Page 44 of Insomnia

“What happened, monkey?” I go to sit with him but Robert blocks me.

“Don’t touch him.”

“What the hell, Robert?” I try to push him out of my way, but he grips my arms, stopping me.

“Did you come in here last night?” His voice is all growl. I say nothing, my mouth opening and closing like a guppy’s, trying to find a truth that works or a lie to save me. “Did you?” He shakes me as he shouts.

“Only for a minute! I thought he was awake. I thought—”

“For fuck’s sake, Emma, you need help.”

“Honestly, I—”

“You what?” He shakes me again. “What? What excuse this time? Look at our boy, Emma! Look at him!” He spins me around so I’m facing away from him, but his hands are still firm on me, making sure I can’t break free. Will’s pushed his face into his knees and is rocking backward and forward. “Look at what you’re doing!”

I break free. “I have never hurt our children! I would never hurt our children!”

We stare at each other, both breathless, and then he runs his hands through his hair as if he’s the one who’s exhausted. When he looks at me again, his rage has gone but it’s been replaced by something worse. Complete mistrust.

“You need to move out for a few days.”

“What?” I recoil as if I’ve been slapped.

“Go somewhere else.” His eyes slip away from me. “Until we know what’s going on here. With you. With Will. I’m going to take him to see someone and get to the bottom of it. And it’s probably best you’re not here until we’ve got to the bottom of the other things too.”

“Theother things?” It’s gone from feeling like a slap in the face to a punch in the solar plexus. “You mean my mother?” We stare at each other for a long moment. “Jesus fucking Christ, Robert.” I turn and storm away before he can see my tears.

36.

It’s nearly eleven by the time I collect my courtesy car and check into the Raddison Blu, my hands trembling and my stomach in knots. I drink the strong but awful coffee from the machine as I hang up the few clothes I managed to grab in my fury, and then flop on the bed. I’m so angry at Robert, but I’m also angry at myself for not getting on top of this insomnia, as well as worried about both Will and Chloe. Our family is crumbling in front of my eyes. I check my phone but there’s nothing from Darcy yet, and I don’t honestly expect to hear from him until later in the day, if at all. The only light ahead is knowing that Robert is going to feel like absolute shit when he realizes that I couldn’t have done it.

But someone maybe did.

It’s my mother’s voice again, a parasitic worm, whispering in my head. I try to squash it. As Darcy said, the fibers probably came from a rough-handed nurse or something my mother did herself. Probably.What else did he say, though?The voice probes.Don’t tell me you haven’t thought it yourself.Phoebe. My big sister. I can’t shake what Darcy said about her. My motherdidhave two daughters that she royally fucked up. It was Phoebe she was trying to kill that night, so why wouldn’t it be Phoebe who did this? She told Robert about our past. And terrified poor Will. That’s hardly balanced.

A thought strikes me suddenly, one so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. It’s followed by a hot flush of shame.Maybe Phoebe didn’t tell Will?What if Will overheard Phoebe tellingRobert? Robert’s said twice that she told him some things about our childhood. What if Will heard Phoebe telling him what “Mummy” did to her? That could easily have frightened him, and of course he would hear “Mummy” or “Mum” and think of me. Especially if they were also talking about me. It could have all got messed up in his head. A story of a mummy and a scared child in bed and a pillow.

I’d feel happier about this likelihood if I was less worried about all the other things.The secret things. The things that are definitely aboutme.The numbers. The lost moments. If Phoebe’s done nothing wrong, then couldIhave smothered my mother and not remembered? I think of the cold tea on the hallway floor. The numbers recorded on the Dictaphone, time slipping through gaps. How can I expect my family to trust in me if I don’t even trust myself fully?

I text DarcyAnything back on the cameras?but get no reply. What do I really expect? That he’s dropped all his weekend plans to clear me? I’m embarrassed that I thought maybe there was still a spark of attraction there. Old friends is all we are. And I’m married. I have to laugh at that as I take in my surroundings. Married. Yeah right, that’s going well. I close my eyes, and as my head starts to pound with the bloom of a migraine, I find song lyrics falling in line with the pulse in my skull.

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

My phone rings and I startle, the music falling quiet, and I answer quickly, hoping it’s Darcy, but it’s only Dr. Morris checking in.

“Sorry to call on a Saturday, but you didn’t book in another session,” she says. “Are you sleeping better? Is everything okay?”

“No, not really.” I half laugh, as if it’s all a joke, but tears threaten to spill from nowhere. “The pills are helping a bit, but not much. There’s some family stuff going on.”

“Is this what’s keeping you awake?”

“No.” What’s the point of lying? I let out a long, shaky breath. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t stop thinking about my mother and what she did. I have these new tics too. Things I have to do at night. Check the back door handle. Look out the upstairs window. Look in the under-stairs cupboard. Go into Will’s room.” I let out a shaky breath. “It’s compulsive. I can’t stop myself. I’m so afraid.” My voice is trembling, as I finally say it out loud. “I’m so afraid I’m going to go mad like she did. What if I hurt my children? I crashed my car yesterday with Chloe in it and I know Robert thinks I did that on purpose. I’m just so tired.”

“Slow down,” she says. “That’s a lot to absorb. Take a few deep breaths.” I make a half-hearted attempt but she cuts in.

“Deeper and slower. I want to be able to hear you breathing. In through the nose... and now out through the mouth.” I do as I’m told, and finally my heart slows and my hands stop trembling. “Sorry,” I say. I hate being vulnerable. I’m the one who takes care of everything. I’m never the one who falls apart.That’s what all the ones who fall apart say.My mother’s voice whispers, amused, in my head.Just before they shoot their children and spouse with a shotgun and then turn it on themselves.

“Never apologize for your feelings. The point is to try to understand what’s driving them. It seems to me that, understandably, you’ve become fixated on a very short period of time in your mother’s life. A traumatic time that massively impacted on you at a young age. Everything you think or know of your mother is from that moment. That short time leading up to the night of her fortiethbirthday. But she lived a very long time both before and after that. Perhaps what you could spend some time doing is find out more about those years? Get to know the rest of her life a little bit?”

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