About an hour passed during which I saw nothing more of me and my mother, except the imprinted image of little me in her arms, which I played over and again in my mind like footage from a film.
I heard more old-fashioned morning sounds, distinctive mainly because of the lack of traffic. I’d thought the road we lived on was quite a main one, but it had been quiet enough to play on as a kid, picking up a ball or riding my bike to the curb now and then to wait whenever a car came by. And there was birdsong, lots of it, and some distant coughing and a dog barking. I wondered how I could approach my mother, speak to her. There was no easy way to introduce myself and spend real time with her. I thought about pretending to sell insurance, or maybe telling her she’d won a prize, but these ideas were so flawed. I only had one chance because I couldn’t knock, get it wrong, and then knock again later.
I took in my surroundings, looking for anything that might help me. There was the usual shed stuff: a bucket of tools, masking tape, and a hammer; lots of nails and screws and unidentifiable pieces of metal; some glass jars, which used to contain jam, and some folded sheets spattered in paint.
I stared for a long time at the Space Hopper box. It was intact but rather crumpled from me landing on it, and I wondered about taping it up, to make it sturdier. And I knew that I would, because the Space Hopper box in my attic had loads of tape holding it together; I’d just never realized that I had put it there.
I suddenly remembered something and looked at my wristwatch, another way to check for evidence of my reality. Before the children were born, I went through a period of insomnia for six months, and it was torture: awake all night, with fitful sleep between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. full of strange dreams. One day I discussed my insomnia with some work colleagues, and on the whole they were sympathetic; then one of them said, “You’re probably sleeping more than you think.”
“I’m awake all night,” I said.
“You can’t be sure,” he said. “It probably just feels like that. But those long stretches in the night when you think you’re awake, you’re probably kind of dozing.”
I felt furious with this well-rested know-it-all. “Are you sleeping now?” I asked him, my hostility quiet but sharp.
“Right now? No, of course not,” he said.
“How do you know?” I said. “If I can be wrong about whether or not I’m asleep at night, then surely you can be wrong about being awake now.”
He grabbed some paperwork and left, choosing wisely not to mess with me. After all, I hadn’t slept for a long time and probably looked dangerous. More interesting was the response of another workmate, who told me there was a surefire way to check if you’re dreaming or not. She said numbers don’t work in dreams, they get all muddled up, so what you need to do is always wear a watch when you’re awake and look at it a ridiculous amount of times. Every time you look at your watch, you must consciously ask yourself: Are the numbers in the right place? Then you must clearly answer yes or no. When you’ve been doing this for long enough, it becomes such a habit that it leaks into your dreams, and then one day you’ll look at your watch while you’re dreaming and ask yourself the question about the numbers being in the right place, and the answer will be no, because when you’re asleep they never are, and that’s when you know you’re dreaming. That’s when you can do whatever you like in your dream. It’s called lucid dreaming and is very good fun, because I’ve tried it. Give it a go, it works. I guarantee it.
My point is, two things: One, in the shed I knew I was awake, in the same way that you can be confident you’re awake at this very moment. Second, when I looked at my watch, the numbers were all in the right place, even though it had stopped and the glass on the front was cracked. So we’re definitely talking time travel or insanity; there was no other option.
The sound of a dog barking again just a short distance away had me mentally strolling in the direction of the sound. I could picture the little squares of lawn from this, my mother’s garden, to the one next door, and beyond that all the fences in between, just low enough to peep over if you were a grown-up standing on tiptoes.
Now my mind’s eye took me through all the gardens to Em and Henry’s place, all the way down the other end of the street. Henry with his face like a sad puppy, and lovely Em; the couple who had taken me in when my mother died. In the quiet world I had inhabited with my mother as a child, few people had really made an impression on me. But Em and Henry had, and they had stepped in, and brought me up. Of course I should go to Em and Henry now; I would be able to get my foot through their door more easily than my mother’s. After that, I wasn’t sure, but it was somewhere to start. Before I did anything, I needed another glimpse of my mother; I was emotionally thirsty and she was my glass of water. Then I needed to get out of here without being seen.
* * *
THE KITCHEN DOOR opened and clattered shut, startling me. I scooched forward and pressed my face against the rough wooden door. My mother was putting a bag of rubbish into a shiny steel trash bin with a proper lid. She shouted, “Faye, get your shoes on, we’re leaving,” and then she paused, stood with hands on hips looking straight down the short, narrow garden, straight at me in fact, and took in a deep breath of cold air. She closed her eyes and smiled. She looked so content, and I realized I knew nothing about this woman, even though I loved her with all my heart. She didn’t look like me, with her smooth brown hair and gray eyes. She was natural-looking, slim, and wore a belt pinching in the waist of a long sweater over a long skirt that made her look even slimmer, and brown leather boots. I saw little me come to the back door, open it slightly, and say something to my mother, who bent at the waist and cupped Faye’s face in her hands. “Of course you can,” said my mother in reply. They went inside and the key turned in the lock.
I knew they would go out the front door, so I unfurled myself. I was like one of the screwed-up plastic bags in my mother’s kitchen cupboard, and it was hard to straighten up. I eased out of the shed, jogged cautiously down the side of the house, and peered round the corner. They were just coming out, my mother with a large brown satchel over her shoulder and little me wearing a puffy pale-blue and green striped jacket (how I had loved that coat!) with a chunky sweater underneath, and carrying a table tennis paddle on which I was bouncing a red rubber ball—small bounces—and counting each one. Little me got a rally of bounces, before missing one: it bounced on the ground and shot high in the air. My mother caught it, and I saw my young self look at her gleefully, shouting, “Five!”
They walked companionably down the street, my mother’s long skirt thrapping her legs, and little me going at varying speeds, sometimes holding back, sometimes trotting, depending on what was required to keep the ball in the air. My mother chatted away and there was the odd interval of laughter. I had forgotten she was funny—I couldn’t remember our conversations, but I guess that’s true of many people. My friends remember a few lines their parents said to them when they were younger, the odd nugget of gold, and lots of nuggets of criticism, but nothing more than a small collection of well-worn anecdotes.
I walked behind at a short distance. I don’t think it was obvious I was following or anything; we were walking toward town and there was nothing suspicious about another person walking to town. The sun was out now, and it was cold, but milder than you might expect considering people had their Christmas trees up.