So, I’m not going to beat myself up over the wine. You’ve got to have some fun and it’s not like getting tipsy can lead me down the dark path to overeating. The cupboards are bare and I’m too lazy to go out at this time of night. I need the wine to sleep anyway. I’m sure my night terrors have got worse, but then I guess that’s not surprising as I’m fucking my new friend’s husband. I say the word harshly in my head so that I flinch. Yeah, no wonder my sleep is so disturbed.
I flick through the channels looking for some distraction. Some awful talent show is on, but that’s about it. An old episode of A Touch of Frost. Nothing to grab me. I drink more wine, and my mind drifts back to David and Adele. There’s always some part of my brain thinking about David and Adele. Is he thinking about me? Is she thinking about me? I almost laugh. How fucked up is that? I should get an early night. At least tomorrow I can lie in if my sleep is shit.
I go to the kitchen and top up my glass. Still just under half a bottle left if I stop now, and that’s way better than normal. Is David drinking at home? Have they gone out for dinner? Are they having some kind of guilty make-up sex? Does he compare our bodies? God, I hope not. The questions hum away in my head and I give up fighting them.
I get the notebook out of the kitchen drawer. It’s my link to them, and if they’re going to be in my head, then I may as well dip back into Adele’s past, even if it is a strain to figure out the scribbled, messy words. Also, I’ve been much better at the routines over the past couple of days. Maybe this will help me really grasp it.
I switch off the TV and take my wine glass through to the bedroom. I’ve got a mellow, tired buzz on, even though I haven’t drunk all that much. Dieting is turning me into a cheap date. I try not to think about how cheap I already am, given everything.
I keep my T-shirt on but ditch the rest of my clothes on the floor and get into bed. My eyes are already heavy and I take a big swallow of wine. I haven’t brushed my teeth. I’ll do it when I finish my drink – mint and wine are not a good mix – but the odds are on I’ll probably fall asleep first and then do it when my bad dreams wake me up in a few hours. I’m so rock ’n’ roll, I think, half smiling at how not rock ’n’ roll I am, in bed before ten, and then I flick on the bedside lamp and open the notebook. The small spiky writing hurts my eyes at first, but slowly I learn the shapes of it. Adele and David’s past. Your sleep, my inner voice tells me. You’re reading this to help your sleep. Yeah right, I answer myself. We both know that’s a lie.
… It starts the same as usual. I’m running and they’re all coming after me. The dealers from the estate, my long-gone waste of space mother, Ailsa, that boy I beat up in the alley that time for no other reason than my skin itching, my lack of high and all my bubbling rage. They’re them, I know they’re them, but they’re also not them. Monstrous versions of themselves, how I see them really; sunken eyes, flabby skin, sharp teeth bloody from sucking me dry of everything with their constant existence. I’ve got marks in my arms where my mum and Ailsa have caught and bitten me before I’ve broken free. Don’t need a head doctor to tell me what that’s about. They’d call it guilt. Guilt about my habit and the effect it has on my family. They have no idea what’s in my head. The marks and the biting and the sucking my blood are about them sending me to rehab and making me give up the one thing I actually enjoy in this dreary life.
I’m running through the tower block. Not the one I live in with Ailsa, but the one my mum and ‘Shanks’, her paedo boyfriend, really named Terry, shared before he disappeared. It’s old and stinks so badly of piss in the lifts that even when they’re working it makes you think fuck that and take the stairs. I’m on the stairs in the dream and I can hear them behind me, calling after me, insulting me. ‘We know about you! Don’t think we don’t!’ my mum shrieks. Their voices are wet, too many sharp teeth in their mouths. I can hear metal clattering against the concrete steps and my legs feel as if they’re moving through treacle. I can’t get any speed up. I reach a landing and look back.
They’re two flights down but moving fast in a crazy half-human, half-beast pack. Their hands have long, sharp knives where their fingers should be, dragging along behind them. They’re coming to slice and dice me and then eat me up. I’m too tired to keep running up the stairs and I look towards the door from the stairwell to the line of crappy flats. Hip hop music booms from somewhere. There’s a grimy glass panel in the door and through it I see Shanks, never one to be left out. He glares at me from the other side of the dirty glass and raises a finger-knife and wiggles it as if telling me off.
I’m stuck. They’re going to catch me, I know it. Their fingers will tear me apart. This is normally where I freeze in the dream and only when Ailsa reaches me do I wake up. But not this time. This time, dream-me has a moment.
Doors.