Sleepwalkers (6 page)

There was a shout from downstairs. His father – a warning, they had to leave. Toby didn’t reply. He just sat there, halfinside the open cupboard, too miserable to move. Finally he mustered the strength to place the box in its secret place, hidden amongst the clothes.

Then he stood and put on the school uniform that his mother had laid out for him at the foot of the bed.

The journey to school was quiet – too quiet for both of them – so Michael put on the radio. Toby sat silently, staring out of the car window, watching as grey buildings passed under grey skies. He looked down at his belt, where the tiny camera had once sat. It was, of course, gone.

His father tried to hum along to a pop tune. He didn’t know the words or the tune, really, but Toby recognised the effort to lighten the mood.

‘Dad?’

‘Toby.’

‘Where did you find me?’

His father drove on, stony-faced.

‘Dad?’

‘I don’t know how you can bring it up.’

‘But I didn’t … ’

Michael snapped off the radio. ‘We were driving the streets all night, Toby. I was terrified we were going to get the call from the police saying you were hurt or you’d …’ He stopped,
and Toby realised how upset he was. ‘Your mother never stopped crying.’

They drove on in silence. The red lights seemed interminably long.

‘I guess it’s because you’re our only one, Toby. Your mum had so wanted a little brother or sister for you, but that wasn’t to be. So we worry about you more. I know that can be a bit suffocating for you, but … I drove all night, Toby.’

Toby stared down at his lap. ‘Sorry.’

His dad muttered something back under his breath, but Toby didn’t catch it.

When he looked up again, they had arrived at school. A couple of stragglers were running in, trying to beat the bell.

‘Just get into school. We love you.’

‘Love you too, Dad.’

He got out stiffly, but didn’t want to show it. He headed into school and turned at the gates. Michael was still parked there. Watching him. Toby waved, a little half-heartedly, then went inside. He wondered whether, if he turned and looked back outside again, the car would still be there, if his Dad was still waiting and watching. But then he saw some bigger boys coming towards him and he hobbled away to class, as quickly as his sore feet would allow.

Each time I see Jeff now, I feel jittery. I’m alright at home, but the way he laughs (his stupid bloody jokes) and the way he watches me only makes me more and more stressy. I thought this would all calm down but it hasn’t. It’s building inside me, I can’t explain it right; it’s like my body’s really unhappy and my brain doesn’t know why. At the end of every day, Jeff offers to drive me home, but I can’t face him at the moment. I tell him I’m fine and say something about some job I want to tinker with. He’s a bit unhappy about this, but eventually he lets me be and goes. I wander around the garage, restless and twitchy about things I just can’t put my finger on. I feel worried, and not knowing why is just a bigger wind-up.

When I get home, it’s quiet in the house. I go upstairs and find Carrie, Emma and Joe in our bed. She’s reading a story for Emma, but Joe’s crept into the bed even though he’s too old for the book. They both listen with eager, earnest faces. Carrie looks up, smiles and carries on. I want to run over and hug them so tight. But I am still shaking inside. I listen to the story. The lines rhyme. It’s witty, sweet, smart. Clear and easy.

I retreat to the boxroom. Turn on my computer. The machine powers up, but the screen is dead. I’m screaming inside as I bend down to check the plug, but it’s in, on, so there’s no obvious reason. I’ll need my toolbox.

Carrie appears at the door. ‘They want a cuddle before they go to sleep.’

All I can manage is a grunt. She comes into the room, puts an arm on my shoulder.

‘What’s wrong with the computer?’ I say.

‘No idea, I haven’t had a moment free today. Joe managed to block the sink with …’

She keeps on talking, but I don’t want to hear the details. Because they’ll suck me away from where I am now. They’ll make me feel safer and comfortable. I need the fix she offers, but I have to stay awake now.

And suddenly I feel I’ve been here a hundred times before. On the verge of opening my eyes and seeing it all, but deciding instead to turn my back, to slump down, to let it all slip blissfully away.

‘The screen doesn’t work, the computer’s on but the bloody screen’s buggered.’

She looks at me, confused. She was saying something and I’ve cut across her.

‘Well, it has,’ I mutter. ‘You’ve not used it?’

‘No. I said. What’s with you?’

‘I’ll go see the kids.’

‘No, hang on, you’re all wound up. Did something happen at work? Was it that prick Jeff?’

It’s nice that she doesn’t like him either.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Balls.’

‘Look, just … it’s nothing, I’m … I had three pints at lunchtime, so maybe it’s just the comedown, I don’t know, it’s nothing, honest.’

She studies me. Frowns, then nods. I push past her and go see the kids.

Joe tells me about a science experiment at school where the teacher made something go blue and Emma tells me that she needs another teddy, a brown dog, or the new one will get lonely cos none of the other toys like him. I play attentive dad. They seem happy enough.

Then I go back to my den.

I shut the door and stare at my desk. It’s cluttered with junk. I see three envelopes with red bills in them. In the drawer are some old photos – me and Carrie before the kids. We’re mugging it for the camera in a hammock.

I dig out more photos. Joe without his front teeth, Emma in the bath covered in chickenpox, all of us standing outside a collapsed tent in the rain. More photos, more memories. I stare at each one and I remember each moment. Then I stare at them all again.

Carrie comes back. She’s in her baggy pyjamas and her hair’s wet. I check my watch and realise that it’s late and I’ve dropped photos all over the floor. I see her looking at me and realise I look like a mentalist.

‘What’s going on, Ben?’

I hear the stress in her voice. The anger seeps out of me like a long, slow breath.

‘I don’t know.’

She comes over to me, slips onto my lap, nuzzles her head in my neck. ‘Do you ever get that thing,’ I say, ‘that thing in
the morning when you wake up, you wake up and your mind’s all blank? Like you’re still in the other dream? I wake up sometimes and I’m lying there and I’ve no idea who you are or who I am, really. I lie there, and it’s not scary, but I just feel as though I’m part of the other place, the dream. I lie there and slowly it comes back – you, me, the kids, work … it comes back, but it takes so long.’

‘Everyone gets that.’

‘Yeah, I know, you’re right.’

She is right. But I’m not telling her the truth. Her hair is dripping cold water onto my shirt. I feel the trickle down my chest.

‘Hun?’ She looks at me with her beautiful big eyes.

‘You’re right. I just … I … sometimes even in the day I find it hard to see where the dream ends and where we start. Does that make any sense?’

‘No.’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘Baby, you look so sad.’

She kisses me. I find myself wondering how many times we’ve kissed in our time together.

‘Does this feel real?’ she says. I see the smirk, the sexy smile.

‘It might.’

Her hand reaches down between my legs.

‘How about this?’

‘Yes, I think I can be pretty sure that this is …’

We kiss again. And then the phone rings. It feels like an electric jolt through Carrie.

‘Leave it,’ I urge. I want to stay in this cocoon.

‘No, no—’

‘It’ll be your mum. Whoever it is, let them wait.’

‘No, get off, I must, I’ll just—’

She’s flustered, and all my worries flood back through me. It feels like she’s fixing an expression for me.

‘Get your clothes off, get under the covers,’ she says with a wink. I sit back as she hurries down the stairs, hear her answer the phone. And I slip to the edge of the landing to listen.

‘No … it’s fine … I don’t think we need to … no, nothing like that.’

A long silence as she listens to the person on the other end of the phone.

‘We’re okay. You don’t need to … I’m on it … he’s
fine
.’

The ‘he’ is me. And that’s not her mother.

She hangs up, but doesn’t move for a moment. I can see her, see her head sag. I can feel the burden. If I weren’t so ripped up I’d want to share it with her. She’s still holding the phone in her hand, caught in a terrible quandary that I don’t understand.

I come down the stairs quietly, making sure she doesn’t hear me.

‘What’s wrong?’

She jumps, turns, looks at me, confused.

‘The call?’ I say as casually as I can.

‘Oh. Forget about it. Mum. Panicking about nothing. You know her, drama queen.’

She smiles. It’s a natural, easy smile. And her confusion before seemed absolutely genuine. She grabs Joe’s school bag off the floor and hangs it on the bottom of the banister.

‘I thought you were gonna get naked,’ she says, but the grin has gone now.

I go to the phone, pick it up, watching her the whole time. I dial last number recall. And her mother’s number comes up. I was so sure I was about to catch her out, but, no, I’m wrong, totally wrong. I’m an arsehole. I see the look of disappointment on her face and then she turns her back on me, marches into the kitchen.

I follow her, saying nothing. She goes to the sink, dumps too much detergent into the bowl then starts bashing the saucepans clean.

‘Carrie.’

No reply.

‘I don’t know why I did that. I’m sorry.’

She nods, but doesn’t turn. Still, the plates crash a little more lightly in the bubbles.

‘I think it’s, maybe, it’s cos I’m not sleeping properly. These dreams, Jesus.’

‘You’re booked in to see the doctor,’ is her head-down reply.

‘Yeah, Doctor McKay. Next week.’

A glass is placed on the rack. Her hand instinctively pulls hair behind her left ear. I don’t know what to do. It’s like that time we went to a nightclub and I got too drunk and made a fool of myself and she got so angry with me I thought she was going to mash me right there on the dance floor. But I have to know.

‘He’s just a GP, though.’

‘You just said you only needed sleeping pills.’

‘Yeah, but … what if … there’s something more wrong with me?’

‘More wrong? Like what?’

She turns and now I notice that her eyes are teary. I’m out of my depth.

‘I don’t know, that’s what I’m saying. But my body’s sore—’

‘That’s the rugby.’

‘Yeah, sure, but there’s that and my head’s tired and I feel like shit.’

She sighs, the anger visibly fading with her.

‘Go to bed, Ben.’

I stand there feeling big and useless.

‘Were you talking about me. To your mum?’

Another sigh from her. ‘No, I was talking about Dad. They’re … she wants to leave him. And I just … she sees things, imagines things about him which are just not …’

And then she starts to cry. But I still don’t go to her. I’m trapped in the doorway, trying to hold down papers in a gale. I imagine a fox, standing outside its lair, sniffing the breeze, its hairs on end, instinct telling it to run from a farmer’s gun that it cannot see.

I find words from somewhere, not sure how. ‘Why don’t we go out tomorrow for a drink, and talk. Somewhere without the kids. Not anything big and boozy. Just, you know, if we tried to do it here then Emma would have nightmares or Joe would have a coughing fit or …’

‘I’d like that.’ She reaches for a drying cloth. ‘Go to bed, hon.’

I nod, turn. Go upstairs. I slip into Joe’s room. Crouch down and stroke his matted hair. He sleeps so deeply he doesn’t stir. Sitting here in the dark, seeing the faint glow of the luminous stars that we stuck on the ceiling together, I wonder again what I have to worry about. A bad feeling. A glimpse of a face of a person I’ve never met.

I see the fox dead and decomposing. And the contents of my head feel wrong in my boy’s room. So I clamber up and get out.

I head for the bedroom. But stop, distracted by the wonder wall. I see Carrie at her own graduation with the worst perm ever. There are her parents holding Emma up so she can see the penguins at the zoo. There’s me and Joe pretending to be sumo wrestlers. There’s …

Carrie appears at the top of the stairs.

‘Bed.’

But I can’t take my eyes off the photos. ‘How come there are none of me up here?’ I ask.

‘Huh?’ She comes up close to me again, an arm around my waist.

‘Well, there’s you when you were younger – there, about to do that bungee jump in New Zealand and there, there. And there are your folks, but … where are the ones of me? When I was younger.’

‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

‘No, but—’

‘You want to put some up, you dig them out.’

‘But I don’t know where they are.’

The hand around my waist is a tiny, tiny bit tighter.

‘I don’t know where … I, when I look back, when I try to think back about life before you, before the kids, I … I sort of remember stuff but I … it’s so vague.’

‘Same with everyone.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Of course.’

‘But I … no, cos I can tell you when I first joined the scouts, I can tell you what marks I got at school, but I can’t
feel
any of it. I know it like I know dates in history, but I don’t feel like I was there in any of them.’

It’s so quiet.

‘It’s like …’ But I can’t explain it. She waits. ‘Do you remember how you felt when you were little?’

‘A bit. Some things. You know, like trying on Mum’s makeup when she was downstairs.’

‘And what do you remember?’

‘I … the smell of the food she was cooking. Feeling excited. Feeling … naughty.’

‘Yeah. I don’t … I don’t feel anything like that.’

‘Maybe everyone’s different. Maybe I’m the odd one.’

‘Maybe.’

One of the photos shows Carrie at her hen night. She’s surrounded by cackling, drunken gals, all in identical T-shirts, with devil’s horns in their hair and an oiled-up stripper looking cocksure next to her. She’s got a hand on his pumped chest. My stag do was a blur. But there’s an obvious reason for that.