The weekend is calm, almost too calm. I have a sense of foreboding but I put it down to climate change; you shouldn’t be able to sit outside at the end of March. When I wake on the Monday my first thought is that it’s cold again. I can feel a draught round my head and I wonder if the window’s open. Dave’s not in bed – have I overslept? What time is it? Why does my head feel so strange? I run a hand over my scalp: it’s like a field of stubble with ridges and clumps. What the hell? I check the clock. Shit, I’ve overslept, I’ll have to call work. But first I have to see, I have to know – what the hell has happened? Where has all my hair gone? Have I got some form of rapidly-advancing cancer? I wrench myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I turn on the light and let out a yell – the figure in the mirror looks like a Holocaust victim. She’s been shorn, her scalp brutally butchered. Between patches of bare skin clots of blood stick to clumps of hair. Who could have done this?
I stumble back into the bedroom and step on a piece of paper. There’s a note beside the bed – I pick it up and read the words without understanding them. You wouldn’t shave so I did it for you. What the hell does it mean? I sit on the bed and read it again. You wouldn’t shave so I did. Gradually the full meaning sinks in and as I hurl the note into the bin I see an empty packet; not Dave’s pills, not my contraceptives. I take it out. Temazepam. I know the word but my brain refuses to make sense of it, going off on tangents of trapezes and trampolines. Finally the full picture comes into focus and a murderous rage possesses me. I want to kill him, really kill him. This is coercive control; I’d get manslaughter. Twelve years, out in ten? God, it’d be worth it. I pace to and fro, hardly noticing the cold.
Sarada Gray 