Insomnia Read online

  INSOMNIA

  Sarah Pinborough

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Copyright © Sarah Pinborough 2022

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

  Excerpt from the song ‘Candle Book and Bell’, taken from the album Motorcade Amnesiacs by Sweet Billy Pilgrim. Lyrics by Tim Elsenburg.

  Excerpt from Nikita Gill ‘Monsters’

  Excerpt from Junot Díaz article in The New Yorker

  For all excerpts: All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

  Sarah Pinborough asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008289126

  Ebook Edition © March 2022 ISBN: 9780008289140

  Version: 2022-02-15

  Dedication

  For Jessica Burdett.

  Producer, dream-maker, friend, and fellow sufferer of sleeplessness. Thanks so much for everything. SP x

  Epigraph

  The monsters were never

  under my bed.

  Because the monsters

  were inside my head.

  Nikita Gill, Monsters

  Trauma is a time traveller, an ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before.

  Junot Díaz, The New Yorker, April 2018

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Pinborough

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The other car comes out of nowhere.

  There’s no warning screech of brakes, not even a sideways what the – glance through the window, just the hard whoomph of metal hitting metal at speed, an explosion of energy, a symphony of disaster. The impact is so great that glass shatters instantly, dispersing in a sharp, angry hail. The chassis ripples like water and the car lifts high in the air, the worst kind of fairground ride, tumbling over, hard into the roadside ditch.

  After that, a terrible stillness. A slight creak as the metal settles and then nothing. The radio is no longer on. There is no more excited conversation. In a matter of seconds everything has changed.

  Small movements in the passenger seat. Contained, trapped, broken desperation. A scream that is barely a wheeze.

  The other car, a bull of a four-by-four, is still on the road, front end crumpled to a snout. The engine, surprisingly, is still running, an old man’s rattling cough, but going all the same. For a moment, a longer moment than it took to destroy the universe of life in the other vehicle, the driver sits trembling at the wheel. The sun is still shining, dappling through the trees. It’s still a beautiful early morning and the road is still empty.

  The road is still empty.

  No witnesses.

  Only one mile or so from home.

  The driver leaves it to chance. To luck. The airbag has not deployed. If the car will go, the driver will leave. They won’t look back. If it doesn’t, they’ll stay and face the consequences. Shaking hands shift the gears into first and then grip the steering wheel, suddenly aware of aches and pains coming alive from the impact. The four-by-four, a workhorse of a machine, grinds into movement, and turns, limping along the road. The driver does glance back. They can’t help it. A hand rises a little from the figure trapped in the passenger seat. A cry for help.

  The driver moans. They’ll call an ambulance. From a phone box. But there’s no phone box on the short route. Someone will be along soon, though. This road gets busy by nine. Someone will help. They’re sure of it.

  1

  Twelve days until birthday

  There’s someone in the house.

  It’s not a complete thought, but something feral, more instinctive, and I sit up, suddenly awake, my heart racing. The clock clicks to 1.13 a.m. and I stay very still, listening hard, sure I’m going to hear a creak from the hallway or see a threatening shadow emerge from a dark corner of the room. But there’s nothing. Just the patter of rain on the windows and the hum of night quiet.

  My skin has prickled. Something woke me. Not a dream. Something else. Something in the house. I can’t shake the feeling, like when I was small and the nightmares would grip me so hard I would be sure I was back in that night and my foster mother would run in to calm me down before I woke the whole family.

  Robert is fast asleep, on his side facing away from me. I don’t wake him. It’s probably nothing, but still, I’m alert with worry. The children.

  I won’t be able to get back to sleep until I’ve checked on them and so I get up, shivers trembling up my body from my bare feet on the carpet, and I creep out onto the landing.

  I feel very small as I look along the central corridor, the gloom making it appear endless, a monster’s yawning mouth ahead of me. I wal
k forward – I am a mother and a wife. A career woman. This is my house. My safe place – and wish I’d brought my phone with me to use as a torch. I peer over the landing banisters. Nothing moves in the dark shadows below. No thump of burglars shifting possessions in the night. No menace.

  A flurry of wind drives the rain hard into our cathedral feature window, startling me. I go to the end of the corridor where it cuts into the wall, a perfect arch of black. I cup my hands around my eyes and press my face against the cold glass but all I can make out is the vague shape of trees. No light. No activity. Still, I shiver again as I turn back and head down the L bend ahead to the kids’ rooms. Footsteps dancing on my grave.

  I feel better once I’ve pushed open Will’s door. My little boy, five years old and at big school now, is asleep on his back, the dinosaur duvet kicked away, and his dark hair, so like mine, is mussed up from sweat. Maybe he’s been having a bad night too. I carefully cover him up, but gentle as I’m trying to be, he stirs and his eyes open.

  ‘Mummy?’ He’s blurry, confused, but when I smile, he does too, and wriggles onto his side. His drawing book is under his pillow and I slide it out.

  ‘No wonder you woke up,’ I whisper. ‘Sleeping on this.’ It’s open on his most recent enthusiastic crayon drawing and I turn it this way and that in the gloom, trying to make out what it is. If I’m honest it looks like a dog that’s been run over. Twice.

  ‘It’s a dinosaur,’ Will says, and laughs and then yawns, as if even he knows drawing may not be his finest skill and he’s cool with that.

  ‘Of course it is.’ I put the notebook on the table by his bed and kiss him goodnight. He’s almost asleep again already and probably won’t even remember this in the morning.

  I go to Chloe’s room next and she too is lost to the world, blonde hair fanned out on the pillow, a sleeping princess straight from a fairy tale, even though, at seventeen and a staunch modern feminist, she’d be quick to tell me that fairy tales are misogynistic rubbish. I go back to my own room, ridiculing myself for having been so afraid.

  I get back into bed and curl up, Robert barely stirring. It’s only one thirty. If I fall asleep now, I can get another four hours in before I have to get up. Sleep should come easily – it always has done in this busy, exhausting, exhilarating life I lead, so I snuggle down and wait to drift. It doesn’t happen.

  At three a.m. I check my emails – a midnight congratulations from Buckley for my result in court yesterday with the Stockwell divorce custody hearing – and then scan the news on my phone and go to the loo. Robert almost wakes then, but only enough to mutter something unintelligible and fling one heavy arm over me as I get back into bed. After that I lie there, my head whirring with my schedule for the fast-approaching day, becoming more and more frustrated that I’m going to be facing it tired. I’ve got to be at the office for seven thirty and it’s rare for me to get home before twelve hours later, and that’s only if I can get away without going for the obligatory drinks. There’s no room for slacking. Especially not now. I’m in line to be the youngest partner in the firm. But I love my work, I really do.

  I practise some yoga breathing, trying to relax every muscle in my body and empty my mind, which sounds so easy but normally results in me pondering stupid things like whether there’s enough milk in the fridge or if we should change our gas supplier, and although my heart rate slows I still don’t sleep.

  It’s going to be a long day.

  2

  Eleven days until birthday

  Work is busy. By ten forty-five I’ve had two conferences, dealt with some billing, and returned calls to three more clients to calmly explain that I can’t make the courts work any quicker, and nor can I speed up responses from their partners’ solicitors, however infuriating the delays might be, and that each time I have to call to reassure them, it’s costing them money. People always seem to be hastier to exit a marriage than they ever were to get into one.

  I check my mobile. There are three missed calls from a number I don’t know but whoever it is will have to wait. I’ve got something else to deal with first. Alison.

  There’s a knock at my door and I take a deep breath. Alison is never easy.

  ‘Come in.’

  Alison Canwick is in her mid-fifties and of the mindset that age in and of itself brings authority, and the fact that she’s been a solicitor for a lot longer than me should supersede the fact that she’s my Junior Associate. If I make partner, she might actually kill me.

  ‘Well done with the ex-Mrs McGregor.’ I smile as I wave her to a seat she doesn’t take. ‘She must be happy with the result.’

  ‘As happy as someone can be when their husband of thirty years has run off into his sunset with a woman the same age as their eldest daughter.’

  Just take the praise, I want to say. Alison’s forte is angry wives who want vengeance. I’m not even sure they all do want vengeance but Alison fires them up to go for broke, as she did herself when her own husband left her for another woman ten years ago. Maybe if she stopped fuelling rage in others, her own might fade. As it is, the McGregor result was all right, but it wasn’t entirely in her client’s favour. I only complimented her to try to smooth what I’m about to say.

  ‘Well, yes, there is that.’ I sit even though she’s still standing. ‘It’s about your billable hours,’ I say, and her face tightens. Here we go. ‘You’ve been below 80 per cent for two weeks now, and I thought I’d check that you weren’t under any pressures that we don’t—’

  ‘I’m sure that stupid computer programme doesn’t always log everything right.’

  ‘Please, Alison, let me finish.’ That’s the other thing. Alison is never wrong. Nor can she ever admit weakness. ‘I’m not pulling you up on it,’ I lie, ‘I just want to make sure you’re okay. You’re normally so good at hitting the targets.’ To be fair to her, that last is true. She’s quite competitive and she might not always be on top of things, but she definitely knows we need to be at 80 per cent minimum of our working hours being ones we can charge for.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, disgruntled. ‘I’ll make sure it’s better from now on.’

  ‘Any problems, I’m here to help.’ The moment the words come out I can see it was the wrong thing to say. Her jaw tightens and her eyes flash with indignation.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ She squeezes the words out through gritted teeth.

  A second knock at the door saves us both. Rosemary, my secretary, also in her fifties but someone who oozes warmth and joy at the world, comes in carrying a large vase of roses.

  ‘Look at these!’ She takes them straight to the decorative table by the window. They are beautiful, at least twenty blooms.

  ‘For me?’ I’m confused. It’s not a special occasion and Robert would never buy me roses. He knows I’d rather have a plant that carries on living instead of something that’s condemned to rot even when it looks so beautiful.

  Alison is lingering, curious, and I can’t be bothered telling her to leave.

  ‘This was in with the bouquet,’ Rosemary hands me a card. Oh God, Parker Stockwell.

  Once again, thank you. And if you ever feel like that dinner, just call. Parker x

  I groan. While Rosemary looks at me quizzically, Alison is all knowingly snide. ‘Let me guess – Mr Stockwell?’ She turns and leaves, somehow managing an air of victory, which irritates me more.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t such a creep,’ I say as I look at the flowers. ‘Asking me out for dinner. I don’t think he was expecting a no, even though I’m married.’

  ‘I should imagine he doesn’t get many nos.’

  ‘True. But he’s definitely not my type.’ I take a deep breath and cross Alison off my diary schedule for the day. ‘Perhaps I should set him up with Alison.’ I laugh a little at the thought. ‘Why does she have to be such hard work?’

  ‘She’s jealous, that’s all it is,’ Rosemary says. ‘You’re younger, more successful, got a lovely family and – ah, that
reminds me – your sister called. She said she’s tried your mobile a few times. She wants you to call her back. As soon as possible, she said.’

  Phoebe.

  The flowers, and Alison, and my busy day and my lack of sleep are suddenly all forgotten. Phoebe’s called. I bring up the missed calls on my phone from the unknown number. A UK number. Phoebe. My sister. She’s back. And the only thing I can think is … Why now? Why so close to my birthday?

  3

  I’m at the hospital. Ward fifteen. You’d better come.

  That’s all she said before hanging up and, now that I’m here, I know why. She’s tricked me into coming.

  This is a private ward, but it’s a geriatric private ward. I go past a couple of rooms and I can’t help looking in through the half-open doors. In one, a man, skin shrunken into his cheekbones, hair wispy thin, is silently descending into whatever comes next. In another, a patient is watching Homes Under the Hammer on a too-loud TV, and in the last one there’s a wheelchair folded against the wall and a woman is reading a magazine to an old woman, perhaps a mother or aunt, who’s listening and carefully sipping a cup of tea. Snapshots of lives. I don’t want to reach the room that holds the snapshot of mine.

  ‘Can I help you?’ A nurse makes me jump.

  ‘I’m Emma Averell. I mean Bournett. I’m looking for Phoebe Bournett?’

  ‘Emma? Patricia Bournett’s other daughter?’ And there it is. ‘Have you signed in?’ She’s loud and irritated, and even the woman reading to her mother in the room next to where I’m standing, stops and looks round. I step further away from the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Emma. Here.’

  Phoebe’s standing further up the corridor. My older sister.

  Her hair’s grown long and hangs free around her shoulders, and in her tunic top, skinny black jeans and ballet pumps, it’s hard to believe she’s forty-two. But it’s a disguise. There’s nothing carefree about Phoebe, and a closer look at her face tells a different story. Lines are showing in her forehead and around her mouth, no longer gossamer threads, but sinking deeper, the fishhooks of time tugging her skin downwards.