Chapter Seven
JESS
I wake up but I’m so exhausted I can’t even open my eyelids.
Even so, I have a strange sense that something is off …
wrong, somehow. I roll over and groan, and then my stomach rolls.
It all comes flooding back: the argument, seeing Luke close the door behind him, running through the streets trying to find him.
I have no idea how late it was when I managed to slough off consciousness.
I went to sleep clutching the eternity ring I found last night tightly to my other hand, half-hoping it would work its magic and I’d wake up to find Luke beside me, an arm draped over my hip.
I run my fingers over my left hand to check if it’s still there, but discover that not only am I not wearing Luke’s great-great-grandmother’s ring, I’m not wearing any rings at all.
Did I take them off in the night? Did I have a moment of despair in the small hours of the morning and rip them off my fingers?
I’m so groggy that everything is a bit blurry when I crack my eyelids open, and I run my hand under the duvet to see if I can find them but find nothing but cool, smooth cotton.
I reach out to see if I dumped them onto the bedside table, but there is nothing but varnished wood.
I reach a bit further and … crash! Oh, God.
I’ve just knocked the lamp onto the floor.
My eyelids snap wide open, and I sit up in bed. And then an icy bolt of lightning shoots through me.
This isn’t my bedroom.
This isn’t the bed I share with Luke.
Where am I?
My brain frantically tries to make sense of the information coming its way. Instead of the deep forest greens and neutrals of my bedroom, the walls are white and covered in prints I recognize from IKEA in times gone by. I even used to have a few of those myself when I was younger.
I turn my attention more fully on the fallen lamp.
Thankfully, the bulb is intact, so I reach down, pick it up and place it back on the bedside table, but then I realize that piece of furniture also looks familiar.
I had a similar one in my bedroom when I was growing up, something that had once been in my grandmother’s house, and I’d eventually pestered my mum to allow me to paint it bone-white and distress it, aiming for that shabby chic vibe, and I’d changed the boring wooden knobs out for …
My fingers trace the delicate brass ring pulls, just like … Oh, my God! Just like this one. It can’t be a coincidence. It can’t.
I look around the room again, this time forcing myself to join the dots and come to what I realize is an impossible conclusion. I’m … I’m back in my childhood bedroom. But how? Why?
I leap out of bed and discover I’m wearing a pair of pastel checked pyjamas that were my absolute favourite in my early twenties. I didn’t even know I had them any longer.
I cover my face with my hands, not wanting to see more.
This is too much! On top of everything from last night, I can’t deal with this right now.
I want the world to make sense. Please, please, please, I beg God, or whoever else is up there, please make this stop.
Because the only explanation is that I am in my mother’s house, the very last place in this universe that I would choose to be.
It’s not only my rings I can’t find. I also can’t lay my hands on my velvet dress or my clutch.
Where have they gone? I suppose I could have left them in a heap somewhere, possibly in the bathroom, because I must have been rip-roaring drunk last night to not remember taking my clothes off, let alone recalling I’d travelled from Beckenham to my mother’s house in Orpington, almost eight miles away.
How did I get here? Did I get a cab? And why?
I sit down on the bed, my head in my hands.
I feel sick, and not because I must have a hangover, because I don’t seem to have one at all.
Other than the churning in my intestines, my head feels fine, my mouth isn’t dry.
It doesn’t hurt to look at the light streaming through the flimsy curtains.
I feel sick because I’ve done what I said I’d never do.
I resorted to alcohol to deal with my emotions. It makes me exactly like her.
I don’t even know how I ended up going down that road. I’m not a big drinker. I might have a glass, occasionally two, when we’re out socially, but I’m very, very careful about my intake.
It just goes to show how traumatic last night was for me that I resorted to this, and I’m slightly worried that after two decades of trying never to overconsume, I apparently found it so easy to slide down this path.
What am I going to do?
I blow out a breath and sit up straight. Well, I’m here now, but Mum is definitely not an early bird, so I might be able to slip out unnoticed. It’s possible, if she was in a haze last night, that she might not even know, or remember, I’m here.
I start hunting for my dress, looking under the bed, behind the door, but it’s nowhere to be found.
I need a wee quite badly. So, although I’d rather not risk creeping to the bathroom, I don’t have much choice, but at least I can retrieve my dress if it’s there, before anyone who lives here starts to wonder where it came from.
Only, after inching my way down the landing, the dress is nowhere to be found. Please, don’t say it’s in the hallway, or worse, the front garden, and I skipped up the stairs and crawled into bed in my underwear last night!
I do what I need to do and glance in the mirror while I’m washing my hands. Thankfully, it’s completely free of gloopy mascara and clogged pores. In fact, my skin is looking pretty darn …
I look up at the ceiling. Did Mum get rid of the horrible fluorescent tube? Because this lighting is seriously flattering. I’m having an honest-to-God Mirror, Mirror moment. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was twenty-five again.
But then I notice something – the scar beside my left eyebrow is missing, something I acquired the year after I married, thanks to a trip down a flight of stairs in an Underground station.
I lean in closer to the mirror and stretch the skin with my fingers, examining it closely.
No. Absolutely nothing. It’s as if it never happened.
But I don’t have time to ponder that now. I have to get out of here before anyone gets up and discovers me. While Luke and I have both booked a day off for after our party, the residents of this house probably have jobs to go to this morning, and it’s just after six already.
I creep back to my room and, once inside, lean against the closed door, holding my breath for a few seconds as I listen for evidence of anyone else stirring, then letting out a relieved sigh when all I can hear is a rushing in my ears that thumps in time with my heartbeat.
I need to find something else to wear, and I need to do it quickly.
The weird thing is that the more time I spend in this room, the more I realize it looks exactly the way it did when I lived here last, during that brief interlude when I was in between rental houses and had to come home for two months.
There’s a terracotta rug, bright floral cushions, all with a hint of earthy orange, and as much charity shop quirkiness as I could pack into it.
Hasn’t Mum wanted to update at all? And where do these supposed stepsons sleep?
Surely they’re not sharing this room. Or are they both squeezed into the box room?
That hardly seems fair when there’s a much larger room going spare.
I rummage in the chest of drawers, hoping there might be something I can slink home in.
It’s worse than I thought. There’s a selection of old clothes still in here, which I must have left behind when I moved out, but folded just the way I like them folded.
It’s almost as if she’s kept it as a shrine.
But I don’t want to think about how much I might have broken my mother’s heart by cutting off contact, so I pull out a pair of nondescript black trousers and a top.
I also can’t find my heels from last night, so I pull a pair of loafers from the bottom of the wardrobe, then help myself to some of the possibly ancient deodorant standing on the dressing table.
I even find an old purse with some seriously out-of-date bank cards and some cash in it.
I take it. It’s mine, after all, so I’m not stealing, and since I can’t find my clutch, I’m going to need those banknotes for the train or bus fare home.
I feel anxiety rising inside of my chest like a physical thing, pulling my ribs tight and making my breathing shallow. Before it develops into a full-blown, and probably noisy, panic attack, I swipe my phone, which is lying on the bedside table, and make my exit.
Home. Where I may have to face Luke.
Or maybe I won’t.
I’m not sure which option is worse.