Before I Wake

by C. L. Taylor

  It’s a terrible lie and one that anyone who watches even the smallest amount of television could uncover if they know the first thing about prerecorded chat shows, but luckily for me, Brian rarely watches TV. Not only does he think it’s “brain rot” but he resents how much nonsustainable electricity it eats up.

  “Right.” He nods as though he’s bought every word, then looks up as I stand up and smooth down my choice of outfit for this evening. It’s the most flattering cocktail dress I own.

  “Good job you got dressed up before I got in,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Anyone would think you were going to go out regardless of what I said.”

  I wait for the smile to let me know he’s joking, and sure enough, it appears. I didn’t assume anything about this evening, not least that Brian would agree to me going, but the last few days have passed without incident, and I know he’s fond of Jane.

  “Of course it’s fine,” he says. “You’ve been with Charlotte all day. The least you deserve is a bit of fun and a night out. You have taken your pills today, haven’t you?” he adds, glancing at the glass of water on the coffee table beside me.

  “Of course.”

  “And you’re feeling okay? You don’t think you’ll be overwhelmed by the crowded public transport and everything? You haven’t been to London for a while. It’s pretty frenetic these days.”

  “Brian!” I laugh again. “I went to London a couple of months ago. It can’t have changed that much.”

  “True.” He glances at the clock again. “Is Jane coming to get you or would you like me to give you a lift to the station?”

  I pick up my handbag, fold my jacket over my arm, and slip on my heels. “Thanks but the taxi should be here in a couple of minutes.”

  Brian picks up his newspaper, shaking his head in amusement. “Have a lovely time.”

  I cross the room, crouch down by his armchair, and kiss him on the forehead. He looks at me in surprise, his blue eyes searching mine.

  “What was that for?”

  “Because I love you.”

  The grandfather clock in the corner of the room tick-tick-ticks the seconds away as we look at each other. It feels like the first time we’ve really looked at each other in a very long time.

  “Even after everything that’s happened?” he asks softly.

  “Despite it.”

  He cups the side of my face with his hand, gently strokes my cheekbone with his thumb. “I don’t deserve you, Sue.”

  I place my hand over his. “Yes, you do.”

  I can see my reflection in his pupils as his eyes flick back and forth, just the tiniest bit, as he gazes at me. I look tired and worried and a million years old. When did that happen? When did I become so old? When did he? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were walking hand in hand along the banks of the Kifissos, talking about the future we’d build together?

  “I love you too,” Brian whispers. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, Sue. I’d be lost. Quite, quite lost.”

  My chest floods with warmth, and I press a hand over my heart because it’s almost too much to bear. “I’m not going anywhere, Brian.”

  “And there was me thinking you were off to London!” He snatches his hand from my face and laughs heartily. “Poor old Billy Elliot. I bet he was really looking forward to seeing you too. You’re such a fickle woman, Susan Jackson.”

  I laugh too, then cross the room and peer around one of the curtains. I’m pretty sure I just heard a taxi pulling into the driveway. Sure enough, a flash of yellow approaches the house and there’s the parp-parp of a horn.

  “Don’t wait up!” I call as I dash out of the living room. “I’ll be back late, don’t forget.”

  “Text me if you get into trouble.”

  Into trouble? I turn back to see what he means but he’s got his nose in the newspaper. It was just a throwaway comment.

  ***

  I really wish I had brought Jane with me. That way I wouldn’t feel like such a social leper—a forty-three-year-old woman standing in the queue for one of London’s trendiest nightspots with a bunch of clubbers young enough to be my children. A security guard walks past, pauses to glance at me, then continues on down the line.

  I thought I’d feel overdressed in my knee-length John Rocha little black dress with its plunging neckline and diamanté details on the shoulders, but I needn’t have worried. Compared to the minuscule handkerchiefs masquerading as outfits that the other women are wearing, I’m practically sporting a burka. Other than the beach, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much female flesh on show in one place. It must be forty degrees and yet none of the other women look the slightest bit cold, while I threw on my jacket the second I got off the train and wished I’d brought my pashmina with me too.

  “’scuse me?” says the willowy blond behind me. “Have you got the time, please?”

  Her false-lashed gaze is fixed somewhere over my left shoulder, but I’m pretty sure she’s talking to me because the only thing behind me is a wall.

  “It’s ten thirty,” I say, mesmerized by her pneumatic cleavage and pillowlike lips. She’s tanned within an inch of her life—a perfect match for the oak coat stand in the cloakroom—and her makeup is so flawless it looks airbrushed on. Her blond hair is waist-length and blow-dried big so it frames her face like a Farrah Fawcett halo.

  “Fanks.” Her glazed eyes flicker slightly.

  “Do you come here often?” I cringe at my awkward attempt to initiate conversation.

  “Every weekend.” She appears to be looking at the back of the head of the young man three people in front of me now.

  “Good music, is it?”

  “S’all right.”

  “Nice dance floor?”

  She shakes her head. “Don’t dance. Not in these heels.”

  I look at her feet and am surprised she’s even upright.

  “I hear a lot of footballers come here,” I say.

  Her blue eyes swivel toward me. The intensity of her gaze is unnerving. “Yeah, they do. Why, you after someone?”

  She looks me up and down, as though seeing me for the first time, then, having established that I’m about as much competition as Roseanne Barr, she looks away again.

  “I was hoping to meet”—I lower my voice so as not to announce it to the whole queue—“Alex Henri.”

  Her brow registers the slightest flicker of interest. “He’s fit.”

  I wait to see if she’ll say something else, but that appears to be it. Half an hour passes before someone talks to me again.

  “Sorry, love.” The security guard holds up his hand as I approach the gold rope at the entrance to the club. “Not tonight.”

  I look at him in confusion. “What’s not tonight?”

  He crossed his arms. “Being funny won’t help. Off you go.”

  “No…really…I genuinely don’t understand.” I turn to look at Blondie who’s standing behind me looking as bored as she did half an hour ago. “What did he just say?”

  She shrugs a shoulder. “He wants you to leave.”

  “Why?”

  Another shrug.

  “Is it because I’m old?” The security guard is about the same height as Brian but three times as wide and bald except for a neatly trimmed goatee beard that does little to disguise his double chin. “Because you can be sued for age discrimination. You know that, don’t you?”

  His facial expression doesn’t change. It’s still registering indifference. “You still here?”

  “You have to let me in because…” I glance down the street, at the crowd approaching the club, the couples walking arm in arm, the groups of girls tottering in their heels, the gangs of lads laughing and throwing back their heads, and the wide-eyed tourists consulting their maps and iPhones, but my mind goes blank. He d
oesn’t care about Charlotte or Alex Henri or the accident. His job is to only let people in who fit the “young and beautiful” brief. Neither of which I am. I look at Blondie in desperation, but she shrugs her shoulders.

  “I’m her agent,” I say in a flash of inspiration. “And if you don’t let me in, she and all her beautiful friends will go to”—I say the first thing that comes into my head—“Whisky Mist instead.”

  One of Blondie’s friends gasps in surprise but is swiftly silenced by a jab to the waist from Blondie herself. She whispers something in her friend’s ear as the bouncer looks them up and down, then smiles sweetly at him.

  “In,” the bouncer says as he unclips the rope and waves me into the club. His eyes don’t so much as flicker from Blondie’s cleavage.

  It’s dark inside and I pause in the entrance, blinking to adjust to the gloom.

  “Twenty-five pounds,” says a bored female voice. A blond woman is sitting in a smoked-glass-fronted booth to my right. I rummage in my purse, pull out three ten pound notes, and slide them toward her. She takes them wordlessly and slides a five pound note back. When she doesn’t say anything, I take a step forward, toward the thud-thud-thud of dance music and tiny stream of light that’s escaping from double doors at the end of the corridor.

  “Stamp,” the receptionist says, then sighs.

  I turn. “I’m sorry.”

  “I need your wrist.” She looks dead behind the eyes, like she’d rather be anywhere in the world than here, now. I think of my sofa, a book, a glass of wine, and Milly’s soft head on my lap and empathize.

  I untangle my hand from the loop of my handbag, slip it through the gap under the glass, and madam stamps my wrist. I’m now the proud owner of a black smudgy “G” tattoo. I tentatively rub it with my thumb but it doesn’t smudge. I’ll have to find a way to get rid of it before I get back home.

  ***

  It’s like being in a mirror-balled truck. I have to fight just to get through the door, and then I’m stuck, prevented from taking another step forward by the tight throng of bodies that fill the nightclub. There are people everywhere, and it’s hotter than a furnace. No matter which direction I move in, I am knocked, jostled, elbowed, and nudged out of the way. “What?” people shout over the repetitive, thumping dance track that fills the room. “What did you say?”

  The bar runs along one side of the room—gold, sparkling, and floor to ceiling with bottles of every size, shape, and color. Impossibly beautiful bar staff stalk up and down, reaching for glasses, opening fridges, and pouring drinks as though they’re working an alcohol-themed catwalk. Seating runs the length of the opposite wall; low leather-backed booths and black poofs are groaning with people sitting around gray smoke-glassed coffee tables. I overhear a girl tell her friend that you’re not allowed to sit down at those tables unless you buy a five hundred pound bottle of champagne or a three hundred pound bottle of vodka. No wonder so many people are standing in the center of the club, crammed into the narrow walkway between the seats and the bar. I don’t bother getting a drink. Instead I inch my way through the crowd toward the other side of the room where I can see the bottom of a flight of stairs. Access is blocked by a rope and two burly security guards—they have to lead to the VIP area.

  “Jesus!” I hear a cackle from my right. “You weren’t kidding about going for Alex Henri, were you? The look of determination on your face!”

  I spin around. My pneumatic friend from the queue beams back at me.

  “It’s my agent!” She nudges her friend who giggles like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

  “Mitzi.” She holds out her hand.

  I shake it. “Sue. Thank you, for what you did outside. I really appreciate it.”

  She smiles. “No problem. If he’d have spoken to my mum the way he spoke to you, I’d have lamped him one. Rude bastard.”

  I smile back, unsure how to continue the conversation, but Mitzi fills the gap.

  “So.” She glances toward the stairs and the security guards. They’re turning away a group of three scantily dressed girls. “How are you planning on getting to Alex then?”

  I shake my head. I really didn’t think this through before I left Brighton. I’d assumed I’d be able to talk to him somehow, or at least get a message to him, but I can’t even see him. The stairs lead to the balcony above our heads, but other than a few pairs of legs, I can’t see a thing through the spindly balustrades. I don’t even know if Alex Henri is up there.

  “Could you introduce me?” I ask, glancing back at Mitzi.

  “Me?” She throws back her head and cackles like a fish wife. “Darlin’, if I knew Alex, do you think I’d be standing here now, talking to you? No offense.”

  “None taken. I just…I mean, you’re very glamorous, you could pass for a model, and the security guard obviously thought you were successful enough to have an agent so…”

  “Are you tryin’ to chat me up?” She laughs again then, spotting someone across the room, frantically grabs her friend’s arm. “You know that guy,” she says, leaning in to her, “the one I was telling you about that looks like a cross between David Beckham and Ryan Gosling? He’s only bloody here!”

  She yanks her friend away and through the crowd without so much as a backward glance. I’m not offended by her sudden disappearance. I’m actually inordinately grateful that she helped me get into the club at all. I look back at the stairs. I’ll get into that VIP area if it’s the last thing I do.

  Thursday, May 21, 1992

  I can’t believe I haven’t written in my diary for nearly a year. Initially I hid it in my sewing machine table because I didn’t want James to find it, and then I guess I just forgot about it until now. So yes, nearly a year since I last wrote an entry, and the same amount of time since I moved into James’s house. I’d like to say that my life is wonderful, that I’m thinner, happier, and more loved than I’ve ever been, but the truth couldn’t be more different.

  I don’t know how I ended up here. I feel trapped, unhappy, and more lonely that I’ve ever felt in my life. I feel like my life is on a loop—get up, take a shower, put on jeans and T-shirt (in a size 16—I’ve put on a stone and a half since I moved in), have breakfast with James and his mother (she started showing her face three days after I moved in, sulk finally over), and then complete the list of chores she gives me. If I’m lucky that includes a trip to the supermarket so I can be around real people, but more often than not, it involves cleaning, helping her attend to her personal needs (her caregiver, if there ever was one, never materialized from her holiday), and sitting quietly in the living room to “keep her company” while she watches daytime soap after daytime soap. I’ve taken to watching them too, mostly to try and block out the creepy batik wall hanging that stares at me with its big empty eyes from across the room. It sounds ridiculous, but I get really bad vibes from it. It’s always watching me, wherever I move.

  Unlike the first few months of me living here, James doesn’t rush through the front door at the end of the day and wrap his arms around me. He doesn’t call me his “angel” or his “kitten.” He barely even acknowledges me. As for sex, I can barely remember the last time we made love. Neither of us sleep naked anymore, and when James comes in from the bathroom, he’ll say “night” and turn his back to me. Five minutes later, he’ll be asleep.

  I started to wonder if it was me. I can’t stop comfort eating (chocolate mostly, on the walk back from the supermarket—I don’t get the bus anymore, because it makes me feel claustrophobic) and I thought maybe he didn’t fancy me anymore. I tried wearing a dress instead of my normal uniform of jeans and T-shirt one day, but when James came home and saw me, he shook his head and said I might want to consider getting a bigger size if I didn’t want every roll and ripple on show. I ran to the bedroom and cried.

  James still makes an effort with his appearance. Every Sunday before rehearsals an
d once or twice during the week, he’ll spend over an hour in the bathroom then emerge in a cloud of deodorant and aftershave with a towel wrapped around his waist, then he’ll spend another ten minutes ironing a shirt, twenty minutes doing his hair, and then, when he’s checked with me that he looks good, he’ll leave. I’m pretty sure he’s having an affair—possibly with Maggie—but if I dare say anything, he turns it on me and accuses me of flirting with the male customers at work (I had to get a job at Tesco six months ago when Jess let me go from the bar job). I wanted to teach English as a foreign language again, but James said he didn’t want me traveling up to North London on my own. Besides, his mother needed me, he said, and I could get back quickly in an emergency if I worked close to home. What he said made sense, but I fought him anyway. I didn’t want to work at Tesco. I had a degree. I was a trained TEFL teacher and dressmaker, not a cashier. James didn’t listen. Instead he twisted my words and made out that I was a snob, too spoiled to rough it with the normal people for a couple of months while I got back on my feet.

  I took umbrage at that, but he took my hands in his and said it was okay to have ambition, but my sewing business wasn’t going to take off immediately and I just had to have patience. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so incredulous. I hadn’t touched my sewing machine in months—his mother’s demands had seen to that.

  I miss my mum so much my heart aches. I haven’t visited her in forever, but there hasn’t been the time, money, or opportunity. I called her a couple of times, a few months ago, but she got upset and confused and that made me feel terrible, like I was the cause of her distress. I haven’t rung since and I’m plagued by guilt, terrified she’ll think I’ve abandoned her.

  I’ve nearly called Hels too, dozens of times, but I always put the phone down before the dial tone starts. I can’t bear to hear her say “I told you so” and remind me of all the time and money she and Rupert spent helping me get over James, only for me to go back to him again. And besides, what have I really got to complain about? I’m not starving, I’m not being beaten, and I’m not being forced to sleep in the garden shed. I’ve got a job, food to eat, a roof over my head, and a warm body sharing my bed. Sometimes James and I go out together—more often than not, it’ll be a trip to the theater, cinema, or a restaurant with his mother (she hates being left alone at home)—and when he’s in a good mood, I fall in love with him all over again. He’ll wink at me at the table, put a hand on my leg, and whisper in my ear that he wants to drag me into the toilets and fuck me. He never does, of course, but it’s moments like that—and him occasionally reaching for me in the night and wrapping his arm around me—that keep me here, that make me think that he does still love me, deep down. We’ve just gotten into a bit of a domestic rut and need to shake things up again so he sees me the same way he did when we didn’t live together. I got myself into this situation, and I need to get myself out.