The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up

1

NOW

There’s light, soft whirrs and squeaking sounds. The drag of a curtain pulled across. I’m flat on my back, in bed. Not my bed. Not my home. And then back to darkness.

A series of beeps, light pressure on my arm, the scratch of Velcro. I don’t know where I am. I look up, to a ceiling of square tiles with stained patches. My bed’s metal frame, the sheets white and crisp.

The smell of vegetables boiled for too long, a steady click-clack of shoes on tiled flooring. A touch on my arm, skin on skin.

Hospital. But why? I rake through my memories. The pub, the flat, David. My mind catches on David’s name like a jumper snagged on a metal fence. But it’s too hard to think about it. I fade out.

My eyes are open, and there’s a middle-aged woman standing in front of me.

‘Shelley?’ she asks. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘Hospital,’ I try to say, but no sound comes out.

‘Don’t worry about that, Shelley. It might take a while for you to speak again. You’ve had a tube down your throat. You’re in the hospital. You were involved in an accident.’

I open my mouth, try to speak again. Try to ask for water.

‘Try not to worry about anything. I’m Angela, and I’ll be looking after you during the days while you’re in Intensive Care. It’s one nurse per patient in here, so you get special treatment.’

Intensive Care? I’ve never been inside an Intensive Care unit before. They are for the people who are really ill, the ones who might not get better. Am I one of those people?

I look around to find a window but all I see are other beds, other people being kept alive. Tubes and wires snaking over skin and sheets.

‘I’ll leave you to wake up slowly,’ she says, and bustles away.

I take in the surroundings. Six beds, too far apart for us to speak to each other. I’m on the far end, away from the nurses’ station. A couple of the patients have someone sat beside them, holding their hand. None of them look to be in good shape.

I can feel sleep creeping up on me, and for a moment I try to fight it, but it’s too strong.

Later, Angela passes by, and when she glances at me, I speak.

‘What day is it?’ It comes out as a croak, but I’m so relieved to have my voice back that I don’t care.

‘It’s Tuesday, love.’

It doesn’t really tell me anything. The last thing I can remember is Saturday, but have I lost days or weeks?

‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

There is pain, but it’s dull. When I tell her that, she asks where it hurts, but it’s so hard to specify. It hurts everywhere. I feel at a disadvantage in this conversation. She’s standing, looking down at me, and I’m lying down. Plus, there’s all this stuff she knows about me. What my body looks like, how long I’ve been here, what happened to me. And I don’t know anything. Or do I? I see David again, only this time he isn’t pottering in the kitchen, he’s standing over me, his face puce. No, I think. No. Not yet.

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I say.

Angela’s brow furrows. ‘Try not to worry about anything. You are safe here.’

I feel like I might cry suddenly. I’m scared. That’s the truth of it. Angela pours water from a jug into a plastic cup and hands it to me. I try to sit up, but she puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me, reaches for the remote control and adjusts the bed.

‘The physio will be round soon, and she’ll help you with your mobility.’ She looks down at her feet, at her sensible shoes, then back up at me. ‘Do you know the date?’

I want to say that I don’t know how long I was out for. ‘It’s September 2017,’ I say instead. ‘I don’t know the date. Twelfth, maybe? Was I in a coma?’

‘Yes,’ she says, nodding as if for extra confirmation. ‘Now, do you know who the prime minister is?’

‘Theresa May,’ I say. Does she think I’m stupid? Brain damaged?

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty.’

She shuffles on her feet a bit before asking the next question. ‘Shelley, do you know what happened to you?’

I think I’m going to say I’m not sure, but that isn’t what comes out. ‘It was David,’ I say. ‘My husband. He tried to kill me.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’

I don’t know what to say. But it doesn’t matter because Angela is called away by one of her colleagues. She tells me she’ll be back. When she’s gone, I feel unsettled. To my left, the bed is quite a distance away and it’s hard to make out whether the shape in it is a man or a woman, whether they’re conscious or comatose. Opposite, same story. A thought comes, out of nowhere. Has anyone died in here, since I came? It’s quite possible, surely. This is where you come when things are as serious as they get. What if I have lain here, unconscious, while someone took their last breaths beside me? Does it matter? It shouldn’t, I suppose. I don’t know these people. They don’t know me. But it feels a bit chilling, all the same. I try to push the thought out of my mind. I will concentrate on what I know.

And so, I repeat the things I know, in my mind. My name, which is Shelley Woodhouse. That I am thirty years old. I am the landlady at a pub called the Pheasant. And that, a few days ago, my husband David tried to kill me.

Angela’s back and I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have done.

‘Do you need anything?’ she asks.

There are so many things I need. To know what happened, why I’m here, when I’ll go home. Whether it’s safe for me there.

‘I feel like my memories are scrambled,’ I say. ‘Confused, out of order. I feel like they’re out of my control.’

‘I think that’s pretty normal, Shelley. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Why don’t you start with something you’re sure of, from your childhood perhaps, and go from there?’

2

THEN

Six years old and gap-toothed. I’m in the playground, trying to cross to where the other girls are playing, while simultaneously scratching my scabbed knee and avoiding the football game that’s taking place. Annabelle Harris turns, puts her hands on her hips and watches me approach. There are five of them. Emma Clacton and Sophie Giles holding either end of the skipping rope, Tessa Lynes jumping in time to ‘Granny’s in the kitchen’ and Lucy Jeffers waiting her turn. Annabelle overseeing things. As I get close, I see that Annabelle is frowning, her eyes squinting as if the sun is too bright. But it is October, and dull. I stop and line up the two sides of my jacket, sticking my tongue out as I pull up the zip.

‘You can’t play with us,’ Annabelle says. A pre-emptive strike.

‘Why not?’ I don’t understand. Yesterday, we were best friends, our heads bent in close, giggling.

‘Because you don’t have a dad.’

Later, I would reflect that there’s one moment in every person’s childhood where they realise that what they thought was commonplace is, in fact, not. In the moment, though, I can’t think of a single thing to say and just stand there, my mouth opening and closing like a fish. I think about other people’s houses, about their families. Sometimes a mum and dad, yes, sometimes brothers and sisters, sometimes pets, but surely not always a dad? I’ve never noticed. At home, it is me and my mum, Tina, and her mum, Granny Rose. My mum told me once that Granny Rose moved in the very day that my dad moved out, when I was still a tiny baby. I kept hold of that piece of information throughout my bedtime story and then wrote it down in my secret notebook along with the other things I knew about my dad, namely that he was a liar and he didn’t deserve to have a family.

‘Oh,’ I say eventually. And then I turn and walk away, pretending not to hear Annabelle and the other girls giggling and whispering as the skipping rope thwacks against the tarmac in a steady rhythm.

Later that day, I sit on the stool in front of my mother’s dressing table, with her beside me. She is getting ready to go to work. I’m dressed in blue and green striped pyjamas, while she is in a tight, black skirt and a clingy top with big flowers and a low neck. She is doing her makeup, carefully applying mascara. I take a blusher brush and swipe it over my cheeks, pretending. Inside, I practise what I want to say. Annabelle said I couldn’t play because I don’t have a dad. But I don’t know how my mum will react. I don’t want to make her upset or angry just before she leaves for the night.

Granny Rose appears in the bedroom doorway, tapping her watch. This is how it is every night that Mum works. I try to stay as close to her as I can for as long as possible, but Granny Rose is strict about bedtime.

‘Have you done your teeth?’ Granny Rose asks.

I haven’t. I jump off the stool and dart into the bathroom. If I’m quick, there might be time for Mum to read me a story. But no, when I emerge, Mum is already on her way down the stairs, calling out to us that she’ll see us in the morning. Disappointment settles in my stomach like a stone.

‘Do you want to choose a book, love?’ Granny Rose asks.

I kneel in front of my small bookcase and run my finger along the spines. I pull out a book about dinosaurs having a party, and once I’m in bed I scooch up close to the wall so there’s room for Granny Rose. We’re halfway through the story when I have a thought. Maybe I can say what I wanted to say to Granny Rose. It won’t upset her the way it might upset Mum. So as soon as she closes the book and leans in to kiss me goodnight, I speak, and the words come out in a rush.

‘Annabelle said I couldn’t play because I don’t have a dad.’

Granny Rose pauses in mid-air, her lips slightly puckered. She pulls back, considers. ‘Which one is Annabelle again? The one with the bunches?’

I nod.

‘Well, I could tell you a thing or two about her family.’

My eyes widen.

‘But I won’t. Listen, children can be awfully cruel. In my experience, they decide who they’re going to be mean to and then come up with a reason for it.’

I think this is something I’ll need to pick apart later. But for now I have questions. ‘But why don’t I, when everyone else does?’

Granny Rose sighs. ‘Because some men don’t stick around and do the right thing, I suppose. And your dad was one of them.’

‘Where do you think he is?’

‘I don’t know, love. I never think about him. He chose not to be part of this family, and it gave me the opportunity to step in and live with you both, and I’ll never be sorry for that.’

I nod solemnly. I want to ask another question, to prolong this time snuggled up next to Granny Rose, who smells of floral hand cream and home, but I can’t think of one.

‘You know,’ she says, ‘you’re a good girl. Such a good girl.’

I am. I make a point of it. Dad left and I don’t want to risk anyone else deciding to go, do I?

‘You’re a good Granny Rose,’ I say, and she laughs.

‘Night night, love,’ she says, getting off the bed slowly, one hand on her back. She slides the book back into its spot on the bookcase and leaves the room, turning off the light on her way out. In the pitch darkness, I feel around the bed until I find Big Ted and Small Ted. I lay Big Ted next to me and place Small Ted in the crook of my neck, and I think about Mum, who won’t get back from work until the middle of the night but will still get up to have a coffee and a cigarette in her dressing gown while I have my Coco Pops tomorrow morning before school. I’ve been to the pub a handful of times, have drunk orange squash and eaten bags of crisps sitting on the high bar stools on the occasional Sunday afternoon, so I can picture Mum there, making drinks and taking money to put in the till. Having three different conversations at once, throwing her head back in laughter, and generally being impossibly glamorous.

I want to work in a pub when I’m older, but when I said that to Mum, she just looked a bit sad and said I should aim higher than that. I didn’t understand. In the pub, Mum is like a queen, everyone wanting to talk to her, everyone knowing her name. I want that. I ache for that.

Sleep is tugging at me as I ponder what aiming higher means. I know that Annabelle’s mum and dad both work in offices and she goes to a childminder after school every day while I go home with my mum and play Snakes and Ladders. Is that really better?