My first thought is that I am dead.
How strange, I think, as I lie very still, desperately trying not to open my eyes. Yesterday was such an ordinary day. I wasn’t ill, as far as I was aware. I went to the supermarket, watched something really dull with Dan on the telly and then we argued and I went to bed alone.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe I popped a blood vessel in my head while I was sleeping, from all the stress. Only that doesn’t make sense. It was more of a grumpy tiff than a full-on, plate-throwing kind of row. After twenty-four years of marriage, Dan and I never do anything that involves that much energy – or passion – any more.
It vaguely occurs to me that if I’d known the previous evening was to be my last on earth that I really should have spent it doing something more interesting, something less middle-aged, like tango dancing with a brooding Latin stranger or watching the Northern Lights shimmer across the polar sky. Instead, I’d spent it in the sleepy commuter town of Swanham in Kent, watching an hour-long documentary on the life cycle of a cactus – Dan’s choice.
Slightly disgusted with myself, and feeling more than a little resentful towards my husband, I turn my thoughts back to the present.
I don’t know how I know I’m dead. It’s just that I had a sense as my conscious brain swam up from the murky depths of sleep of being somewhere entirely ‘other’.
I heave in some much-needed oxygen, pulling it in through my nostrils. Odd. I’ve always thought heaven would smell nicer than this. You know, of beautiful flowers and pure, clean air, like you get on the top of a mountain.
Without meaning to, I move. There is a rustle and I freeze. Not because someone else is here and I’m suddenly aware of their presence, malevolent or otherwise, but because it sounded – and felt – suspiciously like bed sheets. For some reason this throws me.
As I remain still, listening to my pulse thudding in my ears, I start to contemplate the idea that maybe this place isn’t as ‘other’ as I thought.
There’s the sheets for one thing. And the fact that I seem to be lying on something that feels suspiciously like a mattress. As much as I get the sense that I’m not where I should be, not in my usual spot in the universe – lying next to Dan and pretending I can’t hear his soft snores – there’s also something familiar about this place. The smell of the air teases me, rich with memories that are just out of reach.
I really don’t want to open my eyes, because that will make this real. I want this to be a dream, one of those really lucid ones. I’ll tell Dan about it over breakfast and we’ll laugh, last night’s spat forgotten. But there’s a part of me that knows this is different, that it’s too real. More real than my normal life, even. I’m scared of that feeling.
It doesn’t take long before I cave, though. It’s just all too still, all too quiet.
I blink and try to focus on my surroundings. The first thing I experience is a wave of shock as I realise I’m right: I’m not at home in my own bed, Dan snuffling beside me. Then the second wave hits, and it’s something much more scary – recognition.
I know this place!
I push the covers back and stand up, forgetting I don’t really want to interact with this new reality, to give it any more credence than necessary.
The memories that were fuzzy and out of reach now become razor-sharp, rushing towards me, stabbing at me like a thousand tiny needles. I want to sit down, but there’s nothing to catch me but a thinning and rather grubby carpet.
This is the flat I shared with Becca during my last year at university.
I stumble through the bedroom door and into the lounge. Yes. There’s the faded green velour sofa and the seventies oval coffee table, which we’d thought was disgusting at the time but nowadays would fetch a pretty price at a vintage market.
Why am I here?
How am I here?
I turn into the little galley kitchen and spot the furred-up plastic kettle that produced the caffeine that fuelled