muddled up. What was I, in the middle of all of them? What was I doing? I closed my eyes, and wasn’t welcome anywhere any more, I was ejected, thrown out like some nasty little scrap. It was spinning inside my head, jostling about, I know that feeling well, it’s what happens before the terrible thoughts, the ones that take me straight to the place I mustn’t go, feelings I never have whenI’m awake, yep, there are some things I can only do when I’m asleep, I go back to them in my sleep, that’s where we’ve arranged to meet.
I buried my head in the pillow to make it go away, but it just thumped harder. It was knotted and heavy. Animals with pincers, scuttling little crabs who want to suck my blood. And they always tell me things aren’t going well, things aren’t going well at all, it’s all gone wrong and it can still get worse, something terrifying’s waiting for me and it’s all my fault, I went about it all wrong and it’s too late now. I try to fight it, to wake up a voice to say it’s not true, nothing’s going to come and gobble me up, I haven’t made such serious mistakes, it was just kids’ stuff, pranks that didn’t mean anything, it was meant for a laugh, I do what I can, I’m not some giant, some perfect mother who lets everything roll like water off a duck’s back, without leaving any scars – I know there are some people who are never hurt, shame I’ll never be like them, I’ll have to come to terms with that. I wasn’t getting anywhere, there was no peace for me in that bed and I may well have slept the night before, but it was bound to be the last time, now something was holding my head above the waterline of sleep, I just had to realize it, that was all.
I opened my eyes, the room was almost completely dark now, you could hear rain against the window panes, the wind was up, if I’d been alonewith Kevin it would have been easier, but there was Stan rebelling against everything, standing up to me. I looked at him as best I could, I wanted to know why nothing was straightforward with him, he’d started quietly eating the biscuits, nibbling at them, and he gave me a fake smile full of crumbs.
The sea must have been black now, too, like this shrunken patch of sky. The sea was swollen with dead sailors thrown into its waters, Hushaby. The sea was a freezing great floating graveyard. Was Kevin’s enchanted castle still on the beach? Had the tide risen that far and snapped it up in one mouthful? And what about all those shells… other children will pick them up, when the water’s all blue and the sun’s broken through the sky. There’ll be classrooms full of them, dead seashells, sick notes picked up along the beaches.
The rain was spattering against our window, poison released from above, the rain was at war with us, that’s what was blurring the colour of the sky, would there be lots of lights at the funfair and lots of people, too? Here at the hotel you couldn’t hear anyone any more. It wasn’t a hotel, it was a tower, a rocket that never took off, we were closer to the sky than the others, suspended in thin air, with clouds pressing against the window panes.
Would you really like to go home? Is it because you miss school? That’s what I wanted to ask Stan but the rain stopped me talking, lashingat the windows with its needles, I mustn’t pay it too much attention, I knew that, had to think of something else, but was Stan really missing school? All day long with the teacher, how does that work? She bamboozles him for hours on end, telling him more and more stories! I can’t even get him to read through his homework, I don’t understand it at all, specially the maths, Forget it, he told me the other day when he realized I couldn’t go through his geometry with him, is it really all that important? Calculating the angles of things? That’s not how I see life, all flat on minutely squared paper, no more mysteries anywhere, school is the kingdom of numbers, even my kids
I buried my head in the pillow to make it go away, but it just thumped harder. It was knotted and heavy. Animals with pincers, scuttling little crabs who want to suck my blood. And they always tell me things aren’t going well, things aren’t going well at all, it’s all gone wrong and it can still get worse, something terrifying’s waiting for me and it’s all my fault, I went about it all wrong and it’s too late now. I try to fight it, to wake up a voice to say it’s not true, nothing’s going to come and gobble me up, I haven’t made such serious mistakes, it was just kids’ stuff, pranks that didn’t mean anything, it was meant for a laugh, I do what I can, I’m not some giant, some perfect mother who lets everything roll like water off a duck’s back, without leaving any scars – I know there are some people who are never hurt, shame I’ll never be like them, I’ll have to come to terms with that. I wasn’t getting anywhere, there was no peace for me in that bed and I may well have slept the night before, but it was bound to be the last time, now something was holding my head above the waterline of sleep, I just had to realize it, that was all.
I opened my eyes, the room was almost completely dark now, you could hear rain against the window panes, the wind was up, if I’d been alonewith Kevin it would have been easier, but there was Stan rebelling against everything, standing up to me. I looked at him as best I could, I wanted to know why nothing was straightforward with him, he’d started quietly eating the biscuits, nibbling at them, and he gave me a fake smile full of crumbs.
The sea must have been black now, too, like this shrunken patch of sky. The sea was swollen with dead sailors thrown into its waters, Hushaby. The sea was a freezing great floating graveyard. Was Kevin’s enchanted castle still on the beach? Had the tide risen that far and snapped it up in one mouthful? And what about all those shells… other children will pick them up, when the water’s all blue and the sun’s broken through the sky. There’ll be classrooms full of them, dead seashells, sick notes picked up along the beaches.
The rain was spattering against our window, poison released from above, the rain was at war with us, that’s what was blurring the colour of the sky, would there be lots of lights at the funfair and lots of people, too? Here at the hotel you couldn’t hear anyone any more. It wasn’t a hotel, it was a tower, a rocket that never took off, we were closer to the sky than the others, suspended in thin air, with clouds pressing against the window panes.
Would you really like to go home? Is it because you miss school? That’s what I wanted to ask Stan but the rain stopped me talking, lashingat the windows with its needles, I mustn’t pay it too much attention, I knew that, had to think of something else, but was Stan really missing school? All day long with the teacher, how does that work? She bamboozles him for hours on end, telling him more and more stories! I can’t even get him to read through his homework, I don’t understand it at all, specially the maths, Forget it, he told me the other day when he realized I couldn’t go through his geometry with him, is it really all that important? Calculating the angles of things? That’s not how I see life, all flat on minutely squared paper, no more mysteries anywhere, school is the kingdom of numbers, even my kids
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