I woke up in the night. But only because of Neil snoring. I stayed awake long enough to realise that I should make a note of my mileage reading every time I got in and out of the car, along with my time-sheet. Then sleep took over again.
In the morning, the first thing I heard was the beeping of Neil’s alarm clock.
I felt pretty good. Refreshed almost. I couldn’t recall any horrible dreams or visions, I had no dream-fuelled feelings of suspicion towards Neil and I didn’t stink of vomit, booze or Vicks.
And I remembered deciding to write down my mileage as I got into or out of the car. Not a bad night really.
Before going to bed I had done as Colin suggested and written down everything relevant I could think of since being mugged.
I jotted down details of the dreams; the sense of smell; the visions; the wind and the noise; the girl on the stairs; Josie at the barbecue; Rose’s room; being outside Harry’s house; the paint on the back of the house; and, of course, the blackouts.
I decided I would let him see the list if he wanted.
On another sheet of paper I wrote down all the things I had done to try to combat what was happening to me. Drinking; determination; Vicks; Anne; my time-sheet; my mileage record; seeing Doctor Jones; and, now, seeing him — Colin.
Reading the list I felt guilty. There must have been more I could have done. I must have missed something.
I would let him see this list too. See if there was anything else he could suggest.
When Michael and Rose had gone, and Neil too, I printed off a new time-sheet for the day. I added a section on it for writing down the car mileage.
Before leaving the house I ate cereal and an apple. I drank coffee and filled a sports bottle with water. That was coming with me into Colin’s house.
I ticked off all the times that had already passed and kicked myself for not having printed this out the night before so I could tick it off as soon as I got up in the morning. In the car I wrote down the overall mileage the car had done. I realised it wouldn’t do any good just to press the journey mileometer to zero. If I could write “Bitch” and screw up my time-sheet, it was a fairly safe bet that I could push the mileometer button whenever I wanted. I was pretty sure that I couldn’t change the overall mileage record, however, whether I was conscious or not.
I scribbled next to the nearest half-hour time slot: 37,867 and made a note of the actual time and the date. It occurred to me that it might be prudent to add my potential destination too, so I wrote Colin Connell underneath the date.
It was another grey and cloudy day, but so far there was no mist and no rain. I could smell no electricity in the air.
I pushed back a thought in my mind. Tried not to think it at all. But I knew it was there. A dream free night, no horrors anywhere in the house, an improvement in the weather and control of my time and mileage. Could it all be over?
On the drive to Colin’s house I must have checked every minute as it went by and every mile as it flicked over on the mileometer. Everything seemed normal as I pulled up against his hedge. I grabbed my handbag and bottle of water and pushed the car door open. I’d made it, without anything weird happening (apart from checking every minute and mile).
As I walked his path to the front door I noticed that the wheelbarrow was no longer on its side. The garage doors were closed, hiding the old car from view. And I heard no birdsong.
His front door creaked slightly when he opened it. I hadn’t noticed that the last time.
‘Hello Christine,’ he said.
‘Hi, Colin.’
He moved back into the entrance hallway and I followed him in, squeaking the front door shut behind me. I smiled as I caught site of the phrenology head.
‘Pseudo-science, remember?’ Colin said. ‘Don’t get too chummy with him, he’ll only let you down.’
The smell of coffee had reached me before the front door had even opened. I gripped my water bottle.
‘Just go through into the study,’ he said. ‘I’m just getting a drink. Do you want one?’
I held up my water bottle and shook it. The water sloshed around inside.
‘I’m fine, thank you. I have some water with me.’
I thought he looked a little surprised.
‘No problem. I’ll be in in a minute. Sit anywhere you like.’
The study looked tidier than it had the last time I was there. The books were more ordered, although still stacked on the floor, and all the seats were available. I noticed that the silver photo-frame on the desk by the window had moved. I heard Colin making a drink in the kitchen. He sounded well occupied. Instead of sitting straight down, I moved over to the desk. I figured that if he came in now, I could get away with the pretence of looking out of the window at the garden. Looking down at the photo-frame I saw that it held a colour photograph. The colour seemed to be faded, probably because of sunlight beaming through the window, although there was none at the moment.
A man, a woman and a girl. All sitting on the floor, all smiling. Colin looked younger in the picture. It was difficult to be precise, I guessed it had been taken about five years earlier. The girl, presumably the daughter now at university, looked more like her mother than like Colin, but I could see his expression in her face. The woman looked comfortable and happy. She had straw coloured hair, quite long and wavy. It looked very natural, as did the whole sitting. They all had their arms hung over each other’s shoulders. It made me feel very sad.
I jumped as I heard a noise at the door. Colin was already halfway in with his coffee. He looked over at me as I blushed.
‘That was taken about three and a half years ago,’ he said. ‘We had all just got back from the holiday from hell. It was supposed to be sunny Spain, but they had floods and all three of us got sick. The only reason we had the picture taken was because it was already booked for that day and already paid for.’
‘You all look great,’ I said. ‘Very happy. You wouldn’t know that you’d been ill.’
‘My daughter, Ruth, put the picture in the frame for me for my 50th birthday. Before she got the frame I just had the picture perched up on the bookshelf by the window. I think the sun caught it a bit. It’s a shame really.’
‘What was your wife’s name?’
‘Louise. Louise Jane Connell.’
He looked past me, through the window at the garden. I wished I hadn’t asked her name.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Neil always says I’m nosey.’
‘Your husband,’ Colin said.
I nodded.
‘How does he feel about you being here today?’
He’s jealous and threatening.
‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘We just want to get everything back to normal again. So anything that helps is good. So he’s good with it.’
Colin indicated the armchair that I had sat in before and we both sat down.
‘Did you feel it worth making any notes before coming today, or would you prefer to just take it as it comes?’
I reached into my handbag and pulled out both sheets of paper. I checked which one was the “problems” sheet and handed it across the coffee table. There was a small stain of dark ink from the mess I’d tried my best to clean up in my handbag. I ignored the stain.
‘I’ve written down everything I think that’s been relevant since the attack. There’s quite a bit I’m afraid. And it’s a bit all over the place.’
Colin’s eyes flicked over the page of scribble. At one point his brow furrowed. A moment later his eyebrows raised. Then he pursed his lips and blew a gentle flow of breath through them. He didn’t speak at all. When he’d finished reading it he handed it back to me.
‘Do you have a pen?’ he said.
I pulled one out of my handbag.
‘If you can remember,’ he said, ‘can you put rough dates against these things that have happened. Maybe put the date you were attacked at the top of the page. I understand the first blackout was after you came here the day before yesterday, but if you can put th
e date down for that too it would help.’
I thought and scrawled over what I had written. I think I had it pretty much spot-on date wise. I handed the sheet back to Colin.
He picked up an A4, hard-backed notebook from the coffee table and opened it up, like a book. A silver pen rested between the pages.
He put my sheet on the left-hand side of the notebook and started writing on the blank page on the right. Again he was silent.
He clicked his pen and looked up at me, then past me, and then back down to the notebook again, writing some more.
‘Last night I had no dreams at all,’ I said.
He looked up at me and nodded. Back to his writing.
His eyes were narrowed, his mouth tightly shut. His face seemed total concentration. It gave away nothing of his thoughts. I felt a flutter in my stomach. Perhaps I had been too honest, too open. Presumably he was in touch with social services through his work. Local authorities perhaps. Would I be considered a danger to others? From what I had written it was clear that all was not well inside my head. Were Michael and Rose at risk? What was he scribbling down in that book of his? A help note? An SOS? The first draft of a letter to social services?
The flutter in my tummy grew great flapping wings.
He stopped writing and looked up from his notebook.
‘Had you ever experienced any of these things, or anything remotely like them, before?’
I had thought this through a hundred times. I had tried to think back over childhood nightmares and dreams, tried to remember if I had ever blacked out in the past — if there had ever been any “lost” moments. I was convinced there were none.
Although I knew the answer, I didn’t speak straight away. I wanted him to realise that I was taking this seriously and that I was giving everything proper consideration. I looked up to a corner of the ceiling and furrowed my brow. After a few seconds of “concentration” I looked back down at him.
‘Never,’ I said. ‘I have thought and thought so much since the attack, ever since the first dreams started coming, but I don’t ever recall having had anything like them in the past. I’ve gone back all through my childhood and I can’t recall a single event that’s even remotely similar.’
He nodded.
‘What do you think about the attack?’ he said
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, when you think about what happened to you, what do you think? How does it make you feel? If you were looking back on it as a mere observer, rather than being involved, how would you regard it?’
I wasn’t really sure what he meant.
‘Well… it hurt,’ I said. ‘It caused me a lot of pain. And when I think of it I feel angry — although sometimes scared. I wonder if the person that did it has a family, whether he might be a young dad or not. I try to imagine how he felt after he did it. Whether he felt guilty and sorry or whether it gave him a buzz, made him elated. It’s crossed my mind that he might have been a pupil of mine once, not that I have any reason to assume that he was, but it intrigues me.’
Colin nodded again but said nothing. It felt like he was asking me to continue.
‘That’s about it, really,’ I said. ‘Obviously I wish it hadn’t happened, but I can’t turn back the clock. It’s made me much more wary when I go out, or go to the front door. I find myself looking around a lot more now, checking to see who is nearby. And the sound of skateboard wheels on the pavement makes goosebumps come up on the back of my neck.’
‘The first dream,’ he said, ‘was approximately two weeks after the incident — is that about right?’
‘I think so. I was due to go back to work the next day, so just over two weeks since the attack. I was looking forward to going back to the school, seeing all the kids again. They sent me so many cards. It was lovely. And then the night before I was due back, I had the dream.’
‘In the two weeks between the attack and the first dream, had you had any dreams or blackouts or odd experiences at all?’
I shook my head.
‘None,’ I said. ‘Apart from my sense of smell.’
‘Tell me about that.’
‘I noticed that smells seemed more intense and stronger while I was in the hospital in the days after the attack. They kept me in for almost three days and some of the smells were just too much for me. I’m sure that was why I was sick so much. Too many intense smells.’
‘And this was the only one of these “symptoms” you experienced almost immediately?’
I nodded.
‘And this acute sense of smell hasn’t diminished at all since then?’
‘As far as I can tell,’ I said. ‘I suppose I have got used to it a little, but it’s still as strong as ever. When I fill the car up with petrol I have to hold a sleeve or handkerchief over my mouth and nose. It’s as though all the smells are a hundred times stronger, so even nice smells, like roses, are sometimes too strong for me.’
He tapped his pen against the notebook.
‘This may sound like an odd question,’ he said, ‘but do you blame the attack for what’s happening to you now?’
It didn’t sound odd. It sounded bloody stupid. I wondered if it was a trick question. If somehow by answering it a certain way I would ensnare myself in his “contact social services” trap.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Is that wrong?’
He smiled.
‘Not at all. But not everyone who suffers from post-traumatic-stress is able to pin their difficulties on the actual event that caused them. It can be difficult for some to see the link to something that happened weeks or months ago to what they are experiencing now.’
‘I have no difficulty at all,’ I said. ‘It’s very clear to me that the attack is what’s caused all of this.’ I waved my hand in the direction of my sheet of paper on his open notebook. ‘The problem I do have is that I can’t see how it’s post-traumatic-stress that’s at the root of it all. I don’t think I have that. I think it’s something else.’
He picked up his pen again and made a note.
‘What do you think it is?’ he said.
‘I think that I received two quite heavy bumps to my head. One from the skateboard and one from when I hit the pavement.’ I lifted a handful of hair to show the scar on my forehead. ‘I honestly believe that some sort of damage has been done inside my head. I know that I’ve had scans and examinations and tests — but I think that something has either been broken or torn. Some sort of protective lining or something inside my brain. It literally feels like a curtain has been torn off an area that was previously secret. And now it’s open and all these horrible things are coming out of it. I now have dreams about hurting young girls, I see visions of girls on my stairs and now my mind seems to continually replay these horrors, ingraining them ever deeper. And whatever I try to do on the outside to combat it, doesn’t seem to have any effect inside. I can’t mend the tear.’
I heard the scratching of his pen as he wrote.
And the latest “event”,’ he said, ‘was yesterday when you blacked out and ended up in your daughter’s room?’
‘It was as though I just came to. I had gone out for a walk to clear my head and then came to in Rose’s room.’
‘Did you go into your son’s room at all?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t check afterwards to see if there was any evidence of me having been in there. I didn’t think of it. Michael hasn’t said anything since, so I guess I didn’t.’
‘And prior to that — you went to your son’s friend’s house — Harry?’
‘Yes. His mother rang me to say I had been sitting outside in the car looking over at their house. Apparently she waved and I ignored it. Then she came out, and I had gone.’
‘Was Harry at home, do you know?’
‘As far as I know. She had said she was keeping him at home for a couple of days. But she didn’t mention whether he had seen me outside as well as her.’
Colin sat back and tapped the silver pen again. He sai
d nothing.
I felt that I had said as much as I could.
When he spoke again it was in a much quieter voice. It unnerved me.
‘Christine?’ he said. ‘Does Harry have a sister?’
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