no matter how much pain that causes.
And I will tell him about this journal, that finally I am able to give myself a narrative, a life, and I will show it to him, if he asks to see it. And then I can
continue to use it, to tell my story, my autobiography. To create myself from nothing.
‘No more secrets,’ I will say to my husband. ‘None. I love you, Ben, and I always will. We have wronged each other. But please forgive me. I am
sorry that I left you all those years ago to be with somebody else, and I am sorry that we can never know who it was I went to see in that hotel room, or what
I found there. But please know that I am determined to make this up to you now.’
And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.
I have called Dr Nash. ‘I want to see you one more time,’ I said. ‘I want you to read my journal.’ I think he was surprised, but he agreed.
‘When?’ he said.
‘Next week,’ I said. ‘Come for it next week.’
He said he would collect it on Tuesday.
Part Three
Today
I turn the page, but there is no more. The story ends there. I have been reading for hours.
I am shaking, can barely breathe. I feel that I have not only lived an entire life in the last few hours, but I have changed. I am not the same person who
met Dr Nash this morning, who sat down to read the journal. I have a past now. A sense of myself. I know what I have, and what I have lost. I realize I am
crying.
I close the journal. I force myself to calm down, and the present begins to reassert itself. The darkening room in which I sit. The drilling I can still hear
in the street outside. The empty coffee cup at my feet.
I look at the clock next to me and there is a jolt of shock. Only now do I realize that it is the same clock as the one in the journal that I have been
reading, that I am in the same living room, am the same person. Only now do I fully understand that the story I have been reading is mine.
I take my journal and mug into the kitchen. There, on the wall, is the same wipe-clean board I had seen this morning, the same list of suggestions in
neat capitals, the same note that I had added myself: Pack bag for tonight?
I look at it. Something about it troubles me, but I can’t work out why.
I think of Ben. How difficult life must have been for him. Never knowing with whom he would wake. Never being certain how much I would remember,
how much love I would be able to give him.
But now? Now I understand. Now I know enough for us to both live again. I wonder if I ever had the conversation with him that I had been planning. I
must have, so certain was I that it was the right thing to do, but I have not written about it. I have written nothing for a week, in fact. Perhaps I gave my
journal to Dr Nash before I had the opportunity. Perhaps I felt there was no need to write in my book, now that I had shared it with Ben.
I turn back to the front of the journal. There it is, in the same blue ink. Those three words, scratched on to the page beneath my name. Don’t trust
Ben.
I take a pen and cross them out. Back in the living room I see the scrapbook on the table. Still there are no photographs of Adam. Still he didn’t
mention him to me this morning. Still he hasn’t shown me what is in the metal box.
I think of my novel – For the Morning Birds – and then look at the journal I am holding. A thought comes, unbidden. What if I made it all up?
I stand up. I need evidence. I need a link between what I have read and what I am living, a sign that the past I have been reading about is not one I
have invented.
I put the journal in my bag and go out of the living room. The coat stand is there, at the bottom of the stairs, next to a pair of slippers. If I go upstairs
will I find the office, the filing cabinet? Will I find the grey metal box in the bottom drawer, hidden underneath the towel? Will the key be in the bottom
drawer by the bed?
And, if it is, will I find my son?
I have to know. I take the stairs two at a time.
*
The office is smaller than I imagined and even tidier than I expected, but the cabinet is there, gun-metal grey.
In the bottom drawer is a towel, and beneath it a box. I grip it, preparing to lift it out. I feel stupid, convinced it will be either locked or empty.
It is neither. In it I find my novel. Not the copy Dr Nash had given to me – there was no coffee ring on the front and the pages of this look new. It must
be one Ben has been keeping all along. Waiting for the day when I know enough to own it again. I wonder where my copy is, the one that Dr Nash gave to
me.
I take the novel out and underneath it is a single photograph. Me and Ben, smiling at the camera, though we both look sad. It looks recent, my face
is the one I recognize from the mirror and Ben looks as he did when he left this morning. There is a house in the background, a gravel driveway, pots of
bright-red geraniums. On the back someone has written Waring House. It must have been taken on the day he collected me, to bring me back here.
That’s it, though. There are no other photographs. None of Adam. Not even the ones I have found here before and described in my journal.
There is an explanation, I tell myself. There has to be. I look through the papers that are piled on the desk: magazines, catalogues advertising
computer software, a school timetable with some sessions highlighted in yellow. There is a sealed envelope – which, on an impulse, I take – but there are
no photographs of Adam.