Thank you.
Two of them clean me. They’ve never introduced themselves, so I don’t know their real names, but I’ve made up my own. ‘Northern Nurse’ sounds as though she is from Yorkshire. She has a tendency to mutter quietly to herself while she works and even then her vowels sound large in my ears. Her hands feel rough and rush to do their work. She scrubs my skin as though I am a dirty pan with stubborn stains and she sounds perpetually tired. Today she is accompanied by ‘Forty-A-Day Nurse’, the clue is in the name. Her voice is hoarse and low and she sounds permanently cross with the world. When she stands close to me, I can smell the nicotine on her fingers, taste it on her breath, hear it in her lungs. I listen to the sound of their plastic aprons while they clean me, the slosh of water in a bowl, the smell of soap, the feel of gloved hands on my skin.
When they are done, they turn me on my right side. I don’t like being on my right side, it feels unnatural. One of them brushes my hair, she holds it at the root, so the brush doesn’t pull. She’s trying not to hurt me any more than I already am. It reminds me of my grandmother brushing my hair when I was a little girl. Northern Nurse cleans the inside of my mouth with what feels like a small sponge, then she rubs some Vaseline on my lips, which feel dry and sore. The smell tricks my brain into thinking I can taste it. Sometimes she tells me what she is doing, sometimes she forgets. What I really want is some water, but she doesn’t give me any of that. I don’t know how long it has been now, but I’m already settling into my new routine. Funny how quickly we adapt. A flash of memory ignites and I think of my grandmother when she was dying. I wonder if she was thirsty. The wheels on the bus go round and round.
It is later, I don’t know how much, when he arrives. His voice crashes through the wall I have built around myself.
‘They let me go for now, but I know they think I hurt you, Amber. You have to wake up,’ he says.
I wonder why he didn’t say hello before he started making demands of me. But then I realise I didn’t hear him come in, he could have been here a while, he could have said more, perhaps I just wasn’t listening. His voice sounds as though he is doing a bad imitation of himself. I can’t quite interpret his tone, which seems wrong, given that I’m his wife. Surely I should know the difference between angry and scared. Perhaps that’s the point, perhaps they are the same.
I remember him leaving with the police. He doesn’t talk about that, no matter how much I wish that he would. Instead, he reads me the newspaper, says the doctor thought it might help. All the stories are sad and I wonder whether he skipped the happy ones or whether there just aren’t any happy stories any more. He stops talking altogether then, and I resent the words he doesn’t speak. I want him to tell me everything that has happened to him while we’ve been apart. I need to know. Time is marching on without me since it left me behind and I can’t catch up. I hear Paul stand and I try to fill in the gaps myself. The police can’t have arrested him, because he’s back here, but something is wrong. He’s still in the room but he’s been stripped of sound. I picture him staring at me and I feel self-conscious about how I must look to him now. All I ever seem to do is disappoint him.
I start to drift when there is nothing to hold on to. The voices in my head are louder than the silence in the room. The loudest is my own, reminding me constantly of all the things I have said and done, all the things I haven’t, all the things I should have. I can feel it coming. There are always ripples in the water before a big wave. I’ve learned already to just let it take me; far easier to surrender and let it wash me up when it’s good and ready. I fear one day the dark water will swallow me down for good, I won’t always be able to resurface. Switches are either on or off. People are either up or down. When I’m down, it’s so very hard to get back up and this is the furthest I’ve ever fallen. Even if I could remember my way back to normal, I don’t think I’d recognise myself when I got there.
‘I wish I knew whether you could hear me,’ says Paul.
I feel dizzy and, as I try to tune in to his words, they crackle and distort. His tone twists into something aggressive shaped and I hear the legs of his chair screech across the floor as he stands, like a warning. He leans over me, his face so close, examining my own, as though he thinks I’m pretending.
And then I feel large hands close around my throat.
The sensation lasts less than a second and I know instantly that what I felt wasn’t real, it can’t have been. A dark flash of a memory I’d rather forget perhaps, but even that doesn’t make sense, Paul wouldn’t do that. I try to make sense of what I just felt but I can’t remember what is real any more. Paul paces back and forth and I wish he’d be still. The effort required to listen to him walking around the room is exhausting. I don’t want to be afraid of my husband, but he’s not himself and I don’t know this version.
Claire arrives and a brief sensation of relief is obliterated by a wave of confusion. I expect them to argue again, but they don’t. I think he will leave now, but he doesn’t.
And when she was up, she was up.
There has been a shift of gear between them.
And when she was down, she was down.
It sounds like they hug each other. I stop myself hoping that she’ll ask what happened at the police station, it’s obvious from their conversation that she already knows.
And when she was only halfway up . . .
The plot thickens and continues on without me beyond this room.
She was neither up, nor down.
I feel jealous of what Claire knows. I feel jealous of everything.
When Mum and Dad first brought Claire home, all she did was cry. She needed so much of their attention and behaved in a way that demanded our lives orbit hers. Mum and Dad didn’t hear the tears I cried at night, they didn’t see me at all after that. I became the invisible daughter. Her screams in the night would wake us all, but it was Mum who got up to be with her. It was Mum who wanted Claire in the first place; I wasn’t enough for her, that’s clear to me now. Our family went from three to four, even though we couldn’t really afford it; there wasn’t enough love to go around.
Then
Tuesday, 20th December 2016 – Evening
I’ve been shopping. Food shopping this time. I unpack the frozen items first, then chilled, then the rest, rearranging things as I go, so that everything is where it should be. The larder requires the most work. I take everything out, every tin, jar and bottle. I wipe down all the shelves and start again, carefully arranging each item according to size, labels facing front. It’s completely dark by the time I’m finished. I can see the light is on in the shed at the top of the garden, which means Paul is still up there writing. Maybe he has turned a corner. I pop a bottle of cava in the fridge, it was a small victory at work today, but one worth celebrating. Project Madeline is most definitely off to a good start. I notice the half-empty white-wine bottle in the fridge door, I don’t remember seeing it there before. I don’t drink white wine and neither does Paul. Perhaps he used it for a recipe. I remove the offending bottle, pour myself a glass and start cooking. It tastes like cat piss, but I’m thirsty so I drink it anyway.