I said yes. I wondered where he had got these photos, how much he knew of my life that I didn’t know myself.

‘Can I keep it?’ I said. ‘That picture of my old home?’

He smiled. ‘Of course!’ He passed it over and I slipped it between the pages of the notebook.

He drove me back. He’d already explained that Ben does not know we are meeting, but now he told me I ought to think carefully about whether I wanted to

tell him about the journal I was to keep. ‘You might feel inhibited,’ he said. ‘Reluctant to write about certain things. I think it’s very important that you feel

able to write whatever you want. Plus Ben might not be happy to find that you’ve decided to attempt treatment again.’ He paused. ‘You might have to hide

it.’

‘But how will I know to write in it?’ I said. He said nothing. An idea came to me. ‘Will you remind me?’

He told me he would. ‘But you’ll have to tell me where you’re going to hide it,’ he said. We were pulling up in front of a house. A moment after he

stopped the car I realized it was my own.

‘The wardrobe,’ I said. ‘I’ll put it in the back of the wardrobe.’ I thought back to what I’d seen this morning, as I dressed. ‘There’s a shoebox in there.

I’ll put it in that.’

‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to write in it tonight. Before you go to sleep. Otherwise tomorrow it’ll be just another blank notebook. You won’t

know what it is.’

I said I would, that I understood. I got out of the car.

‘Take care, Christine,’ he said.

Now I sit in bed. Waiting for my husband. I look at the photo of the home in which I grew up. It looks so normal, so mundane. And so familiar.

How did I get from there to here? I think. What happened? What is my history?

I hear the clock in the living room chime. Midnight. Ben is coming up the stairs. I will hide this book in the shoebox I have found. I will put it in the

wardrobe, right where I have told Dr Nash it will be. Tomorrow, if he rings, I will write more.

Saturday, 10 November

I am writing this at noon. Ben is downstairs, reading. He thinks I am resting but, even though I am tired, I am not. I don’t have time. I have to write this down

before I lose it. I have to write my journal.

I look at my watch and note the time. Ben has suggested we go for a walk this afternoon. I have a little over an hour.

This morning I woke not knowing who I am. When my eyes flickered open I expected to see the hard edges of a bedside table, a yellow lamp. A boxy

wardrobe in the corner of the room and wallpaper with a muted pattern of ferns. I expected to hear my mother downstairs cooking bacon, or my father in

the garden, whistling as he trims the hedge. I expected the bed I was in to be single, to contain nothing except me and a stuffed rabbit with one torn ear.

I was wrong. I am in my parents’ room, I thought first, then realized I recognized nothing. The bedroom was completely foreign. I lay back in bed.

Something is wrong, I thought. Terribly, terribly wrong.

By the time I went downstairs I had seen the photographs around the mirror, read their labels. I knew I was not a child, not even a teenager, and had

worked out that the man I could hear cooking breakfast and whistling along to the radio was not my father or a flatmate or boyfriend, but he was called

Ben, and he was my husband.

I hesitated outside the kitchen. I felt scared. I was about to meet him, as if for the first time. What would he be like? Would he look as he did in the

pictures? Or were they, too, an inaccurate representation? Would he be older, fatter, balder? How would he sound? How would he move? How well had I

married?

A vision came from nowhere. A woman – my mother? – telling me to be careful. Marry in haste …

I pushed the door open. Ben had his back to me, nudging bacon with a spatula as it spat and sizzled in the pan. He had not heard me come in.

‘Ben?’ I said. He turned round quickly.

‘Christine? Are you OK?’

I did not know how to answer, and so I said, ‘Yes. I think so.’

He smiled then, a look of relief, and I did the same. He looked older than in the pictures upstairs – his face carried more lines, his hair was

beginning to grey and receding slightly at the temples – but this had the effect of making him more, rather than less, attractive. His jaw had a strength that

suited an older man, his eyes shone mischief. I realized he resembled a slightly older version of my father. I could have done worse, I thought. Much

worse.

‘You’ve seen the pictures?’ he said. I nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything. Why don’t you go through and sit down?’ He gestured back

towards the hallway. ‘The dining room’s through there. I won’t be a moment. Here, take this.’

He handed me a pepper mill and I went through to the dining room. A few minutes later he followed me with two plates. A pale sliver of bacon swam