I wanted to see my neighbors, and here they are. They know me now, though this wasn’t the introduction I hoped for.
God knows what they think happened here: a burglary, a home invasion, worse.
Across the street, I lock eyes with two women bundled up in their doorways chatting over the dividing wall—they don’t look as concerned as the other faces in the windows and seem to be chatting about something else in the predawn air.
I realize with a start that it is the two women from the first day: the one with gray hair and the woman I now know as Marina, whose hair is tied back tightly in a bun. The older woman is swaddled up in a Dryrobe and raises a hand to me in silent greeting. I am sure now that she was the person I saw in the window opposite me on my very first night.
I raise my own hand to greet her, an apologetic smile on my face for the chaos I have wrought on the street. As she catches my look,Marina frowns. She mutters something to the older woman, then, with a last glance, disappears back into her house. It is Number 15.
Marina, whose husband thinks it is okay to scream at his wife, the woman who wanted to knock on my door the first day I arrived, lives in Number 15. Now I know where they live. I pause, my own selfishness burning, but then a little voice says,She looked fine, cheerful, even—until she saw me, of course.
The older woman is still looking across the street at me, and when I catch her eye, she moves as if she might come directly over, but she thankfully changes her mind.
Instead, she gives a sympathetic smile and disappears back into her own house, Number 17.
The sound of a window thumping closed brings me back to the street.
I scan along the windows, but most are dark now. No faces stare back at me.
The lights of Number 15 flick off. He must be in there, too, the blond man, still sleeping or angry. I shiver against the early-morning air. I head back inside.
In the kitchen I lock the back door and pull a kitchen chair over so it sits underneath, wedged under the door handle, before going back upstairs to bed.
Blue slowly crawls out from under the bed as I lock the bedroom door.
“Sorry, Blue-Blue. Mummy’s had a full psychotic break, I think,” I tell him.
It’s meant to be funny and lighthearted and make me feel better, but Blue looks scared. I am, too.
Chapter 14
The Ghost of Me
I do not sleep well. Idreamt of flames again, of trying to leave and locked doors.
At 5:30 a.m., I wake, and the events of last night come alive inside me.
Blue nudges me and I remember the cat camera I trained on the back door last night.
I grab my laptop and open the app. There is new footage, a thumbnail proudly informs me. The dark blur of my back door, in miniature, taunting me.
I scroll through one hour and forty-six minutes of dark and empty kitchen—until, finally, something shifts in the darkness.
I pause it, lean in, squinting at the screen. There I am, a ghost in my own home. I do not look like me. I’m a shadow of my former self.
I watch the ghost of me move through the darkness like a computer game avatar, moving forward, adjusting. She heads to the door, as if this were what she came for.
She stands for a long time, palms pressed against the back door’s glass. I scrub forward. She fumbles for the key but it is not in the lock. She heads directly to the drawer where the key is stashed, then seems to look inside. She is a different person. She turns the key in her hand and goes to the door, then stops, frozen to the spot. It must be the warning blips of the alarm, but the footage, of course, has no sound.
Then she leaves my body. My own consciousness takes back ownership, and I am there again, in the room, cold and confused. I watch my hands fly to my ears as the alarm begins to wail.
I stop the video; I know what happens next.
It would now appear that I sleepwalk. The deep and dream-filled sleeps, the heavy tiredness that’s been dogging me—it all makes sense.
You can think you’re doing okay, that you’ve slipped through something awful unscathed, but it will always find a way out: the pain, the sadness, the deep shift of identity ripped from a life and transplanted into a new one.
I am out of control. I clearly can’t trust myself. Who knows what I’ve been getting up to while I’ve been sleeping? It’s a wonder I haven’t hurt myself, tripped on the dark staircase, electrocuted myself. I need to go to the doctor.
