Page 42 of Insomnia

“I guess so,” Robert says, picking at the label of his beer. “She’s great with Will. She’s worried about you.” He glances up at me. “I’m worried.”

“So you both keep saying.”

“I need you to talk to me, Emma. Tell me about your mum and why it freaks you out so much. What happened to you?”

I stare into my own bottle. I wanted to tell him about Chloe, but that can wait until tomorrow now. He wants answers, even though I’m exhausted, battered from the accident, and don’t want to talk anymore. “I thought Phoebe told you already.”

“She said she can’t speak for you.”

“Big of her.”She didn’t hold back so much with the police,I want to add.

“I’m trying to connect with you on this,” he says wearily. “And it may make you feel better to actually talk to me. Get it all out.”

I alreadygot it all outto Dr. Morris and any relief at that was short-lived, so I can’t see it making me feel better, but if I keep shutting Robert out then whatever happens in our marriage will be my fault too.

My sheer exhaustion and the events of the day have left me almost numb emotionally and my palms don’t sweat like they did in Dr. Morris’s office. I’m being carried on a wave ofwhat will be, will be.I take a deep breath.

“I know that I’m not like her,” I start. “I know that she was a sick woman. I know that it’s all in the past, and it’s only a small percentage of my life that gets smaller with every year. Iknowall these things, but what Ifeelis entirely different.” I pause. How can I explain my early childhood?

“The oddness back then was normal for us, even if we knew it wasn’t normal for everyone else. No friends after school because at their houses the curtains were always open, and in ours the curtains were always shut.” I pick at the beer label, the skin around my thumbs too raw. “Phoebe says that sometimes beforethenthere’d be times, weeks even, that Mum would come up for air and the house would be clean and she’d be full of love and entirely present.Hugs and promises that things would be better. I don’t remember those times. Sometimes I think Phoebe just made them up but maybe not. Social services would have eventually noticed if Mum hadn’t pulled it together often enough. But in the run-up to her fortieth birthday there was no respite.” My throat dries. “She stopped sleeping. She would mutter to herself constantly. Stuff we didn’t understand.” I take another drink of the beer that’s almost down to the dregs as I remember. Those numbers whispered over and over. The same numbers that now fill my head.

“It got worse.Shegot worse. On the day of her birthday, we got up early and made her a card out of some colored paper Phoebe brought back from school. Phoebe made it really, I just wrote my name inside.”

Sitting here in my beautiful kitchen I can still smell the musty air and feel the cheap carpet under my knees. “When we went downstairs”—hand in hand, Phoebe first, our bellies a mixture of fear and excitement, wanting to make her happy, see Mummy see, we do love you, please love us back—“we found her in the kitchen. She was holding a box of eggs. God knows how old they were. She was smashing them, one by one.” I can see her as if it were yesterday. Her back to us. Hair unkempt and dirty, straggling down it. Her arm straight out to the side.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

“We knew then—even me—that something was very wrong. Phoebe wanted to go back upstairs, but I didn’t. I was so proud of our card, I wanted to give to it her. So I tried.”Taking one step forward as Phoebe tried to pull me back. My heart racing. “Mummy?”

“She grabbed me fast, pulling me right up close and shaking me. She scared me. She said I was keeping her awake at night.” I glance at Robert. Are his eyes narrowing a little at the shaking? Is he thinking of what I did to Ben?

“After school, well, that’s when—” I break off. How much to tell in this violation of my privacy? “I remember the heavy thunderclouds, the tiny swarms of flies on our skin as we walked home along the river route. Phoebe wanted to go to Mummy’s friend’s house, but I just wanted to go home. I thought there might be a cake. A special tea. I thought she might be all right.” I take a breath. “She wasn’t all right. She was worse. Drinking wine. Scratching numbers into the under-stairs cupboard door. When she saw us, she grabbed me and locked me inside it. I was there for hours. All through the afternoon and into the night. It was endless. And then the storm came.

“It was a trauma for Phoebe, yes, undoubtably. But it was a trauma for me too.” My mouth is sour and I’m regretting the beer and resenting Robert. “The storm was raging when she finally unlocked the cupboard door. I’m not sure she even meant to let me out. She opened the door, spoke to me, and then closed it again before wandering off. She didn’t lock it that time though. I pushed it open.” My heart races. No amount of telling it will ever free me of that night.

“The wine bottle, empty now, was abandoned on the floor. I could hear the creak of the stairs as she went up them. It was the middle of the night and all the lights were off. The back door was open, I remember that, because even though it was summer, the wind was cold and carrying the rain into the kitchen. I could hear it pattering onto the linoleum. I wanted to run out that door and never come back. Just run and run and run. But I knew Phoebe was upstairs and so was our mother, and I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life.”

I pause, not sure how to tell the next bit. I don’t talk about climbing the stairs. The strange sounds I heard that made my heart thrum so hard in my tiny chest as I forced myself along the corridor.

“I can still see her,” I say eventually. “Standing over Phoebe’s bed, pressing the pillow hard over her face. I was so confused. I didn’t understand what she was doing or why. It’s Phoebe’s legs I remember the most. I used to have nightmares about them. They were drumming against the mattress, bicycling in the air and then kicking out at nothing.

“Anyway.” I take a deep breath, my tone firmer as I cut to the end, the main details done. “I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t looked up, seen me there, and then collapsed. A ministroke they thought at first, but there was no medical evidence of that. Whatever exploded in her head, it wasn’t veins or capillaries. It was theessenceof her. Her sanity maybe. Phoebe and I left her there on the floor and ran out of the house. A neighbor called the police and that was that. Phoebe was never the same and neither was I.” I look up at him and see he’s expectingmore.

“It didn’t help that we went to different foster homes,” I continue. “Phoebe still has a chip on her shoulder that all the families wanted me and not her but it’s not true. I was younger, that’s all. Easier, I imagine. One lovely family came for me and I was so excited about going to live with them, sure they were going to adopt me, that I think I soured Phoebe against me. No one wanted her at that point. But that first family changed their mind, and then we were both in the same boat. A couple of different foster families each until we were old enough to fend for ourselves. Mine were nicer than hers, I think she’s right about that, but I wasn’t as angry as she was. Iwantedto be loved. Anyway, you know that stuff. I didn’t lie about that.”

Robert’s looking down at his bottle. “So what your mother did to Phoebe was like Will’s drawings,” he says finally.

“Yes,” I say, getting to my feet. “Which is how I know Phoebemust have said something to him.” He’s about to protest but I cut him off. “Whether she meant to or not. Because I certainly didn’t.”

I shuffle past him like an old woman—hunched over like her—every joint screaming with aches and tiredness. “I’m going to have a bath. I need to get onto the tow truck people in the morning and sort the car. Will you bring a chamomile tea up with you?” He nods and I wait for him to say something comforting, but he doesn’t, instead giving me a wan smile as if he’s the one who’s had the shittiest day.

While the bath is running, I knock on Chloe’s door. She doesn’t answer and when I knock again and still get no reply, I let myself in. She’s in bed, lying on her side, facing away from me.

“Go away, Mum.” She’s sullen, very much a teenager and not a grown woman at all. I sit on the side of her bed. I don’t want to fight with her. I want to look after her. I wait a moment before I speak, hoping that she might turn to face me, but she doesn’t.

“I wasn’t much older than you when I met your dad, you know.” I put one hand on her shoulder and she stiffens under my touch, but I leave my hand there as I speak softly. “And then, of course, you came along and we were a family. So I do understand love, Chloe. And I’m not so old that I don’t remember how powerful it feels when you’re so young. When everything is new.” Still no response. “I’m sorry for a lot of the things I said in the car. I didn’t mean them; I was shocked and angry and worried about you. I’m sure you do love him. And yes, he might love you too. Why wouldn’t he? You’re beautiful and bright and kind and full of wonderful energy. You’re very easy to love.”

Parker Stockwell had been laughing at how distracted Julian was these days—got blue balls, can’t think of anything else—so he’s probably infatuated. Maybe he does think he’s in love, even thoughthat thought makes my blood boil again when I want to be calm for my baby’s sake. I’m trying to reframe Chloe in my mind as a young woman rather than a little girl, but it’s so difficult. Where does the time go?

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