Never Tell

TW: contains themes of abuse.

It’s that time of night when you have no business being awake, with thoughts for companions no one would want.

Switching on the lamp, you fiddle with odds and ends in the bedside drawer. Earplugs. Vaseline. The odd paperback you’re no longer able to read.

You scrabble for a pill only to find all the packets are empty. Story of your life.

Can it really be thirty years since his life ended? If you can call it a life.

Only thirty years — forever wouldn’t be enough.

Your bony hands grip the bannister. Another fall would be fatal, and you wouldn’t want a messy death.

The kitchen feels a lifetime away at the end of the landing, but eventually you’ll reach the countertop, gritting your teeth to open the overhead cupboard.

Here you are, groping among tins and jars well past their sell-by date. Remember, the war ended when you were ten! The only war now is the one in your head.

That pill bottle is tantalisingly close, but your fingers overextend, and it drops, rolls under the sink. Blood rushing, you stoop. Slowly, girl. Hang on in there.

Small things turn into epic battles.

The longing for sleep grinds. Four or five hours when the demons get smoothed away. Last night you tried so hard to do what that nice doctor asked, but without the pills you only managed an hour.

Breath rattling, you bite back memories of nursery rhyme curses.

You now have to contend with the child-proof seal. Warrior-like, you pick up a cloth to dry the by now moist bottle. Your neck a corkscrew, your wrists burning, but you won’t be defeated.

Why do they have to make everything difficult? No children to worry about here. Not anymore.

When you say they, do you mean the medical people? Like the doctor who rang out of the blue a few weeks back. They put you on hold, piped that awful fake music into your ears.

What happened to the days when you could simply ring the surgery and make an appointment? Or pop into a bank without a bone-shaker bus ride to the next town, only to be told that branch would be closing too. Not enough demand now people banked online.

You’d never been on the internet. Even though your daughter once tried to show you.

But back to the doctor. The first one you got to see after weeks of trying. He said you should get used to not having the pills because of your recent fall.

You couldn’t tell him you couldn’t sleep without them. Especially after losing—

Not him. What did he know about grief in his snug swivel seat?

You were never going to give up without a fight, were you?

Like when you tried to fight him off all those years ago.

He was stronger. Forced to take it, you stumbled to the bathroom afterwards, your insides burning as you washed it all out.

Except you couldn’t wash him out of your mind.

So you kept ringing until you got a female doctor.

Her eyes — so much like young Amy’s — the neighbour’s girl you loved like a daughter – it threw you.

For the first time in a lifetime, you nearly blurted it all out. Your heart hammered. Fingers gripped the chair arms.

Then a knock at the door.

“Sorry to disturb you, doctor…”

By the time she returned, you’d changed your mind. Easier to say you couldn’t sleep without the pills.

She checked her screen. “It’s just you’ve been on them a long time, Mrs Garson.”

“I don’t mind if you call me Brenda.”

“Ok, Brenda.”

You relented at the warmth of a human smile.

“My name used to be Dawn, but I changed it.”

The doctor stopped her screen surfing, laid a hand on your wrist.

“Didn’t you like the name Dawn?”

“No.”

He gave you that name.

You wanted to tell her everything the computer left out.

How you started taking the pills after your daughter’s birth. How you couldn’t resume… all that marital business.

“I can’t sleep. Having the pills makes things easier.”

“We just don’t want you falling again. Fuzziness during the day is a long-term effect, Brenda.”

Who is we?

“I’ll be alright. Now the handrails are fitted. Someone’s coming to see about a stairlift too.”

You didn’t tell her you’d cancelled the appointment. Or that you’d stopped the carer.

As a last resort, there was the secret stash. No one needed to know about that.

It takes all your strength to release the lid.

Time bends and Amy’s young face is before you, her hand reaching for a fairy cake. The girl who turned into the woman you could have been.

“These taste so good, Brenda!”

The day she confided her dream of becoming a lawyer.

If only you could have felt the same love for your own children.

The pink-and-white pill became an escape capsule. Rotating it, you unravel a life whose promise fled like shadows under old school sheds.

In the hallway, the grandfather clock tolls. Your tongue flicks across your mouth, your mind a flame not yet extinguished.

You ricochet back to the sweet shop all those years ago on the walk to school. A guilty pleasure. Aniseed balls, pear drops.

The shop bell. Another man’s wolfish smile. “What will it be today, dear?”

You were not his dear. Not anyone’s dear.

“That one, please.” Yellow and pink fruit salads. The Catherine Wheels — only if there was nothing else.

Natural light seeps through the blinds. Tap water runs into your glass. Unlike the scummy bath residue you were forced to share after he’d used it.

You wait for the pills to work, finding comfort in rituals.

At the top of the stairs, the wallpaper swirls into monstrous shapes. You remember another hall, another house.

It was always when your mum was out cleaning, wasn’t it?

The thud of a football outside. The creak of floorboards inside.

Then his hand over your mouth.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “It’ll be our secret.”

As if that made it alright.

By the time your mother returned, the light was gone.

You never told her. You never told anyone.

Now in the home you call your own, you slowly turn the bedroom handle.

You painted the walls yellow, like daffodils in fields before the juggernaut carved them up for houses.

Water spills on the slippers your daughter gave you. “I thought grey would be a safe colour.”

“It was just a thought,” she said, her eyes dark as your own. As dark as his.

Amy loved yellow too. She painted you a picture of daffodils before leaving to study law. You rarely saw her after that, but you were so proud.

Later, you’d take the bus into the city, disappear into the Underground. Sometimes you found yourself outside the Old Bailey. Imagining Amy in her robes and wig, demolishing opponents.

You stood in the rain when she tried her first rape case. You were there for the woman too.

Then the photo. The headline: Prominent female lawyer killed in hit and run.

Your legs buckled. Something lodged in your throat.

Grief turned to rage. You wanted the driver crushed.

Just as you thought nothing of giving your father the pills when he begged for your help. Potent with alcohol.

The family doctor said you’d been the perfect daughter. He must have known better.

At the funeral, you told everyone you needed to scatter his ashes alone.

Now, waiting, your hand reaches not for the glass of water but for the sweet jar. That’s where he is. At the sink, you twist the lid. All that’s left of a grubby life, the aniseed balls and Catherine Wheels clatter into the basin. You turn on the tap, the clean water washing him away, down into the dark where he belongs.

Natural light seeps through the blinds. The face in the vanity mirror is tired and old, but for a moment there’s a trace of a young girl. In the yellow glow behind her eyes, Amy is waiting, smiling, her hand warm upon your arm. “It’s alright, Brenda,” she says. “You can rest now.”

Whether it’s the pill, sleep, or something beyond, you drift into a sleep deeper than anything you’ve ever known.

Dawn is unknown, but the secret stays with you, unspoken, as the night finally loosens its grip.