before I go to sleep05(文稿)

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I hear myself start to cry again, and as I do so this man, this Ben, comes over to where I stand in the doorway. 

I feel his presence next to me, do not move as he puts his arms around my waist, do not resist as he pulls me into him. 

He holds me. Together we rock gently, and I realize the motion feels familiar somehow. It makes me feel better.

‘I love you, Christine,’ he says, and though I know I am supposed to say that I love him too, I don’t. I say nothing. 

How can I love him? He is a stranger. Nothing makes sense. I want to know so many things. How I got here, how I manage to survive. But I don’t know how to ask.

‘I’m scared,’ I say.
‘I know,’ he replies. ‘I know. But don’t worry, Chris. I’ll look after you. I’ll always look after you. You’ll be fine. Trust me.’

He says he will show me round the house. I feel calmer. I have put on a pair of knickers and an old T-shirt that he gave me, then put the robe over my shoulders. 

We go out on to the landing. ‘You’ve seen the bathroom,’ he says, opening the door next to it. ‘This is the office.’

There is a glass desk with what I guess must be a computer, though it looks ridiculously small, almost like a toy. 

Next to it is a filing cabinet in gunmetal grey, above it a wall planner. All is neat, orderly. ‘I work in there, now and then,’ he says, closing the door. 

We cross the landing and he opens another door. A bed, a dressing table, more wardrobes. It looks almost identical to the room in which I woke. 

‘Sometimes you sleep in here,’ he says, ‘when you feel like it. But usually you don’t like waking up alone. You get panicked when you can’t work out where you are.’ 

I nod. I feel like a prospective tenant being shown around a new flat. A possible housemate. ‘Let’s go downstairs.’ 

I follow him down. He shows me a living room- a brown sofa and matching chairs, a flat screen bolted to the wall which he tells me is a television- and a dining room and kitchen. 

None of it is familiar. I feel nothing at all, not even when I see a framed photograph of the two of us on a sideboard.

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