The Rat

Monday 3rd January 2011

Day 257

Last night I had a dream that I caught a grey rat slipping behind the filing cabinet in my study. I grabbed it by the neck. It was compact and hairy - I could feel the weight of its compressed animal vigour. I carried it downstairs where my brother-in-law was lying on our sofa. He said,

‘You must strangle it with a piece of string.’

I said I couldn’t do it. He took it away.

For the last three days and nights my world has shrunk to the desert of bed. My husband brings me hot lemon tea in white china cups. He goes for long walks alone under a blanket of raw grey skies and returns at dusk with icy dry cheeks. I eat peeled apples and slices of sharon fruit and then feel sick but hollow hungry. In the kitchen the red leaves of the pointsettia curl up and drop on the table. I watch three episodes of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ on iplayer and take long baths in the afternoons.

In the night while my husband breathes beside me I stare into the empty bedroom darkness and flay myself with the last thing he asked me -

‘Who is Alec Guiness?’

I must find a way to kill this rat. You can’t be this afraid forever.