Page 9 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
‘I wasn’t.’
I look up at Mum, shocked, and wait for her to speak again.
‘I was lonely, Shelley. Your dad left and there’d been no one else since, and then Mick turned up and he thought I was pretty and he wanted to listen to what I had to say, and I hadn’t realised how much I’d needed that.’
But then he hurt you, I think.And you didn’t make him stop so he did it again.He isn’t good, or kind.
‘I’m scared,’ I say.
‘Monsters?’ Mum asks. ‘Witches, ghosts? I’ve shooed them all away, my love. There’s nothing here that can hurt you.’
But it isn’t true, because Mick could return at any time. Some nights, he comes home after hours in the pub and he’s loud andsilly, and other nights it makes him sullen. I always pull my duvet cover right up to my nose and stare at my door, but he’s never come in. He’s never taken his anger out on me. Sometimes I wish he would, because surely then Mum would see that he was bad.
Mum sits on the edge of my bed for a while. She doesn’t usually do this. I pretend to fall asleep in the end, because I know that will please her. I let my breathing slow and deepen, and keep my eyes shut tight. Still, Mum sits there, holding my hand. I want to open my eyes and sit up and ask for an extra cuddle, but I don’t want Mum to know I’ve been pretending, so I just wait, and after a while I hear a sound that I think is soft crying. I am trapped, able to hear Mum but unable to comfort her. And after what feels like a really long time, Mum gets up and leaves, pulling the door closed gently behind her.
The next morning, Mick is back. I don’t look at him as I carry my cereal bowl carefully over to the table. Mum and Mick are both smoking, sitting opposite one another, like they’ve just happened to find themselves here and they don’t know each other. Granny Rose is making my packed lunch, slicing the cheese for my sandwich as thin as possible and choosing a packet of crisps from the Sainsbury’s bag in the cupboard. I feel a bit sick, but I don’t say anything. When I was younger, before Mick, I would sometimes say I wasn’t well so I could spend the day with Mum and Granny Rose fussing over me. But now, I’d rather be at school. I hope Annabelle will be in one of her good moods. I won’t tell her about what happened. I never tell her. I keep it all locked away, my secret shame.
7
NOW
The night is long. I thought I knew long nights, long shifts at the pub, Christmas Eve and New Year, when everyone wanted to celebrate and no one wanted to go home, but they were long in a different way. Exhausting and busy, all that rushing about and trying to keep everyone happy despite long waits, and ignoring the odd minor sexual assault. But here, there is nothing. Low light, footsteps tapping along corridors, people coughing, or shouting, some distance away. But no one to actually talk to or engage with. I am checked fairly regularly, my observations (or ‘obs’, as they all call them) taken. Pulse, blood pressure, temperature. The nurses are quick and efficient. I couldn’t exactly ask them to stay. And besides, I didn’t want to. I didn’t know, yet, who was on my side. I slept in snatches, always waking a little cold and a little afraid.
So when the lights come on and the shift changes and someone comes in to ask me about breakfast, I am relieved. Because I didn’t think I was scared of anything. I’ve walked down dingy alleyways alone at night, and let fairground rides swing me high in the air, and I once held a snake on a school trip to the zoo when no one else would do it. But it turns out that’snot true. I’m not scared of any of the obvious things, perhaps, but I’m scared of being alone in the night.
I order toast and tea, and then a nurse comes over and it’s Angela, and I realise she’s had her time off, while the night shift worked, and now she’s back.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asks me.
I do a quick check in with my body. Are the pains the same as yesterday? Are they worse, or better?
‘Where would you put yourself on a scale from one to ten, if one was no pain at all and ten was excruciating agony?’ she tries.
I think of the worst pains I’ve ever felt. I’ve been lucky, really. A jellyfish sting, period cramps, that time I fell off the low branch of a tree and broke my wrist.
‘Five?’
I say it like it’s a question, because I want her to tell me what’s reasonable.
Angela puts the blood pressure cuff on my arm. It’s only day two of me being conscious, but we’ve got this down. When I see her approach with it, I hold my left arm out. Then I give her my finger for the thing that checks my pulse.
‘Five’s pretty good,’ she says. ‘Do you have children?’
The question throws me. How is it relevant? And also, what if I did? Who would be looking after them?
‘Er, no.’
She pulls a pen from her breast pocket and writes something down on my chart.
‘Are they okay?’ I ask. ‘My obs?’
‘Fine. Blood pressure is on the high side of normal, but it’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Why did you ask about children?’
I am thirty, and female. I get asked a lot about children. And while it’s a great conversation starter if the answer is yes, because people can ask follow-up questions about gender andnames and ages, it’s a different story if you say no. It feels too abrupt to just offer the honest truth, so I find myself trying to explain. Sometimes I say that I’m not ready, or I’m not sure, or, if they don’t know enough about my circumstances to know it’s a lie, I say I’m single. Once, I asked David if anyone ever asks him whether he has children. He gave me a funny look, like it was a strange question, and said no.
‘Oh,’ Angela says, ‘just because it tends to skew things on the pain scale front. Women who’ve been through labour tend to class other pains as lower, because they have known pain that’s pretty bad.’
