I don’t think this is really helping actually. How can this feeling be of any use to me? Drudging up all of these memories, ones that I had pushed to the far recesses of my mind. It’s only making it hurt more. I’ve not even started on what happened at school and already my life’s a shambles. Maybe I should carry for a little longer. After all, where there’s advice from my nan, there’s an order from my nan.
After the debacle in the supermarket, mum stopped taking us out. Obviously Alison still went to school, but I stopped going to playgroup and Alison could no longer go to her friends’ houses.
Mum still went out, but only after we were safely tucked in bed. She’d read us both a story and then lock the house up so it was “safe and sound, nice and tight, safe as houses.” That’s what she’d say and then we’d get a kiss on the forehead each and she’d be off before the scent of her perfume had left our nostrils.
We were fine, “safe as houses”, until the night that mummy brought someone back with her. We heard them get back home, we’d never heard her come in before. She’d always be there in the morning to wake us up with a hug and a toothpaste-smothered-toothbrush, but we’d never hear her get in.
There was talking, and laughing. And then I heard a scuttling sound outside my bedroom door. I ducked under the covers seconds before a crack of light appeared. I couldn’t see who it was and I didn’t want to leave the warmth and protection my quilt was giving me.
“James,” a voice hissed from beside my bed, “James, are you awake?” I felt a hand creep along the top of the bed, fumbling for the top of the quilt. I looked up and saw a hand breaching the confines of my safest hiding place. I think that’s when I started to cry.
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