The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 7

Sleep had not been delivered to Jackie. An unnecessary analogue clock in the room ticked louder as each hour passed. At just after midnight, 12.03 to be precise, Jackie could take no more. She dislodged the battery from the clock and put an end to its relentless ticking. It didn't help. The silence in the house filled her ears. It sent strange sensations from her throat to her stomach. Feelings which she could not quite put words to. Forebodings.

Alice would have been able to recognise what this feeling meant. If her mother had talked to her about it, she would have tried to help her understand that she was feeling scared. That she was anxious and that this anxiety may be coming from a sense of helplessness. But this difficult conversation would never happen because Jackie would not tell anyone about this feeling she had, let alone one of her daughters.

Instead she laid awake. Images of Maya as a child flashed through her mind. A different feeling swept into her throat. A lump she could not dislodge. She held her breath so not to taste its shame. It was filled with her failings. The phone-call from the police was next to be replayed. Just two weeks after she had left home for her final year at university, Maya had gone missing. To this day, Jackie had not been able to talk to anyone about it. Where Maya went or what she did forever remained in the realms of the unspoken. After all, she came back. She got some medication, had counselling and finished her course with a First Class Honours degree.

Jackie had never had any difficulty being able to recognise the pride she felt at her daughters' achievements.

In life she mostly avoided unhappy and unhelpful memories of the past. She was the kind of woman who liked to move forward. To focus on getting things done. But as she lay awake in her daughter's spare room, trying hard not to venture into the dark lanes of her memories, they came to her anyway. They lingered there in spite of her refusal to allow them to emerge fully in her mind. They haunted her. Shadows that stretched with a feeling that began in her throat and went down to her tummy. Accompanied by a shudder and the relentless instrumental echo of a phone ringing in the middle of the night.

Jackie focussed hard on the memory of Maya's graduation. The ringing did not subside . She focussed on the memory of her achieving her doctorate. The memory of her Thesis being published. When she got her first job as a Clinical Psychologist. These happy proud memories. She made them bigger and brighter and full of happy chatter. Until she could no longer her the toll of the phone in the night and she finally drifted into a light sleep.

The clock in the bedroom still said 12.03, when Jackie was suddenly awoken by the sound of footsteps outside the door. It was the sound of someone running. She jolted upright. Was there someone in the house?

As consciousness brought her back to her surroundings, her mind delivered a memory of a time when the sound of running and weeping in the corridors in the middle of the night had often woken her. A time when waking to this noise was so familiar that she no longer became startled upon waking.

Perhaps it was this memory that brought her mind so quickly out of sleep and into focus. The summer of 1993. She remembers the year. How could she ever forget the year that she buried her husband? The father of her three daughters. She had grieved for the loss of her husband long before his actual death and so she had struggled to help her daughter's grieve.

Sylvia was the eldest and was resilient like her mum. She just seemed to be able to keep going. Alice was only 9 at the time and had a wonderful primary school teacher who had been an amazing source of support. Maya had struggled the most. During the daytime it mostly looked as though she was coping. She went to school and got good marks. She sometimes still saw her friends after school. But Jackie would regularly get a call from school because something very minor or trivial had caused Maya to burst into tears. She would be asked if she could come and collect her daughter, who they felt probably just needed some nurturing time from her mum. They were trying to help.

Jackie was struggling to support three children on her own and dealing with debts she had not known existed. It was a strain to be available for nurturing time on the days she had to leave work early to collect Maya. She would take Maya and buy her a book and cook her a meal before returning to work, hoping their loyal labrador Daisy would stay by her side. When she returned home late in the evening, the food would be untouched and the book unopened, but loyal Daisy had not given up hope. Her head always resting on the sofa next to Maya. Her eyes reflecting her pain.

It was the night-times that had been the worst. Every night Jackie would wake to hear Maya running back and forth through the house crying. At first she had not realised that Maya was asleep. Seeing her daughter's eyes closed, she had tried to wake her but Maya had become scared and inconsolable. She spoke to a friend who knew a Paediatrician and they suggested that she just try to calm Maya and lead her back to bed. So this became the ritual for at least 6 months. It may have even been a year. Jackie would hear the running and crying. She would go to her daughter. She would tell her 'Maya, darling, you are home. I am here with you. Let's take you to bed'. She could not remember how she had come up with her chosen words, but they had become part of the script and they seemed to soothe Maya. Jackie would hold her daughter's hand and take her back to her bed. She would lie next to her until she seemed to settle before returning to bed herself.

It was a difficult time for Jackie.  Her sleep pattern had returned to the days of having a newborn, but she did not have the luxury of maternity leave and was working two jobs to keep her children in their home. One night she could not get up anymore. She just lay in bed and listened as her daughter ran back and forth, weeping and wailing. Eventually she heard 9 year old Alice go to her sister. She heard them talking. It happened again for a few more nights. After that it just stopped.

She never imagined over 20 years later she would be hearing that same running and crying sound that had disappeared long ago.

But that night, Jackie was free from the pressures of work for a few days and able to prioritise her instincts to go to her daughter's aid. She got up calmly and walked through the dark hall. She noticed Stephen had also appeared and was moving quickly and anxiously down the stairs, calling out to his wife 'Maya!'

Jackie did not know of Stephen's own experiences of Maya sometimes disappearing in the night. Usually on the nights that he had terrorised her with his words. She called to him in a firm but calm voice: 'Stephen, we must not startle her'.

Stephen looked up at his mother in law and his first feeling was one of relief, but that was quickly followed by an uncomfortable feeling of inadequacy. He was angered by his inability to help his wife, to protect her from the world, from him, from herself. His anger subsided as he gladly received some instructions from Jackie. She told him to just hold Maya's hands and tell her 'Maya, darling, you are home. We are here with you'.

As he said these words Maya's eyes opened but she did not seem to wake. Her feet followed the direction in which her arm was being led. Her body laid itself in the bed.

She did not like it that her mother and husband had joined her in her flight. If she kept still she was sure they would leave her alone. Eyes open, fast asleep, surrounded by darkness, she tried to keep still in the dark tunnel.