Fear gripped me, effervescent bubbles of terror frothed in my throat. The beautiful bond that had been forming between me and Baby Boy had filled me with so much love that I had forgotten what it was like to be perpetually terrified.
He didn’t hold back this time. The kicks and the punches found their way to every part of my body. I held an image of Baby Boy’s face in my head, knowing I had to survive this for him.
Afterwards, as I lay in the corner of the lounge, I made up excuses for him in my head: he was drunk, he was tired, he was stressed. It was a slight blip. Tomorrow, I would try harder and we would be okay.
After he had left that night and I knew he wouldn’t be back until morning, I went to put the night latch on the door. Half an hour later, in my tired and bruised state, I could not remember doing it, so I returned to the door, checked the lock and, to be certain, I unlocked and locked it again.
Just before I went to bed, I checked it once more.
19
Now
Sophia closed the door softly behind her and left me alone in my bedroom. She had brought me a vodka, neat, and I managed to swallow it down through my gulps of tears. She knew she wouldn’t get much out of me, and so she had kindly walked me to my room and laid me down on my bed, with the vodka doing its work. There was a part of my brain that was willing me to get up and start doing something in the bedroom, strip the bed, straighten something out, but the more prominent side had been lulled by the alcohol and didn’t want to do anything but lie still until the thoughts had disappeared. The niggling thought, the one that was willing me to perform a compulsion, was that I had stupidly brought up the subject of my son with Sophia. It was a natural thing to do, of course, but I had stopped sharing my true feelings such a long time ago. It was the child; he had brought all the feelings to the surface. He reminded me so much of what I once had. I felt like a failure, that everything I had been trying to hold on to was suddenly out of my grip. I had tried to keep it hidden for so long from everyone.
I woke up fully clothed. The room was pitch-black. My throat was dry and scratchy and I knew I had been sleeping with my mouth open, probably snoring. I grabbed my phone from my bedside table and saw there was a missed call from the number. He had called only a few hours ago. It was now 2 a.m. I wondered how much longer I would be able to get away with ignoring him. Not much longer. It wouldn’t be long before I would find myself face to face with him, and the thought of that made my gut twist with terror.
I had been asleep for almost ten hours. Apart from a slight dull buzz in my head, I felt wide awake. I knew getting back to sleep any time soon was going to be tricky. It was alarming to be suddenly awake at 2 a.m. when the world felt so empty; it was easy to feel all alone.
There was a pair of clean pyjamas folded neatly over the end of the bed, so I removed the clothes I had been wearing at college that day and pulled them on. I decided a hot drink would help me get back to sleep.
The house was so silent as I opened my bedroom door that I felt my heart thumping in my ears.
I stole down the stairs, careful not to tread on the parts of the steps that I knew would groan back at me. I found my way into the kitchen with the torch from my phone and turned on one of the lights to make myself a cup of herbal tea and sat down at the kitchen table. I could hear the creaking of the house as the central heating came on, the temperature in the house had dropped and even though warmer days were here, we were still feeling the cold in the night, especially as the house was so old. I opened my phone and looked for Mrs Clean, to see what I had missed whilst I had been asleep, and just as I had thought, she had posted on Instagram stories and a new post. The woman was busy. I was becoming accustomed to seeing which posts were ads, and I noticed that the main post on her Instagram account was just that. It was an image of a geometric abstract rug, grey and yellow. It was unusual to see a flash of colour in her shots as everything was usually black and white and grey. The photo was taken on an angle again, and I was somewhat taken with the design and colour. I looked at it for a long time, longer than any rug I had ever looked at before. Then I went down to the comments section and scrolled through until I found the ones I was looking for. The ones filled with outrage and hatred.
marvingayandgetiton Who does she think she is? That’s two ads back to back. You need to rein it in, love. We don’t come on here to see you flaunting your money.
mrsdownside I don’t mind the odd ad but come on, two in a row, not to mention one last week.
deux_enfants Is it me or is this woman posting more and more ads? What is it with these female Instagrammers? It’s all about the money.
lucybest65 I think she is pretending to be someone she isn’t. It’s so obvious.
I stopped on the comment from lucybest65.
