Page 33 of Insomnia

I go to the back door and check that it’s locked, making a mental note that it is, so that if I wake in the night, I won’t have any doubts. Maybe that will stop my compulsion to come downstairs. Maybe I’ll be able to go back to sleep. What about Robert? Will he sleep after this? We’ve had the police here basically accusing me of murdering the mother he thought was dead years ago. And then there’s Will’s drawings, and him waiting for me in Will’s room last night. Despite me saying Phoebe’s been scaring him, he must have doubts. His face last night said it all.Stop scaring our boy by standing over him at night.

I think about the pillow that the woman in Will’s drawings is holding and then about our mother and what she did and then the pillow found beside her bed. The police would have a field day with all that if he’d told them, and Robert must be going over and over it all in his head.

I pour the tea and add milk and then two sugars to Robert’s and my phone buzzes again. I almost don’t look, dreading what mightbe coming next, but it’s Caroline. It reads:Sure. Sounds great.What sounds great? I scroll up to see a text from me suggesting drinks again at some point. When did I send that? I look at the time. Three-thirty in the morning last night? I remember scrolling my emails trapped in my bed, I must have sent it then. My head is throbbing. It doesn’t matter and doesn’t really come as any surprise. The nights get fuzzy.

I turn the phone off. It makes me feel a hint of warmth in the awfulness of the evening. Maybe she wants to be friends too. Time to go upstairs to face Robert and hope he doesn’t implode on me. I’m sure we still have arguments to come when he’s “processed it all” as Dr. Morris would say. I remember the way he gripped me last night, dragging me out of Will’s room. That anger and distrust. I look again to the back door as my sense of threat increases. It’s locked. I know it’s locked. But I give it one last check before I go to bed.

I do it when Robert goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth. I take my own prescription sleeping pill and then, before I can change my mind, I crumble a NightNight into his tea and give it a quick stir with the end of a pen from my bedside table drawer. I sit back, heart racing, and hope he won’t taste anything odd under all the sugar.

I know it’s wrong,of course it’s wrong,but I’ve read the leaflet and it can’t hurt him, and I can’t stand the thought of him staying awake to watch me in the night. Hopefully we’ll both sleep well and then in the morning the police will ring and this whole business with my mother will all be a stupid mistake. Then I’ll get Will to admit that the drawings are Phoebe’s fault and then there’ll just be the business of the bar between us, and my looming fortieth to get past.

But first, dear god, please let me sleep.

27.

I’m not asleep.

I’m in the under-stairs cupboard, pressed against the wall, my knees tucked under my chin. It’s dark and musty and dust tickles my nose as memories rage in my head.

No, Mummy no!

Time folds in on itself and I’m back in that night, in a different under-stairs cupboard, locked in by my mother, the blackness a terrifying void gobbling me up, almost as terrifying as the noises on the other side. Her pacing, opening the back door, closing it, going upstairs, coming back down. Pacing, pacing, pacing.

There was a storm, I remember that. And now the storm is inside me.

Look, look, a candle, a book and a bell, I put them behind me.

Oh look, look, a candle, a book and a bell, there to remind me.

The song is too loud in my head and I can’t think. I’m so tired. Why did I crawl in here? What can this possibly achieve? My finger, a ghostly grainy shape, reaches sideways and touches the door. Onthatlast day Phoebe and I came home from school and found her crouched low in the hallway and scratching away with a compass on the inside of the under-stairs door, muttering to herself. “One hundred and thirteen one hundred and fifty-five two hundredand eighteen two hundred and twenty-two.”I draw the numbers with my finger against the smooth wood:113155218222.

Look, look, a candle, a book and a bell, I put them behind me.

Why is this happening to me every night? My mouth is dry from the sleeping pill that didn’t work. I won’t take another one. No point. It’s making me feel sick but giving me no rest. Not like Robert. He’s dead to the world on his one NightNight.

Oh look, look, a candle, a book and a bell, there to remind me...

I draw the invisible numbers against the wood again, and they’re soothing. I feel like I’ve been in here forever rather than a few minutes. Although maybe I have. Maybe I’ve had one of those little black spots when I lose time.

At 1:13a.m.I checked the back door.Rattle, rattle.It was locked, of course. I knew before I checked that it was locked. I remembered locking it. But as the minutes crept around in my battleground of a bed, I couldn’t stop the urge to go and check again. More than an urge. Something primal. Something I couldn’t fight.

At 1:55a.m.I went upstairs and stared out the hall window, my hands pressed against the glass, my heart racing. And now? Now I’m here. Back in the under-stairs cupboard, like I was all those years ago in a different house, but this time I’ve put myself in here.

Turning forty. Turning into my mother.

Everything feels wrong at night. Pieces out of place in my head. No straight edges in the jigsaw to anchor me. I thought I would be better when my mother died, but I’m worse. Tonight feels distorted, thoughts fragmented and yet so loud, filled with dread and worry and unease. How did my mother die?Wasit me? Can I trust myself? In daylight I’d say yes, no question, but now, in the dead of night, I’m not so sure. Am I my own unreliable narrator?

No, I decide, my finger sketching numbers fast against thewood. I’m exhausted. Maybe I’m even having some kind of breakdown. But I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t have. I’dknowif I had.

Are you so sure?It’s my mother’s voice, hissing in my ear.You’re hiding in a cupboard under the stairs for no reason. The past is repeating itself. Mad like me. Like mother, like daughter. Bad blood.

The door opens, my finger left drawing on air, and I gasp, clutching my hands over my mouth, pressing myself into the corner, trying to make myself smaller. I’m so terrified that for a moment I’m convinced that the figure crouching there isher.

But this is notthen,and the shadow is not my mother as she was on the night of her fortieth birthday, long hair hanging straggly and unkempt across her face, tilting her head.“Ah, there you are.”Surprised to see me, even though she was the one who’d locked me in.

The shadow now in front of me is smaller, much as I was back then.

“Mummy?” His whisper is quiet, but the sound of his voice shatters the confusion in my head, like cold water on my face, and I feel like myself again.Will.It’s Will. He’s giving me that funny look, like when I squeezed him too hard readingPaddington,as if he can’t rely on me for safety anymore. It breaks my heart.

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