Keep your eyes closed.
“I know you’re awake.”
I open my eyes. They’re both looking at me: Mum curious; Robert cross.
“You were telling Lola about making babies?” Mum obviously thinks this is her area of expertise, not mine.
“I—”
“You shouldn’t be talking about it with her. She’s too young.” Robert weighs in a bit louder than he means to because he’s had a little too much wine.
“Robert. Volume,” Mum says sharply, as she has been doing all evening.
“Stop shouting!” Lola interrupts. “You’ll scare her baby.”
Oh, Lola…
“What?” Robert and Mum don’t seem to realize what’s going on; they’re looking at Kooky still.
“Hannah’s baby. You don’t want to scare it by shouting.”
AARON
I’m sitting on the stone bench that overlooks the sloping front garden. It’s cold, but my cheeks are still burning hot from being shut inside close to a log fire and too many relatives, and there’s a white heat in my mind that’s so intense it’s almost consuming me.
I breathe, watching a little of it disappear in the air.
One breath at a time, little by little, heat out, cold in, until I’m there.
Uncles Matt and Dave were talking to Zoë, Matt’s wife, about me. About how pale I looked. About how my parents hadn’t come to them to talk about the problem. About how they shut out the Family. That was no way to deal with these things — we’re family, we share our problems, we share the burden of our children’s woes. We don’t hide and pretend everything is all right.
But did you hear? They sent him to counselling.
Counselling? Well, of course, he would need that after—
I heard Gran walk in, sensible clops of sensible shoes on the flagstones.
It didn’t stop them.
He only went to three sessions. (Wrong, Uncle Dave. I went to four.)
Well.
Well.
Well.
Stephanie told me she’d set him up with visiting.
Visiting? Who?
At one of the old folks’ homes her company do the supplies for. (Gran does not put herself in the category of old folks because her back’s still straight and her mind sharp.)
How’s that supposed to help?
No answer. I imagine there was a lot of shrugging. (Mum’s logic was that I need some perspective — a bit of purpose. Which is true.)
Little Lynette told me he’s very withdrawn. (Of course, I forgot, brattish seven-year-olds are experts in psychoanalysis — I should have gone to Zoë’s daughter for counselling.)
It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch.
Mm.
Mm.
Mm.
Goes to show.
I walked past the door. You could almost see the shared thought bubble:
How long has he been there? Did he hear us?!
“We’re leaving on Monday,” I said, looking back. “Best to finish the conversation then.”
Then I came out here.
There’s a swell in the volume of voices as someone opens the back door and crunches down the path towards me. Dad sits down and holds his hand out flat then grunts.
“Snowing.”
It’s winter. We’re in Yorkshire. I am not entirely blown away by this turn of events.
“Your mum is currently tearing strips out of Zoë and the uncles.”
I say nothing.
“They feel pretty bad about it.”
Still have nothing to say.
“Talk to me, Aaron.” He pauses. “Please.”
I turn and look at him. He’s staring at me, eyes a little bleary from the smoke and the alcohol and yesterday’s four-hour drive.
“There’s nothing to say.” I watch him watching me, looking for signs of mental instability. “I think they’re unwise to talk about me whilst I’m in the house. And rude. But then, y’know, your family…”
I crack a smile to show I’m joking but Dad’s echo of the same is weak. Our timing’s all wrong these days.
“Come back to us, son.”
I stare at the ground between my feet and focus on the fuzz of frost on the blades of grass.
“It’s hard. I’m trying.”
But I wonder whether I really am.
Dad puts his arm around me, pressing his face into my hair. “I just wish I knew what was going on in here.”
“Guilt, Dad.”
There’s a silence between us. This is old ground.
“We’re all guilty of something,” he says and I know he’s thinking that there was something he could have done to help. That my parents’ love is so strong they’d rather see a flaw in their parenting than a flaw in their son is overwhelming.
It’s too much to be forgiven when all you want is to be blamed.
HANNAH
“I can’t tell you who the father is” sounds a lot like “I don’t know who the father is” to an already hysterical parent.
“How many have there been?” The look that crosses my mother’s face shames me more than anything I’ve ever done with a boy — and yet it’s still easier to let her think I’ve been knocked up by a nameless random than tell her the truth. I think that would be one truth too many after learning that not only am I over three months pregnant, but that I turned to Gran for help.
Robert tells me to leave the room. We will talk in the morning. As I turn to shut the door, I see Mum burrow into his big broad shoulder, pressing her face into the cheesey Christmas jumper he wears every year. I watch as her shoulders shake and he wraps his arms around her, protecting her from the hurt I’ve caused.
I shut the door and slide down the other side. Mum has Robert. I have no one.
And it’s all my fault.
AARON
Sleep is dangerous country. You relinquish control of body and mind, hand over everything and leave yourself vulnerable for those unwaking hours.
I never used to have problems sleeping. Not before. Now sleep and I are uncomfortable bed companions, with me lying frigid beneath the sheets waiting to feel its arms slip around me, then giving in to the inevitable. Sleep cannot be trusted. Sometimes it takes you away for what feels like a lifetime to deposit you awake and alert mere minutes after it claimed you. Sometimes it snatches seconds and gives hours in return. And when you slip behind that black curtain there’s no telling what waits on the other side…
Sometimes I’m living my dreams, sometimes I’m aware that I’m dreaming, but there’s a special kind of dream that is a living nightmare. I know what’s coming, I’m aware of what I’m being dragged inexorably towards, but I’m also living it, like it’s something I’ve never experienced before, so I get to feel the horror and the dread every time, as if it’s the first. How does my brain allow this to happen? What stupid short circuit has been set up so that I get to experience apprehension and surprise at the same time?
And why is it that this dream can strike at any time, turning innocuous fun, or satisfying sexy time, or even calming blankness into something that erases every bit of good feeling I’ve ever had and forces me to face the worst of myself?
It starts with the rain.
In my dreams I get 3D, surround sound, smell-o-vision… I also get wet. IMAX has nothing on me.