Mindsight. Chris Curran

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      The quiver in her voice brought a spurt of anger. It was too late to start on that again. In the old days I would have flared up at her, but not now.

      ‘I’m fine, and the flat’s lovely. Thanks for sorting it out.’

      ‘I got some shopping for you – just the basics – but don’t offer me coffee because …’ glancing at her watch, ‘I need to get off. Shall I ring you later?’

      ‘Better leave it till tomorrow. I’m so tired I think I need to settle in then get to bed.’

      She gestured to the telephone. ‘I’ve put my mobile number, as well as the one for home, into your phone memory, so you don’t need to call the house until you’re ready.’ After a moment’s hesitation, she pulled me to her and whispered, ‘It’ll be all right.’ But I couldn’t speak and my arms hung heavy at my sides.

      She stopped at the door and I forced a smile. ‘Go on. I’m OK.’

      The kitchen overlooked the front garden and I watched her go. She turned at the gate to wave, and I raised my hand, longing to call her back and ask her to take me home with her.

      When I heard the car start up and drive away, I pulled down the kitchen blind, went back into the living room and shut the window to let silence fill the place. Then I sat on the sofa, leaning back and closing my eyes. Deep breaths, one step at a time.

      In the bedroom, I unpacked the holdall, my clothes lost in the big wardrobe. My one precious possession – the photograph in its cheap plastic frame – I put on the bedside table, my fingers lingering for a moment over each glassy face.

      Alice had made the bed, and I pulled off my clothes and crawled into the soft darkness, lying hunched with the effort of clamping my mind shut. I knew I deserved to feel the pain the oh-so-familiar thoughts and images would bring, but, for now, I would allow myself a few, blessed, moments of peace.

      I woke to darkness, knowing I’d slept for hours. I didn’t need a clock to tell me it was 3 a.m.: the time I’d woken every night for the past five years. Oddly enough, there was no confusion about where I was. The softness and the stretch of the bed around me, the silence and the feeling of space told me everything. I thought of my friend, Ruby, and longed to feel her warm, brown skin against mine; to tell her how frightened I was. But Ruby was still in prison, and I knew she’d only repeat the last thing she said to me: ‘This is the first day of the rest of your life, girl. So, get out there and live it.’

      The floorboards were cold under my feet as I fumbled for socks and a sweatshirt. I knew, if I turned on the lamp, I’d never be able to cross the huge space to the door, but there was enough grey light to lead me to the living room windows. As I looked out, I felt a shock of disorientation; it seemed the stars were below, and the dark sea above. Then I realised that, of course, there were no stars. The shining pinpoints were lights from the houses in the town below; the darkness, above and beyond, was the sky merging with the water. I recalled the milky emptiness I’d seen from the same window earlier and the phrase that had come to mind then – the end of the world. This was how ancient mapmakers thought of the Earth: a slab of land bustling with life, a strip of sea and then – nothing – just emptiness.

      I leaned my forehead against the window and closed my eyes. If I could stay perfectly still, block out my thoughts again, I might be able to sleep when I got back to bed. But the chill glass, dripping condensation on my skin, brought me fully alert. I was shivering, rocking back and forth, and chanting the familiar, meaningless charm, ‘Oh God, oh God, help me.’ It brought no more comfort than my own clutching arms, or my head beating against the cold glass.

      The darkness in my head flickered with images of flames, my ears echoed with screams, and I longed for Ruby to hold me and help me cry away the agony. ‘That’s it, baby,’ she would say, ‘you’ll feel better soon.’ And a storm of tears would exhaust me so much that I no longer felt anything. But now, alone, I couldn’t cry, and I knew that all the tears and the therapy had just been another way to keep up the barricades.

      I sometimes went to church services in the early days in prison, and the chaplain talked once about what he called the dark night of the soul. It seemed a good way to describe how I felt. But, later, I read another phrase that fitted better – the torments of the damned.

      For I was certainly damned for what I’d done.