Page 52 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
I feel like I can’t breathe waiting for her to answer. I need to know I haven’t spent the last seven years going to prison to visit a man who put me in hospital. Who hurt me, over and over.
‘Yes,’ she says again.
And I feel like I might break into pieces, just scatter on the wind. But she must see the pain on my face, because she holds up both her hands.
‘You went once,’ she says. ‘I came with you. You wanted him to see the scar you have on your wrist, from where it was gashed open on the bottom step. And you wanted to tell him that you were seeking a divorce.’
I take a deep, shaky breath. It’s over. My marriage is over. I look down at my wrist, run my thumb across the scar there, which is little more than a silver line. And it helps me, looking at that, to believe in the time that’s passed.
‘So I’m divorced?’ I have to check.
‘You are. And he’s doing ten years.’
‘People always talk about prisoners only doing half their sentences.’
‘Yeah, I think that’s often the case. But not when you lose your temper and attack a prison guard.’
I put a hand up to my mouth. I can’t believe it. And at the same time, I can. Of course I can. I know that temper. I lived with that temper.
‘I have to go,’ she says, her face twisted into an apology.
I look at the clock on the wall. It’s five past six in the evening.
‘Home for bedtime?’ I ask.
‘Yep. He hates it if I’m not there. Apparently I’m the only one who gets the voice of his cuddly rabbit right.’
‘Well, that sounds like a really important job.’
She gives me a hug, and it’s one of those really tight ones where you feel like the life’s being squeezed out of you. I think we both need it. She’s almost at the door when I say her name and she turns back. ‘I’m really glad you got to be a mum,’ I say.
She blows a kiss and opens the door to leave. But I call her name, because something’s just occurred to me.
‘Do I still have Whiskers?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, no. He died a couple of years ago. Cancer.’
I nod, work out how old he would have been. Fifteen. A good age. Still, it hurts, somewhere deep in my ribs.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ she says, reaching for her bag. ‘I brought you a brick, until you can get a new phone sorted.’
She passes it to me and I look at it. It’s like the first phone I ever had, as a teenager. I wonder whether you can play Snake on it.
‘It’s fully charged, and I’ve put my number in it, and Liam’s.’ She shows me how to get to the contacts, and I see their names there, and it’s the saddest list of contacts I’ve ever seen. And then she leaves.
I sit up in bed for a long time, going over memories of me and Dee. They’re all jumbled up, some from the Pheasant, some from the Horse and Wagon, some from the flats we’ve shared. My wedding, and then, I think, hers. I can picture us dancing, me in that electric blue dress and her skirt swishing against me as she moved. I could have conjured it up, after seeing the photo, but I don’t think I have. I close my eyes and imagine Liam, and he’s in a suit, standing at the end of the aisle, joking about how much he’s sweating.
So Dee has a husband and a child. A happy marriage, I hope. And I have nothing. But I could have less. I could still be trapped in my unhappy marriage. I could still be letting David treat me like I’m less than him, less than anyone, barely a human being. David is in prison. I have to keep repeating it to myself, letting it fully sink in. I’m in hospital, in a Brain Injury Unit, but I won’t be for too much longer. I’ll be back to my life, whatever that is now. And he’ll be alone, full of regret. Well, good.
My dinner is macaroni cheese followed by a sponge pudding with custard. It’s all bland and stodgy, and I make a note to ask Dee to bring me a salad and some fruit next time she comes in.I’ve just brushed my teeth when Jamie comes to do his usual checks.
‘Could you tell me stuff, when you come round?’ I ask him.
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Just things that might jog my memory. News stories from the last seven years, celebrity gossip, that sort of thing. Trump is gone, right?’
‘Yes, but he didn’t go gracefully. God, it’s hard, this, when you’re put on the spot.’
