His thumbs move swiftly across the keypad.Actually, I could do with a listening ear.
It’s a minute or two before the reply comes.
Where are you?
VELVET
A fabric made by weaving two different thicknesses of the material at the same time. One might think that the results would be uneven, but the technique gives rise to a dense, even pile with a distinctive soft feel that’s almost impossible to resist touching.
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 isnothing 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. Buthow? 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’tdeal 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 verylastplace 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? Andwhy?
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 definitelynotan early bird, so I might be able to slip outunnoticed. 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.
