school photos 38

I’m not sure what to say or how to put it. ‘Ah know it sounds daft, but sometimes when Ah go to bed Ah sleepwalk.’

Mr Williams shook his head and blinked rapidly. ‘That’s not daft at all. In fact, it’s a relatively common occurrence.’ He made a joke out of it. ‘I’ve even been known to sleep walk myself after a few too many Glenfidichs.’

I yawned and gave him the kind of tired smile his joke deserved. ‘Ah hardly ever sleepwalk,’ I reassured him. He nodded back at me and his face grew serious, and my tone more solemn. ‘But when I do fall asleep I have these weird dreams. It’s as if Ah leave my body. And it’s me lying in bed and not me getting up out of the bed.’ I couldn’t explain it better. ‘You know what Ah mean?’ 

He didn’t and I tried again. ‘Before Ah fall asleep Ah get this buzzing in my ears, angry voices and snatches of songs from some faraway place. Ah hear breathing and it comes and this fat squelchy thing sits on my face and chest. Ah can’t move, not even to brush a tear away from the corner of my eyes. Then Ah pull away, escape, but Ah’m  still lying in bed.’

His eyes met mine and his head flicked almost imperceptibly in affirmation, allowing me to continue. ‘Although it’s dark, there’s enough light from the lamppost outside to see. Ah pull open the room door and steal into the hall. Ah can hear my da’ and his snoring.’ I grinned at the recollection of this.

‘My ma never sleeps so Ah’ve got to sneak past their door.’ 

‘Why should that matter if you’re dreaming?’ he asked.

‘Ah’m no’ sure.’ The memory made me screw my face up like a rotten tomato. ‘Anyway, Ah glide down the hall. Put my head outside my sister’s bedroom door. Listening.’

He held his hand up in a flat stop sign. ‘You said “glide” in your dreams. Have you got feet, do you walk?’

‘Aye,’ but when I thought about it for a few seconds I had to admit, ‘Ah don’t know’. But he didn’t seem that bothered.

I stuttered and started the next part with my face getting redder and redder, hesitating before I jumped in. ‘Ah’m listening at the door and it’s as if there’s a force goading me on and another holding me back. Ah try the handle, but it’s never locked, and slowly push open the door. My sister Jo’s bed is nearest the windae. She turns over in her sleep, a bump of dark bedclothes and frizzy hair. Little Ally’s bed is nearest the wall. Ah stand at the end of her bed watching her. She moans, wriggles up out of her bedclothes. Her wee face seems luminous as a dandelion clock’s as she sits upright, looking straight at me, as if she’d been expecting me all along. Ah pad round her side of the bed and kiss her on the forehead. Whisper for her to shhhhhh. Ah slip under the covers beside her, as easy as slipping into a shallow pool of warm water. She turns her back and moves away, flat as a plywood near the wall. There’s a draught between our stiff bodies. But she knows the drill. Ah shirk up her nightie and tug her pants down and she lift her feet off the mattress so she can step out of them. Ah hook her pee-pee with a sticky finger and reel her in close, let her writhe up against my chest. Clamp her knickers to her mouth so she doesn’t squeal too much and if she’s good and she likes it…’.

‘What do you mean by pee-pee?’ he asks.  

I couldn’t look at him, and muttered with my chin tucked into my chest ‘Ah think it means vagina.’ Sweat runs down my face and under the arms of my T-shirt are saturated with sweat.

‘Go on,’ he said.

It’s more difficult to talk now he’d interrupted me. ‘I ride her,’ I spoke as matter-of- factly.   

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘That’s it.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yeh.’

His fingers played about the mouse-like hairs of his nose and mouth as he considered this. ‘What about Jo?’ he asked.

‘Whit about her?’

‘She’s in the next bed. Doesn’t she hear you?’

‘Nah.’ Then it occurred to me. ‘She’s too scared.’

‘What’s she scared of?’

‘Me.’

‘Why’s she scared of you?’

I pushed my chair back and stood up. My voice was wavering and I was on the edge of tears. ‘In case Ah do to her what Ah was doing to Ally.’

‘Do what?’

‘Fuck her.’  Tears calved and splintered like blocks of ice in the back of my throat and I sniffed to hold them back.

‘And did you?’

‘Yeh, Ah fucked her back and front.’

I lost control of my body, bent over the chair, howling. I glanced up at him sitting there so cool, one leg up over the other, clutching at his ankle. I felt a surge of hatred towards him, travelling through me like an electrical current, giving me the strength of Samson and the tears began to dry. I thought he’d better watch out. But it was as if I’d been listening to a dream memory way back beyond myself and I had to explain.

‘She wouldn’t listen. Said she was goin’ to tell. Ah had to kill her.’

The chair creaked as he dropped his ankle and his fawn Desert boot banged down and scuffed the floor. ‘Who?’

‘Our Jo,’ I said. I felt cleansed by my tears and sat down facing him. ‘She began to scream and Ah put a pillow over her face to stop her and she widnae stop: Ah had to press down harder and harder, until she did.’

‘You raped and killed her?’

‘Yes.’ I shook my head. ‘And no. When Ah lifted the pillow from her face Ah knew immediately that she was deid, but it wisnae our Jo’s face. Ah put the pillow over her face again. Every time Ah pulled it away it was a different deid girl lying beneath me and looking up at me. But the last time Ah did it the girl’s eyes blinked opened and Ah screamed, but she hooked her arms round my neck and forced the slug of her long tongue into mouth to shut me up. She was only a wee thing, but Ah couldnae get her aff. Then I blacked out. Found myself bollocks naked outside, up Dalmuir Park, in the woods at the Golfie. That’s when Ah heard the wolves.’