Part 2

In her father’s house, the rule was simple: women stayed home, kept quiet, did as they were told. There was no chance of a job – he wouldn’t allow it. So she left, hoping things would be better. England had sounded so promising. And nursing had sounded like such a satisfying career – something where she could really make a difference. Help people.

She couldn’t have done that back home. The situation there had just been too hopeless. Her mother was so high on Valium most days that Jane wasn’t even sure she’d noticed when she left. She remembered the smell of the house on those long, silent evenings – puncheon rum, the good bottle her father kept for himself, high-proof and sharp, the smell of it seeping from under his door along with the raised voices. She hadn’t smelled it since. She told herself she never wanted to smell it again.

And now, despite the miles between England and her “home,” she was in a similar situation.

Jane’s husband didn’t know that she knew what was going on. He’d remortgaged the house and pretended everything was fine. She’d seen the debt letters piling up, but he always grabbed them off the doormat and took them to his “office” before she could open them.

The problem was that she wanted to keep up the pretence, too.

It would have been a big thing to admit to the family back home. She’d moved to a wealthy country. Learned a respected trade. Married a man who owned his own business. Had some kids. Every box ticked that the family expected. It was hard to admit it wasn’t the dream she’d wanted it to be. The business had failed, and she’d had to keep things going.

When you grew up in a rural village with nothing, this was supposed to be living the dream. And that’s how it looked on the surface. Who doesn’t want to look like they’re doing well?

Her sister was still there, in the house their father had built. He’d died a few years back. But Jane knew his ghost was still there – the fights, the drinking – all of it soaked into the splintered, rotting wooden walls.

When her father built the house in the fifties, it had looked wonderful. But her sister had lost faith over the years, and now she just drifted through it while the place crumbled around her.

Jane sent money over every month. She always felt a mix of pride and guilt about it. Guilt about a lot of things from home – about leaving, about the new life she’d built, about memories she’d rather ignore. There were things that had happened in that house she wanted to forget, and moving away had seemed like the best way to do that. So that’s what she’d done.

Her husband didn’t ask about her past – or about anything, really. That suited her fine, in the main. She didn’t want to tell. But there was a part of her that wished he would ask. She threw herself into her work instead. But parts of the work brought the thoughts of home back anyway, whether she wanted them or not.

This was one of those days.

The buzzer went off again in her pocket, piercing through her thoughts. No time to think about any of this.

“Jane, Ward Three. Paul’s having another episode. We need restraints and a sedative.”

She sighed, wiping her hands on her scrubs as she trudged down the corridor. Somewhere behind her, a radio was still playing whatever was riding high in the charts that week – tinny, cheerful, entirely wrong for the place. Her footsteps echoed, each one a dull reminder of how long she’d been doing this. Years of hard, thankless work – patients in pain, families angry, the system and management indifferent. Not that different from home, after all.