Free The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe

did not see her again for several days after that; or at least, while he may have glimpsed her from his window, onher way to or from the house, or been offered a fugitive vision of her disappearing into her bedroom or passing through the L-shaped kitchen, he never had the opportunity of speaking to her, and became convinced that she was purposely avoiding him. One evening towards the end of the week, he challenged her about this, and she admitted that she was shocked by his behaviour – by his failure, specifically, to return home in the aftermath of his sister’s death. Once this mistake had been brought to light, of course, it was easily dealt with. Robert burst into laughter as soon as he realized what had happened, but she was too embarrassed to see the funny side, and was disturbed, besides, by this further evidence of the perfidy of her dreams. She apologized rather coldly, and made no effort to prolong the conversation.
    That night, however, long after most of the other students had gone to bed, Robert looked out of his window and saw Sarah standing alone on the moonlit terrace. She was looking out into the darkness and leaning against the balustrade, upon which she had balanced what appeared to be a tumblerful of white wine. He went downstairs to join her, gaining access to the terrace through the French windows in the television room, where the rusty hinges gave out a grating squeal. She turned when she heard him approach, and smiled an encouraging smile.
    They began talking on the terrace, and continued in the kitchen, and it was after four o’clock in the morning when they finally said goodnight and went upstairs to their separate rooms. It was probably, at that point, the longest conversation Robert had ever had in his life. The melancholy silence which had always enveloped him at home – his mother timid and deferential, his father morosely taciturn – had never prepared him for this kind of fluid, impulsive exchanging of confidences. By the time they had finished, he felt drunk with talk; high on confession. They had discussed everything, it seemed, and had held nothing back from each other. It had begun with the collapse of Sarah’s relationship with Gregory, and after thatthey had ranged freely over romance, friendship, families and gender, the shared intimacies and the self-revelations coming ever thicker and faster as the subjects themselves grew larger and more complex, until Robert realized that he had trusted Sarah with secrets about himself, about his parents, about his home life, that he had never thought

Stage One
    4
    thought there was something strange about the rooms at the Dudden Clinic, and now realized what it was: that although they contained wardrobes, and washbasins, and dressers, and desks, and easy-chairs, and all the other appurtenances of residential accommodation, they contained no beds. Of course, this made perfect sense. Punctually at 10.30 p.m., washed and wearing their night-clothes, the thirteen patients would make their way from the day rooms and settle down to sleep under laboratory conditions in the thirteen small, simple bedchambers – each flanked by an adjacent observation room – which took up much of the ground floor. There was no need for beds anywhere else. But it still seemed odd that there should be no bed against the far wall of this room, which he now found that he remembered well as the room Robert had occupied in his last year at the university, and which seemed in every other way to be unchanged. Even the furniture was the same; and it was all in exactly the same position.
    It surprised Terry that he should remember Robert’s room better than he could remember his face. He tried to recall the last time he had seen him, and had a sudden, badly focused flashback to a grey Saturday morning, during their last summer, with Robert sitting near the edge of the cliff and talking to Sarah, both looking tired and haggard. That was twelve years ago. After that he had