Same dream, same time, same sweaty body reduced to a shivering mess. Paige peeled her knees from her chest, unfurling her body from its foetal position, cramped fingers slowly relinquishing the fisted balls of bed sheet to fumble in the dark for the mobile phone with its illuminated display. Not that she needed to check a clock to know the time, not after all these years.
Her first thought this morning was to poke Robert from his silent slumber. Once upon a time, her husband would have felt her stir and woken, rolled over, held her, whispered his love for her and massaged that knotted muscle at the base of her neck. Then, without the need for words, her dutiful knight would have clambered out of bed and made a point of examining every nook and cranny of the house so that Paige could confidently close her eyes again. Over time, however, the armour had tarnished, the fairy tale had faded, the knight had tired, his investigations become less forensic, until so cursory Paige no longer bothered waking him at all. Not because he wouldn’t check, put his wife’s mind at ease, let her fall back to sleep; their relationship had not deteriorated to that level. Not waking Robert was more about Paige wanting to avoid his predictable jibes over breakfast the next morning about what he labelled her overactive imagination.
Paige slipped out of bed and with the phone lighting her way tiptoed to Matilda’s room. Not until she could peer through the gap in the doorway to see the Disney nightlight casting its dancing shadows across the small, sleeping form would Paige think to breathe, convinced—again—that no one had slipped from those shadows and stolen her daughter away in the night. As usual there was no one in the house, no one smashing windows, no one ripping her baby from her arms. It was as the doctors and therapists suggested. First her body had betrayed her; now her mind was playing tricks.
Paige fell back against the wall, sliding to the floor outside Matilda’s room. Clasping bent knees with one arm, the thumb of her other hand punched out a phone number. And only then did she glance at the time—always 2 am—before whispering . . .
‘Alice? Same dream.’