Chapter 1 - Run
I was sleeping beside my daughter when the dream found me.
It wasn’t the kind of dream that dissolves as soon as your eyes open, leaving only scraps of colour and confusion. This one had weight. Temperature. Sound.
It arrived vivid, as if my mind had opened a door and something on the other side had stepped through.
In the dream, I was running.
My feet hit the ground hard — not graceful, not light, but urgent. The kind of running you do when you’ve already decided there is no other choice.
My chest was tight, my throat burning, my arms pumping as if they belonged to someone braver than me.
Behind me, I could hear him screaming my name.
Again and again. My name dragged across the air like a warning, like a command. The sound of it should have made me turn around. It should have slowed me down.
It didn’t.
I didn’t look back.
I ran toward a port in England, toward water that looked black and endless, toward boats that rocked gently in their places as if they had never known panic. Everything around me felt sharp and clear: the smell of salt, the echo of my steps, the heaviness of the night pressing down on the sea.
At the edge of the port, I saw a small boat.
I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I climbed in like it belonged to me, like it had been waiting there for this exact moment. I pushed away from the dock and started moving toward the lights on the other side of the water.
France, I thought.
Freedom.
For the first time in the dream, I looked back.
Sam - my husband, was standing at the port, crying.
Not chasing me anymore. Not shouting, just standing there. The distance between us widening with every second, his body small against the dark. I saw him the way you see someone after it’s too late — not as a threat, not as an anchor, but as a figure in the past.
And still, I didn’t turn back.
Halfway through the Channel the breeze changed. The air cooled against my skin and I shivered — not from fear, but from something like relief. Water moved beneath me in a restless rhythm, and the wind kissed my face so gently that it almost felt like hands.
It felt real. Too real.
As if someone had opened a window in my daughter’s bedroom.
As if my body was still there, still lying beside her, but my skin had travelled without me. I could feel the cold air brushing across my arms with such clarity that it startled me, like a reminder that the body can be convinced by anything it believes hard enough.
When the boat finally reached land, it was not the France of postcards or cities. It was smaller. Soft. Like a secret.
A beach stretched out in front of me, and beyond it — a village glowing gold.
Fairy lights hung across narrow streets in warm yellow strands, the kind that make even ordinary places look like celebrations. Taverns spilled laughter onto the pavement. People sat outside eating and talking, leaning into each other like love was an easy thing to hold.
Friends. Couples. Families.
I stood at the edge of it all and watched.
They couldn’t see me, I thought.
I moved through them like smoke, like a thought, like someone who didn’t belong to this world. My feet touched the ground but it felt like I had no weight. Like I could drift away at any moment and nobody would notice.
Only a few people turned.
Not many — just enough to make my stomach tighten.
Their eyes found me briefly and their faces changed in an instant. Not shock. Not fear. Something stranger.
Recognition.
As if they knew I wasn’t meant to be there.
A discomfort crept over my skin, and suddenly the warmth of the village felt too bright, too exposed. I turned down a smaller street, then another, then slipped into a narrow alley where the lights couldn’t reach.
It was darker there. Quiet. The air thicker.
I told myself I just needed a moment. To breathe. To steady the shaking in my hands.
Then I felt it.
I wasn’t alone.
A restlessness crawled up my spine, the instinctive kind — the one that arrives before logic does. The hairs on my arms lifted. I turned around, expecting to see someone, anyone.
But the alley was empty.
Only a shadow lingered at the end, stretched thin against the walls, not quite human, not quite nothing. It moved when I moved, keeping its distance. Following.
My pulse hammered in my ears.
I ran.
I turned corners, took streets at random, my breathing ragged now, frantic. The village that had looked like a fairytale moments ago became a maze. The same streets appeared again and again. The same lights, the same signs, the same tables of people laughing as if they lived in a world where escaping was optional.
I was running in circles.
And the shadow was still there.
Closer.
Closer.
Then it reached me—not with hands, not with violence, but with a presence that filled the air around me until I couldn’t breathe.
A voice echoed inside my head, deep and calm and absolute.
It’s time to go back.
No.
My whole body resisted it. I fought it with the desperation of someone clinging to the edge of a cliff.
Not back.
Not back to the life where my words were twisted and returned to me in sharper shapes.
Not back to being controlled.
Belittled.
Not respected.
It’s time.
The voice didn’t argue. It didn’t explain. It didn’t need to.
It was a law.
And then I woke up.
It was 3am. The room was dark. My daughter’s small body was warm beside mine, her breathing steady and innocent, as if she had spent the entire night in safety while I had crossed oceans in my mind.
My heart was still racing.
My skin was cold.
I could still feel the breeze of the water on my arms like it had been real, like the window had been open—except it wasn’t. The air in the bedroom was still, heavy with sleep.
I sat up slowly, not fully understanding what had just happened, my hands pressed to my chest as if that could keep my heart from breaking through my ribs.
In the silence, the dream clung to me.
And then, without permission, the memory of earlier that day arrived.
Not a dream.
Not a metaphor.
A conversation.
One of our many fights that led nowhere, except back to the same place every time.
His voice had been sharp with certainty, the kind that didn’t leave room for softness.
“I am the asshole that does everything and runs around about everything,” he said.
“The fact that you put the dishes in the dishwasher and the clothes in the washing machine is not teamwork. It’s not fifty-fifty. It’s nothing.”
The words stacked up quickly, like he’d been collecting them.
“You’ve become like a zombie. Everything is piling up. You’ve gained weight. I’m not attracted to you anymore.”
I remember the way my throat tightened. The way my body went still, like it was waiting for the moment to pass.
I forced myself to answer anyway.
“Okay,” I said, my voice steady enough to surprise me. “Since I’m rubbish at everything. Since I’m not good enough for you… why are you still with me instead of getting a divorce?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“I’m just being patient.”
Patient.
As if I was a burden he was tolerating.
As if my existence in his life required endurance.
My husband of seven years - with whom I shared two beatuiful children. Mia aged 6 and Pete aged 2.
Beside my daughter at three in the morning, I stared into the darkness and felt something open inside me—quietly, painfully.
Not love.
Not rage.
Something clearer than both.
The beginning of knowing I could not stay asleep forever.
