Sunday, 14 July 2013
Morning
My heartbeat feels as though it is in the base of my throat, uncomfortable and
loud. My mouth is dry, it hurts to swallow. I roll on to my side, my face turned to
the window. The curtains are drawn, but what light there is hurts my eyes. I
bring my hand up to my face; I press my fingers against my eyelids, trying to rub
away the ache. My fingernails are filthy.
Something is wrong. For a second, I feel as though I’m falling, as though the
bed has disappeared from beneath my body. Last night. Something happened.
The breath comes sharply into my lungs and I sit up, too quickly, heart racing,
head throbbing.
I wait for the memory to come. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it’s
there in front of my eyes in seconds. Sometimes it doesn’t come at all.
Something happened, something bad. There was an argument. Voices were
raised. Fists? I don’t know, I don’t remember. I went to the pub, I got on to the
train, I was at the station, I was on the street. Blenheim Road. I went to
Blenheim Road.
It comes over me like a wave, black dread.
Something happened, I know it did. I can’t picture it, but I can feel it. The
inside of my mouth hurts, as though I’ve bitten my cheek, there’s a metallic tang
of blood on my tongue. I feel nauseated, dizzy. I run my hands through my hair,
over my scalp. I flinch. There’s a lump, painful and tender, on the right side of
my head. My hair is matted with blood.
I stumbled, that’s it. On the stairs, at Witney station. Did I hit my head? I
remember being on the train, but after that there is a gulf of blackness, a void.
I’m breathing deeply, trying to slow my heart rate, to quell the panic rising in my
chest. Think. What did I do? I went to the pub, I got on the train. There was a
man there – I remember now, reddish hair. He smiled at me. I think he talked to
me, but I can’t remember what he said. There’s something more to him, more to
the memory of him, but I can’t reach it, can’t find it in the black.
I’m frightened, but I’m not sure what I’m afraid of, which just exacerbates the
fear. I don’t even know whether there’s anything to be frightened of. I look
around the room. My phone is not on the bedside table. My handbag is not on
the floor, it’s not hanging over the back of the chair where I usually leave it. I
must have had it, though, because I’m in the house, which means I have my
keys.
I get out of bed. I’m naked. I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror on
the wardrobe. My hands are trembling. Mascara is smeared over my cheekbones
and I have a cut on my lower lip. There are bruises on my legs. I feel sick. I sit
back down on the bed and put my head between my knees, waiting for the wave
of nausea to pass. I get to my feet, grab my dressing gown and open the bedroom
door just a crack. The flat is quiet. For some reason I am certain Cathy isn’t here.
Did she tell me that she was staying at Damien’s? I feel as though she did,
though I can’t remember when. Before I went out? Or did I speak to her later? I
walk as quietly as I can out into the hallway. I can see that Cathy’s bedroom door
is open. I peer into her room. Her bed is made. It’s possible she has already got
up and made it, but I don’t think she stayed here last night, which is a source of
some relief. If she isn’t here, she didn’t see or hear me come in last night, which
means that she doesn’t know how bad I was. This shouldn’t matter, but it does:
the sense of shame I feel about an incident is proportionate not just to the gravity
of the situation, but also to the number of people who have witnessed it.
At the top of the stairs I feel dizzy again, and grip the banister tightly. It is one
of my great fears (along with bleeding into my belly when my liver finally packs
up) that I will fall down the stairs and break my neck. Thinking about this makes
me feel ill again. I want to lie down, but I need to find my bag, check my phone.
I at least need to know that I haven’t lost my credit cards, I need to know who I
called and when. My handbag has been dumped in the hallway, just inside the
front door. My jeans and underwear sit next to it in a crumpled pile; I can smell
the urine from the bottom of the stairs. I grab my bag to look for my phone – it’s
in there, thank God, along with a bunch of scrunched-up twenties and a
bloodstained Kleenex. The nausea comes over me again, stronger this time; I can
taste the bile in the back of my throat and I run, but I don’t make it to the
bathroom, I vomit on the carpet halfway up the stairs.
I have to lie down. If I don’t lie down, I’m going to pass out, I’m going to fall.
I’ll clean up later.
Upstairs, I plug in my phone and lie down on the bed. I raise my limbs, gently,
gingerly, to inspect them. There are bruises on my legs, above the knees,
standard drink-related stuff, the sort of bruises you get from walking into things.
My upper arms bear more worrying marks, dark, oval impressions that look like
fingerprints. This is not necessarily sinister, I have had them before, usually from
when I’ve fallen and someone has helped me up. The crack on my head feels
bad, but it could be from something as innocuous as getting into a car. I might
have taken a taxi home.
I pick up my phone. There are two messages. The first is from Cathy, received
just after five, asking where I’ve got to. She’s going to Damien’s for the night,
she’ll see me tomorrow. She hopes I’m not drinking on my own. The second is
from Tom, received at ten fifteen. I almost drop the phone in fright as I hear his
voice; he’s shouting.
‘Jesus Christ, Rachel, what the hell is wrong with you? I have had enough of
this, all right? I’ve just spent the best part of an hour driving around looking for
you. You’ve really frightened Anna, you know that? She thought you were going
to … she thought … It’s all I could do to get her not to ring the police. Leave us
alone. Stop calling me, stop hanging around, just leave us alone. I don’t want to
speak to you. Do you understand me? I don’t want to speak to you, I don’t want
to see you, I don’t want you anywhere near my family. You can ruin your own
life if you want to, but you’re not ruining mine. Not any more. I’m not going to
protect you any longer, understand? Just stay away from us.’
I don’t know what I’ve done. What did I do? Between five o’clock and ten
fifteen, what was I doing? Why was Tom looking for me? What did I do to
Anna? I pull the duvet over my head, I close my eyes tightly. I imagine myself
going to the house, walking along the little pathway between their garden and
the neighbour’s garden, climbing over the fence. I think about sliding open the
glass doors, stealthily creeping into the kitchen. Anna’s sitting at the table. I grab
her from behind, I wind my hand into her long blonde hair, I jerk her head
backwards, I pull her to the floor and I smash her head against the cool blue tiles.
Evening
Someone is shouting. From the angle of the light streaming in through my
bedroom window I can tell I have been sleeping a long time; it must be late
afternoon, early evening. My head hurts. There’s blood on my pillow. I can hear
someone yelling downstairs.
‘I do not believe this! For God’s sake! Rachel! RACHEL!’
I fell asleep. Oh Jesus, and I didn’t clear up the vomit on the stairs. And my
clothes in the hallway. Oh God, oh God.
I pull on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. Cathy is standing right
outside my bedroom door when I open it. She looks horrified when she sees me.
‘What on earth happened to you?’ she says, then raises her hand. ‘Actually,
Rachel, I’m sorry, but I just don’t want to know. I cannot have this in my house.
I cannot have …’ She tails off, but she’s looking back down the hall, towards the
stairs.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry, I was just really ill and I meant to clear it up
…’ ‘You weren’t ill, were you? You were drunk. You were hung-over. I’m sorry,
Rachel. I just can’t have this. I cannot live like this. You have to go, OK? I’ll
give you four weeks to find somewhere else, but then you have to go.’ She turns
around and walks towards her bedroom. ‘And for the love of God, will you clean
up that mess?’ She slams her bedroom door behind her.
After I’ve finished cleaning up, I go back to my room. Cathy’s bedroom door
is still closed, but I can feel her quiet rage radiating through it. I can’t blame her.
I’d be furious if I came home to piss-soaked knickers and a puddle of vomit on
the stairs. I sit down on the bed and flip open my laptop, log into my email
account and start to compose a note to my mother. I think, finally, the time has
come. I have to ask her for help. If I moved home, I wouldn’t be able to go on
like this, I would have to change, I would have to get better. I can’t think of the
words, though, I can’t think of a way to explain this to her. I can picture her face
as she reads my plea for help, the sour disappointment, the exasperation. I can
almost hear her sigh.
My phone beeps. There’s a message on it, received hours ago. It’s Tom again.
I don’t want to hear what he has to say, but I have to, I can’t ignore him. My
heartbeat quickens as I dial into my voicemail, bracing myself for the worst.
‘Rachel, will you phone me back?’ He doesn’t sound so angry any longer and
my heartbeat slows a little. ‘I want to make sure you got home all right. You
were in some state last night.’ A long, heartfelt sigh. ‘Look. I’m sorry that I
yelled last night, that things got a bit … overheated. I do feel sorry for you,
Rachel, I really do, but this has just got to stop.’
I play the message a second time, listening to the kindness in his voice and the
tears come. It’s a long time before I stop crying, before I’m able to compose a
text message to him saying, I’m very sorry, I’m at home now. I can’t say
anything else because I don’t know what exactly it is I’m sorry for. I don’t know
what I did to Anna, how I frightened her. I don’t honestly care that much, but I
do care about making Tom unhappy. After everything he’s been through, he
deserves to be happy. I will never begrudge him happiness, I only wish it could
be with me.
I lie down on the bed and crawl under the duvet. I want to know what
happened; I wish I knew what I had to be sorry for. I try desperately to make
sense of an elusive fragment of memory. I feel certain that I was in an argument,
or that I witnessed an argument. Was that with Anna? My fingers go to the
wound on my head, to the cut on my lip. I can almost see it, I can almost hear the
words, but it shifts away from me again. I just can’t get a handle on it. Every
time I think I’m about to seize the moment, it drifts back into the shadow, just
beyond my reach.
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