I wake up to voices. Without thinking, I spring out of bed. My heart is pounding. There are voices inside our home. And they are not ours. Everyone is asleep. It’s the middle of the night. There should be no voices. Jagged thoughts race through my mind as I struggle to my feet. Maybe it’s people outside, on their way home from the pub. Our front door opens directly on to the street. Maybe I left my keys in the door again and people have let themselves in. Maybe my daughter is talking in her sleep. It must be people outside. I run out of the bedroom.
It’s definitely voices inside our house. I’m terrified. My skin itches. I start to run down the stairs then think again and run back up to shut my daughter’s bedroom door. I don’t quite know what the logic is, because I haven’t hung her door properly so it doesn’t shut anyway.
The voices seem calm, deep in conversation. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what I’ll find. I’m full of questions, in my half-asleep state. Why are they so deep in conversation? What are they talking about? Who are they? Why are they in our house?
My heart pounds. I may have been learning to box recently, but it’s the middle of the night. I’m not at my best. I can barely open my eyes. What is your response? Do you keep a cricket bat under your bed? Keep a tawa pan on hand to whack someone round the head? Is a reasonable question enough? When survival instinct kicks in, what is the appropriate response? None of these questions are relevant to me. I am on auto-pilot thundering down the stairs.
I’m waking up, as quickly as I can. I start to pick up words from the conversation. Two very posh people are in my house having a conversation about the global impact of yoga and whether, at this point, wider yoga culture constitutes cultural appropriation. One of the people cites the example of T-shirts that subvert a word such as “Namaste”, strip it of meaning and put it on shirts sold at hipster yoga studios that say, “Namaste, Bitches” or something.
But these two people, in my house, they’re having an in-depth, middle-of-the-night conversation about the cultural appropriation of yoga. What the hell is going on? I’m so confused. I’m not entirely sure I’m not dreaming. In my confusion, I slip and fall down the remaining few stairs. The pain pulsing up and down my elbows and backs of my legs prove that I am awake.
I stand up.
The house is still quiet. My thundering about hasn’t woken anyone. It certainly hasn’t disrupted this conversation. I catch sight of the time on the oven clock. It’s 2.25am. I put my fists up to guard my face and shuffle forward, my feet at 2pm and 5pm, like I’ve been taught in my boxing classes. I am ready to meet these people who have come into my house. The voices sound so close. I am fully awake.
I realise, quickly, as I find nobody in our house, that the radio has come on in the middle of the night. A phantom switching on. I find the hi-fi and, yes, the blue light is on. It’s our radio. I breathe a long, slow sigh of relief. I find the remote control for it and fiddle about. Little fingers, it becomes apparent, have pressed enough buttons to put on an alarm. I feel so rattled I have to sit down for a few minutes, just to calm down.
I listen to the rest of the discussion about yoga, disagree with some points and try to figure out exactly what I would have done if I’d found two people in our house in the middle of the night.
I go back up to bed and lie down. I don’t think I can sleep. Adrenaline has kicked my body into hyperdrive. I try to calm myself down. The house is still and quiet and dark again.
“Daddy,” I hear in the dark. It’s my daughter. “What was all that noise I heard?”
