Free Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson Page B

don’t remember. I want to see if anything comes back to you then.’
    I was hesitant, unsure of where this avenue might lead, but certain it was a road I had no choice but to take.
    ‘OK,’ I said.
    ‘Good! We’ll look at just one picture today.’ He took a photograph from the back of the file and then walked round the desk to sit next to me. ‘Before we look, do you remember anything of your wedding?’
    I already knew there was nothing there; as far as I was concerned, my marriage to the man I had woken up with this morning had simply not happened.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    I nodded. ‘Yes.’
    He put the photograph on the desk in front of me. ‘You got married here,’ he said, tapping it. It was of a church. Small, with a low roof and a tiny spire. Totally unfamiliar.
    ‘Anything?’
    I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. A vision of water. My friend. A tiled floor, black and white. Nothing else.
    ‘No. I don’t remember ever having seen it before.’
    He looked disappointed. ‘You’re sure?’
    I closed my eyes again. Blackness. I tried to think of my wedding day, tried to imagine Ben, me, in a suit and a wedding dress, standing on the grass in front of the church, but nothing came. No memory. Sadness rose in me. Like any bride I must have spent weeks planning my wedding, choosing my dress and waiting anxiously for the alterations, booking a hairdresser, thinking about my make-up. I imagined myself agonizing over the menu, choosing the hymns, selecting the flowers, all the time hoping that the day would live up to my impossible expectations. And now I have no way of knowing whether it did. It has all been taken from me, every trace erased. Everything apart from the man I married.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing.’
    He put the photograph away. ‘According to the notes taken during your initial treatment, you were married in Manchester,’ he said. ‘The church is called St Mark’s. That was a recent photograph – it’s the only one I could get – but I imagine it looks pretty much the same now as it did then.’
    ‘There are no photographs of our wedding,’ I said. It was both a question and a statement.
    ‘No. They were lost. In a fire at your home apparently.’
    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 authority that Ben’s didn’t have.
    ‘When did I get married?’ I said.
    ‘It would have been in the mid-eighties.’
    ‘Before my accident.’
    Dr Nash looked uncomfortable. I wondered if I had ever spoken to him about the accident that left me with no memory.
    ‘You know about what caused your amnesia?’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I spoke to Ben. The other day. He told me everything. I wrote it in my journal.’
    He nodded. ‘How do you feel about it?’
    ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. The truth was that I had no memory of the accident, and so it didn’t seem real. All I had were its effects. The way it had left me. ‘I feel like I ought to hate the person who did this to me,’ I said. ‘Especially as they’ve never been caught, never been punished for leaving me like this. For ruining my life. But the odd thing is I don’t, really. I can’t. I can’t imagine them, or picture what they look like. It’s like they don’t even exist.’
    He looked disappointed. ‘Is that what you think?’ he said. ‘That your life is ruined?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said after a few moments. ‘Yes. That’s what I think.’ He was silent. ‘Isn’t it?’
    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 worth living. But he didn’t. He just looked straight at me. I noticed how striking his eyes are. Blue, flecked with grey.
    ‘I’m sorry, Christine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. But I’m doing everything I can, and I think I can help you. I really do. You