It was a gloomy day, or perhaps it just felt that way because I did.
In fact, I’m not sure that I could tell you what the weather was doing. It wasn’t raining; I’d have heard that. But I didn’t go outside. The curtains stayed shut. I moved from bed to computer to bed to television. Only very late in the evening I looked out of the window and saw the last rags of sunlight just brushing the tops of the leylandii.
I was refusing to feel guilty about it. I was ill. Not seriously ill; just the irritating sort of sore throat that made it hurt to talk much, and the lethargy that made venturing outside the house an exhausting prospect. I could have pushed myself, I knew, but I would have suffered for it later. I’d done that through the working week, taken one sick day and ignored two others I knew I needed. Better a day of utter boredom than months of never quite being well, of always being tired.
This had happened the year before, you see. I’d gone away for a few days and been ill when I came back. And somehow I’d never got better, and before I knew it summer had disappeared and autumn was hurrying after it, and Christmas was a burden I couldn’t shoulder. A year before, and here it came all over again. I couldn’t face it. I went to bed and shut the curtains.
You’d like to know, wouldn’t you, what was the end of the story. You’d like to know what would have happened if I’d dragged my shoes on, gone out to buy a loaf of bread. You’d like to know if I recovered faster because I let myself rest, or if I would have just got over it if I’d only pushed myself.
So would I. I don’t know. It was only yesterday.
Kathleen Jowitt 