That call in the middle of the night

It’s the worst sound in the world: the phone ringing in the dead of night. The jangling went straight through my earplugs and clanged every bell in my comatose brain.

I swear I didn’t even sit up: I went from supine to standing in one movement, like a corpse in a zombie film.

Because everyone knows that a phone ringing in the dead of night brings only bad news.

My mum, I thought, oh god, what has happened to my mum? She had left my home a few weeks before after a glorious extended holiday with us, headed back to the other side of the world.

As usual, as I said my teary goodbyes, I felt the old horror inside that I’d never see her again, but the thing is it gets stronger every time.

I suppose it’s an unavoidable truism that every moment I spend with my parents – with anyone I love – is a moment closer to the final one.

If I think about it too much I feel like I’ll crumple, fold in on myself like a car being crushed at a scrapyard, utterly broken. So I try not to think about it. But that damned phone was ringing in the dead of night.

I dared not probe the other horror that sleeps in the murkiest depths of my mind: neither of my children was at home – one has moved out, one was spending the night at his girlfriend’s – so I couldn’t check they were safe in their beds like I used to.

My chap knows the drill if anything happens to my children. A simple bullet in the back of my head will do it, the final message delivered with no time to process, the shot fired without even telling me why. He won’t do it, of course. He has no gun and he knows people survive these things, but the fact is I don’t want to survive the death of anyone I love so much.

And still that damned phone was ringing in the dead of night.

I was halfway down the stairs went it clicked to the answering machine.

We – he and I – froze and listened, clutching on to each other, but no message was left.

I rushed to check the caller ID: a local number. I phoned back.

It was the alarm company. They’d registered a sudden fault on our line: was all well? Yes, all is well. For now.