Page 75 of Insomnia

As soon as she’s moved away, hand in hand with Will, I gasp in a lungful of breath and twist around onto my knees. Stars swirl and threaten blackness in a wave of nausea and pain, but I don’t have time to stop. At 2:18a.m.she found my boy in the cupboard. I’ve got four minutes to get upstairs.

My head fills with pockets of time. A memory.

Mummy is crouching in the doorway, her smile too wide behind the ragged curtain of her hair. Behind her, the house is grainy dark. It’s the dead of night. Neither of us moves and the sound of the storm outside is loud, as if a door is open somewhere. A slight breeze confirms it. The back door maybe.

A flash of lightning illuminates Mummy. She’s soaking wet. Her eyes are odd. Empty. Looking at me but not seeing me. Looking at somethingpastme. I think she’s more frightening this way. More “funny Mummy.” I almost want her to shake me again so I know this is my mummy.

Her head tilts to one side and there’s a long pause before she speaks.

“Ah, there you are.” Her voice is soft. Calm.

I crawl to the cupboard, then and now merging. They’ll be nearly at his bedroom now. The cupboard yawns wide in front of me. Another memory. Recent this time.

“Don’t tell anyone, but that’s Mummy’s secret hiding place.” His eyes come back to me. “It can be your secret hiding place too now, if you like,” I say. “But the thing about secrets,” I whisper, hoping I’m making it sound fun, “is that you can’t tell anyone about them. Not even Daddy. Okay? It has to be just us. It’s a safe space. A special place.”

I reach inside and grab a golf club and haul myself to my feet, before pulling myself up the stairs as fast as I can, clutching the banister as I go. I reach the top. As I grip the balustrade, I hear strange noises coming from farther around the corridor.

“Mummy,” I hear. It’s barely a whisper. Chloe is slumped up against the wall, barely able to lift her head. She’s trying to signal toward Will’s room, but I don’t need her help. I’ve been in this moment since I was five years old. I move faster now, not caring if I’m bleeding out, not caring that I can barely feel my legs. I hear his feet thrumming against the mattress and I push his bedroom door open—

Mummy, beside the bed, is leaning over Phoebe, her hair hanging down over her face, as she holds the pillow down, smothering my big sister. She grunts with the effort, because Phoebe is struggling hard and I can hear muffled panic coming from under the pillow, but all I can see are Phoebe’s legs thrumming against the mattress as she arches, and then they’re up and wheeling as if she’s trying to kick something away. Phoebe.

I take a step forward. The old boards creak. Mummy’s head spins around, her eyes startled and wide.

“Emma,” she says, surprised. She straightens up. And then suddenly, with no warning, she spins to one side before crumpling into a pile of silent bones on the thin carpet.

Caroline is leaning over Will, her hair hanging down over her face as she holds the pillow down, smothering my son. He’s struggling hard and she grunts with the effort, and one of her headphones falls out, tinny music like the whine of a fly against Will’s thrumming legs.

I raise the golf club and take a step forward. The floor creaks. Her head turns toward me, her eyes startled and wide.

“Emma,” she says, surprised. She straightens up and as all my rage comes out in something between a scream and a grunt, I swing the club around as hard as I can. It smashes into the side of her skull and she spins away and then crumples onto the carpet.

“Fuck you, Caroline,” I mutter, breathless, as I stand over her, the club raised in case she moves. “Fuck you.” Her skull is dented. Her eyes flicker from side to side. She’s not going anywhere.

I collapse onto the bed and pull Will in close to me. “It’s over, baby.” Outside, through the sound of the storm, I can hear sirens. I hug my baby tighter, my other child stumbling in from the hallway and resting her head on my knee, and with both my babies close, I start to sob with relief as unconsciousness comes for me. They’re safe. It’s finally over.

65.

I take out the dying flowers from the small vase at the base of the gravestone and replace them with bright fresh pansies. Nina says Mum used to find them joyful. I’m learning a lot from Nina, drinking it in, trying to get to know who my mother really was.

I get up, satisfied, and dust down my knees and coat, ignoring the ache in my side. I was lucky. I did twist away just enough that she missed my liver. I’d lost some blood but I was home within a couple of days.

Sometimes I go and put flowers on Caroline’s mother, Jackie’s, grave too. I’m glad I had a chance to meet her. She was full of warmth, even in her grief. She cried and I cried and we talked about all the loss and what a waste it all was. There was a lot of love in her. She had a massive stroke and died two weeks after my fortieth birthday, days after it came to light that Caroline was also under investigation for the deaths of several patients in her care over the past few years, as well as the attempted murder of my family.

A lot of people want answers from Caroline, but they won’t be forthcoming. I hit her hard with that golf club and caused her serious brain damage. She’s not quite in a vegetative state, but she’s close. Sometimes I almost feel bad about that, but I don’t. I can’t. I doubt she’ll ever face trial for her crimes, but I’ve already given her a life sentence. That brings me peace.

I turn the heat on in the car and drive out of the quiet cemetery. Phoebe normally comes with me, but she has physio today. She’s recovering quickly too, but maybe that’s because she’s got a new sparkle in her eye. Darcy has been visiting her in the hospital, and I think that whatever feelings he may once have thought he had for me have gone. He and Phoebe spar with each other, and I like how much that makes Phoebe laugh. I think they’re a good fit. It’s good for her. She’s lighter now that she’s had to let all that anger out. We all are. Kinder to one another. She doesn’t want to talk about it much anymore, and I respect that. Everything is now about moving forward, and I can’t blame her for not wanting to look back. And we’re getting closer too. Talking more. Opening up about who we are. She’s my big sister again now that all that anger filling her up has gone. We have each other’s backs and I’m glad she’s not running back to Spain. She’s thinking of training as an art therapist, and I’ve noticed her own work is so much better than it’s been for years. It’s freer. She may even make a modest living as an artist, as was always her dream.

Robert and I are moving forward too, albeit in separate directions. We’ve sold the house, and he’s gone into business with Alan. Good luck to them both. It might be the making of him. I have a feeling he and Michelle may get together for a while. They spend a lot of time in each other’s company. I don’t see her anymore. She hasn’t forgiven me for not saying anything about Chloe and Julian.

Julian and Chloe didn’t survive the night of my fortieth birthday, which came as no real surprise to anyone but Julian. Once Michelle kicked him out, he of course turned to Chloe, but she’d grown up a lot by nearly dying and that ship had sailed. She’s stayed local for uni, which I’m glad about, but to be close to the rest of us, not for him, and I’m pretty sure she’s dating a boy her own age called Darren, whose name seems to come up an awfullot in conversations and even Will has started to giggle when he’s mentioned.

Will’s taken mine and Robert’s divorce pretty well, and we’re determined to keep it as easy as possible for him after everything he’s been through. His dark, quiet moods have lifted and he’s back to being my bouncy little boy. I guess now that my birthday is over, he hasn’t got a “fuzzy head” anymore.

We’re both second children, just like my mother.

No one told him about what my mother did to Phoebe. Not Phoebe or Robert. No one was telling him what to draw. He was getting flashes of the future too, even if, like Mum and me, he didn’t know what they were. They clogged up his head and made it fuzzy was the best way he could describe it. He had to draw it to feel normal. It shut him down.

Patricia, me, and Will. All stuck in that moment, the future bleeding into us. My poor tragic mother, who died thinking she’d gone mad and tried to kill her child. She had the strongest “gift” of all of us. The future was leaking into her. All those lost moments when she acted out events that hadn’t happened yet. Her own fuzzy head. She’d never wanted to hurt Phoebe. She was caught in that moment in the future, trapped in Caroline’s actions, overwhelmed by them. None of it was her at all.

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