The police searched our garden the next day, and found nothing.
I calmed down a little, although I still hadn’t slept much. Neil took the day off. We kept Michael at home too. I watched the police through a window, hunting around outside, and determined to get control of myself.
Despite being only a fraction over five and a half feet tall, I had always been quite a strong person. When we first got together Neil used to call me “the mighty atom”. Even at school I had been feisty.
The skateboarding incident had knocked it all out of me. I had allowed myself to become a different person. One who jumped at the slightest sound. One who expected the worst around every corner. But that really wasn’t me
I decided to buy a diary.
When I was ten years-old our family cat died. I was heartbroken. Dad told me “write your thoughts down in a diary — it helps you to make sense of things”. So that’s what I did. I wrote and wrote. About boring, every-day things, about arguments with Mum and Dad, about schoolgirl crushes. Tears and fun. When the diary ran out of pages I bought a notebook and wrote in that too.
I wrote diaries and journals almost every day until I was about fifteen years old.
It had been a good idea then, and I reckoned it would be a good idea now. I wanted to make sense of what was happening to me. Of what I had been allowing myself to become.
Neil offered to come into town with me but I wanted to go alone. I could see he was tired. The last few weeks had taken their toll on him as well as me. He’d been snappy with the kids about silly little things. More grumpy with me. I knew he wanted me to move on from what had happened. I could see he was struggling to cope with it at times. It made me realise how strong I had been before. Perhaps even strong for Neil. He wasn’t falling apart, not like I felt I was, but he was struggling. I wondered whether I might have been his strength too.
‘Neil, we should do something nice,’ I said.
His face had an “are you serious” look about it.
‘I think we need it,’ I said. ‘The weather has been getting warmer lately, why don’t we have a barbecue — get Abi and Oliver over. It could be for my birthday?’
‘It’s not your birthday for another five weeks,’ Neil said. ‘Is it really a good idea to have people round, you know, at the moment?’
‘It’s exactly the right time, Neil. I think I need it. I think we need it. Take our minds off all of this.’
He wasn’t convinced. I tried a different tack.
‘And I think it would be just what Michael and Rose need, having Jessica and Josie here. It would let them know that everything is normal. That Mum and Dad are just as they always have been.’
Neil gazed up at the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if he was thinking, or looking at where the kids’ rooms were.
‘I’ll let you do the cooking?’ I said.
When I arrived back home with my diary Neil was in a happier frame of mind.
‘I’ve spoken to Abi,’ he said. ‘She’s going to check with Oli and come back to us,’ he smiled.
I realised it was the first time I’d seen him smile for quite a while.
‘I suggested this coming weekend,’ he said. ‘The weather forecast looks good.’
‘I’ll write it in my diary,’ I said.
The night before the barbecue I had a little more to drink than usual, just to calm me down. Abi and Oli were old friends, the best, but I still needed an extra glass or so. Apart from day to day stuff at the school, this was the first social occasion since the attack.
I dropped off to sleep thinking that maybe we should get in another couple of bottles, just for the barbecue.
It’s very windy. I can hear a rushing sound, like waves or a gale. It’s not cold though. Will that smell give me away? Will it stay on the ground after I’ve gone? On the bushes? Like a dog who sprays his territory? This is my territory.
I can hear her now. And I can also hear… what? Panting? Heavy panting. Is that her? These damned bushes are in the way. She is coming fast now. She doesn’t know I am here. She isn’t expecting me.
I step out from behind the bushes, look behind me and all around. Only us. I brush my sleeves, make it look like I was just looking for something. Just out for a walk. Are my sleeves brown?
She sees me. Hesitates for a moment — then a smile. Does she recognise me? I think she does. I think she knows who I am. I smile too.
I woke up in a sweat, heart thumping. My head felt crushed, probably from the wine, and my left thigh hurt.
My first thought was to wake Neil, but I stopped myself, lay there for a few minutes and tried to bring my breathing under control. Consciously tried to slow my heart rate, gently stretched my neck a little. The smell buds (if that’s what they are called) in my nose were working overtime. I had always thought that the only thing to smell in the morning, in the bedroom, was stuffiness and stale air. How wrong I was.
Sweet floral scents came to me, then thick, sugary smells. Chemical odours too. I was sure I could smell the paste holding the wallpaper to the walls.
I rolled out of bed, trying not to wake Neil, and pulled on my bath-robe. My diary was downstairs, so that’s where I headed. The third step from the bottom creaked and a cold shiver hit my neck. Come on, Christine. Pull yourself together!
I had left the diary on the small glass table next to the sofa. I was sure there had been a pen resting on it when I’d gone up to bed. Now the pen was on the floor. Had Neil come up after me or before? I couldn’t remember. Had he read my diary? He had sworn that he wouldn’t, that he knew it was my space for trying to get back on track. Perhaps it had been Michael.
I hadn’t written much anyway, yet. But it was the principle. I eventually supposed that the pen might simply have rolled off the diary in the night.
I wrote down everything that I could remember about the dream. About the wind and the rushing noise. I tried not to assume things or jump to any conclusions. I just tried to write about it as objectively as possible. As though I was just an observer.
Technically, of course, I was just an observer of the dream. I was most definitely not just an observer in the dream. I wrote what I could about the girl. Her face was more abstract than anything, but I had sensed that she knew me — or at least, wasn’t too scared of me to make her want to run. I remembered my brown sleeves and how I came out from the bushes brushing them off. I couldn’t remember what the smell was that I thought I had been scenting the area with. Also, it felt significant that I hadn’t attacked her. That I had woken up before anything like that. So I made a note of that too.
As my pen moved across the page I could feel the tension lifting from my shoulders. I felt as though I was doing something proactive, rather than just being a victim of something. It had been the right thing to do, to come down and write about it, rather than wake Neil. I would maybe try to not even mention the dream to him.
I wrote about how worried I was feeling. I just couldn’t understand why I was dreaming about hurting people. Hurting girls. I worried, still, that it might somehow spill out into my school life. That I would have to stop working with children.
I wrote in large letters, taking up half of one page, the words: BE STRONG. Underneath that I wrote: IT MUST STOP!
I read them back and thought about the girl in the dream. Wondered whether I should have written: I MUST STOP!
The stair creaked.
‘Neil! You scared me.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘What are you doing down here? It’s six o’clock.’
‘I had the dream again.’ Inside I kicked myself for mentioning it so quickly. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m just writing a few notes. I’ll probably be up again soon.’
He shrugged and rubbed the side of his nose with his fist, then pushed his head back and yawned loudly.
‘You go back to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll be up soon.’
He nodded and plomped back up the stairs. His footsteps sounded heavier than normal. I hoped he was OK. The bedroom door squeak
ed and I heard the door of the en-suite slide open. The toilet flushed — and then all was quiet.
I sat still for a few minutes, listening to the silence. Then I closed my diary and wandered through to the kitchen. I was far too awake to go back to bed. It was way too early to start preparing things for the barbecue that evening.
I thought about opening a bottle of wine.
And decided to start on the barbecue after all.
11