Sleep. C.L. Taylor

walk. I drift from gravestone to gravestone, reading the inscriptions, looking at the dates, noting the flowers – or lack of them. As a distraction it only partially works. I feel lost in a fog of sadness and regret whenever I pass someone who died young. There’s one grave that particularly upsets me. A man and a woman are listed on one stone, John and Elizabeth Oakes. He died aged fifty-nine in 1876. She died twenty years later aged seventy-six. Their children are listed below them – Albert, Emily, Charlotte, Edward, Martha and Thomas. Six children and not one of them made it past their fifth birthday. The grave is old and uncared for; moss clings to the children’s names and the angel that sits atop the stone is chipped, her face worn away with age. I scan the cold, hard ground around the grave, looking for daisies or dandelions that I can bunch together with blades of grass. A clump of bowed snowdrops at the base of a tree catches my eye.

      I crouch down beside the flowers and pinch one of the stems between my index finger and thumb, then pause, mid-snap. Someone’s watching. I can feel their gaze resting on me, like a weight across my shoulder blades. I turn sharply, expecting to see a photographer behind a gravestone, or a journalist dressed in black with a faux-sad expression. The local press have been hounding me for an interview since I left hospital.

      But whoever was watching me isn’t interested in a chat. I catch a glimpse of a black coat or jacket disappearing around the side of the church and then they’re gone. I abandon the clump of bright snowdrops – the idea of plucking them so they can wither and die on a gravestone suddenly feels wrong – and walk back towards the church. As I approach the leaf-strewn porch, the door opens and Alex slides out to the piped opening chords of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.

      ‘Okay?’ His eyes search my face.

      ‘Not really, no.’

      ‘Do you want to go back in?’

      I glance towards the side of the church, where the figure in black disappeared. There’s no one there now. Just row after row of grey gravestones, some aged, some new and – my breath catches in my throat as I notice it for the first time – a large hole in the ground, with green, sack-like material surrounding it. Peter’s plot. Alex turns his head, following my line of sight, and his hands twitch at his side. For one second I think he’s going to reach for me. Instead he shoves his hands into his pockets and shivers.

      ‘It’s cold out here. Shall we go?’ He inclines his head in the direction of the car.

      I take one last, long look at the plot then nod silently, but Alex is already halfway down the path.

      My boyfriend is behind the wheel, hunched over his phone as I reach for the passenger door handle. It’s splattered with mud; the whole side of the car is. I’ll offer to pay for a valet when we get back to London. It’s the least I can…

      It’s so small I almost didn’t notice it.

      SLEEP

      Written just above the front wheel arch, like someone’s wet their finger and carved the word into the mud.

      ‘Alex.’ He looks up from his phone as I tap on the window, surprise then irritation registering on his face. I beckon him with one hand and point towards the wheel arch with the other. ‘Something weird.’

      He sighs silently and opens his door.

      ‘What?’ he says as he steps out.

      ‘Someone’s written something on the car.’

      ‘What!’ His irritation turns to fury in an instant.

      ‘It’s not damaged. It’s just weird. Look.’

      He joins me and looks where I’m pointing.

      ‘SLEEP?’ He’s nonplussed.

      ‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’

      ‘A bit.’

      ‘What do you think it means?’

      He shrugs. ‘That some teenager was bored? It’s more original than clean me, anyway.’

      ‘But it’s not funny. It’s not witty. It’s not … anything.’ I glance back towards the church – I just had the strongest sensation that we were being watched – but the churchyard is still deserted.

      ‘Exactly. It’s nothing to worry about.’ Alex wanders back to his side of the car and pulls on the door handle. He smiles as our eyes meet over the top of the car. ‘I won’t be losing sleep about it, anyway.’ He laughs. ‘Losing sleep. Get it?’

      ‘Yeah.’ I close my eyes tightly and think about ‘SLEEP’ and what it could mean, all the way home.

       Chapter 6

       Anna

      EIGHT WEEKS AFTER THE ACCIDENT

       Thursday 26th April

      I feel like a balloon on a string, floating above the pavement. Alex’s hand is wrapped tightly around mine but I can’t feel the pressure of his fingers on my skin. I can’t feel anything. Not the pavement under my feet, not the wind on my cheeks, not even my laboured breath in my throat. Tony, my stepdad, is walking ahead of us, his white hair waving this way and that as the wind lifts and shakes it. His black suit is too tight across his shoulders and every now and then he tugs at the hem. When he isn’t pulling at his clothes he’s glancing back at me, over his shoulder.

      ‘All right?’ he mouths.

      I nod, even though it feels like he’s looking straight through me, talking to someone further down the street. I barely recognised the woman who stared back at me from the mirror this morning as she pulled on the white blouse, grey suit and black heels that had been laid out on the bed for her. I knew it was me in the mirror but it was like looking at a photograph of myself as a child. I could see the similarity in the eyes, the lips and the stance but there was a disconnection. Me, and not me, all at the same time. I barely slept last night. While Alex snored softly beside me, curled up and hugging a pillow, I lay on my back and stared at the dark ceiling. When I did fall asleep, sometime after three, it wasn’t for long. I woke suddenly at five, gasping, shrieking and clawing at the duvet. I’d had my hospital dream again, the one about the faceless person staring at me.

      ‘It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,’ Mum says now, trotting along beside me, her cheeks flushed red, the thin skin around her eyes creased with worry. When we got out of the car she took my right hand and Alex took my left. I felt like a child, about to be swung into the air but with fear in my belly rather than glee. At some point Mum must have let me go because now her hands are clenched into fists at her sides.

      ‘Anna.’ Mum’s gloved hand brushes the arm of my coat. ‘This isn’t about you, love. You’re not the one on trial. You’re a witness. Just tell the court what happened.’

      Just the court: the judge, the jury, the lorry driver, the public, the press, and the family and friends of my colleagues. I need to stand up in front of all of those people and relive what happened eight weeks ago. If I didn’t feel so numb, I’d be terrified.

      ‘Anna!’

      ‘Over here!’

      ‘Anna!’

      ‘Mr Laing!’

      ‘Mr Khan!’

      The noise overwhelms me before the bodies do. Everywhere I look there are people, necks craned, arms reaching in the air – some with microphones, others with cameras – and they’re all shouting. My stepdad wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close.

      ‘Give her some space!’ He raises an arm and swipes at a camera that’s just been shoved in my face. ‘Out of the way! Just get out of the bloody way, you imbeciles.’