Falling by Emma Kavanagh Read Free Book Online

could not possibly have been sleep. Sleep made you think of rest, a gentle sinking into an easier state, not that plunging over the cliff edge, a black hole of unconsciousness. There had been dreams, if you could call them that. Rather piecemeal edges of sound, flashes of light that danced on the edge of her vision, and that pain that wrapped itself around her arm, wrenching at the socket, hauling her up towards wakefulness before the pain killers gripped her again, tugging her back down into the roar of the engines and the heat from the fire.
    She lay, staring at the ceiling. Not so different from every other night. Just different dreams.
    Her mouth seemed to be of cotton wool, head thick. She blinked, once, twice. There were the magnolia walls, the Degas reproduction that she had chosen that Tom hated. It seemed like there should be fire. There was the thick duvet over cotton sheets, but her body shivered like it was snow. There were sounds, right at the edge of her consciousness, a voice, familiar, strained. Cecilia turned her head, away from the sound, but it was still there.
    The sky was a dull cotton today, snow falling in a relentless drone. She gazed out of the window at the grey sky, and the grey rooftops, and thought of plunging towards the ground. There were other voices, farther away, laughter, childish shrieks and dull thuds. Cecilia thought of the scream of metal.
    “She’s sleeping now.”
    Cecilia closed her eyes again. It seemed so loud, that voice. Disproportionately loud, like the roaring of engines. Perhaps she could sleep again. Or pass out. Whichever.
    “No. There’s no way I can today.”
    It seemed to be getting closer, looming larger the further under the duvet she sank, tightening around her. Her head throbbed.
    “Yeah, I know. No, Ben’s with my mother.”
    Ben. Her eyes fluttered open. She wanted to see him. Now. It was a sudden need, like the pull for breath at the bottom of a swimming pool. Had to see him. Her tiny baby, born earlier than he should have been so that he came out little bigger than a bag of sugar. Too small for her to hold, even if she had wanted to, even if she hadn’t been too ripped apart, too addled with drugs to care. The nurses had taken her to see him, wheeling her in an overlarge chair that looked to be of Soviet design. This miniscule creature, with the wires and the tubes, buried behind glass. They had encouraged her forward, in voices that promised Christmas and spring flowers, glancing at one another in self-satisfaction when she had finally rested her fingertips on the glass of the incubator. Then the baby had turned, and although now it seemed that she must have imagined it, looked straight at her, and something had swelled up on the inside, a terror that they had got the wrong woman. They were standing there, smiling, thinking that it would be okay, that she would be able to take care of him, give him everything he needed. Didn’t they know that she couldn’t even take care of herself? They hadn’t understood when she had wanted to leave,
    “ Yeah, I know. No…no, I didn’t tell him about the crash.”
    And Tom. So damned capable. So much a father, right from the start, even with the tubes and the wires and this thing that looked barely human. Talking softly through the plexiglass walls, as if there was someone to hear him. And then it seemed that he had heard, because in what felt like a moment he was two years old, and it was his father that he ran to when he fell to the ground because walking was still an imprecise affair. His father who made him smile so wide that it seemed that his face would split apart. Whilst she floated, still stuck behind plexiglass.
    Would Ben have noticed if she had never have come back? Cecilia felt tears building. She already knew the answer.
    “I know, boss, but it’s a really bad time. I feel like my place is here.”
    Tom seemed to be just outside the door now. She wondered if he was listening, waiting for her to make a