Check and never tell

It’s that time of night when you have no business being awake, with thoughts for companions no one would want.

Switching on the lamp, you check the odds and ends in the bedside drawer. Earplugs. Check. Vaseline. Check. The odd paperback. Still worth checking — though you’re no longer able to read it.

Mostly you check for pills. You scrabble around only to find all the packets are empty.

How did that happen?

Can it really be thirty years since his life ended? If you can call it a life.

Your bony hands grip the bannister. Another fall would be fatal, and you wouldn’t want that.

The kitchen feels a lifetime away at the end of the landing, but eventually you reach the countertop, gritting your teeth to open the overhead cupboard.

You grope among tins and jars. For some reason you need to check their sell-by dates.

Why?

Didn’t the war end when you were ten? The only war now is the one in your head.

Check.

That pill bottle is tantalisingly close, but your fingers overextend. It drops, rolling under the sink. Blood rushing, you stoop.

Slowly, girl. Hang on in there.

Small things turn into epic battles these days.

You just need four or five hours of sleep to smooth them away. The demons, that is.

You really tried last night, but without the pills you only managed an hour.

You now have to contend with the child-proof seal. As you pick up a cloth to dry the bottle, you tell yourself you are a warrior. Even though your neck is a corkscrew and your wrists burn, you won’t be defeated.

The trouble is they have to make everything difficult these days, don’t they? It’s not as if there are any children to worry about round here.

Not anymore.

Eventually a doctor rang back after you were put on hold to check you were alright. Before that, you waited endlessly while fake music was piped into your ears.

You miss the days when you could simply ring the surgery and make an appointment. Or pop into a bank without a bone-shaker of a bus ride into the next town, only to be told that branch would be closing too. No longer needed with people banking online.

You’d never been on the internet. Even though your daughter once tried to show you.

After weeks of trying, you eventually got to see a doctor. A smug young man in a swivel seat said, in that irritatingly matter-of-fact way some of them have, that you should get used to not having the pills because of your recent fall.

What did he know about your capacity to love? Or what you’d survived?

You were never going to give up without a fight, though, were you?

Like when you tried so hard to fight him off all those years ago. You stumbled to the bathroom afterwards, your insides burning as you washed it out. Except you couldn’t wash him out of your mind.

So you went back to the surgery. This time you checked to make sure you got a female doctor. You sat right across from her in the quiet room.

You might have told her, but then her eyes reminded you of Amy’s, the neighbour’s girl you loved like a daughter.

You nearly blurted it all out. Your heart hammered as you gripped the armrests of the chair.

Then a knock at the door interrupted you.

“Sorry to disturb you, doctor…”

By the time the intruder left and the doctor returned to her desk, you’d changed your mind. You just repeated the mantra of needing the pills to help you sleep. You’d tried everything.

She checked her screen. 

“It’s just you’ve been on them a long time, Mrs Garson.”

“You can call me Brenda.”

“Ok, Brenda.”

You relented at the warmth of a human smile.

“My name used to be Dawn, but I changed it.”

The doctor stopped scrolling and laid a hand on your wrist. 

“Didn’t you like the name Dawn?”

“No.”

He gave you that name. Him.

You wanted to tell her everything the computer left out. Like how you started taking the pills after your daughter’s birth. How you couldn’t resume… all that marital business. 

And…

“We just don’t want you falling again. Fuzziness during the day is a long-term effect, Brenda.”

Who is we?

“I’ll be alright. Now the handrails are fitted. Someone’s coming to see about a stairlift too.”

You didn’t tell her you’d cancelled the appointment. Or that you’d stopped the carer coming.

And there was always the secret stash no one knew about.

Now, in the kitchen, it takes all your strength to release the lid.

Time bends and Amy’s young face is before you, her hand reaching for a fairy cake.

“These taste so good, Brenda!”

She’d once confided her dream of becoming a lawyer.

If only you’d have known how to love your own children.

The pink-and-white pill is an escape capsule. Rotating it, you unravel a life whose promise fled like shadows under old school sheds.

In the hallway, the grandfather clock tolls. Your tongue flicks across your mouth, your mind a flame not yet extinguished.

You ricochet back to the sweet shop all those years ago on the walk to school. A guilty pleasure. Aniseed balls, pear drops.

The shop bell. Another man’s wolfish smile.

“What will it be today, dear?”

You were not his dear. Not anyone’s dear.

“That one, please.” Yellow and pink fruit salads. And Catherine Wheels — only if there was nothing else.

Natural light seeps through the blinds. Tap water runs into your glass. Unlike the scummy bath residue you were forced to share after he’d used it.

You wait for the pills to work, finding comfort in rituals.

At the top of the stairs, you check out the wallpaper before it swirls into monstrous shapes and your mind turns to a hall in another house.

It was always when your mum was out cleaning, wasn’t it?

The thud of a football outside. The creak of floorboards inside.

The hand over your mouth.

“It’ll be our secret,” he said. As if that made it alright.

By the time your mother returned, all the light was gone.

You never told her. You never told anyone.

Now in the home you call your own, you check the front door is bolted.

Then upstairs, you slowly turn the bedroom handle.

You painted the walls yellow, like daffodils in fields before the juggernaut got them.

Your hand jerks and water spills on the slippers your daughter gave you. 

“I thought grey would be a safe colour. It was just a thought,” she said. It wasn’t her fault her eyes were as dark as the monsters.

Amy loved yellow too. She painted you a picture of daffodils before leaving to study law. You rarely saw her after that, but you were so proud.

Later, you’d take the bus into the city, disappear into the Underground.

Sometimes you found yourself outside the Old Bailey. Imagining Amy in her robes and wig, applying logic to demolish opponents.

You stood in the rain when she tried her first rape case. You were there for the woman too.

Then the photo.

The headline: Prominent female lawyer killed in hit-and-run.

Your legs buckled. Something lodged in your throat.

Grief turned to rage. You wanted the driver crushed.

Just as you had done with your father when he begged you for help. 

You did your best.

The family doctor said you’d been the perfect daughter. They all said it.

At the funeral, you told everyone you needed to scatter his ashes alone. No need to check. A private moment.

Instead, you kept them hidden away in an old sweet jar.

Now, waiting for sleep, your hand reaches not for the glass of water, but for the jar hidden beneath the counter, behind the bin.

That’s where he’s been all these years.

You carry the jar upstairs. At bathroom sink, you twist the lid. You turn on the tap and watch the clean water carry him away.

Natural light seeps through the blinds. You check the face in the mirror. Tired and old, but for a moment there’s a trace of a young girl.

In the yellow glow behind her eyes, Amy is waiting, smiling, her hand warm upon your arm. “It’s alright, Brenda,” she says. “You no longer have to fight. You can rest now.”

You check the latch on the window one last time. Give the jar one last shake to make sure every bit of him has truly gone down the drain.

Whether it’s the pills, sleep, or something beyond, by the time you get to bed you drift into a sleep deeper than anything you’ve ever known.

Outside, dawn is coming. The secret stays with you, unspoken, as the night finally loosens its grip.

There’s nothing left to check.