Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite: I really didn’t mean what I said to my boyfriend while he was in the bath

'Something inside me, some vital component whose function it is to restrain base instincts, went ping!'

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issue 23 November 2013

The builder boyfriend and I have had a terrible row. In the heat of the moment, I said something truly awful to him that may have done irreparable damage. It wasn’t entirely my fault. I haven’t been sleeping. And when I haven’t been sleeping I become irrational. Fine, I become more irrational.

Suddenly, the other night, I fell asleep while lying on the sofa watching CSI Special Victims Unit. The overcomplicated plot acted like a powerful anaesthesia and I found myself drifting into precisely the sort of deep, blessed sleep I have been craving for months.

Before I drifted off, I had asked the builder to run me a bath. As I sank lower and lower, it did occur to me that I ought to tell him to have the bath but I didn’t get time before the duck-down bouncy castle of deep sleep enveloped me in its blissful environs.

The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake.

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