I am four years old and we live with my nana. I don’t know why we no longer stay in London with my granny. My finger healed and no longer hurts. The scar is bright red.
Five of us live in a one-bedroom flat within a tenement made from grey granite. We live on the floor second from the top (the fourth). Since we have no bathroom in the flat, we have to go down one flight of stairs to use the shared toilet on the landing. One room acts as the kitchen, living room and my Nana’s bedroom. A small cupboard sized room off of it houses a sink and some shelves. A tiny hall by the front door leads into the back room where the four in our family sleep. My brother and I sleep on bunk beds that stand along the same wall as the door. He has the top bunk with me on the bottom. If the bedroom door opens too wide, it bumps against the end of our beds. Mum and Dad’s double bed takes up most of the rest of the space on the cold side of the room near the window.
Our first winter in Aberdeen was a long, cold shock. It didn’t matter how far we placed our beds from the window, my feet still felt like frozen icicles under the blankets. My brother was breathing deep above me, fast asleep. Why didn’t he feel the cold? I tossed and turned and then lay on my side, facing out towards the room, holding my blankets tight around my neck to keep draughts out and warmth in. The thin curtains glowed a dim orange from the streetlights below.
Cars drove by on the Viaduct. I watched the beams of their headlights sweep across the room in time with the hum and tyre noise of their passing. The discomfort of my cold feet faded. I felt drowsy. The headlights cast sinuous shadows through the patterned folds of the curtains over the repeated floral shapes of the wallpaper. The shadows merged these shapes and patterns together until they lost their distinct nature and combined into something else.
I imagined what that something else could be. My breathing slowed. My feet were almost warm. The next set of headlights shone higher and brighter than the rest. My eyes followed the projected shadows as they moved across the wallpaper. I propped myself up on an elbow to look down the length of my bed at the shape there. The shadows had passed, but the shape remained.
A woman stood there by the door.
She wore a cloth bonnet and a dress that flared out at her waist and dropped out of sight behind my mattress. The peak of her bonnet made her face a shadow within a shadow. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew she watched me as I watched her.
She did not move. And neither did I.
No cars passed by, so the moving light and shadows did not erase her. We stared at each other.
The bedroom door opened. The woman disappeared behind the door panels. I couldn’t see her. There came a gentle bump as the door hit the bunk bed frame. With a click of a switch, the big light in the ceiling came on. Dad poked his head around the door. I squinted up at him. He saw me half-sitting up and asked if I was all right. I said I was. He frowned. He asked me if I was sure. I said I was. He nodded once, looked around the room, still with a wrinkled forehead, and wished me goodnight. He switched off the light and closed the door.
Above me, my brother made a little sound and then went back to sleep.
I stayed propped up as I waited for my eyes to readjust to the gloom. I spent a while staring at the same spot at the foot of the bed and tried to find the right combination of light, shadow and imagination to account for what I had seen. But no matter how hard I stared, the wallpaper and shadows would not resolve themselves into the woman with the bonnet and the long dress.
I allowed myself to fall down onto my pillow. I was warm at last. My eyes refused to stay open. I turned to face the wall, my back to the window. I reached out and touched one of the raised petal shapes on the wallpaper and fell asleep.