12:07 The Sleeping Read online

  He would work his hands later—for given strength—into what promised this afternoon, to be an arduous few hours away from work.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It had started raining and puddles were forming on the dark grey tarmac paths that led between the rows of headstones. A sombre sky, darkly cruel, weighed heavy in the afternoon light. The mourners came in procession behind the heavy, carried coffin. Black umbrellas shielded them from the rain, protecting the men’s suits and the women’s dresses. The few gathered around the open grave, their polished shoes sinking slightly into the wet grass. The family of the deceased stood in solemn thought, dabbing at tears with paper tissues. The Vicar, in his dark robes, showed a sorrowful look as he glanced at his prayer book. But the words he spoke were of no comfort, as the casket was steadily lowered into the wet earth. The lips trembled on the faces of the son and daughters as they said farewell to a Mother they loved.

  From underneath an old tree, in the far corner of the cemetery, the lonely figure of Lance stood—under his arm was the small package collected by Miss Swan. Staying hidden from view he watched the burial with absolutely no emotion showing on his face. Rain water dripped from the leaves above, onto his head and the shoulders of his black suit. His hair hung wet, clinging to his face.

  The Vicar said his last words as the family in turn dropped small handfuls of wet earth into the gaping hole, onto the coffin lid, making dampened thuds upon landing. A solitary lily was softly dropped to land almost perfectly upon the brass plaque. The Vicar then shook the hands of the bereaved and silently left. His precious time was required all too soon back in the chapel for the next family service. After all, the church has to make a living even if it is out of the dead and the grieving.

  From his distance, Lance could see the family huddled together—forming one black mass. A short time passed before the mass grew smaller as each family member, with their own thoughts, walked head down to the highly-polished, waiting, black cars. Rain gathered in growing droplets to slide off the car roofs and down the windows, like falling tears. Lance’s thoughts were of the years of misery he’d known from the woman now lying deep within the damp earth. Some think that’s where you wait sleeping, till you are called for on Judgement Day. Others think that when you die you go straight to God and are judged there and then. He would like to think, and hope that on this occasion, heaven would forget about this one and leave her buried there for all eternity.

  The cars drove away passing look-alike others—humble mere reflections—coming to do exactly the same thing. Grief, pain and sadness were adding more grief, pain and sadness. To Lance, the serenity of a cemetery was like a safe haven. It was peace away from everyday toils, to be alone with one’s own thoughts. And Lance was doing exactly that, safe for the time being on holy ground.

  As he watched, he saw two grim-faced men arrive and quickly shovel the earth back into place, hopefully without being seen. It’s not a sight for a distressed family to see. When finished, they left the place as tidy as possible, not an easy task with everything so wet—but they tried their best. The Sexton arrived with flowers and wreaths from the deceased’s loved ones, he placed them upon the mounded grave, then left.

  For the moment all was still—silent but for the patter of rain on the leaves above. Lance left his place of hiding and walked towards the grave. What he had just witnessed, he wanted to see up close. Standing there he looked down upon the wet brown earth. The cards on the flowers, protected from the rain in plastic envelopes, read goodbyes of love. He read them all; he didn’t feel their pain, their loss. Any feelings he had, had turned to regret with the passing of time. Now nothing could be changed, ever. He said his ‘goodbye’ in an ambiguous tone that left him feeling uncertain of his true thoughts. It wasn’t worth saying anything more, and besides, the dead couldn’t hear. As he stood there the coldness of the ground seemed to push upward into his bones, leaving him feeling numb. His wet fingers opened the package, and from its damp insides he grasped at a small wreath of green. He tossed the foliage beside the flowers, turned and left. Feeling cold to the core he pushed his fingers through his hair, pushing lank strands up over his forehead to reveal an ashen face. With eyes that would never forgive, he made one last look back across God’s acre. Finally she could never hurt him again.

  He was sodden when he arrived at his car, a 1969 Morris Minor 1000 four door saloon, which was discreetly parked a few streets away. He opened the door and slid onto the back grey-leather seats, took a towel from a bag and covered his head like a prize-fighter entering the ring. In fact, he felt like he’d just left the ring and was too dazed to know whether he’d won or not. The towel’s softness was like someone giving empathy, while rubbing his head and face dry. He slid his jacket, shirt, shoes and trousers off and placed them into a black bin bag. He then dried the rest of his body down, the hairs on his arms stuck on end upon his goose flesh. A sharp glance around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, allowed him to remove his socks and boxer shorts. They followed into the abyss like his other discarded garments. Now naked and shivering and feeling freshly alive, he leaned over into the front passenger seat and pulled through to the back a sports bag containing freshly bought clothes. He slipped on new, grey tracksuit bottoms and over his head pulled a matching hoody. His body instantly began to warm up as the soft fleece lining soothed his cold limbs. With new trainers on his feet, he felt ready to face the rest of the day.

  Between the front seats he climbed and started the engine—it grumbled slightly as it started. He could now get on with the rest of his life, knowing there was at least one person less in this world that had judged him wrongly. He drove away knowing he had to discard the bin bag. It wasn’t long before he sighted a litter bin. He parked alongside, got out, and feeling good about what he was doing, threw away a hardened layer of himself. Now that was done, he felt even more removed from everything that had happened that afternoon. A feeling of shedding a skin, that could never remind him ever again, felt good.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was always lonely coming home to No. 113 Padstow Avenue.

  This modest, four-bedroomed, terraced Victorian dwelling was nearly everything the Lewisham’s ever wanted. They had a lovely home—comfortable and beautifully furnished. The only thing missing were children; they had wanted children, desperately. They had tried in their early years of marriage, but trying never happened again.

  They met in their late twenties: Katherine was small, blonde, beautiful and intelligent, and starting to enjoy life; her years of study at university had provided her with exceptional qualifications in law. With a job in a large company accepted, all was well—she was going to move up the ladder of success. Within a few months the company offered promotion, she took it; her life was geared to a career. She was having a great time. It was work during the week, but at the weekends she would see friends and taste the night life.

  Katherine met Lance—her gallant knight—at a friend’s Christmas get-together. For the gallant knight it was love at first sight. For her, he was just another guy.

  Lance had given her his favourite chat up line, on seeing eyes of a pale Bermuda blue: ‘Your eyes are beautiful—let me swim in them for eternity.’

  He received a distasteful look. But at least the ice was broken, and he, for once, was telling the truth. They chatted, listened to music and sat together all night. The next thing they knew, it was morning. He hadn’t even kissed her, but he’d wanted to.

  Half a year passed, and then one night she realised she loved him. It wasn’t anything magical, just recognition. She hated being away from him, if she lost him it would be the end of her world.

  Engagement and marriage was all within a year. They were so happy; their life was going to be wonderful. Then shortly after their marriage she became pregnant. Everything seemed fine, but life can be cruel and in the sixth month of her pregnancy something dreadful happened. One night she couldn’t feel the baby moving, she became terrified something was wrong. She was rushed to hospital and was admitted for tests; the sad news was that the baby had died.

  Their lives were torn apart. She had to go through with the delivery, only the end result was already known. A small, lifeless body was delivered and removed—Lance thought it best that Katherine had no visual image of their dead child. He couldn’t even bring himself to look.

  The baby girl’s body was cremated and her ashes were interred somewhere unknown to them, it was what Lance had wanted. All arrangements were sympathetically made by the hospital’s chapel priest.

  The doctor told them that a tragedy like this can sometimes happen, that they were strong and nothing was physically wrong, so there would be plenty of time to have more children.

  Lance, at that time, was a studying gender psychiatrist, he seemed to cope. It wasn’t like he didn’t care; he just removed himself from the situation. What choice did he have? He had to be strong—strong for her. She wasn’t that strong, it took much longer for her to accept. Even now, fifteen years on, she hadn’t really got over it. She never would. She used work as a tool—the more time she devoted to her job, the less pain she felt. Work seemed to absorb her grief. That was Katherine’s form of therapy.

  When it had become almost one year to the date of Katherine’s suffering, she looked up the hospital chapel priest. He was a kind man, very young and very understanding. He listened to her plea. She had all the relevant paperwork and after checking his records, he took her to a corner of the church grounds, where he alone had knelt and put in the ground her daughter’s ashes and prayed. This time they both knelt. It was something she needed to do, to accept what had happened. She would never forget, but she would try to forgive. Life with love was hard enough, without adding hate. She said a silent prayer to the dau
ghter she wasn’t meant to have—her name was Claire. She never told her husband. Every year, on the date of Claire’s birthday; she visited and placed a single lily where a small brass plaque rested, simply saying ‘Claire, your Mummy loves you’.

  In the house everything was just how Katherine left it earlier that morning, feelings of sadness still hung oppressively in the air. She sat on a chair and sank into its deep softness, and burst into tears. She sobbed her heart out, as a week of loss and worry finally broke her. Grief had caused her mental distress and this morning’s funeral had made her physically exhausted. She took sharp intakes of breath causing her lungs to ache and her chest to tighten. Tears streamed from her eyes. Salty, they painfully burned her sore lids, and with her hands clasped to her face, she tried to wipe them away. The more she wiped—the more she cried. The salted tears ran in reddened tracks over her lips and down her chin. She tried to control her breathing, but it hurt as she cried uncontrollably. For a long time she cried, until, finally, crying wore her out and knocked her into sleep.

  Through the silence, a sound like furniture being moved vibrated through the ceiling. There followed a sudden, loud bang. Katherine jumped up and ran into the hall. Her eyes climbed every stair tread with unease, and met nothing but an empty landing. With a pounding fear she stepped onto the first tread. She didn’t know whether to go up and see what had caused the noise or wait to hear if it happened again.

  “Hello, Kath,” the air whispered.

  Katherine knew the voice—was her mind playing tricks? “Who’s there?” she called. She didn’t know what to expect. Her heart beat even faster—her breathing stopped.

  “It’s only me!” the air whispered.

  “MUM?” shot loudly from Katherine’s mouth. A pounding chest, gasping for air, was suddenly aware of what she had called.

  Katherine’s body jumped, every muscle tensed. She sat up shaking; she’d been asleep, slumped in the chair.

  Oh my God, she thought, with her hands clasped to her face. She now began inhaling deep, slow breaths.

  Feeling giddy and nauseous she tried to bring her mind into reality. She needed a drink of water. At the kitchen sink she turned on the tap, and splashed her face. Her mouth kissed the fresh, running water as she drank. The sound of water filled her ears as the coldness bit her mouth and throat, quickly removing the feeling of being sick. Grey faced and with trembling hands, she turned off the tap to bring the house into silence again. Time felt, for a few brief moments, like it was standing still.

  Katherine went to the stairs again. There was nothing, all was quiet. Hesitantly she climbed the stairs, one tread after another. When she finally reached the top she was starting to feel foolish. She walked into her bedroom; it looked just the same as earlier that morning. The bed still not made, the covers kicked back airing. The indentation of her head remained on the pillow.

  Suddenly there was a strong smell of perfume, so strong that it made her head reel. The wardrobe door creaked, then a crack so loud, just like the one she thought she heard before, shocked her backwards. She almost fell; carefully she opened the wardrobe door. The dressing mirror, which was fixed to the back, was cracked from top to bottom. No glass fell, but her heart was in her mouth. The smell of the perfume had gone, and as strong as it was, not a trace could be smelt. She knew that scent, it was her mother’s favourite.

  Katherine looked at herself in the broken mirror, her reflection distorted into two. “Mum,” she said softly. “Thank you. Say hello to Claire for me… tell her I love her.” In her mind, a vision of her Mum holding her daughter’s hand seemed to give her comfort.

  A soft, white feather appeared and gently floated down to rest tenderly in the indentation on Katherine’s pillow, it was a simple gesture of her mother’s watching love.

  Katherine sat on the bed, she hadn’t noticed. But she did know, without a doubt, that her mother had just been there.

  Seventy-five per cent of Lance’s patients had gender-related problems. The other twenty-five per cent were sent to him by their representing lawyers, prior to court appearances. Katherine’s company valued his professional evaluation and work ethics.

  ‘Do you remember when…?’ was something Lance always asked his patients. It was an exercise for trying to look back through time, to recall anything no matter how odd it seemed, from when they thought their problems first began.

  Some were receptive to this question, others stubbornly awkward, and one or two aggressive. It didn’t matter to Lance, he was there to help. His time was their time. As much time as they needed.

  Katherine and Lance didn’t talk about their work to each other. Professional confidentiality they called it. That was not unless they wanted professional guidance, and then they would discuss it through a scenario situation.

  Lance had a simple exercise that he set for his patients. If anything strange happened—write it down. ‘To keep a record of unusual events’ was how he explained it. So Katherine heeded that, everything she could remember she jotted down on paper. The date, time and place—she recorded every detail. Everything from the time she thought she fell asleep to when she was standing in front of the broken mirror. A record of what had happened written down so she couldn’t forget, not to fabricate later, but to jog her brain in case she’d missed something.

  It rained all day. Heavy drops beat against the window panes. A dark-clouded sky hid the sun from view, giving the rooms a strange character. It was difficult to tell whether the light had relinquished so that darkness could take over.

  Katherine decided to soak her tired body; she ran a hot bath and added perfumed oils. Undressing in front of the bathroom mirror she saw her sore eyes, bloodshot and swollen. She stood there naked, feeling saggy. It seemed like the elasticity her bottom once had, had stretched itself out—it had succumbed to cellulite—and she didn’t like it. However, her breasts had naturally enlarged from their girlish smallness to a rounded, womanly handful over the years—she liked that, but felt disappointed that they no longer passed the pencil test. She had, unfortunately, fallen to the chocolate craving that was starting to give her an overindulgent tummy. She turned sideways and breathed in. That’s better, she thought.

  Through the mirror she imagined seeing her husband, behind his desk, ogling his secretary—the twenty years his junior—Imogen, bending in front of the filing cabinet. The mirror rippled, allowing her body to look like Imogen’s—tall and slim and firm. She now had the body she secretly desired to have, the one her husband lusted over and longed for.

  Katherine blinked and the image faded, she was again her ageing self—she could tolerate Lance’s toys, but a pretty thing like Imogen, he was not allowed to have. He could window shop to his heart’s content. But touch was a definite NO. She had already joked to him that she would cut off his dangly-bits with a large, rusty blade, if he ever so much as laid a finger on such a pretty thing. All his toys were older than he was, so anything younger was out of the question.

  Upon lowering herself into a deep, hot, scented bath, she let her green-eyed thoughts drift away as she lay listening to the rain hitting the steamed-up bathroom window.

  When Lance came home at his usual time, he rushed by Katherine like a whirlwind. She was preparing their meal and hardly noticed him as he disappeared upstairs to wash and change. When he came down, his face was a picture of guilt. He didn’t know how to broach the subject of that afternoon, how do you say sorry for all the hurt caused by two people who just couldn’t see eye to eye?

  Lance sat silently at the table swirling the contents of his drink with his finger. Ice cubes clinked against the sides of the glass making a venomous hiss. The fizz quickly went from his vodka and coke.

  “I’m…” he tried to say something, but the right words weren’t coming into his head. Everything he thought of saying sounded harsh and cruel. He watched as the most precious piece of stardust brought him his meal. She was his heaven sent, his morning star, his evening star, his leading light. Why couldn’t he tell her this?