‘Are you? You don’t look fine. You’ve been ignoring my calls.’

‘I’ve been busy. I have a full-time job.’ I study her face for a moment, stalling for time as my mouth rejects each form of words my mind suggests. She looks so much younger than I do, as though her face has forgotten to age over the last few years. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’ I wish I could tell her the truth, share the sort of secrets that normal sisters share, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. We have everything and nothing in common and our mother tongue doesn’t contain that kind of vocabulary.

‘Do you remember the boy I dated in my last year at university?’ I ask. She shakes her head. She’s lying and I already regret bringing it up.

‘What was his name?’

‘Edward. You didn’t like him. Not that that will jog your memory, you never liked any of them.’

‘I liked Paul,’ she says. I ignore the past tense.

‘I bumped into him on Oxford Street, yesterday, one of those crazy coincidences I suppose.’

‘I think I do remember. Tall, quite good-looking, very sure of himself.’

‘I don’t think you ever met him.’

‘Is there a point to this story? You’re not going to have an affair, are you?’

‘No, I’m not going to have an affair. I was just making conversation.’

I stare at the table for a while, wishing she would just leave, but she doesn’t.

‘How are things with Paul?’

‘You tell me, you’ve spent more time with him than I have lately.’ I’m surprised at my choice of words, which are far braver than I’m feeling. We’re sailing into unfamiliar territory here. I’m aware that I’ve started speaking in a language she doesn’t understand and for the first time we might need an interpreter. She stands to go, removing her coat from the back of the chair. I don’t try to stop her.

‘I’ve obviously caught you at a bad time, I’ll leave you to it.’ She opens the back door before turning back. ‘Remember, I’m only around the corner,’ she adds before leaving.

Her final words feel like more of a threat than a comfort. I listen as she walks down the side of the house, the sound of crunching gravel getting fainter until I hear the gate slam shut.

My thoughts return to the robin. For a moment I believe it must have come back to life and flown away, but as I get closer to the glass, my eyes find its brown body lying motionless on a carpet of green. I can’t leave it there, broken and alone. I open the back door and wait a second or two before stepping outside, cautious not to disturb the disturbing. It takes me a while to summon enough courage to reach down and pick up the bird. It’s lighter than I imagined, as though it is made of nothing but feathers and air. The thud as its tiny corpse lands at the bottom of the bin echoes the sound of it hitting the glass and I can’t shake the feeling of guilt that’s come over me. I step back inside and wash my hands, soaping and scrubbing my skin beneath the scalding water three times. When I have dried them, I turn the tap back on and do it all again and again until there is no soap left. I push my hands, still wet this time, into my pockets and try to stop thinking about them. I feel strange about dispensing with a life as though it is rubbish. There one minute, gone the next, all because of one wrong decision, one wrong turn.

Now

Wednesday, 28th December 2016 – Morning

It’s becoming harder to separate the dreams from my reality and I’m scared of both. Even when I do remember where, I don’t know when I am any more. Morning has broken and there’s no afternoon or evening any more either. I have escaped time and I wish it would find me again. It has a smell of its own, time. Like a familiar room. When it’s no longer your own you crave it, you salivate and you hunger for it, you realise you’d do anything to have it back. Until it is yours again, you steal stolen seconds and gobble up misused minutes, sticking them all together to make a delicate chain of borrowed time, hoping it will stretch. Hoping it will be long enough to reach the next page. If there is a next page.

I can smell my lost time. And something else. I have been alone for a while now. Paul has not returned and nobody has been in my room since I started counting the seconds. I stopped at seven thousand, which means I have been lying in my own shit for over two hours.

The voices come frequently, to wake me from my dream within a dream. They’re starting to sound familiar to me. The same nurses come into my room, check I’m still breathing and sleeping, then leave me alone again with my thoughts and fears. I’m not being fair, they do more than that. They turn me, I’m not sure why. I’m on my left side at the moment, which is how I liked to sleep when I had a choice in the matter. Having choices is something I used to do. Most of the shit is on the inside of my left thigh. I can feel and smell it. With my mouth forced open I can almost taste it and the thought makes me want to gag, but that’s just another thing I can’t do. The tube down my throat has become a part of me I barely notice any more. I picture myself as a newly invented Doctor Who monster: part woman, part machine; skin and bones entwined with tubes and wires. I want them to clean me before Paul comes back. If he’s coming back. The door opens and I think it is him, but the smell of white musk informs me it isn’t.

‘Morning, Amber, how are we feeling today?’

Let’s see, I feel like shit, I’m covered in shit, I stink of shit.

Why do these people keep talking to me? They know I can’t answer and they don’t really believe I can hear them.

‘Oh dear, don’t you worry, we’ll soon get you all cleaned up.’

Thank you.