laid bare

I was going to write a post just now about our pre-Christmas goings on. About getting the tree and Christmas crafting and the sewing I have been excited to complete. Then.

Then in the dark and freeze of this here night there was a loud loud knock at the window. I get startled out of my skin in the daytime when I hear someone at the door, because out here, it's so irregular. Only the postman, unannounced, comes here. There are no street-lights. No pavement, no paths even. When it's dark, it's truly dark and you are lucky to see your hand in front of your face.

Outside in the cold was a girl, crying and mud streaked and hunched over. My first thought was that there had been a car accident somewhere along the road and she had come for help. The Man rushed out but she backed off still crying. So I took off past him and put my arms around her and held her and said it would be OK. She was freezing and wouldn't come in. I shouted to fetch my coat, to fetch a pen, paper and the phone. She told me her name. That was it. For the next hour (which felt like about four), stinking of drink and somehting else (do drugs smell?) she babbled, she swore, she screamed, she punched the wall, she eventually lay on my sofa where I saw she had a huge bloody hole through her jeans. She said one minute she had been riding a motor bike and had come off, the next that she had been attacked. She told me about four different addresses. She said she lived with her mum, then said her mum was in Portugal, that she had a job, that she was alone all day in her flat without a job... she said any number of random things, contradicting everything. She said she lived in a care home. I thought she looked about 16. It turned out she was 19. One number which I tried and tried but no answer. I called the police and they took her away.

I sat on the hall floor and cried and cried after they took her. She cried and cried as they led her out. The night swallowed them and all that was left was dirt on my floor and sofa. A cup of spilled tea. She slurred that I was the nicest person she had ever met. The police didn't seem kind to her, I felt such guilt. My babies sat on the stairs and heard her rant and swear and scream and punch my wall. I am still crying. I don't know her, will never see her again. She will forever be this mystery. And there is now this huge hole. This void. And I feel so vulnerable. I feel weirdly violated. Shocked out of my circle of living. My life, forgotten in this intense hour of someone else's strange and violent life. She was so pretty. She cried and cried and cried. She talked nonsense. She didn't know if it was night or morning.

I can't make sense of anything tonight so I will go to bed.

I can't post my photos now. They seem to have lost all meaning and point. Some how I feel so changed and strange. The Man keeps hugging me telling me how well I did but I feel I didn't, that I let her down in some way. And I was shit-scared of her too. I kept my arm around her and asked her questions, made her tell me any old thing she wanted, while I waited and waited for the police, sneaking my eye to the clock on the wall every minute that passed by and they still didn't show up(as is usual of delivery people and such, no one can find us from our postcode on any Sat Nav device). I wanted to let her take a bath and sleep. Clean her leg up. Find out later her real story. But she was so unexpected and unrestrained I just couldn't. Not with my three little ones, here with me, waiting for their lives to re-assemble into a shape they could recognise.

The world is a strange place. And tonight was one of the strangest I have had in a long while. I hope some meaning tumbles from it to help me slot back into my place in the world.