Page 56 of Insomnia

“You don’t feel safe with me?” I take an involuntary step backward.

She half shrugs, half sobs. “How can I? It’s like you’ve, I don’t know, suddenly cracked. All this shit about Auntie Phoebe. You’re acting so weird. Not sleeping.” She takes a hitching breath. “AuntiePhoebe said this is what happened with your mum. The mum you never told us about. And other people in your family too. Some great-aunt or something, who got locked up for being mad.”

“Sounds like Phoebe’s been talking a lot.”

“Maybe, but she’s not making you act weird, is she? You’re doing that all by yourself. And it’s freaking me out.”

This time when she hurries away, I don’t follow. I can’t bring myself to move, suddenly seeing myself as they must. Unhinged. Unkempt. Untrustworthy.

I should do what Caroline suggested. Go to see Phoebe. Find out what she’s up to face-to-face. What else have I got to lose?

45.

My whole body is jittery, and I stay in the car for a bit before I can bring myself to get out. Last night I had no sleep at all, and on top of my prior exhaustion I feel trippy. I probably shouldn’t even be driving. I can’t afford to crash the replacement car as well as my own. I’ve parked in the city center and I finally get out, the world shimmering around me, and find the Hand and Racquetpub on my phone. There are two in Leeds, but I recognize the logo of one from the top Phoebe had been wearing and let Google Maps start to guide me to it.

As I get within a couple of streets of the pub, I grab a strong coffee and a sugary iced cake from a café and take a seat outside. I need some energy to be able to think straight. I’m in a busy part of town, and as the day gets warmer the pavement fills up with people hurrying here and there, buses and cars streaming by, and somehow the noise is soothing. All these people going about their daily lives, oblivious to the mess in mine. I probably look like a perfectly normal person, a little tired perhaps from managing work and kids, but nothing more than that. I feel invisible. A ghost.

The cake is sticky in my mouth and I tilt my head to the sun. I’ve got time. The pub is probably only just opening and I don’t know what time Phoebe works. I take a sip of my coffee and break another piece of cake off. Phoebe whispering bad things to ourmother. Phoebe whispering bad things to Will. Phoebe maybe whispering sweet nothings to Robert.Why, Phoebe? What did I ever do to you? Apart from save your life?Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe. I close my eyes for a moment and relax.

“Phoebe!”

I startle. At first I think I’m the one shouting, but then my head spins as I come out of my haze, and the world is such a place of noise and movement around me that I almost lose my balance. I’m standing on the sidewalk, a chunk of cake sticky against my fingers where the icing has melted, and my mouth is dry. A man is staring at me and he tuts as if I’ve tried to push past him. What am I doing here? I was at the café. How am I standing here?

“Phoebe!”

With the second call of her name, I look back, the anxiety in the tone cutting through the city sounds like a knife. Cars have stopped. People have stopped. A little farther up and on the other side of the road is the Hand and Racquetpub, on the corner of what looks like a busy crossroads. Or it would be a busy crossroads if anything was moving. Why am I walking away from it? How did I get here?

“Call an ambulance!”

“I think she was pushed,” someone says as I force myself forward. “She looked like she was pushed.”

Phoebe Phoebe Phoebe. No. No.

My heart is in my mouth.

“She’s still breathing!” A shout goes up from someone hunkered down in the road.

I force through the gawkers, and then I see her. She’s on the ground, twisted at an awful angle, three people hovering over her. Oh god, Phoebe.

Someone grabs me, trying to pull me back, to keep clear. “Let me go! She’s my sister!”

I fall to my knees, a woman in a pub T-shirt making way for me, and I see how pale and scared her face is as she moves back, embraced in a hug by an older colleague. I tug off my jacket and put it over my sister’s hitching chest.

“Phoebe. It’s me. It’s Emma. Can you hear me?” Her lips twitch, but she doesn’t get any words out.

“She came out of nowhere.” A fat man is crouched on the other side of her, his face blotchy under his bald head. “I swear to Christ, there was nothing I could do. I was only going about twenty miles an hour. The light was green. It was like she threw herself into the road. Or someone pushed her.”

Her hand—the only part of her I can risk touching without potentially hurting her more —is icy as I rub it, hot tears and snot running down my face. “There’s an ambulance coming, Phebes. Any minute now.” I’m trembling—shaking—all over. “Keep breathing, Phoebe,” I whisper. “Please.”

There’s blood under her head, thick and red, and I want to grab her and pull her to me, but instead I rub her hand and watch her eyes, one pupil horribly dilated as they flicker, confused. “I’m here, Phoebe, I’m here,” I say before turning to the gawping crowd. “Where’s the fucking ambulance?” I scream, as her hand tightens around mine. “Get that fucking ambulance!”

46.

Her blood is sticky as it dries. I should wash it off, but I don’t. The bright color is a part of her, clinging to me as I sit in the cold hard chair and watch as more and more hospital staff hurry toward the room they’ve moved her to after the chaos of her arrival in the emergency room. I am a still, small body of calm as I stare ahead, impassive. They don’t know what to make of me. No tears. No emotions. All that stopped when the paramedics and the noise took over and then I was pressed into the corner of the ambulance as they worked on her unresponsive body.

Not dead yet, though. She’s not dead yet.

They think I’m cold, but I’m not. I’ve simply brought the shutters down. I did it back then. I remember now. Once we’d fled the house, out into the rain and thunder, Phoebe was calling for help, banging on a woman’s door, and then there were ambulances and police and so many lights and so much noise that I couldn’t breathe and I became very still. They carried Mum out on a stretcher and I never saw her after that.

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