Dream a Little Dream (18 page)

‘Sadly your life is about to become as far from that as you can possibly think,’ murmurs Carly, raising her eyebrows at him.

He widens his eyes in response before cracking into a smile and placing his hand on her tummy and giving it a little rub.

‘You’ll have to say hi to him for me,’ Alastair says, looking back at me.

‘Will do,’ I chirp, knowing I probably won’t.

‘Who’s that?’
Dan asks, joining in the conversation as soon as he and Lexie walk in. If I thought he cared I’d assume his ears pricked up when he heard me talk about a guy. But I’m under no illusion there.

‘Brett,’ Alastair replies. ‘Remember my brother’s mate. Used to visit us.’

‘Uni?’ Lexie asks, managing to look interested. I’ve never really given it much thought before, but for someone coming into a group of established mates who already have a decade of memories together, it must be really boring when they always refer back to the ‘good old days’.

‘Oh yeah, I remember,’ Dan nods. ‘Top bloke. Had a really shitty black Corsa that they drove up in,’ he remarks.

‘That’s it,’ laughs Alastair at the memory.

‘Is he driving something better now?’ he asks me.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say breezily, annoyed that he even knows who we’re talking about, although aware that I’m being touchy and protective. Real Brett might not be Dream Brett but I’d still like to keep him to myself rather than have to share him with the dickwad stood next to me.

‘Maybe you could bring him along here one week,’ Alastair continues, his eyebrows rising with delight at his idea.

I must look as flummoxed as I feel, as he catches my expression and copies it.

‘What?’

I swear he’s smirking.

‘Why would she do that?’ asks Josh, from across the table.

‘We never bring other people here,’ I say, in agreement.

‘She’s working with him now,’ Carly tells Dan and Lexie, giving them the missing piece of information.

‘A new bloke in the office,’ Lexie smiles widely. ‘What’s he like? Fit?’

‘We’re not at school,’ Dan tuts under his breath as he turns away and walks towards the bar.

Lexie frowns at the back of his head before flashing a forced smile to the ground and following him.

It’s a minuscule exchange, but it’s awkward and unlike Dan to snap at Lexie.

My eye briefly catches Alastair’s before he looks away uncomfortably. He shrugs his shoulders and with a bounce of his eyebrows he picks up his beer and takes a swig.

From the look I can tell he’s surprised too, but isn’t about to dwell on its significance.

No one else seems to have caught wind of the strange atmosphere at our end of the table; instead they’ve started debating our pub quiz guest policies.

‘No strangers or work colleagues – it’s the unspoken rule,’ Josh continues, his hand moving from Carly’s tummy to rest on her thigh.

‘But he’s an old friend of the group,’ smirks Carly, placing her hand on top of Josh’s.

‘He is,’ nods Alastair. ‘And I seem to remember you going on about how much you loved him back in the day.’

‘We always had fun when he came up with Ned,’ nods Natalia with a mischievous smile – making me question why my brain couldn’t place Brett so clearly when he first appeared in my dreams. I guess it’s simply because he was in a setting I wasn’t used to. Maybe if I’d stumbled upon him in a grotty pub in Leicester I’d have known instantly.

‘He was pretty epic …’ says Josh, looking like he’s about to back down from his argument.

‘Oh you
have
to bring him down so we can talk old times,’ Carly grins at me.

‘See if he can patch together some of our missing memories,’ suggests Natalia, nodding to encourage the idea.

‘But it’s only a one-off,’ states Josh firmly, letting us know that he’s totally given in.

‘Yes,’ hisses Carly.

‘Sounds fun,’ I mutter, sending a death stare in her direction.

She notices but doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest – if anything, she enjoys my discomfort.

Cheeky cow.

… I’m drunk.

Absolutely off-my-tits smashed.

Buried under a mound of purple pillows on a purple sofa, I’m struggling to function. My body is heavy and monged out and my eyes want to drift off to sleep even though they know they shouldn’t at this precise moment as I’m out in public. I’m in a room filled with people, with a babble of activity and noise around me.

Looking across the room, I spy my friends all gathered on an oversized orange sofa, sipping on red wine while playing duck, duck, goose. It’s Natalia’s turn to bash on the heads of our friends. I watch with one eye slightly open as she teasingly walks behind them, causing them all to squirm and laugh, before finally choosing Alastair as her ‘Goose’. He chases after her, catches her and throws her in the air, making her squeal in protest.

I close my eyes and chuckle, loving the weightless sensation the little movement causes in my zombified state.

My body gets knocked by someone slumping on the sofa next to me – I half open an eye to see Dan.

I audibly groan.

‘You think you’re the only one who’s pissed at this situation?’ he snaps under his breath.

‘I’m the only one who’s allowed to be,’ I bark back, my eyes now awake and alert.

‘How’d you work that one out?’

‘You broke my heart?’ I say, incredulous at his audacity to question his actions.

‘And you don’t think you broke mine?’ he asks, visibly shocked, as though I’m being narrow-minded in my pain, that it’s something I should share out and not hog all to myself. ‘You think your disappointment as a partner didn’t cause me to weep into my pillow at night while you snored open-mouthed next to me?’

‘Fuck you,’ I spit.

‘You too.’

‘Why can’t you just bugger off? You’ve got the girl, why can’t you just let me have my friends and live happily ever after with them?’

‘Maybe they don’t want that.’

Even in my dreams I know there’s truth to that. My friends aren’t pawns in our game of love and hatred. They’re real people with their own thoughts and freewill – they’re not either of ours to claim, although I wish they were. I wish I could bag them all up and whisk them off to some faraway land, away from Dan and Lexie.

‘Why wasn’t I good enough?’ I whimper.

‘It wasn’t about you.’

‘To me it was. To my heart there was only you and me, and you tossed me aside without even a second thought – on the first day Lexie entered your life.’

‘She was different.’

‘She was perfect.’

‘She was fun.’

‘I was fun once,’ I bellow, suddenly annoyed that my entertaining side got snatched away by such an ungrateful twat. I was a hoot when we were together. I was always giggling and laughing – making him laugh until he cried. How can he say I wasn’t fun? I was fun. I was the joker, his personal fucking clown.

‘Debatable,’ he scoffs, his eyes giving a little roll of agitation.

I see red, my eyes bulge out of my head like a character from
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
and steam gushes from my ears.

‘What was that?’ I snarl, daring him to say it again.

But I don’t wait for a reply, instead I snatch the glass of red wine from his hand and chuck its contents in his face.

‘What the … ?’ he asks, shocked, wiping the liquid from his eyes.

He calmly grabs the glass in my hand and repeats the action on me.

Tit for tat, I realize as the red liquid runs down my face and seeps all over the big puffy white dress I’m wearing. The sight of it reminds me of all the dreams I’d collected of our future together. How I thought we’d buy our own place, get a puppy – get married, and live happily ever after with our two children in the suburbs.

That dream has been massacred, just like this dress – in my mind I’m like Uma Thurman in
Kill Bill
on her character’s tragic wedding day and the image causes a fire to burn in my stomach.

I glare at Dan, my nostrils flaring at his wonderfully formed face and ridiculous good looks.

I roar, a sound that growls from deep within and scratches at my throat as it’s released.

Snatching the pillows around Dan, I shred them to pieces with my razor-like nails, then I grab photoframes from the wall and crush them under my feet as I hurl them to the ground, snatching up chairs and flinging them across the room and into the walls.

I’m out of control.

I roar and roar and roar.

Snarling in an ugly, beastly manner while Dan cowers with his head in his hands, unable to even look at me and see the mess he’s turned me into.

As music fills my room a cloud of confusion fills my brain. My head is heavy as I open my eyes and frown at the sunlit room.

I never want to be in a situation where I explode like that. I never want to feel so out of control and angry …

Funny that feeling of anger – it’s popped up a few times in my dreams (like when I became The Hulk and slammed Alastair’s canoe into the water) – that build-up of furious energy and raw madness that causes a blast of outrage to fly from the centre of my soul and smack into my victims …

I don’t for one second think I’m going to succumb to those feelings and lash out at my nearest and dearest, but it’s unnerving to know that rage is there within me, lying dormant.

If I think about it, I’ve got so much anger buried inside.

Anger at Jonathan for not valuing me sooner and seeing that I’m all kinds of epic, anger at my mum for making me feel like shit most of the time, anger at my mates for being Dan’s mates too – and anger at Dan for still being in my fucking life.

Dan …

He is a large part of my simmering anger simply because I’ve left so many things unsaid and brushed his betrayal (mostly) under the carpet for the sake of others. Perhaps it’s actually not healthy to bottle it all up like I have.

But what can I do about it now?

Talk to him?

Phone him and ask for a little closure chat, detailing all the ways in which he screwed me over and ruined the last two years of my life?

Seriously?

What kind of desperate person talks to her ex about how jaded she feels, knowing that he’s fully moved on with someone else?

It’s also worth noting that there’s absolutely no way I’d be able to talk through it all (even now) without getting into some sort of state. Maybe not the furniture chucking, dirt-talking mess in my dream, but definitely a weeping, snotty and needy version of myself … I’d rather that side of me didn’t come out to play in public.

But what can I do about this anger that’s obviously stirring inside me? Will it all subside slightly when
Grannies Go Gap
is a stonking success and I’m given a promotion and make my mum prouder than ever? Well, that would be a start, I guess.

I’m not in the best of moods as I head out of the house. I grunt out my coffee order, barge my way through to a seat on the tube and land with a huff when I’m eventually at my desk.

But just as my disastrous mood looks like it’s going to linger for the day, I open my emails and am struck with hope.

‘I think I’ve found our first case study,’ I grin at Real Brett a few minutes later as I stand next to his desk and wave around a piece of paper containing a printout of the email that’s just arrived in my inbox.

‘Tell me more,’ he nods, sipping on a pint of milk as he pushes away from his desk, leans back in his chair and spreads his legs invitingly in my direction – an action I’m sure is only suggestive in my head and not intended by him to be anything other than him sitting comfortably.

‘She seems quite sweet,’ I say with a cough, scanning the
sheet in front of me and selecting which bits of information are best to share as I will my cheeks not to embarrass me. ‘Her name is Ethel Snart and she lives on her own in the same house in Maida Vale that she’s lived in for sixty-three years.’

‘Hopefully she’s redecorated a few times,’ he muses.

‘I’d like to think so,’ I agree before swiftly moving on. ‘She’s eighty and married her late husband Samuel when she was just seventeen. They had five children – Joshua, Joseph, Jackie, Josie and Connie – and she now has twelve grandchildren and four great grandchildren.’

‘Big family.’

‘Yeah,’ I nod, biting my lip. ‘She says she’s been getting computer lessons from one of her grandsons, which is how she found our little shout out on Age Wise – I told you that was a good idea.’

‘You did,’ he says, raising an eyebrow while putting his drink back down on his desk.

‘What do you think?’

‘Let’s go see her and find out more.’

‘Really?’

‘Can’t do any harm,’ he shrugs. ‘Want me to give her a call? I could see if she’s free this afternoon,’ he suggests, holding his hand out for the paper in my hand.

‘That would be great,’ I breathe, feeling triumphant that not only am I on the cusp of moving my idea forward but I’m also now able to delegate jobs to others.

Before I have a chance to walk away from his desk and head back to my own, Real Brett picks up his office phone and dials the number Ethel’s left for us in her email.

‘Ringing,’ he tells me, putting his hand over the receiver.

I decide to stay put and listen to their exchange.

‘Still ringing,’ he frowns.

I never put him down as the impatient type. Although, I guess it’s not him who I’m really thinking of, but rather adventurous, chivalrous, benevolent Dream Brett, who has yet to do anything seriously wrong – other than hiding from me in a rapeseed field.

I manage to suppress a longing sigh and focus on the task in hand – getting hold of my first courageous granny!

‘Might take her a while to get to the ph – ’

‘Mrs Snart?’ Real Brett asks interrupting me, his attention snapping back to the phone in his grasp. ‘My name is Brett Last. I work at Red Brick Productions … a television production company. You emailed us about a show we’re working on. Yes, that’s the one …’ he says, turning to me, his nostrils flaring and his eyes widening with amusement. ‘Yes, you sent my colleague Sarah an email about yourself. We were wondering if we could come and visit you to hear more … Yes, me and Sarah, the lady you emailed … Would this afternoon suit at all? Fantastic … Yes, after two can work for us,’ he says with a smile. ‘Perfect, see you then.’ He puts down the phone and lets out a chuckle. ‘Now, she seems like a real character.’

‘Really?’ I ask, mirroring his excitement, thrilled that she’s already making such a positive impression on us both and amazed at the change in my mood from this morning. ‘And she’s up for us going to hers today?’

‘Yes, but not until after two,’ he says with a serious look. ‘There’s a
Cagney and Lacey
re-run that she wants to watch before that.’

‘Lives her life by the TV guide – now that’s my kind of
woman,’ I say, making him laugh. He clearly hasn’t taken the comment quite as seriously as I meant it.

‘Shame her grandson hasn’t taught her how to use iPlayer yet – that’ll be mind-blowing for her. She’d never leave the house then.’

‘And that’s the opposite of what we want, Mr Last!’ I say, puffing air from my cheeks and walking back to my desk – adrenaline pumping through my veins at the excitement of my project potentially being brought to life by a little old lady in west London.

A few hours later, we leave the office together and head towards the tube, striding along Shaftesbury Avenue and down the steps of Piccadilly Station.

It’s feels funny being out of the office and in the outside world alongside Real Brett – I’m so used to walking with Dream Brett that part of me feels it’s beyond natural, as though it’s something I’ve done dozens of times before without giving it too much thought. But the other part of me realizes that Real Brett is essentially a stranger and not someone I know very well at all (besides a few drunken nights in my very early twenties and some chats in the office about jam, Tom Jones and coffee). It’s a weird tug of emotions in my head. Especially when I forget myself momentarily and look over expecting to see Dream Brett but see this older and more worn version instead. Still attractive, but different.

‘Don’t you think it’s strange?’ he asks, glancing up at me and catching me staring at him with the loving expression I’d intended for Dream Brett. Yikes. He definitely notices the look as he screws his lips inwards, as though he’s trying to stifle a smile.

Bugger.

‘What?’ I ask, trying to hide my embarrassment.

‘That I’m randomly working in your office after not seeing you for a decade or more.’

‘Not given it much thought,’ I lie.

‘Really?’ he asks, surprised, his face showing the faintest flicker of disappointment that I’ve brushed the whole thing off so dismissively. ‘Of all the offices in London, I walk into yours. Weird.’

‘I guess. It’s a small world,’ I shrug, my hand grabbing for my Oyster card in my coat pocket but clumsily dropping it on the dirty tiled floor beneath my feet as I pull it out.