Life as I Know It (35 page)

Remembering that we had to continue to live together in some sort of harmony, I decided for the sake of peace between us that I wouldn’t press the point. “Is that your final decision about Toby then?”

“Absolutely. Fill in the forms for Teddy. Toby stays put.”

As I went up to bed I peeked into each of the children’s rooms. Toby was asleep on his back, his mouth open. Teddy was curled up, clutching his ball. The girls were both on their sides, their long hair spilling over their pillows. I stood watching them for a while, wondering again how Lauren could ever have contemplated leaving them. They were lovely children and I felt so, so lucky to be given the chance to be a part of their lives.

On Tuesday morning I walked to the Citizens Advice Bureau, with Frankie trotting at my heels, to ask about representation for a tribunal for unfair dismissal. Now that I’d had a chance to cool off and think things through in a rational manner, I’d decided there was no way I was going to let Stephen get away with it. It appeared that without witnesses to the supposed assault, Stephen’s case rested on pretty shaky ground. I walked home again, determined to fight him all the way. It wasn’t that I wanted my job back, in fact the thought of working for him again after this was impossible, but I wanted justice, and I wanted a good reference so I could look around for something else.

After a short shopping trip, I went home to await Karen’s visit. I knew that although she had been reluctant to tell me much about it yesterday, I would find out exactly what went on in person today.

At twelve o’clock I heard a tentative knock at the front door. Frankie raced me to the door, barking wildly, and I opened it to find Karen standing on the step looking nervous and apprehensive.

“Karen!” I cried, taking her arm and drawing her into the sitting room. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

She stared at me incredulously. “But I didn’t tell anyone I was coming.”

“Come in and sit down,” I said, taking her shaggy jacket as she stood watching my every move. “How was the journey?”

She ignored my question and spluttered, “How did you know I was coming? I haven’t even told Lauren; I left her asleep upstairs. You are Jessica, aren’t you?”

“You told me when you got back,” I explained, restraining
Frankie, who was trying to claim our attention by jumping up against Karen’s trousers. “Please don’t look so worried, Karen. It’s me, Jessica… Lauren… your new sister.”

Karen sank heavily onto the couch, and Frankie rested her head against Karen’s ample calves, gazing up at her with adoring eyes.

“Frankie likes you,” I commented, trying to put her at ease.

“This is so weird,” she said. “I wanted to see you for myself, but I wasn’t sure if it would be safe… Have I done the right thing?”

“It’s quite safe, Karen. Lauren experiences each day first, that’s all. You left me a note propped in the fridge telling me you were coming here. When you get home this afternoon you tell Lauren… me… a bit about your visit, that you’ve been here today, so I… Jessica… knew you were coming by here today.”

Karen rubbed a hand over her eyes as if trying to dispel a nightmare.

“Bloody hell.”

I grinned at her. “Fancy a cup of tea?” She nodded, still looking shell-shocked.

It didn’t take long to make two mugs of tea in my small kitchen, and I walked back into the sitting room and handed one to Karen, who, it seemed, couldn’t take her eyes off me.

“You’re as pretty as Lauren, but in a different way,” she said at last. “I can see why you don’t want to be blond; your hair is a lovely color.”

“Thanks. By the time you get home, Lauren will have been to the hairdresser and had lowlights put in.”

Sipping at my tea, I couldn’t help smiling at her bemused expression. She must have felt she was sitting drinking tea with a
complete stranger, whereas I felt completely at home with this woman who’d believed until only a few days ago that I was her sister.

“Would you like to see around the flat?” I asked, more to break the tension than from any desire to show her my possessions.

“Yes, I’d like that. I want to know the real person who’s masquerading as my sister.”

“I’m sorry, Karen, I know this must be difficult for you, but you must believe that I never asked for any of this.”

“How do you do it?” she asked as she followed me into the bedroom and then peeked into my tiny bathroom.” How do you cope with being dropped into the life of a mother of four, in that huge house that’s so different to everything you have here?”

I shrugged. “No choice. It’s where I wake up in the mornings. I just do the best I can.”

I watched as her shoulders relaxed slightly, and then she smiled.

“I’m sorry if you think I’m giving you a hard time. This is all so strange. Once I suspected you weren’t my sister, I had to accept your explanation of what happened to her, but seeing you in the body of a complete stranger is really freaky. I don’t know what I was expecting to find by coming here, but I don’t think I expected to find you. On the way over here in the car I thought about all the things I was going to ask you, but when you opened the door I was struck dumb. I can’t get my head around it at all.”

“Don’t try,” I said, smiling back. “We’ll both go mad if we think about it too much. How about having some lunch? I went out and bought some oven fries this morning. I know how much you like them!”

She laughed then and followed me into the kitchen, where I put the oven on and sprinkled some fries onto a baking tray.

“I thought you’d appreciate this, since it’s the meal that gave my identity away,” I chuckled. “Sophie obviously realized that as I’d lost my memory she could pull a fast one and tell me that I gave them all oven fries, ketchup, and ice cream every day!”

“I definitely thought that something very odd was going on,” Karen admitted. “Lauren never let them have fries as a main meal; I expect they were only in the freezer as a standby. I just didn’t know at that point how strange things were going to become!”

Karen stayed for over an hour, then glanced at her wrist-watch.

I ought to be getting back. Lauren might be worrying about me.”

“I was worrying about you,” I said. “But you got home before me and started the dinner.”

“I’m thinking of doing spaghetti Bolognese,” she said. “Do I change my mind on the way home?”

“No,” I laughed. “You make a delicious Bolognese sauce. But I won’t tell you any more about what happens later. It isn’t a good idea to tell someone what’s going to happen in the future.”

“I’ll obey the same rule when I get home then,” she said. “I won’t tell you too much about what happened today, because as Lauren you won’t have had Jessica’s version of today.”

“Right then,” I said, shaking my head with a confused smile. “I’ll see you later.”

I waved from the door as she walked back up the courtyard steps and disappeared around the corner, then I pulled on a coat and took Frankie for another walk. I had only been back in the
flat ten minutes and was pulling off my shoes when the doorbell rang. I answered it to find Dan standing there.

“Would you care to join Dad and me for some tea?” he asked.

I glanced at my watch; clock-watching had become a necessity of late.

“It’s a bit early for tea, but I’d love to come over. How is your father?”

“He’s great, but he gets lonely when I’m at work all day, even when I leave Bessie there to keep him company. I thought we might cook another meal together at my place and share it with the old man. Do you like cooking?”

“I don’t dislike it,” I said, thinking guiltily of the oven fries I’d served my guest at lunchtime. “What did you have in mind?”

“I stopped off and bought some minced beef on the way over here. Do you like spaghetti Bolognese?”

I nearly laughed, but stopped myself in time. “That would be lovely,” I said, struggling to keep my expression neutral. “Do you need me to bring anything or have you got it all?”

“I forgot to buy any black pepper, if you’ve got some.”

I nodded and headed for the kitchen, remembering only at the last minute that I hadn’t cleared away the lunch things. Dan followed me in and stood staring at the used mugs and plates I’d carelessly heaped onto the drying rack before taking Frankie for her walk.

“You’ve had company then?”

“Er… yes, an old friend dropped by for lunch.”

“Oh.”

He looked horribly suspicious and doubtful, and I realized that he might think it had been Stephen.

“It was a female friend named Karen.”

“Oh, well, it’s none of my business anyway.”

I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head as I rummaged in the kitchen cupboard for the pepper mill, and I felt myself flush guiltily. I hoped he wouldn’t probe too deeply about Karen, because as Jessica I had no way of knowing her, and I didn’t want to start lying to him again if I could help it. I couldn’t very well tell him she was my sister when he knew I didn’t have one.

“Do you mind if I change quickly? I’ve been out walking Frankie and I could do with a brush-up.”

“Go ahead,” he said, taking the pepper mill from me and settling himself onto the sofa. “There’s no rush.”

When I’d changed into a clean pair of jeans and T-shirt and reapplied my makeup, I returned to find him leaning back on the sofa, eyes closed.

“Hard day?” I asked him, perching next to him and resting my hand on his knee.

He opened his eyes and smiled.

“I can’t get anything done. Since I met you all I think about is you. I can hardly wait to come over and see you, and work has suddenly become a chore.”

“If it’s any consolation, I feel the same way,” I said, returning the smile. “I was hoping to see you today, but I didn’t want you to feel suffocated.”

He shook his head. “Not possible. I told you, I’m besotted with you, Jessica. I was worried you might be the one feeling stifled.”

He fidgeted with the zipper on one of the cushions, breaking eye contact with me, then said suddenly, “I don’t know what’s got into me. You have no idea how incredibly jealous I felt when I saw you’d had someone here for lunch. I’ve never been
that way before! My previous girlfriends complained I wasn’t demonstrative enough, that I didn’t show them I cared about them.”

“And did you?”

“Not really, nothing like this, though I suppose I thought I cared at the time.”

I leaned toward him until our faces were nearly touching, and breathed in the scent of him.

“We’re so lucky,” I whispered. “Most people never experience anything like this in their whole lives. It’s a mixture of liking and accepting each other, faults and all… and,” I giggled, “the sex isn’t bad, either.”

He leaned a little closer still, so that our noses were only a hair’s breadth apart. I could feel his breath caressing my skin.

“I love you, Jessica Taylor,” he murmured. “I understand we haven’t known each other long, but I know without a doubt that I want to be with you, have lots of children with you, and grow old and wrinkly together.”

I gazed at him, slightly taken aback. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you? And you want children?”

“Lots,” he repeated with a grin. “To make up for all the brothers and sisters out there that I never got to know.”

I pulled back even further and watched his expression carefully. “And after what happened to your mother, what would you do if there was something wrong with one of our children? Would you run a mile, or stay the course?”

“Any child of ours would be perfect,” he said firmly.

“But if it wasn’t? What then?”

He frowned as he considered his answer. “If we love each other enough we could cope with anything, Jessica. With you at
my side I would stay forever, no matter what problems we had to face.”

I almost told him then, but something still held me back. My problem sounded so far-fetched, even to my own ears, that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Instead I leaned toward him again and traced the outline of his lips with the tip of my tongue. He put his arms around me, pulling me close, and we clung together, lost in each other’s embrace.

On Wednesday morning the weather broke, and I awoke to the sound of rain lashing at Lauren’s bedroom windows. After dressing hurriedly I helped Karen prepare the children for school. I was late, and since Karen had been expecting me to be up in time this morning, everyone was behind and consequently in bad moods.

“I haven’t got long; Dan thinks I’m having a nap after dinner,” I whispered to Karen as I hurried the boys to get their shoes on.

“Mum, I want to see Blackie before we go to school,” Sophie wailed as I tried to brush her long hair into a ponytail.

“It’s too wet. I’ll feed the animals when I get home,” I promised. “And you can see her this evening.”

“But you said I could take Ginny to school to show to my class,” Nicole whined, catching her sister’s mood. “Everyone is waiting to see her.”

“You can take her tomorrow,” I said, handing her one of the raincoats Karen had found in the under-stairs cupboard. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”

“Not going,” Teddy said, as I helped him tie his laces. “Don’t want go!”

“Teddy is a baby, Teddy is a baby!” Toby chanted.

“Stop it, Toby. You’re not helping your brother, are you?” I said crossly.

“He doesn’t like the rain, so he is a baby, isn’t he?” Toby said, trying to stare me down.

“You should be kind to your brother, Toby. Tell him he doesn’t have to worry about a bit of rain.”

“You’re all going to be late to school at this rate,” Karen said unnecessarily. “The traffic’s always worse when it’s raining.”

I took Teddy’s hand and started walking toward the garage, but he resisted, pulling against me.

“Won’t go, won’t go!” he shouted. I turned, trying to get a better grip on his hand, when his foot shot out and caught me directly on the shin.

“Ouch! Teddy, that hurt!”

He stared at me, his lower lip trembling, then he flung his arms around my waist and buried his head in my coat.

“Don’t catch fire, Mummy,” he sobbed. “Don’t go ’way.”

“Oh, Teddy,” I said, crouching down and putting my arms around his shaking shoulders. “I’m not going to get hurt again. There’s no lightning, it’s just rain.”