Page 66 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
He looks at me, his eyes steady and level, and I think about when I said to him, the first time we met, that my husband tried to kill me. He knows about this world. I feel suddenly as if I’m naked, completely exposed.
‘Is that a volunteer job too? Are you some kind of saint?’
He chuckles, and I’m glad I’ve managed to lighten the mood, because the air was thick with it.
‘I just help out a bit, with the food. It’s really not a big deal.’
I nod. ‘You must see some awful things.’
‘I do.’
I leave a gap for him to go on, but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’s not about to tell me these women’s stories as if they’re gossip. I hear him swallow. It strikes me as ironic that I married a man who hurt me and only now I’m meeting a man who works in a job that helps other women in that position. What might life have been like if Matt had walked into the Horse and Wagon the night David did?
‘I know you went through that, and I’m sorry,’ he says.
I shrug. ‘It’s one of those things.’
‘No,’ he says, shaking his head vehemently. ‘It’s not “one of those things”. “One of those things” is getting caught in the rain just after you’ve had your hair done, or missing lunch with friends because you were stuck in traffic. What you went through, what the women at the shelter have been through, it’s someone’s fault.’
He’s right, and I’m stunned into silence for a minute.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to raise my voice. It’s just… something I feel so strongly about.’
Does he have personal experience of this? ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘You’re right. It’s all someone’s fault. I’m not saying it’s okay.’
In the quiet that follows, he reaches out a hand and puts it over mine where it’s lying on the white sheets. It’s deliberate, not a mistake or a careless brush. It has meaning. I can’t look at him, so I look down at our hands, his large one covering mine, and I have another flash of something like memory. My hand, and a man’s, held just like this. And I’m in a wedding dress. And it isn’t the one I wore to marry David.
Suddenly I know something. I know that I have met Matt before, outside of this hospital, back in my real life. But I’m not ready to say that to him yet, so I wait until he goes before I open the door to the past.
34
THEN
It’s a slow night and Dee’s dragged two barstools round to our side of the bar, and she and I are chatting to Liam. Besides the three of us, there’s only Derek, sitting at his usual barstool, and a man and woman sitting at one of the corner tables. I know I should be wiping tables or doing an impromptu stocktake, but my feet are rubbing from new shoes and I can’t resist the opportunity to take the weight off them for half an hour.
‘Shelley needs to get back out there, don’t you think?’ Dee asks.
Liam grins. ‘I know better than to tell Shelley what she needs.’
Dee flashes me a look. One that says that she’s going to continue to tell me exactly what she thinks, but that I should remember she only has my best interests at heart. I marvel at the fact that we can speak without words like this. It’s born of long nights in pubs with sleazy men and, before the Pheasant, shitty bosses.
‘David’s gone, thank god, and it’s been a while, and you’re fully recovered from the attack, and I don’t like to see you lonely.’
Physically recovered, I think. Fully recovered physically. I don’t know whether I’m ready to meet someone, don’t know, in truth, whether I ever will be. How can I trust someone again, after falling into the trap of a man like David? Wouldn’t I always be waiting for things to turn nasty, always wincing when I made a mistake or said something sharp, expecting to pay for it with blood and broken bones?
‘What does Shelley think?’ Liam asks, blowing Dee a kiss to apologise for challenging her.
They both turn to look at me, to see how I’ll answer.
‘Don’t you want some romance?’ Dee asks. ‘Some passion? That feeling you get when you meet someone and know there’s something between you?’
I look from Dee to Liam and back again. They are properly together now. Have been for months. And they have a silent communication thing going on, too. I feel a pang of something. Jealousy? I am happy for them, but I am waiting for Dee to tell me she’s moving out, and I can’t help but think that the last time she moved out it was because I was moving in with David, and now it will be because she is moving in with Liam, and I feel like I’ve gone backwards while Dee has moved forwards. It’s stupid, because I don’t want to be in the marriage I was trapped in. But still.
‘Sometimes,’ I say. ‘Sometimes I think about going on a date. About getting dressed up and doing my hair and makeup and having someone pick me up and going for dinner and drinks and wondering whether he’s going to kiss me on the walk home.’
It’s true, I do think about all of that. It’s hard not to, sometimes. Love and sex are everywhere. In books, on TV, in conversations. There’s no avoiding it.
‘And?’ Dee prompts.
