Page 21 of Insomnia

...I grip the banister and start to climb, forcing one foot in front of the other, my legs numb from being cramped so long. Another flash of cold lightning makes me jump. I’m only five and I’m so scared, but the upstairs hallway is empty. There are noises though, strange sounds I don’t quite understand, coming from down where mine and Phoebe’s bedroom is.

“Mummy?” I say, quietly.

My hand is trembling as I put the card down. I’m shaking, not with fear, but with rage.Mummy.She was everything a mother shouldn’t be, and even though she’s now just this husk in a bed, I can still feel the embers of the fear I felt that night.

Her medical notes hang on a clipboard above her bed and I lean forward to look at them. There are mainly just a lot of medical expressions I don’t understand, but then at the top I seeHartwell House in-room CCTV recorded the initial injury at 1:13 on 06/24. The patient was found at 2:00 on a routine check and immediately transferred to Leeds General.

I stare, frowning.

1:13 on 06/24.

The twenty-fourth of June. That was last Friday. She did this late Thursday night. Last Thursday. That was the day of theStockwell v. Stockwellcustody judgment. The first night of my insomnia. I woke in the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. It’s coming back to me with perfect clarity. I remember being in a panic—there’s someone in the house—and looking at the clock.

It had showed 1:13a.m.

My heart races as I look back at the clipboard and notes:1:13 on 06/24. I woke up terrified at exactly the time my mother was bashing her own brain in against a mirror.

How can that be?It’s a coincidence, I try to tell myself. But the dread I’ve felt since waking that night coils in the pit of my stomach.What is happening to me?

Icy fingers clamp around my wrist, the hand coming up from the bed fast. I shriek—a quiet airless panicked sound—and stumble backward in disbelief, but she holds tight, knuckles straining white against cold skin, even as the rest of her body lies so still and deathly and unmoved.

No, Mummy, no!Memories crowd in and it feels like she’s dragging me to the under-stairs cupboard again, grip like a vise as I cry out pleading with her, and in my panic the past and the present become a jumbled mess and I’m sure I’ll pass out.No, Mummy, please no!

Her eyes flash open wide, jaundice-yellow and bloodshot, and her gaze fixes on mine. I try to pull myself free and I can hear my wheezing breath as my face burns, and I’m sure—sure—that this time she’ll drag me into the darkness, the void in which she’s trapped and I can feel a scream building and then—

As fast as they grabbed me, her fingers let go. Her arm drops to her side, as if it’s never moved at all. Her eyes are closed again.

I crumple into the visitor’s chair, almost breathless. The machine continues itswhooshandclick,keeping her alive. I look around the room in disbelief. No one is here. I glance up—there are no cameras watching this room. No one saw it. I rub my wrist and can still feel her cold fingers there. I stare at her, so peaceful, as if nothing has happened. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe this is the start of my going mad. Turning into her.

1:13a.m. The moment my insomnia started she was smashing her head apart.

I was wrong. She can still scare me. And her fingers might have fallen away, but she refuses to let me go.

There’s no nurse at the desk when I stumble past a short while later, desperate for fresh air and desperate to get away, not stopping to sign out. I hurry out of the building, knocking into an older woman coming the other way, not pausing to apologize, and then I reach my car just before my legs give way. A rush of heat floods my body, black spots forming at the corners of my vision, and I’m sure, for a minute, that I’m going to pass out. I get the air-conditioning blasting and suck in deep breaths, the cold sweat on my skin slowly fading.

I shouldn’t have come. I should have stayed at work. No good could come from seeing her. I should have known that. The buzz in my ears fades, and it’s only then that I realize that somewhere deep in my bag, my phone is ringing. It stops and then starts again.

I dig it out. It’s the school. They want to see me. Of course they do. I hang up and want to cry as exhaustion settles heavily back in my bones.

19.

I’ve been waiting outside the headteacher’s office for fifteen minutes by the time Robert turns up, hurried and flustered.

“Where have you been?” I ask, annoyed. The school secretary told me they’d called and got his voice mail, and no answer on the landline, but that they really wanted us both here if possible. I’d got his voice mail too, and then I went from worrying about what the school was going to say to worrying that Robert had driven into another tree.

“Sorry, I must have had a bad signal. What’s this all about?”

I don’t have time to answer—thankfully—before the door opens and we’re ushered inside amid polite greetings. God, I wish he wasn’t here for this. What’s he going to think? He’s going to be mad, and I can’t really blame him.

“Mrs. Fincham,” I say as we take our seats. I need to face this head-on. “If this is about what happened this morning...”

“What happened this morning?” Robert looks at me sideways, surprised.

“Ah, that. Yes, actually we had a phone call from a member of the public.” The headteacher leans forward on her desk, looking at me over her glasses, as if I’m a naughty schoolchild. “They were very concerned about what they saw.”

My face is burning again. “Honestly, I’m so sorry, I—”

“They said they saw you shaking one of our students. You were leaning in close to his face and it looked like you were very angry and saying some very unpleasant things to him. They said he was trying to pull away.”

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