Before I Wake (14 page)

“What are you doing?” His voice cut through me.

I murmured something inane about a tidy fridge and a tidy mind, unwrapped the cling film from a chunk of cheese then rewrapped it, tighter, and placed it in the top drawer of the fridge door.

“Sue, stop fucking about with the fridge and look at me.”

I turned slowly, my eyes fixed on the tiled floor.

“Look at me.”

I tightened my grip on my glass of wine and forced my gaze upward. A jolt of fear flashed through me as our eyes met. There was no warmth in James’s eyes, no humor, no love. He was looking at me dispassionately like he’d never seen me before.

“Let’s go through to the living room.” My voice came out as a whisper. “We need to talk.”

James turned on his heel and left the kitchen. I followed behind, pausing in the corridor to gulp my wine as he disappeared into the living room. I’d barely taken a step through the door when a hand gripped my neck and I was shoved up against the wall.

“I knew you’d cheat on me. You dirty, little slut.”

“James.” The wine glass tumbled from my hand as my fingers flew to my neck. I pulled at his hand but he was too strong. “James, I can’t breathe.”

“No one will ever love you as much as I do.” His top lip was curled back, his nostrils flared. “No one.”

“Please.” I pulled at his hand again, my heels dancing against the skirting as I tried to find my footing. Only my toes were touching the floor. “Please, James. Please, you’re hurting me.”

“Good.” He pressed his face against mine, his breath hot against my cheek, his skin damp with sweat. “Because you’re hurting me.”

“I didn’t cheat on you. I swear. I swear on my mum’s life. On my dad’s grave.”

James pulled back and looked at me through narrowed eyes and then smiled. For a second, I thought he was going to head-butt me, but then he kissed me full on the lips, pressing so hard I lost all sensation in my mouth. His hand grasped for my breast and then, just as I thought it was over, he threw me across the room. My foot hit the coffee table and I stumbled forward, landing face-first on the sofa.

“James.” I twisted onto my side. He moved across the living room toward me, the same dead expression in his eyes that I’d seen in the kitchen. “James, stop it. I didn’t cheat on you. I swear. I—”

He stopped walking and laughed. He laughed so hard he gripped his stomach and gasped, reaching for the arm of the sofa as he doubled over.

“You?” He snorted. “Cheat on me? As if.” He pointed and laughed again. “Have you looked in the mirror recently? Have you? Who’d sleep with you, you fat bitch? I’m glad that you wanted to talk tonight.” The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started as James pulled himself up to his full height and smoothed down his clothes. “Because I wanted a little chat of my own. Things aren’t working, Suzy-Sue, and I think we should split up.”

He stopped talking.

He was waiting for a reaction, but I couldn’t work out what he wanted me to do. To cry? To beg him not to finish with me? To agree? Too scared to make the wrong decision, I said nothing at all.

“Ah,” he said after what felt like an age. “No reaction. No reaction to the man you claim you love more than life telling you he wants to leave you. How strange. That’s not the behavior I’d expect of a woman in love.”

“I…I do love you James but—”

“LIAR!” He spat the word in my face, and I covered my face with my arms, cowering into a ball. “Filthy liar!”

I felt his fingers on my left wrist and, for a horrible moment, thought he was going to break my hand, but then I felt a sharp tugging on my ring finger and I realized what he was doing. I peered through my arms as he crossed the living room and opened the window. The traffic outside roared in response.

“Oh, Granny.” He held the ring aloft, between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “I’m so sorry. I really thought I’d met the one. I thought I’d met my soul mate. But she didn’t love me, Granny, not as much as she claimed.” He stifled a sob. “So now it’s time to say bye-bye. Not just to her, but to your ring too. Sorry to let you down, Granny. I tried. I really did.”

I watched, horrified, as he pulled back his arm. He was going to throw the ring—a family heirloom—out of the window, and it was all my fault.

“No!” I jumped off the sofa and hobbled toward him, my hands outstretched. “James, don’t. Your granny wouldn’t have wanted—”

But it was too late. The ring flew through the window, arched over the road, and landed in the path of an oncoming car.

“It’s not too late.” I grabbed James’s arm. “We can still get it. It might not be damaged.”

“You money-grabbing bitch.” He swiped at me, and unstable on my injured foot, I tumbled onto the carpet. “You don’t give a shit about me but you want to keep your precious ring, do you? Well, I’ve got news for you, my darling gold digger.” He stooped down and cupped my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “It’s not a fucking diamond and sapphire family heirloom. It’s a cheap piece of shit I picked up from Camden Market. You should have seen your face, lapping up that Great Granny shit like an alley cat with its nose in a bowl of cream. And you claim to be intelligent? Honestly.”

He pushed me away from him.

“Mother said I was worth more than you—some bar scrubber with a sewing machine—and she was right.” He shook his head. “Poor Mother. And to think I almost abandoned her to spend time with you. You! Jesus. Still, it’s true what they say about fat girls being easy.” He crouched down again and ran a finger along the side of my jaw, then pinched the small deposit of fat under my chin. “You might want to keep your legs crossed a bit longer with your next boyfriend. He might respect you a bit more.”

“Where did you go, darling? It’s okay, you can tell Mummy.” I speak a little louder than a whisper. It’s 5:00 a.m., and save for a couple of patients being woken for observations, most of the ward is asleep. I can hear the nurses chatting quietly at their station, and every now and then, I hear the creaking of gurney wheels or the squeak of shoes as a member of staff crosses the corridor outside Charlotte’s room. The nurse who answered the intercom was surprised by my request to be let in to see Charlotte, but when I told her I’d had a terrible dream that my daughter’s life was in danger, she relented and buzzed me in. I’m sure I’m not the first parent who’s turned up in the middle of the night to check that their child is okay and I’m sure I won’t be the last.

The dream was a lie though. I haven’t actually been to sleep yet. How could I when my mind is so full of questions? We talked for a long time after we returned from the school, but at 1:00 a.m., Brian insists we go to bed. I lay next to him, listening to his snores and snuffles for four hours before I slipped out from beneath the duvet, gathered up my clothes from the chair beside the bed, and got dressed in the bathroom.

“Mr. Evans said you didn’t go on the school trip…” I watch Charlotte’s face, sure there will be a reaction. This—this secret excursion with Ella—it’s part of the reason she stepped in front of a bus, I feel sure of it. “He said you pretended you had a bad tummy from a trip to Nando’s. I know that was a lie, Charlotte.”

Nothing. No twitch, no tightening, no tension. If anything, her face seems to relax a tiny bit, as though she’s just slipped into a deeper sleep. The nurses don’t believe me when I say I can tell when Charlotte is asleep. It’s a common misconception that comatose patients are always asleep. They’re not. They have sleep and wake states like the rest of us, only it’s not always obvious when they’re in a wake state. I can tell by the heaviness of her eyelids, the shape of her jaw, and the looseness of her lips, but I can also tell if she’s asleep, even in darkness. One of the nurses, Kimberley, gave me a kindly smile when I told her that Charlotte smells different when she’s asleep, but I knew she thought it was a strange thing to say. It’s true though. I know Charlotte’s scent better than anyone else’s. I know the scent of her skin, the uniqueness that lies beyond her deodorant, her perfume, and her hair spray. Sitting by her cot in the dark, when she was a baby, I’d know without touching or listening to her if she was asleep or not. The salty-sweet scent of sleep was all I needed to be sure. Even now, if I hold Charlotte’s hand to my face, I know from the scent of her wrist if she’s awake or asleep.

“Sue?” I jump at the hand on my shoulder and know instantly that Brian is standing behind me.

“Yes, darling?” There are dark bags under his eyes and a gray pallor to his skin. His shirt, the same one he wore yesterday, is crumpled with yellow sweat stains under the armpits. His hair is sticking up at angles. He looks like a scarecrow on night shift.

“What are you doing?” He glances meaningfully at the clock.

“Visiting Charlotte.”

He squeezes my shoulder so hard I wonder if he’s holding onto me because he’s too exhausted to stand unaided.

“Come home, Sue.” His voice is loud in the quiet room. “You need to come home now.”

***

“So you see, doctor, she hasn’t been well for a while.”

We are sitting in the Western Road surgery, in Dr. Turner’s office—Brian on the left, me on the right, and the doctor behind the desk, her red hair tied back in a ponytail, a string of multicolored beads around her neck.

“I see.” She nods, her eyes still on me. They haven’t left my face since Brian started speaking. He’s been telling her about the way I’ve been acting recently, the things I’ve been saying, the things I’ve been doing.

“I’m only here because of the fainting fits,” I say.

Dr. Turner tilts her head to one side. “Just the fainting fits?”

I feel like she wants me to admit to more than that, that she’ll be disappointed if I don’t, but I nod anyway. “Yes. And I wouldn’t even have come in for them if the paramedic hadn’t suggested I get checked over.”

“I see.” She looks away and types something into her computer. “So you’re not worried about the way you’ve been feeling recently? Everything’s been fine…emotionally…as far as you’re concerned?”

“Well yes. No. Well, I’m obviously very emotional at the moment. My daughter’s in a coma.”

“Our daughter.”

I glance at Brian. The last time he took me to the doctor, he held my hand all the way through the appointment. He hasn’t so much as touched me today—not that I blame him, not after everything I’ve put him through recently.

“Our daughter.” I correct myself.

“I see.” Dr. Turner raises her eyebrows. “How long has she been like that?”

“Seven weeks,” I say. “Five days and…” I look at my watch but catch Brian shaking his head out of the corner of my eye, and the words dry in my mouth.

“So you’ve been under stress for nearly two months then, Sue?”

I nod.

“And all these symptoms…they’ve only presented themselves since your daughter became unwell?”

“Yes,” Brian says before I can object to the term “unwell.” “Sue was absolutely fine prior to Charlotte’s accident.” He glances at me. “Well, since 2006 anyway.”

The doctor makes a low hmmm sound and consults her screen. “Two thousand six.” Her eyes flick from left to right and then back at me. “Which is when you were diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, Sue?”

“That’s right.”

“And how did that present itself?”

“Delusions,” Brian says. “Jumpiness. Paranoia. Heart palpitations. Difficulty sleeping.”

“Sue.” Dr. Turner stresses my name. “Do you agree with your husband’s description of your symptoms?”

I stare at my hands. I don’t want to think about 2006. It’s too painful, what I put Brian and Charlotte through, particularly Charlotte. “Yes.”

“And the treatment you were prescribed was—”

“Bloody ineffective!” Brian snorts. “Talk therapy. Jesus! She may as well have gone down to the Women’s Institute and had a nice chat with—”

“Please.” I put a hand on his knee. “Please, Brian, don’t.”

“But it didn’t work, did it, Sue? It might have
seemed
like it did at the time but”—he looks at the doctor and holds his hands wide in exasperation—“it obviously didn’t cure her long-term or she wouldn’t be suffering now, would she?”

I want to tell him that I’m not having delusions, that James Evans knows where we live and that it’s dangerous for us to stay in the house, but if I do that, he’ll think I’m mad—more mad than he already does. After what happened at the school yesterday, I couldn’t refuse when he insisted that I see the doctor, especially when the paramedic chimed in about my fainting fit. Saying that I thought my PTSD could come back was the only way I could explain why I’d run through the corridors of our daughter’s school, screaming that the business studies teacher was dangerous. I had to agree to see Dr. Turner—for Brian’s reputation, if nothing else.

“Sue.” She angles her body in my direction so Brian knows the question is meant for me and me alone. “How do
you
feel? Day to day. Hour by hour. Now?”

I blink several times, trying to absorb the question. It’s huge.

“Don’t think too hard. Just tell me the first words that come into your head.”

“Scared,” I say. “Nervous. Worried. Jittery. Worried? Did I say that already?” I try to block out Brian’s nodding head. “Frightened. Tired. Anxious.”

The doctor nods, her eyes never leaving my face. I feel like she understands me, that if Brian would only leave the room, I could tell her all about my worries for Charlotte and my fear of James, and she’d calm me with just a single nod of her all-knowing head.

“Do these feelings…are they overwhelming sometimes, Sue?”

“Yes.”

She nods. “And how would you like to feel?”

“Calmer. Unafraid. Happy. Content. Whole.”

“Whole?” A frown crosses her brow.

“Yes,” I say. “Whole. I feel split into scattered parts. My heart is with Charlotte, sitting by her bed, holding her hand, even when I’m not actually there. But my head is preoccupied with my ex-boyfriend”—Brian flinches—“trying to work out what his next move might be and how best I can protect my family.”

“I see.” More nodding but this time she taps something into her computer. When she looks back at me, her expression has changed. The compassion has morphed into professionalism, a bland, nonsmiling mask meant, I am sure, to calm and reassure.

“There is medication I could give you,” she says, “to help with the anxiety. It’d help you feel less overwhelmed and more able to cope.”

Brian’s face brightens and he parts his lips to speak but is silenced by a look from Dr. Turner.

“We could try that,” she says. “But I would recommend that you take it in conjunction with therapy. Some therapies, CBT—cognitive behavior therapy—in particular, can be hugely helpful when dealing with PTSD. What do you think, Sue? Would you like me to arrange for you to see someone?”

I don’t know what to say. I feel awful, like this poor doctor has been tricked into thinking I’m ill when I’m perfectly healthy.

“No,” I say. Brian inhales sharply. “To the therapy, I mean. I don’t have time for a lot of sitting around and chatting and—”

“CBT is more than just chatting, Sue. It’s about changing the way you think.”

“I appreciate that. I really do. But I’ll just go for the medication, if that’s okay.”

“It is.” Dr. Turner’s eyebrows are raised but she seems satisfied with my response. She turns back to her computer and clicks several times with her mouse. A couple of seconds later, she swivels around to the printer and tears off a green prescription form.

Brian leans over and puts a hand on my knee. “You’re doing the right thing, Sue.”

He smiles, his eyes shining with relief.

I half-listen as the doctor talks me through the medication, telling me when I should take it, what might happen if I drink alcohol or combine it with other drugs, explains about possible side effects, and then suggests we make an appointment for six weeks’ time to review my progress.

“You might feel differently about CBT then,” she adds. “If you change your mind, just let me know.”

“Maybe.” I take the prescription she’s holding out, fold it in two, and slip it into my handbag.

The doctor smiles a half smile, nods briefly at Brian, and then swivels around to reach for a book on the shelf behind her. Appointment over.

“Come on then, darling.” Brian reaches for my hand and squeezes it tightly. “Let’s go to the pharmacy and get you dosed up.”

Thursday, May 30, 1991

It’s been nearly two months now since James and I split up, and despite Hels telling me that time is a healer, I feel worse now than I did the day we split up.

I spoke to Hels the morning after and told her what had happened. She gasped when I told her about James holding me against the wall and said that, if she ever heard me make excuses or blame myself for James’s behavior again, she’d never speak to me again. Then she ordered me to report him to the police. I know she was just worried about me, but her comment annoyed me. James wasn’t a criminal. He was drunk and scared I’d slept with someone else. Yes, he’d lost his temper and got a bit rough, but he didn’t actually hit me. And besides, he knew half the police force, so what was the point? They’d only let him go (particularly as there wasn’t a scratch on me).

I didn’t tell Hels any of those things, of course. Or the real reason I was refusing to go to the police—I was secretly hoping that, by the end of the day, James would be on my doorstep with a bunch of red roses and an apology. He wasn’t. He didn’t ring either. And I drank and smoked myself to sleep for a second night.

I saw a lot of Hels and Rupert those first few weeks after James and I split up. One of them would ring at least once a day and they’d take me out—to the cinema, the pub, their house for a meal—two or three times a week. I’m not sure when, or why, we started to drift apart again. Maybe it was after their holiday in Greece, maybe it was when Rupert had to put in a lot of overtime at work, or maybe it was because I’d stopped bursting into tears each time James’s name was mentioned and they assumed I was over him. Either way, I stopped going out as much and that’s when the rot really set in. I’d lie in bed at night, poring over the details of my relationship with James, trying to work out when it had all gone wrong, trying to pinpoint the moment the magic disappeared. I was haunted by guilt and regret—if I hadn’t opened up to him about my sex life on our second date, he’d have carried on thinking that I was a precious angel; if I hadn’t told him about Rupert, maybe the four of us would have been the best of friends; if I’d dragged him out of the pub a couple of hours earlier, maybe his mum wouldn’t hate my guts. I wanted to rewind time, to go back and do everything again differently. Maybe that way, I wouldn’t feel like I’d lost the love of my life.

The more I thought, the more miserable I became and the more I drank. I’d sit by my phone, repeatedly snatching it up to check it was still working or repeatedly dialing James’s number. The first few times I called, his mum answered and told me that James wasn’t at home. The next time I called, the phone went dead at the sound of my voice. By my fifth day of calling, there was a “number not recognized” message on repeat. They’d changed their number.

I started making excuses not to go into work, particularly on a Sunday when I knew rehearsals were on. I lost track of the number of times I had a tummy bug, a migraine, or had to rush up north to see my mum—and when I did go in, customers would comment that something was wrong with my face and ask what had happened to my smile.

Last week, my phone rang. I snatched it up, sure it was James ringing to tell me he missed me, but no, it was Steve from the Abberley Players. He was in a pub with the other actors and they’d been discussing my mysterious disappearance. They’d figured out that James and I had split up from his surly appearance (I was glad to hear that) and the fact that he’d stalk off if anyone mentioned my name in his presence, and they wanted to check if I was okay (and if their costumes were near completion!). I laughed at the last comment, and Steve said, “See, I told them you wouldn’t have lost your sense of humor. Come out with us. We miss you.” I was touched but said no, I was already halfway through a bottle of wine and enjoying listening to my Nina Simone records and chain-smoking. Steve said that sounded like an excellent way to spend an evening and he’d be over with another bottle of wine and some more cigarettes. I tried to dissuade him, but he went on and on, wheedling at me for my address until I finally gave it.