Free Cut by Cathy Glass

with some housework and seemed to enjoy chatting as we worked together. That evening John, Dawn and I had a Chinese takeaway, which Dawn thoroughly enjoyed; then we watched a video together, and she went up to bed at 10.30 p.m.
    However, at 2 a.m., John and I, either sensing her presence or hearing our bedroom door open, woke to find Dawn entering our room. We immediately got out of bed. As before, Dawn went to Adrian’s cot, but this time she didn’t lean over to try to pick him up. She stood beside the cot, slightly turned away, staring straight ahead with her eyes glazed and unfocused. After a moment she raised her arms and began making the same chopping motion she had done the night before, with the side of her right hand coming down on to her left wrist. Only now it was harder, more insistent, as though she was punishing herself. As she ‘chopped’ she grimaced, as if she was inflicting and experiencing pain, although of course the soft flesh of one hand striking the other couldn’t have caused her real damage or pain. She continued this chopping for about half a minute; then, as though she had finished what she had set out to do, she turned and left our room, and we saw her back to bed.
       
    On Sunday morning, after John and I had spent another sleepless night, and had become beside ourselves with worry, John went to the large hardware store on the edge of town and bought a lock. While he fitted it on our bedroom door, I took Dawn out for a walk with Adrian in his stroller so that she wouldn’t know what we were doing. John and I both felt guilty about locking Dawn out of our bedroom, but what else could we do? We were both exhausted, and if we were honest, we no longer felt safe in our own bed. We were also worried that the next time it happened we might not hear Dawn enter; visions of her taking Adrian from his cot and then dropping him while we slept on haunted me.
    When Dawn and I returned home, John nodded to me that the job was done, and the next time I went upstairs I had a look. The key was in the lock on the inside of the door and only a small hole was visible on the outside. I was immensely relieved, but also still uncomfortable that we were having to use a lock at all. I had decided, while strolling in the park, that on Monday, when Dawn was at school, I would visit the library and try to find out more about sleepwalking and how to deal with it. If we could stop Dawn from sleepwalking, the lock wouldn’t be needed.
    That night John locked our bedroom door before he got into bed and we slept soundly, only waking when Adrian cried for a feed at 4.00 a.m. In the morning John was up first and said that Dawn’s bedroom door was still closed, so we assumed that she hadn’t been sleepwalking and therefore hadn’t attempted to enter our room. I was doubly relieved, for what had started to worry me was that if Dawn did sleepwalk, where would she go now our door was locked? Would she simply try the door and, unable to get in, return to her own bed? Or would she sleepwalk somewhere else and put herself in danger? Downstairs possibly, with all the hazards that entailed. We could only wait and see what happened.
    For now I had to concentrate on the day ahead – it was Monday and the start of a new week.
    Once John had gone to work, I fell into the weekday routine – feeding and changing Adrian, washing and dressing myself, then waking Dawn. She had her usual toast and honey, and although I had offered to take her in the car to school and see her in, she wanted to catch the bus. I had to trust her to go to school, and I didn’t envisage a problem because she was looking forward to meeting Natasha, the new girl she was going to buddy. Checking Dawn had her dinner money and bus pass, I wished her luck, told her how smart she looked in her new coat and said I would be thinking about her. She gave me a kiss and I saw her off at the door. Adrian had an appointment for a routine check-up at the baby clinic that