Read True Things About Me A Novel (Deborah Kay Davies) for Free Online

said. I’m off now. He had a little whispery voice, as if he had chest problems. OK, I said. He left the TV on and slammed the front door.
    I couldn’t move. Gradually the way I felt about my house when the boy had been there eased off. I didn’t feel like I was a visitor in my own home any more: someone who’d come for an interview, say, or for some unpleasant physical examination. It was my own place again. My welcoming, safe place. But now I was beginning to be afraid about how my house could change so quickly; one moment almost shutting me out, and then just as quickly drawing me in again. I didn’t feel I could trust it anymore.
    I got up stiffly; my legs were aching. I locked the doors, closed all the curtains and blinds, and went to have a bath. As I relaxed in the warm bubbles I heard someone at the front door. I stayed in the water. He called my name through the letter box. He said he knew I was there. Baby? His voice got louder and hoarser as he shouted. Baby? I really want to see you now! What’s wrong? Are you narked off with me? He banged the door really hard. Then he went to the back door and tried that. There was a pause and he was at the front door again, banging and banging.For fuck’s sake, what’s your problem? he yelled. Let me in, you bitch.
    His voice sounded deeper than it did when he spoke, and ragged. I thought perhaps the door wouldn’t keep him out. I pictured his curling blond hair springing away from his temples. The way his long legs stretched out on my white sheets. The intimate smell at the nape of his neck. At last he went away. I got out of the bath with difficulty. It was as if all my joints had seized up. In the bedroom I put on my old soft nightie, took some pills, and climbed under the duvet.

I have titanic dreams
    I WOKE AND realised I had missed work. It was a long way down to the kitchen. I busied myself making toast. My limbs felt as if they were made of pipe cleaners, my bones long and thin with a covering of dry, puffy flesh. It was difficult to grasp my mug, to sit upright on the chair. The toast on the plate looked like a floor tile. I knew it was the medication. I needed to do normal stuff but I couldn’t leave my chair in the kitchen.
    Then I began to remember the dream I’d had. I had been sailing on an enormous, opulent ocean liner. At first I didn’t recognise anyone. I felt completely alone on my journey. Nothing happened for a long time, people just drifted around the decks wearing beautiful clothes. And then we heard the boat was heading for a colossal iceberg; there was no escape. Everyone gathered on board. I remember thinking that this was only another Titanic dream; it was OK, and nothing was real. Anyway, things always turned out fine. No one ever got hurt.
    But slowly, as we all milled around, quietly terrified, I began to recognise people. My mother and father were there. Alison and Tom. Even their children and the two puppies they had got for Christmas. Each child was holding one. My gran was lying on deck in her hospital bed. My boss was on the phone. I began looking through the crowd for someone very important to me, but I couldn’t find him or remember what he looked like. Then we only had a few minutes left. The air was dazzlingly cold. The iceberg, emerald green and glinting in a powerful beam of moonlight, was getting nearer. I could hear it creaking, and realised it was making a kind of high, metallic, wordless singing sound. Its freezing breath rushed at us, spiking our lashes and hair with stinging crystals. In the moonlight we all looked dead.
    I gazed down into the beautiful black water. Impossibly narrow, almost transparent fish with smiling mouths flicked about. Suddenly I knew that if we all jumped in together we would be safe; everything would be fine. I told the others what I knew. I went round the little crowd saying, just trust me, you have to trust me. Alison was fussing with her kids’ hair. She was holding the sleeping baby in her