Spinning around, I see a small boy standing behind me in the corridor, appearing like some freaky child apparition.
‘Jesus Christ! You made me jump,’ I say, pressing a hand against my chest to fend off a heart attack.
‘Mummy swore again.’ The boy slaps both hands over his mouth, his eyes bulging like a fish out of water. Baby Amy is still howling, rattling the cot barriers like a prisoner desperate to escape.
‘I’m not your mum, kid,’ I say to the boy. ‘How many children live here?’
‘Two,’ the boy says, narrowing his eyes at me. At least this one can speak; he might be able to help me.
‘Do you know where I can find my handbag? I need my stuff, my phone.’
‘Amy’s crying,’ the boy says, looking at me with such abject disapproval that I feel compelled to walk back towards the baby banshee. The boy follows me.
‘What does she want?’ I ask him.
‘Milk, nappy change, I dunno,’ he says, leaning against the door frame. Amy’s face is streaked with tears and her little cheeks are now red with rage. Whoever invented babies, they did a great job of making their cries completely unignorable. I’m forced to pick her up just to stop myself from clawing out my own eardrums. As soon as she is in my arms, the noise stops, but now it’s my nose that’s being assaulted.
‘She’s done a poo,’ the boy tells me.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask him.
‘Felix,’ says the boy. ‘What have you done with my mummy? Are you an alien? Did you eat her brain?’
‘I didn’t eat anyone’s brain and I don’t know where your mum is. Are your mum and dad, um, divorced? Separated?’
‘Divorced?’ he asks.
‘Does your mum usually live with you?’
‘Yes,’ he says slowly.
Great. I’m no child-rearing expert, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be the one to break it to this kid that his father is a douchebag.
‘Can you help me with this?’ I ask Felix, pointing at the baby. He screws up his face and shakes his head. ‘How old are you? Eight? Nine?’
‘Seven,’ he says. ‘Where did you put Mummy? Have the aliens taken her back to their planet?’
Have I been abducted by aliens and put back in the wrong body? At this point I’m not discounting any possibilities. As I contemplate the logistics of an extra-terrestrial body swap, the man appears at the door to the baby’s room. I’m relieved to see he’s no longer naked and is now wearing a pair of worn blue jeans and a white linen shirt. He’s so effortlessly attractive, it’s distracting, and I briefly forget to be freaked out that his kids are calling me ‘Mummy’.
‘Morning, buddy,’ the man says. He ruffles Felix’s hair, walks over and kisses baby Amy on the head, then leans in to kiss me, on the lips. The lips! I freeze, too stunned to move, looking up at him with wide, unblinking eyes. The gall of this man. I’m holding his child that smells of literal shit, and he just kissed me like it was the most normal thing in the world.
‘Ben’s sick, so I said I’d take his tai chi class this morning,’ the man says. ‘Maria’s coming early to do the school run, so you should still be fine to get the eight fifteen. Sorry, I’ve got to run. See you tonight. Oh, and good luck with your pitch. They’re going to love it.’ Then he waves and turns to walk away.
‘Wait, what? You’re leaving me here, with your children?’
He stops, turns, then frowns, annoyed with me for some reason. ‘I know, they’re as much my responsibility as they are yours, but it’s not like I do this all the time, Luce.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Ben is always covering for me. Come on, it’s not my fault you went on a midweek bender last night. You really don’t think you can cope for twenty minutes until Maria gets here?’
This line of argument, that I’m being unreasonable not wanting to stay here and babysit, is so preposterous that before I can even fathom how to respond, he’s gone. Putting the baby down on the landing, I stagger after him only to discover we’re not in a flat at all, but an entire house, and it’s all just as tastefully decorated as the bedroom. There’s a vintage wooden sideboard on the landing with two Jo Malone candles, a framed photo of the children and a gloriously verdant yucca plant. Further on, along one side of the landing, there’s a huge built-in bookcase, neatly filled with hundreds of books. I always wanted a bookshelf just like that. A thick, plush pile carpet leads all the way down a wide, curving staircase, framed by polished, mahogany banisters.
Momentarily distracted by the beautiful house, by the time I’ve got downstairs and located the front door, a car is pulling out of the driveway. Upstairs, the baby is howling again. Was it bad that I left her on the floor? What if she crawls to the stairs and falls down them? Even if this guy is insane thinking I’ll watch his children, I don’t want to be responsible for anyone getting hurt. Racing back upstairs, I find the boy sitting on the floor, trying to comfort his sister. They both look up at me with wounded eyes.
‘What’s that guy’s name, the one who just left?’ I ask the boy.
‘Daddy?’
‘Yes, but apart from Daddy, what’s his real name. Like I’m Lucy, you’re Felix and he’s . . .?’
‘Sam.’
‘And how do I know Sam?’
Felix narrows his eyes again and then glances to the left, to the wall beside me. Instinctively, my eyes follow the direction of his gaze to a large, framed photo mounted on the wall. It’s of a couple on their wedding day, standing in a field. The man in the photo is a younger version of their dad, Sam, and the bride is . . . the bride is . . . me.
Chapter 6
‘Holy fuck!’ I shout. Felix claps a hand over his mouth. ‘How is that me? How is . . . Is this Photoshopped?’ I lift the frame off the wall so I can inspect it more closely. The woman looks just like me, the real me, not this weird, haggard, great-haired, drug-mule version of me. Do I have amnesia? Did I hit my head and forget twenty years of my life?
That’s when I remember, the wishing machine. The wishing machine.
‘No way,’ I say as my mind contemplates the idea that just presented itself. ‘No, no, no. This couldn’t be that.’ What did I wish for? To be sorted. To have found my person, to skip to the good part of my life.
The nausea comes on suddenly, and I rush to the bathroom before I throw up all over this ridiculously plush carpet. When I’m done, I look up to see Felix standing in the doorway, his little face puckered into a grimace.
‘Mummy says better out than in. You wanted this,’ he says, holding out a blue leather handbag. ‘Will you put my mummy back when you’ve finished your alien experiments?’
‘Thank you,’ I say, wiping my mouth with a tissue then taking the bag from Felix. Rifling through it, I find a phone, a far larger, slimmer handset than my third-hand iPhone. The screensaver is a photo of me, Sam, Felix and Amy. The date on the lock screen says Friday, the twenty second of April, which is the day after yesterday, but there’s no year.