I have a dream where a man starts to make me bleed crimson between my legs by using what's between his. Then I wake up.
It's not a dream. It's a memory.
It's not a man. It's my brother.
The bedroom I find myself lying in doesn't have blue walls like Liam's did. This bedroom has walls that are painted a sort of grey colour, but lighter than the grey of headstones. It's a soft grey, the colour of the inside of a clam's shell and the colour of the warm woollen jumper Lola used to wear in the winter.
I don't like that colour grey.
The memory of my brother that wandered into my dreams takes a while to pass. It clings to me like the petrichor clung to my black clothes after Lola's funeral.
It rained that day. Heavily.
I don't like the rain.
The t-shirt I seem to have slept in sticks to my arms and my stomach as if I've been fever dreaming. I wipe my forehead as I get out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Kieran, and my hand comes away wet. My breathing is fast and I nearly fall over when I stand.
I don't feel clean. I should get clean.
Shame I can't have a bath.
I know this bathroom well, as I should, seeing as it's mine. Mine and Kieran's. This is Kieran's flat. Our flat. Mine and Kieran's.
I can't have a bath.
That's okay.
This bathroom hasn't got blue walls like Spencer's, but it's got lipstick stains that I think are mine on the sink and white towels on the rail. It had a pregnancy test in the metal bin a couple of months ago. I wonder if it still does.
I don't look in the bin to check. Instead, I brush my teeth. The toothpaste burns my tongue like stomach acid and makes my eyes water. It's peppermint, and it smells like Kieran, because Kieran smells like peppermint. Peppermint and boy and a little bit like home, which is okay. He doesn't smell like cologne because he doesn't wear cologne like the strange man who gave me his black suit jacket and was married and could have been a pedophile and drove me to the corner shop the night I miscarried.
I start imagining where that strange man is now, without his black suit jacket and his silver lighter. I wonder if he's brushing his teeth too.
He's probably not. It's nearly midnight.
Wondering and imagining are easier than remembering.
Once I've spat in the sink and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, I take a look at myself in the mirror. I'm not wearing the strange man's black suit jacket anymore, and so the solid weight of the silver lighter I've grown so attached to is lacking. I don't remember getting changed into one of Kieran's band shirts, but I have. It's white instead of blue or grey, so that's okay. Kieran probably laid the jacket across the back of the one chair we have in our bedroom, just like Natalie did at the hospital. He could've thrown it out like she threw out Paul's bloodied boxers, though.
I wonder if Paul's brushing his teeth right now, in Spencer's blue-tiled bathroom.
I imagine it. Imagining and wondering don't hurt as much as remembering.
But I do remember. I remember when I look in the mirror again and swallow and taste the peppermint again. It's a sudden memory, appearing out of the blue, of me standing in front of a different bathroom mirror with Lola, giggling through mouthfuls of toothpaste as we race to see who can finish brushing first. I'm missing a tooth and I'm wearing the blue boy's pyjama shirt I used to love sleeping in. It could be my brother's, because he's there, too. He's sitting on the side of the bath behind us, laughing at us.
