The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 38

Thursday had been the first time that Maya's evening ritual had interfered with her ability to get to work on time. She had woken at 07.05 to find herself wrapped in a white duvet on the bed. She did not remember taking herself to bed. Her hair was damp and matted and Stephen's distant voice was telling her she was going to be late, or that maybe she should think about taking a day off. That she had got caught in that rain and probably made herself ill.

Maya was not really processing his words, but the act of waking had set off a chain reaction in her mind which led her to reach for her phone to check the time as she could not remember hearing the  daily call of her alarm. The screen was blank. Maya pressed the on switch. Nothing happened. She had a memory of wading into a river but was unsure if it was a dream. As consciousness resumed, panic replaced confusion. She realised she did not know the time and did not have any access to work numbers to let people know if she was going to be late.

Maya sat up and was relieved to see the clock, whose ticking she had not remembered hearing for some time, still hanging from the wall. It was 07.15. She had time to get dressed and go to work without being late. She put her legs to the floor to do the simple job of standing up, a task she managed each day without a second thought. But Maya did not sense the absence of the soft touch of the carpet beneath her still numb feet. Or that her legs had failed to register the weight of her body. She heard a surprised yelp escape from her mouth as her body collapsed awkwardly in a heap on the floor.

Stephen had heard it too. He checked the clock on his wrist. 07.17. 07.17. 07.17. It told him that lingering to make sure his wife got out of bed had already made him late. He heard a voice warning him that he was the one who had caused the commotion. He wanted to check Maya was okay, but his legs followed the command of the voice inside his head and carried him to his car so that he could not cause anymore things to go wrong by being even more late for work.

The mirror in the guest room reflected back a frail figure with a mass of damp and knotted hair moulded to a pale head. Without her clothes, Maya could see for the first time how thin and lifeless her arms and legs had become. Her stomach bulged and she found it hard to contemplate the state of the being before her in the mirror. Maya had never been happy with her appearance. She always felt her facial features were not delicate enough and that her body was a little too chunky. Maya was not the kind of girl to be too bothered about her appearance, but perhaps it had shaped who she had become. She had never been distracted by clothes and make-up as a teenager, as she did not possess a perfect mannequin to hang them upon.

Even before her father had died, knowing that she did not have the appearance, nor the inclination to fit in with the pretty and popular girls, she had instead spent her evenings with study, or escaping in a book. Sometimes she recognised she was lonely but at other times she would watch the groups of teenagers laughing and grooming and flirting and thought it all looked like a lot of effort and hard work. It was not that she was completely alone. She had a few friends who she used to talk to in school. Boys and girls she would sit with at lunchtime. It just rarely extended beyond the school day. There was a time she thought she should try. She would invite friends over or make plans for the cinema. And they would come. It was just sometimes she felt even more alone as she sat in the company of others. Like it reminded her of some strange disconnectedness she had been born with.

Things had never really changed. In work, people liked Maya; they enjoyed her company, but at the close of day, they did not invite her for a coffee. They did not send her a message to share significant moments in their lives or to enquire after her own significant moments. It was not that they did not like her or did not care. It was just she never became that close to anyone.

The friends of her school days had disappeared when she went to university. Her university friends disappeared when she graduated. It was the days before social media and so it required much more effort to stay connected. She had dabbled with Facebook briefly in an attempt to be like everyone else and gain a list of friends and likes from people who seemed like they cared. It just all felt fake. Or like too much of an effort, just like when she was younger. She had once joked to Stephen that there was no point 'connecting' on Facebook as she had never managed to connect with anyone in real life. It had caused a big argument of course. How could she tell her husband she had never managed to connect to anyone in real life? What was the point of him being with her?