Standing naked on the bathroom tiles, Annette Ashley wiped the steam
from the mirror and stared at her pale reflection. Like every morning
for the last two monochrome months, it was there. An imprint of a night
she couldn’t remember, a branding she could never forget. She traced
the scar from her temple to the corner of her mouth: a deep red curl alien
in her ashen skin.
You should count yourself lucky, they’d told her the morning they
snatched out the stitches: you’re still alive, more than can be
said for Danny.
She swallowed the lump in her throat as she raked a brush through her
tangled hair; was life like this really any better than death? Living
in the same four walls every day of the week: a prisoner in her own home.
How could it possibly be any better? The man she loved had been buried
and the woman she was had decayed ever since. She was nothing now but
an empty shell, hollow and void of any passion, any interest, any feeling.
A tear slid in the scar to the corner of her mouth and was met by her
tongue: salty, wet, warm: familiar. Wiping her eyes with a shaky hand,
she finished drying herself, pulled on her dressing gown and walked to
the kitchen.
Since the night that it happened, Annette’s mother had brought her
meals daily and watched her pick at food in agonising, inner-screaming
silence. But her mother wouldn’t be coming today; she wouldn’t
be coming for two weeks.
‘I just need a bit of time to myself,’ she’d told her,
‘I need a break Annette.’
A break, Annette thought as she bent and looked into the fridge, I could
do with a break; from my thoughts, my guilt, my nightmares; myself. But
it won’t happen. It’ll never happen. How could it when my
own face won’t let me forget?
She took out a plastic tub of food that her mother had left, poured it
into a saucepan and flicked on the hob. Leaning against the worktop she
glanced at the clock on the oven: 4pm. She’d woken early today.
Sitting at the table Annette nudged a fork at food that, like everything
now, looked torpid and turbid. The scraping of her cutlery on the plate
grated on her bones making her back arch and her face flinch. After three
mouthfuls she pushed it away and sunk back in the chair.
When she looked at the time again it was 6pm. Was I asleep? She wondered.
Or was I awake? But what does it matter? I feel the same regardless –
disconnected, numb, deadened; the days become nights and the nights become
days.
She knew what people were thinking: get yourself together, don’t
let this ruin your life. Don’t be a victim twice. But it wasn’t
that simple. She couldn’t even bring herself to step outside: to
let people see her, to have them stare. And so she stayed in the house
because in the house she was safe. Safe and in control.
Looking out of the window she saw a full moon; it shone, luminous above
the city in which she no longer felt she belonged. Maybe I could go for
a walk, she thought, no one would see me properly in the dark; see my
face, my scar. But it was dark the night it happened, she reminded herself,
it could happen again. It could happen again and I’d never forgive
myself for being so stupid. Once bitten, twice shy, that’s what
they say. Oh no, she thought, shaking her head at the window, at the night,
at the city, oh no, I’m not going out there again. She nodded at
her decision and smiled at having resisted temptation.
She was still smiling twenty minutes later when the doorbell rang. She
stood, then froze: her smile vanished. Who is it? She wondered, frowning.
No one visits. No one but my mother and my mother is away. So who could
be at the door?
She pressed her back firmly against the wall willing the house to swallow
her up and conceal her existence. Am I too late? She panicked, clasping
her hand over her mouth. Have they seen that I’m home? God, oh God.
What should I do?
In a moment of head-spinning silence she wondered if she was dreaming.
Had she really heard it? Her heartbeat slowed and she began to relax.
Yes, she convinced herself. Yes, I was dreaming. Just like that time before
with the phone. The doorbell didn’t ring. Of course it didn’t
ring.
The smile on her face vanished when the doorbell rang again, a nasty rasping
buzz that sounded even louder, even more penetrable, than the first. She
took deep, debilitating breaths to stop her heart rupturing through her
ribs.
She couldn’t move; she couldn’t move a muscle; it felt as
if her veins had run through the floorboards, knotted around the pipes
and rooted her to the spot. She heard the metal letterbox open.
‘I know you’re there, Annette,’ a female voice called,
snaking through the house, ‘I know you’re there. You should
let me in.’ The letterbox slammed shut.
She felt panic prickle like summer sun on her skin. That person knows
my name, she realised, that person at the door knows my name.
‘I need to speak to you,’ the voice came again, loudly and
clearly, ‘I need to speak to you about November 23rd. You need to
hear what I have to tell you. You need to let me in.’
November 23rd? November 23rd; that’s the date; that’s the
date it happened she remembered as blood rushed through her body, rousing
life from her toes to her legs to her stomach to her throat to her face.
Her hand rested on the door handle; she didn’t care what happened
now; she needed to know what happened then. She opened the door and a
face devoid of expression looked back at her; a face that was familiar
but that she couldn’t place. The woman stepped inside locking the
door behind her.
‘Thank you, Annette,’ the woman said, looking at her with
eyes as questioning as her own. ‘I don’t suppose you remember
who I am, do you?’