‘No.’ I arch up into his kiss again. ‘It’s never just a shag with you.’
Afterwards, I am first to speak, though my mouth is brittle from the brandy, my words sticking together in slurs. We are still on the sofa, and he is lying on his back, eyes clamped shut, one hand resting on his forehead.
‘I think... I should sleep in here,’ I say.
It’s difficult to know why, exactly. Maybe it’s just instinct telling me that to wake up in Josh’s arms tomorrow, without half a bottle of brandy inside me, would be too hard – and that the first thing we would want to do is the one thing we must never do again.
He nods and reaches clumsily down to rebutton his jeans, buckle his belt. ‘Fair enough. But you’re having my bed. I’ll sleep in here.’
I totter to the bedroom, where I collapse, fully dressed, on to his mattress. The flat falls quickly quiet. All I can hear is the crack of rain against the windows, a noise that sounds entirely like reproach.
And now, a full thirty-three years later, I sit bolt upright in my bed.
I know the truth of it instantly.
Emma is not Lawrence’s daughter.
She is Josh’s.
87.
Rachel
December 2036
I dreamt about something important last night. So important, in fact, that my brain was churning with urgency when I woke. But by the time I’d remembered where I was, and the whole palaver of washing and going to the toilet and eating breakfast had been dealt with, the dream had vanished entirely from my mind.
But it was to do with Emma. I’m sure of it. Emma, and her father.
Why didn’t I write it down? Do I have a notebook anywhere?
We are in the living room, where I always feel safe, and warm. Someone has lit the fire, though it wasn’t me, because I’m not allowed.
There is a fir tree standing by the window. I quite like it. Lights are winking softly from its branches. But they are not winking the way eyes do, watchful and sinister. These lights are more like stars. Beyond the glass, the world creaks with cold, the ground and trees newly stiff with frost.
‘I have something to tell you,’ I say to Emma. Perhaps if I just start talking, what I need to remember will come to me.
‘Okay,’ she says, smiling brightly. ‘What’s that, Mum?’
I stare at her for a long time, trying to squeeze out the memory from wherever it has lodged, in some dark recess of my brain. The effort makes me frown. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘Well, not to worry,’ she says gently. ‘We’ve actually got something we wanted to tell you too.’
I don’t recognise the fair-haired man sitting next to her. He’s not been here before, I don’t think.
‘Mum, Kai and I are expecting twins. You’re going to be a grandmother.’
Expecting twins?I think.What does that mean?
‘We can’t wait for you to meet them.’
I straighten up a little. ‘Who? Who’s coming?’
There is a knock at the living-room door. It opens, and another man puts his head around it.
My heart leaps with certainty. Dark, calm, kind. It is him. I am sure of it.
They begin to spark in my brain – fresh little static shocks of memory.
