Page 60 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
‘You couldn’t have known. I didn’t know. Or if I did, I shut it out. Pretended I didn’t.’
‘I just don’t get it, Shell. Why do men claim to love us and do things like this? It doesn’t make any sense.’
I have thought a lot about that. Over the past few days, in hospital, but also in the days and weeks and months and years since David first hit me. Since Mick did.
‘It’s about power, I think. And control. It’s small men who don’t like women having a voice, being strong. And it’s everywhere. Hidden away behind people’s front doors, but it’s there.’
We are silent, and there’s a kind of hum of anger in the room. I feel like, if I stuck out my tongue, I would be able to taste it.
‘I should go,’ Dee says after a long moment. ‘Shall I bring Whiskers in with me in the morning?’
I smile. ‘Yes please.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Dee says, walking down the hall to let herself out.
‘Tomorrow.’
I go to bed in the spare room. I don’t want to be in our room, with his things. And I don’t sleep, anyway. Not until the early hours of the morning. There’s too much fighting for space in my head, and I’m jumpy, too. I get up to check every time I hear a creak or a tap. This is what he’s done to me. It isn’t only about the physical injuries, which will heal. It’s about this, the loss of my peace of mind. And I’m furious. I’m incandescent with rage.
31
NOW
Dee bustles into the ward in the early evening with a little boy holding her hand. ‘This is Callum,’ she says.
He laughs. ‘Aunty Shelley knows who I am!’
‘Well, remember we talked about how Aunty Shelley’s had an accident and some of her memories have gone?’
Callum looks at me, his expression serious. ‘Did they fall out of your head, the memories? What about the one from when we went to the farm and that goat tried to eat your dress?’
Dee smiles. ‘That was pretty funny.’
The goat story rings a distant bell, and I close my eyes, try to let more of it come. ‘Was it pink? The dress, that the goat tried to eat?’
Callum shakes his head. ‘I don’t remember. Have some of my memories fallen out too, Mummy?’
‘No,’ she says, playing with his hair affectionately. ‘We all forget some things. I don’t think there’d be room in anyone’s brain for everything.’
Callum seems to accept this. He sits on the bottom of my bed and I give him the remote control to move it up and down, lift my head and then my legs. He thinks it’s wonderful, and I takea moment to appreciate the simple joy of children. I watch Dee, too, the way she watches him, alert to his movements. Ready to catch him, I suppose. That’s a big part of what motherhood is.
‘Why don’t you show Aunty Shelley the things you chose for her?’ Dee asks, handing him a rustling white plastic bag.
Callum looks a bit shy, tucks his chin into his chest. ‘You do it.’
‘I will if you want, but you chose them. I thought you’d want to do the honours.’
Callum looks from her to me and then back to the bag. ‘Okay.’
The first thing he pulls out is a plastic dinosaur about the size of a tennis ball. ‘Stegosaurus,’ he says. ‘You always choose him when we play dinosaurs.’
I hold it in my hand, look at it intently. It’s green, a little battered. Clearly well-loved. And there’s something a bit familiar in the weight and feel of it. I do a sort of roaring noise and make as if to attack Callum with it, and he shrieks and giggles.
‘That’s what you always do!’
I think about muscle memory. About how the body remembers things the mind has hidden. But not for long, because Callum reaches into the bag again and pulls out a packet of Skittles. I wonder whether these are significant, or whether he just chose them because they are bright and they are sweets, and he likes them. Perhaps he’s hoping we’ll share. I ask if he wants one, and he nods very solemnly.
‘Greens and yellows,’ he says.
