Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel

Mike was too inward-looking for that, I have learned. With him, everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.

Paper. Pages and pages. I recognize it. The faint blue lines, the red margins. These pages are the same as those in my journal, in the book that I have been writing. And then I see my own handwriting and begin to understand. I have not read all of my story. There is more. Pages and pages more. I find my journal in my bag. I had not noticed before,

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 that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

Perhaps I was worried that she would be able to read its contents reflected in my face, and they would no longer be mine to own.

“It’s so difficult, isn’t it? To see what’s going on when you’re in the absolute middle of something? It’s only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.”

“Okay,” she said. “But let’s sit down. I’m just gasping for a coffee.”

ectopic

looked over at him, running in the distance. Another faulty, fucked-up brain in a healthy body.

as if I knew everything about her, and everything about myself, too. It was as if the emptiness, the void that sat at the center of my soul, had been lit with light brighter than the sun. A history—my history—flashed in front of me, but too quickly for me to do anything but snatch at it. “I remember you,” I said. “I remember you,” and then it was g