Sophie, the eldest girl, was wearing embroidered hipster trousers and a cropped top that showed her flat eight-year-old stomach. When I caught her eye she stared back almost defiantly and stuck her iPod earpieces into her ears, effectively shutting out any kind of conversation. I wondered what sort of relationship she had with her mother.
Nicole, on the other hand, hovered round me anxiously and sat as close to me as she could without actually getting into the bed next to me. If I glanced at her, she smiled hopefully as if silently begging me to remember her, and when I ran my tongue lightly over cracked lips she reached out immediately for the plastic beaker and straw.
Toby seemed like any other four-year-old boy: bored with being stuck in the bland hospital room and ready to make a game out of anything. I watched him lying on the floor opening a paper bag of sterile antiseptic wipes, which he used to scrub his trainers before trying to cut the laces with a pair of blunt-ended suture scissors.
Teddy, I noticed, was hanging back again, still clutching the squashy ball he’d had with him yesterday. I realised he was watching his brother’s experiments with the hospital equipment, but seemed to have no desire to join in.
The girls spread themselves over the bed and tucked into the seedless white grapes they’d brought me, while Grant opened the album.
‘I’ve read that memory loss can be rectified by showing images of the patient’s life, listening to your favourite music, or watching your favourite programmes,’ Grant explained. ‘Here, look, this is a picture of us on our wedding day. I didn’t bring in the whole wedding album, as there are some of the best pictures in here, plus holidays with the children…’
I had stopped listening to him, my eyes riveted on the photo of the bride and groom smiling outside an old church. Grant didn’t look hugely different, maybe a little less lined round the eyes. The bride smiling innocently beside him was about my height and build, with golden blonde hair falling in soft curls round her shoulders above the white dress. The eyes staring into the camera were a mesmerising blue with tiny grey flecks.
‘You always liked that close-up one best,’ he continued when he saw me staring at it. ‘Of course, your hair isn’t quite that blonde now, but you’re as pretty as ever, isn’t she, children?’
‘Arms not blue now,’ Teddy commented from the corner of the room, where until that point he’d been watching us in silence.
‘Were my arms blue?’ I asked Grant. I snatched at the comment as if, by thinking about that, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the mind-blowing fact that I appeared to be sitting here in someone else’s body.
‘The doctor said it happens sometimes after a high-voltage injury,’ Grant said. ‘There’s a huge medical word for it. Apparently your upper and lower extremities were cold and mottled blue when it happened, but it cleared in a few hours.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘You look wonderful now.’
Nurse Sally chose that moment to appear in the doorway and I glanced up and saw the mirror in her hand. My face must have blanched, because concern suddenly creased her features. I held her gaze imploringly and shook my head. She tactfully backed out of the room again and left me to my supposed family.
‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ I asked this man, my husband, somehow recovering my voice. ‘And why aren’t the children in school?’
‘It’s half-term, Lauren,’ Grant told me. ‘We were going to take a few days off and do some day trips with them.’
I looked at the children, who were beginning to fidget in earnest now. The girls had finished the grapes and Toby had got up to inspect the silent ECG machine. Teddy was still glowering at me from the doorway.
‘You poor things!’ I said with forced cheerfulness, wishing they would all go off and leave me alone. ‘Fancy having to be here visiting me instead. Grant, why don’t you go ahead and take them out to lunch or something? It’ll give me a chance to have a bath and sort myself out.’
‘Lunch?’ Sophie repeated, pulling out her earpieces and making a ‘yuk’ face. ‘I want to go to Chessington World of Adventures!’
‘Yeah, me too, me too!’ cried Toby, rushing over and jumping on the bed again.
‘I don’t,’ Teddy muttered from the corner. ‘I’m goin’ wait here for Mummy to come back again.’
‘I want to stay here with Mummy too,’ Nicole said quietly from my side.
Grant looked uncertainly from the children to me, then seemed to come to a reluctant decision.
‘Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘We’ll go to Chessington and leave Mummy to have some time on her own.’ He glanced at Teddy. ‘You too, Teddy. You’ll like it when we get there.’
‘Shan’t,’ Teddy grumbled from the corner. He flashed me a malevolent stare as he was bodily picked up and presented for a kiss goodbye.
I smiled at them all and waved thankfully as they trooped from the room, then, as the door closed behind them, I breathed a sigh of relief and turned my attention to the photo album, which Grant had left open on the bedside table. I stared at the lovely bride for a second or two, then pulled a tuft of my almost shoulder-length hair round in front of my face, peering at it out of the corner of my eye. Blonde. Oh no.
Sally reappeared a moment later with the mirror. ‘I saw the family leaving,’ she said. ‘They seemed very excited about something.’
‘Grant’s taking them to Chessington World of Adventures,’ I told her.
‘Lucky them,’ she said. ‘Do you want me for anything, or shall I leave you alone for a little while?’
‘You can answer me one question, and then leave me alone,’ I replied, holding the mirror face-down so I couldn’t see into it. ‘Where exactly am I?’
The nurse had the decency to look shocked. It was strange how people took for granted the obvious things, the things that made up their own little universes. They knew I’d lost my memory, but it hadn’t occurred to anyone that I might not even know where I was.
‘You’re in St Matthew’s Hospital, near Little Cranford,’ she told me. ‘I’m sorry, Lauren, we haven’t been very understanding, have we? I’ll leave you to look at the photos and make yourself nice. The bathroom is right next door. You can just pull off the sticky pads from the monitor. Buzz if you need anything, I’m on until two.’
I was none the wiser as to my whereabouts. I had never heard of Cranford, Little or otherwise. I stared at the back of the mirror for several minutes once she had gone, willing myself to turn it over. Eventually, I plucked up the courage and peeked into the glass. What I saw literally took my breath away. Whether this was a dream or not, it was certainly a nightmare, because despite all my denials, it appeared I really was sitting here in someone else’s body. A pretty someone else, with clear English-rose skin and expensively highlighted hair, though I could see if I held the mirror up that the blonde locks were singed at the top of my head.
Lauren had a cute snub nose, pouty lips and cheekbones to die for. But the eyes, which I had expected to be the same clear blue as in the wedding photo, were a greyish green. My eyes, I realised with relief. Hazel eyes belonging to Jessica Taylor.
I remembered the old saying that a person’s eyes are the windows to their soul. Well, these windows, despite the fancy dressing, were reflecting my soul. Teddy had been right, I thought with a pang of conscience. His mother had gone, and here was I, stuck in her body, without the first idea what sort of person she was, or how the hell I had got here.
In