The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

13

The sycamore outside the window was hurling its branches about in the wind. Yvonne was sitting on the dressing-table chair, which she had dragged to the side of the bed.

She had brought an advanced dot-to-dot book for Eva, ‘To pass the time.’

Under duress, Eva had finished the first puzzle. After fifteen tedious minutes she had joined up ‘The Flying Scotsman’, complete with a village railway station, a luggage trolley, booking office and a station master with whistle and a raised flag.

Eva said, ‘Don’t think you have to stay.’

Yvonne sniffed. ‘You can’t be on your own when you’re poorly.’

Eva raged inside. When would they accept that what she told them was true – she wasn’t ill, she simply wanted to stay in bed?

Yvonne said, ‘You know it’s a symptom of being mental, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva, ‘and so is an adult filling in a bloody dot-to-dot book. Madness is relative.’

Yvonne snapped, ‘Well, none of my relatives are mad.’

Eva couldn’t be bothered to respond, she was weary and wanted to sleep. It was exhausting, listening and talking to Yvonne – who, it seemed to Eva, wilfully misinterpreted most conversations, and lived from one grudge to another. Yvonne was proud of her straight-talking, though other people had described her as ‘obnoxious’, ‘unnecessarily rude’ and ‘a total pain in the arse’.

Eva said, ‘You know how much you value straight-talking?’

Yvonne nodded.

‘I’ve got something to ask you… it’s difficult for me…’

Yvonne said, encouragingly, ‘Come on then, cough it up.’

‘I can’t use the en suite any more. I can’t put my feet on the floor. And I was wondering if you would help to get rid of my waste.’

Yvonne paused, computing the information, then gave a shark’s smile and said, Are you asking me, Eva Beaver, to dispose of your wee-wee and poopy? Me? Who’s fastidious about such things? Who gets through a giant bottle of Domestos a week?’

Eva said, ‘OK. I asked, and you said no.’

Yvonne said, ‘I warned Brian not to marry you. I foresaw all this. I saw at once that you were neurotic. I remember when you and Brian took me on holiday to Crete and you would sit on the beach wrapped in a big towel, because you had “issues” with your body.’

Eva flushed. She was tempted to tell Yvonne that her son had been sleeping with another woman for the last eight years, but she was too weary to manage the aftermath. ‘You were very cruel to me after the twins were born, Yvonne. You used to laugh at my stomach and say, “It looks like a Chivers jelly.”‘

Yvonne said, ‘Do you know what your problem is, Eva? You can’t take a joke.’ She picked up the dot-to-dot book and the pen. ‘I’m going downstairs to clean your kitchen. The salmonella must be rife in there. Rife! My son deserves better than you.

When she’d gone, Eva felt as though the furniture were crowding in on her. She pulled the duvet over her head and was comforted.

She thought, ‘No sense of humour? Why would I want to join in laughing when Brian and his mother find it hilarious that somebody has suffered an accident or misfortune? Should I have laughed when Brian introduced me by saying, ‘And this is the trouble and strife – she spends my money, but she’s mine for life.’

She was glad that her mother-in-law had refused her request. The thought of Yvonne criticising the colour and texture of her stools was intolerable. Eva felt that she’d had a very narrow escape. She started to laugh until the duvet fell away from her and slid on to the floor.

That night, Eva dreamed that she saw Cinderella running down a red carpet, hurrying back to the pumpkin coach. As she woke, she imagined that the carpet was white and led from her bed to the bathroom. Within a second the carpet had turned into Eva’s pure-white bed sheet, folded and draped and transformed into a rippling pathway which led from her bed to the adjoining bathroom. If she kept her feet on the white pathway she could, she thought, with a leap of imagination, still be in bed.

She knelt on the bed and pulled the bottom sheet free, threw it on to the carpet and then brought the sides of the sheet together, tucking the ends under the mattress. She stepped out and, working carefully, brought the edges together with a series of narrow folds until the sheet was ridged, like an expensive crisp.

The cotton pathway was a foot or so short of the toilet. Eva pulled a white towel from the rail in the bathroom, folded it and laid it down as an extension.

She felt that if she stayed on the sheet she would be safe – though from what, she didn’t know.

When she had finished on the toilet, she leaned across to the washbasin and washed her body down with warm water. After cleaning her teeth she emptied then refilled the basin and washed her hair. She then crept back along the white pathway and on to the safety of her bed.