“You’re awake.” I wonder if he intends to say anything else, whether he is capable of saying anything else. “This isn’t what I wanted. I thought we would come here and it might help you to remember. Remember how things used to be between us. And then we could talk, and I could explain what happened here, all those years ago. I never meant for it to happen, Chris. I just get so mad, sometimes. I can’t help it. I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, ever. I ruined everything.”
He looks down, into his lap. There is so much more I used to want to know, yet I am exhausted, and it is too late. I feel as though I could close my eyes and will myself into oblivion, erasing everything.
Yet I do not want to sleep tonight. And if I must sleep, then I do not want to wake up tomorrow.
“It was when you told me you were having a baby.” He does not lift his head. Instead, he speaks softly into the folds of his clothes, and I have to strain to hear what he is saying. “I never thought I’d have a child. Never. They all said—” he hesitates, as if changing his mind, deciding that some things are better not shared. “You said it wasn’t mine. But I knew it was. And I couldn’t cope with the thought that you were still going to leave me, going to take my baby away from me, that I might never see him. I couldn’t cope, Chris.”
I still don’t know what he wants from me.
“You think I’m not sorry? For what I did? Every day. I see you so bewildered and lost and unhappy. Sometimes I lie there, in bed. I hear you wake up. And you look at me, and I know you don’t know who I am, and I can feel the disappointment and shame. It comes off you in waves. That hurts. Knowing that you’d never sleep with me now, if you had the choice. And then you get out of bed and go to the bathroom, and I know that in a few minutes you will come back and you’ll be so confused and so unhappy and in so much pain.”
He pauses. “And now I know even that will be over soon. I’ve read your journal. I know your doctor will have worked it out by now. Or he will do soon. Claire, too. I know they’ll come for me.” He looks up. “And they’ll try to take you away from me. But Ben doesn’t want you. I do. I want to look after you. Please, Chris. Please remember how much you loved me. Then you can tell them that you want to be with me.” He points to the last few pages of my journal, scattered on the floor. “You can tell them that you forgive me. For this. And then we can be together.”
I shake my head. I cannot believe he wants me to remember. He wants me to know what he has done.
He smiles. “You know, sometimes I think it might have been kinder if you’d died that night. Kinder for both of us.” He looks out of the window. “I would join you, Chris. If that’s what you wanted.” He looks down again. “It would be easy enough. You could go first. And I promise you I would follow. You do trust me, don’t you?”
He looks at me expectantly. “Would you like that?” he says. “It would be painless.”
I shake my head, try to speak, fail. My eyes are burning, and I can hardly breathe.
“No?” He looks disappointed. “No. I suppose any life is better than none. Very well. You’re probably right.” I begin to cry. He shakes his head. “Chris. This will all be fine. You see? This book is the problem.” He holds up my journal. “We were happy, before you started writing this. Or as happy as we could be, anyway. And that was happy enough, wasn’t it? We should just get rid of this, and then maybe you could tell them you were confused, and we could go back to how it was before. For a little while, at least.”
He stands up and slides the metal bin from beneath the dresser, taking out the empty liner and discarding it. “It’ll be easy, then,” he says. He puts the bin on the floor between his legs. “Easy.” He drops my journal into the bin, and gathers the last few pages that are still littering the floor and adds those. “We have to get rid of it,” he says. “All of it. Once and for all.”
He takes a box of matches out of his pocket, strikes one, and retrieves a single page from the bin.
I look at him in horror. “No!” I try to say, but nothing comes apart from a muffled grunt. He does not look at me as he sets fire to the single page and then drops it into the bin.
“No!” I say again, but this time it is a silent scream in my head. I watch my history begin to burn to ash, my memories reduced to carbon. My journal, the letter from Ben, everything. I am nothing without that journal, I think. Nothing. And he has won.
I do not plan to do what I do next. It is instinctive. I launch my body at the bin. With my hands tied, I cannot break my fall, and I hit it awkwardly, hearing something snap as I twist. Pain shoots from my arm and I think I will faint, but do not. The bin falls over, scattering burning paper across the floor.
Mike cries out—a shriek—and falls to his knees, slapping the ground, trying to put out the flames. I notice a burning shred has come to rest under the bed, unnoticed by Mike. Flames are beginning to lick at the edge of the bedspread, but I can neither reach it nor cry out, and so I simply lie there, watching the bedspread catch fire. It begins to smoke, and I close my eyes. The room will burn, I think, and Mike will burn, and I will burn, and no one will ever really know what happened here, in this room, just like no one will ever really know what happened here all those years ago, and history will turn to ash and be replaced by conjecture.
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 at least I’ll die knowing I had one, and that he is alive and happy. For that I am glad. I think of Ben. The man I married and then forgot. I want to see him. I want to tell him that now, at the end, I can remember him. I can remember meeting him at the rooftop party, and him proposing to me on a hill looking out over a city, and I can remember marrying him in the church in Manchester, having our photographs taken in the rain.
And, yes, I can remember loving him. I know that I do love him, and I always have.
Things go dark. I cannot breathe. I can hear the lap of flames, and feel their heat on my lips and eyes.
There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.
That is all right.
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 neither rising nor falling in pitch but remaining constant. Something is over my mouth—I think of a balled sock—yet I find I can breathe. I am too frightened to open my eyes. I do not know what I will see.
But I must. I have no choice but to face whatever my reality has become.
The light is bright. I can see a fluorescent tube on the low ceiling, and two metal bars running parallel to it. The walls are close by on each side, and they are hard, shiny with metal and plastic. I can make out drawers and shelves stocked with bottles and packets, and there are machines, blinking. Everything is moving slightly, vibrating, including, I realize, the bed in which I am lying.
A man’s face appears from somewhere behind me, over my head. He is wearing a green shirt. I do not recognize him.
“She’s awake, everybody,” he says, and then more faces appear. I scan them quickly. Mike is not among them, and I relax, a little.
“Christine,” comes a voice. “Chrissy. It’s me.” It is a woman’s voice, one I recognize. “We’re on our way to the hospital. You’ve broken your collarbone, but you’re going to be all right. Everything’s going to be fine. He’s dead. That man is dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
I see the person speaking, then. She is smiling and holding my hand. It’s Claire. The same Claire I saw just the other day, not the young Claire I might expect to see after just waking up, and I notice her earrings are the same pair that she had on the last time I saw her.