Witness This

She slipped between the sheets as I slept, the shadow of a long forgotten lover. She lay with me, patient, waiting. So soft was her touch I barely noticed the gentle weight of her, the breathing of something old and sickly sweet over me. I welcomed this unexpected visitor for a while, allowed her to speak to me, share my skin, my secrets. Fantasies explored and revisited. She lingered on and kept me in my bed. One day and then another. Appointments forgotten and ignored. Just one more morning together and then she’ll move away, forget about me. But the weight of her grew almost imperceptibly, a body comfortable and relaxed on mine, familiar and heavy. She whispered her name, and it sounded like sadness.

Gradually I forgot how to be without her. She knew me inside out and I was unfolding. We took long baths together, looking for childish comfort. I hoped she would dissolve in the water, spiral away down the plug clockwise. But she clung to me like the scented oils I dripped into the bath, lavender for calm and geranium for happiness. Interruptions to our secret affair were dismissed with brusque normality. Excuses made. Reasons given. Return to the bed where we first met. Sanctuary and torture between the folds. It was familiar and strange to be here, to be this way. Helpless in her tightening embrace, she drew the sunshine out of me, slowly, until just darkness remained.

There was a witness to all of this. A voice, somewhere, that said, I see this happening. My witness watched as I gave myself up, completely and utterly to this malevolent lover. She waited patiently for me to listen to her, but I was busy.

You have been in bed all day, for the second day. Third Day. Fourth Day.
There is no food in the house. You need to go shopping.
The bathroom should be cleaned.
You are taking yet another bath.
You are drinking at 3.00pm in the afternoon.
How long will it be before this is irreversible? Do you care?

I heard my witness and ignored her. Yet she stayed, watching as summer dissolved in pictures on the bedroom wall, the ebb and flow of a life abandoned. I shut her out with Radio 4, the television, alcohol, the sound of my own breathing, so that I could pay attention to my demanding lover. High Maintenance. Jealous. My witness became insistent. Her voice grew stronger and clearer.

You must stop this, now.

Then my lover was distracted for a moment, lifted her weight from me for a heartbeat. Long enough for me to look over the edge of the precipice. Coming into focus far below, the kind words of a friend, the face of a daughter neglected, the sweet meadows of a life left behind.

Time to get up.
Time to get up.
Time to get up.

I am here and I am listening. Help me.

Place your feet on the cool floorboards.
Now stand, and place one foot in front of the other.
Leave the bath because she waits there for you.

I don’t want to. I’m afraid. I can’t do this.

Don’t think. Just follow.

I can’t remember how to be without this cloak, this darkness. I turn back to the sheets and the pillows and the deadening stillness of nothing. But there is no comfort there; skin and hair, over-washed and over-stroked, no longer give pleasure or relief. I cannot survive here.

You must move, steadily and without stopping. You cannot negotiate right now. You must simply do.

A ghost in my own home, I do as my witness says. Compliant to a new mistress.

See? Now you are dressed. Time to go.

Remembering a familiar routine, I talk myself through going out. Handbag, shoes, keys. Where are the keys? On the hook where they always are. Light floods in as I open the door. I didn’t realise how warm it was. Summer hasn’t quite ebbed away.

Walk to the car and get in. Drive to the station and get on a train.
The first one.
Now you’re going somewhere.

And then I am gone.