I shrug, quickly averting my gaze. ‘Anyway, best you get some sleep. Like you say, you’ve got an early start.’ I place Cory on top of the laid-out sleepsuit and proceed to bend his arms into the openings. I try my best to ignore the slight shake of my hand, telling myself it’s been a long day and I’m in desperate need of sleep.
Half an hour later, I lie on top of the covers, hearing James’s gentle snores, which are somehow comforting rather than annoying. My mind clogs up with one thought after another, none of them completely whole. Eventually I begin to feel my muscles grow heavy and somewhere deep inside of me fear takes hold, almost as if my body knows what my subconscious is planning. My eyelids fall, a little at first… then all at once.
His fingertips brush the inside of my thigh. ‘Close your eyes,’ he whispers, his touch slightly ticklish like the static from a balloon.
My bare legs are raised and wide apart. I am without underwear and cold seeps into my nakedness, the hem of a garment I am not familiar with skimming my knees. ‘This won’t hurt,’ he promises, just as something sharp slides inside of me, my teeth clamping together in protest.
‘Stop, it hurts. Please.’ I try to shuffle away but there is no escape. I am locked in.
A baby’s cry splices through the silence, yanking me forward. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ I say, guilt clawing at my chest. ‘It isn’t right.’
‘Shhh,’ he says, the sensation between my legs a spiked cocktail of pleasure and pain. ‘I’m nearly finished.’
‘Lou, I’m at work tomorrow. Will you see to him, please?’
I wake with a gasp, the nightmare evaporating into cold sweat which lathers my chest. Cory’s cry fills the bedroom. ‘Okay, baby,’ I say, my voice thick with sleep. ‘I’m coming.’
‘I was just dropping off then.’ James’s voice is clipped. ‘Does he ever sleep?’
‘It would appear not.’ I sit up and peer out into the darkness, the nightmare now breaking up behind my eyes. It isn’t a first, or a second, or third come to that. Ever since I opened that card at the hospital, the same twisted dream has hounded me. It would seem that two separate memories, one entirely innocent and the other not so, have somehow tangled together and reworked themselves into a frenzy.
‘James?’ I reach out under the duvet and grab hold of his thigh, suddenly desperate to confess everything. ‘I keep having a dream.’
‘Least you’re getting some sleep then. Sorry, Lou, but I’m going to have to sleep in the spare room. I can’t work on no sleep. It’s dangerous.’ He jumps out of bed and makes his way across the bedroom, his footsteps heavy on the laminate flooring.
I rub at my eyes, feeling a prickle of annoyance when the bedroom door slams shut. To give James his due, he has helped with the night feeds over the past fortnight, and there is no way he can deliver anaesthesia while sleep deprived. But still…
Begrudgingly, I pull myself out of bed, Cory’s cry rising until it’s almost a shriek. I stumble over towards the Moses basket where I can just about make out his silhouette, the street lamp outside our bedroom window permanently suffering with insomnia. ‘Shhh, baby,’ I whisper to him, while turning around to unhook my dressing gown from the back of the door. I put it on, the heavy flannel still warm from where I took it off not half an hour ago. ‘I’m here, sweetheart.’ Bending down, I scoop up Cory, his tiny fingers like blocks of ice despite the central heating. Guilt washes over me. ‘Where have your mittens gone, hey? You’ll be scratching that beautiful face again.’ I kiss his head, take a moment to breathe him in. He smells of sleep and Johnson’s shampoo, the scent scrumptious enough to sell.
I carry him over to the bed and sit on the edge, the soft mattress sinking under my weight. I flick on the bedroom lamp, blink a few times as my eyes adjust. Cory squints up at me, his eyebrows furrowing together, creating a cute little mono brow. ‘Well, you will go waking me up, you little sod.’ I stare deep into his eyes which, over the past few weeks, have begun to slowly darken, making me wonder if he will have brown eyes like James after all. The thought causes my spirits to lift. It would be nice for Cory to share some physical characteristics with James, would be nice for all of us. ‘What are we going to do with you, baby? You’re a little night owl, aren’t you?’ My eyes sting and for a moment I feel like crying through sheer exhaustion. In the past three days I must have slept a total of ten or eleven hours, and even then I’ve been plagued by nightmares. I’m not angry at Cory though, how could I be? All he has to do is look up at me and I melt, feeling like a teenager meeting her idol for the first time. He really is beautiful to look at, his skin as white as porcelain and his hair redder than fire. He is a dainty baby, his features all in perfect proportion, reminding me of a Victorian pot doll. ‘So what is it this time, sir?’ I say, attempting to find light in the situation. ‘A tickly foot? Or do you require a freshly powdered bottom?’ He frowns up at me, as if already finding me embarrassing.
An hour later, and with Cory finally asleep and settled back into his Moses basket, I climb back into bed and close my eyes once again. Sleep tugs at my eyelids almost instantly but then a sudden thought jolts me back awake. In the morning, I am due my first home appointment with my health visitor, Carol, something I’ve been dreading. I hate the idea of a stranger snooping around inside my house, watching me, judging my mothering abilities.
Or perhaps I’m just terrified she’ll mention my past.
CHAPTER SIX
Louisa
Then
Peeking out from under the duvet I am surrounded by darkness. I know I shouldn’t get out of bed because Mr Moon is still awake, watching over me until it’s time for the world to switch itself back on. Mummy once told me that a man lived on the moon called Aiken Drum. She said he had hair made out of spaghetti and played upon a ladle. I don’t know what a ladle is and I often wonder if his hair is spaghetti like the type I eat at school or spaghetti hoops, which are orange like my hair.
I look for Aiken Drum but I can’t see him. I even jump out of bed and tiptoe across the freezing-cold floor made out of scratchy wood and towards the window where Jack Frost blows me a kiss. But Aiken Drum isn’t there, just like always. I wonder if he’s really real or whether he’s just made up like Santa and Daddy.
Wrapping my Sooty dressing gown tightly around me, I tiptoe down the stairs. I don’t like Sooty any more; he’s for babies and I’m five now, or maybe six.
Once downstairs, I turn on the television with the remote control. If you press the green button, it makes the TV come on. I used to think there were real people who lived in the television but I was very silly back then, not grown-up like I am now. I wish it was that easy to wake Mummy up, to just be able to switch her on and bring her to life. I wonder how she will be feeling when she gets up, whether she’ll bounce around the room like Tigger or have her sad face on like Eeyore.