Читать книгу Coming Home - Annabel Kantaria - Страница 18

I yanked the wool from the tip of my knitting needles, unravelling a row of uneven stitches. ‘Please could you help me with my knitting?’ I asked Miss Dawson. She’d been waiting for me to say something for several minutes, but the knitting was taking up all my concentration. It hadn’t been going right for a few days now and the work I’d produced was full of telltale holes.

‘Here.’ Miss Dawson took the wool and needles from me, unravelled a couple more rows, cast on and knitted a couple of neat rows for me. ‘There you go.’ She passed it back.

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you sleeping all right now?’ she asked. ‘You said you have sleeping tablets? Are they working?’

‘Hmph.’

Nights were bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about the accident. Mum had taken me to the doctor and, after that, I got half a tiny purple sleeping pill at bedtime.

The pills tasted bitter and dragged me into sleep but, in my dreams, I met Graham. All night we played, we argued, we messed around. I woke feeling happy. And then I had to remember all over again that he was dead. During the day, I felt like I was walking through melted toffee, my head enclosed in a glass jar.

‘I stopped taking them. I don’t feel much like myself with them,’ I said.

‘And are you managing to get to sleep without them?’

‘S’pose,’ I said.

I’d never tell Miss Dawson, but I’d started talking to Graham instead. Each night, I lay down and told him about my day. I imagined that he could hear me; I imagined his replies. I slept better now—but my dreams were still of Graham.