Perhaps she was responding to having somebody staying with her in the castle, she thought. Maybe her subconscious was fearful even though – consciously – she wasn’t afraid of Luke. She genuinely liked him. One Ear liked him. He was the husband of her dear friend, Helen, and she truly believed that he wasn’t a threat. Yet maybe there was a part of her that didn’t trust him. That little part of her that kept her hidden from the world because she was fearful of being hurt again.
Padding quietly through the castle corridors towards the kitchen, she determined to make the most of being up at so ungodly an hour and have a cup of herbal tea. Something warm and soothing to chase every last remnant of the nightmare away.
She was just about to turn the light on in the great hall when she became aware of a presence. There was a change in the air around her and she instinctively knew that somebody else was there. At first, she stood paralysed. When she’d moved into the castle, she’d been terrified of the long dark corridors at night and had wondered if she’d made a huge mistake in moving there, but she’d gradually got used to the place and she knew her security was tight. Still, the thought of somebody breaking in was one she dreaded.
Of course, it could have been Luke but, if he’d got up, wouldn’t he have turned the lights on? Possibly not. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to disturb her or maybe he had excellent night vision.
‘Luke?’ she called into the darkness as she entered the great hall. Surely he wouldn’t be up in the middle of the night. ‘Luke – is that you?’
One Ear was immediately out of his basket at the sound of his mistress’s voice, and Orla took comfort from having the animal by her side. If he wasn’t growling, then perhaps the threat she felt was imaginary. She switched the light on.
And there he was. He’d been sitting there in the dark. His eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see her as she walked into the room.
‘Luke?’ she whispered. ‘Luke!’ She reached out towards him, but then something occurred to her. Maybe he was sleepwalking. You weren’t meant to wake sleepwalkers, were you? She didn’t know if that was a myth or not, but she thought she’d try something else because she really didn’t want to distress the poor man, and so she gently took hold of his arm and encouraged him to stand.
‘That’s it. Nice and slowly. We’re going to get you back to bed,’ she told him as she guided him out of the room. One Ear walked behind them, taking this new phenomenon in his stride as Orla became anxious that Luke might actually wake up, and then what would she do? Would he be angry or upset or just embarrassed at being caught in his T-shirt and boxer shorts? But she needn’t have worried because they made it back to the bedroom. Indeed, Luke seemed to know where he was going now and got himself into bed.
Orla watched him for a few minutes, making sure he was going to stay in the safety of his bed before leaving the room. She was wide awake now and so, after making a cup of tea, she took the opportunity to look up sleepwalking online. The most likely cause for Luke, she believed, was sleep deprivation. She had the feeling he hadn’t been sleeping properly for some time now. What a pair they were, she thought – him sleepwalking and her with her nightmares.
The minutes ticked by as Orla began researching bereavement on the internet. She soon realised that there was a lot of confusing information. Some sites said that there were five stages of grief, but there was another that stated there were seven. Another article she found agreed that there were five: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance, but that they weren’t always neat and consecutive, but muddled and messy. But did anyone really know for sure? And did a grieving person know that there were all these neat stages to get through? Did they feel them instinctively? Orla somehow thought not and soon came to the conclusion that, because each person was different, it stood to reason that they would work through grief differently and that there was no one-size-fits-all pattern or solution. Some people might eat their way through their grief whilst others would starve themselves. Some people found talking to others about their grief helpful whilst others shunned company and grieved alone. There was no right or wrong way.
She yawned, her eyes sore from looking at the bright laptop screen in the middle of the night. Sleep, perhaps, was beckoning her at last and she switched the computer off. One Ear, who’d been snoring in his basket, raised his one ear and opened an eye as she got up to leave the room.
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she told him, switching off the light and making her way to her bedroom, pausing briefly outside Luke’s room. Was he still asleep, she wondered? And were his dreams as troubled as her own? She made
