Total irrational fears about aliens and the death of everybody I know.

In my
whole life, the one thing I have never had a problem with is sleep. Fallen out
with a lover? I’m not the one who lays awake looking at the ceiling for
resolution. Big meeting tomorrow? It’s going to happen whether I allow myself
those eight hours or not. Flight delayed by eleventy thousand years? Well this
patch of floor by the bins looks like a great place to lay my weary head. Wake
me when we’re ready to go.

Nothing
gets in the way of my z’s and me.

Except
last week. Last Wednesday night I tossed and turned and worried for most of the
wee hours. And when my alarm rang, it felt like I had only just dropped off; it
seemed an otherworldly impossibility that it was time to get up. I groaned
loudly, and then was cross at myself because I have this thing about not having
my first thought on opening my eyes be I
WISH I WAS DEAD SO THAT I’D NEVER HAVE TO DO MORNINGS. I try to start with
something a bit less final. On Thursday, my first thought was FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKSHITTITSARSEANDBOLLOCKS.

I thought
the bad thoughts and then was sad and really REALLY tired. I knew that theoretically I could just go back to
bed, but if I have learnt anything about working in a job I hate, it is that if
I don’t go for my twelve breakfasts and do some writing at the café before
work, I want to cause bodily harm to children when AT work.

Related:
hi, students!

I
peeled myself from around the duvet and did some stretches and brushed my teeth
and played with my new fringe in the mirror. I want Mama, I thought to myself, and realising that 8 a.m. my time
is 7 a.m. GMT, I knew she’d answer if I called.

I
Skyped them. It rang, and rang, and rang. That’s
weird, I thought. They have the
computer upstairs, and the iPad downstairs, and The Forge is so small they can
hear the ringing from anywhere… Generally, if the Skype rings off Mama
calls me right back with some tale about letting the dog out or being on the
toilet or how she was on the phone to her own mother.

I
waited.

Nothing.

I
rang them five times at five-minute intervals.

Still
nothing.

I’m not very comfortable with this, I thought. My parents have a
routine. 6.30 a.m. they wake up. 6.45 a.m. Dad makes a cup of tea. 6.50 a.m.
They lie in bed laughing and watching the sun over the hills. 7.15 a.m. Dad
does his first poo of the day. Honestly, at any given point in the day I can
tell you exactly where they both are with a 96% rate of accuracy. Therefore,
THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANSWERING THE TELEPHONE.

This
is the moment at which I acknowledge my somewhat
irrational behaviour, because I possibly should have shrugged, told myself to
put on my big girl pants, left a voicemail to say, hey, is everything okay? Call me! and then gone off to write.

Instead,
I invented a factually unfounded and absolutely groundless narrative in my mind
about all the reasons that my parents were not answering a 7 a.m. Skype call
from their only daughter in Rome, and it involved blood and heart attacks and
robbers and divorces and alien abductions and the episode of Emmerdale where they found a baby on the
doorstep.

I
tried Dad’s cell, and then Mum’s cell, and with every unanswered call my
imaginary suspicions were confirmed that ALL THE BAD THINGS HAD HAPPENED AND I
WAS TOO MANY MILES AWAY AND IT IS ALL MY FAULT BECAUSE IF I WASN’T IN ANOTHER
COUNTRY EVERYONE WOULD BE OKAY HOW WILL I EXPLAIN THIS AT THE FUNERAL EVERYONE
WILL HATE ME FUCK.

And
yes. I’m aware of how uncensored my narcissism gets when I haven’t slept.

So by
7.30 a.m. British time and I was dialing and dialing and eventually decided to
call my Nanna. Mum sees her mum every day and Nanna is a bit like the head of
our own version of the Mafia, so if any shit was going down and if any
abductions needed noting, Nanna was my woman.

I
think I woke her up. What is it with Derbyshire? IS 7.30 A.M. NOT A REASONABLE
TIME TO BE AWAKE AND MAKING HYSTERICAL PHONE CALLS? HUH? HUUUUH?!

Thing
is, my Nanna is an emotionally sensitive soul, so I knew the importance of not
being A Mental on the phone. So she was all, Laura, I can’t hear you! And I was all, Just calling to check in! And she was like, At 7.30 in the morning? And I was all, SO LISTEN. TALK TO ME ABOUT ANYTHING UNUSUAL THAT HAPPENED DURING THE
NIGHT. SOAP OPERAS, LIGHTS IN THE SKY, THAT SORT OF THING.

Nanna
told me she loved me, and that she’d seen mum and dad yesterday and had a
lovely time with them, so I got all, Oh.
Okay. Awesome. And then forgot anyone on the rest of the plant existed
because it was time to go and write about my vagina and eat all the pastries.

I
swear, without those pastries, my book would not have been written.

By
the time I arrived at work six hours later, and thus to an Internet connection,
I had a gazillion emails and Facebook messages from my mother best surmised as,
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK LAURA? WHAT IS GOING
ON? And then my phone started beeping with texts from them both, which
hadn’t come through in the café because there is no signal there. That’s why I
write where I do: no signal for my phone, no Internet connection for
distraction, just me and my mind.

Which
is pretty scary.

So
then Mama was all hysterical saying her sister had called her to say I had rung
Nana from Rome, and then everyone in the world knew I had been trying to not be
A Mental, and in the six hours I had been writing about all the cute boys I met
when I lived in America Mum thought that maybe I had died, or been
abducted by aliens, or fired, or SOMETHING REALLY TERRIBLE AND WHY WOULD ANYONE
LEAVE SO MANY MISSED CALLS WHEN THEY WEREN’T EVEN AWAKE YET?

‘Wait,’
I said to Mum when a Skype call finally connected. ‘You were asleep?’

‘Yes
Laura. It was seven in the morning. We were asleep.’

To
which I said, ‘Urm. Woops?’ And then Mum was like You’ve given me six of the worst hours of my life for a woooops? And
I said, Hey, I had a pretty scary twenty
minutes myself, you know, and she was all THAT ISN’T THE SAME! and so I took control of the situation by
bringing it back to what we both needed to remember.

Let’s keep this in perspective, I said. NO ALIENS! YAY!

And
then she hung up.