Even though it’s not yet nine o’clock, I take my wine and crawl under the duvet. I want to forget about it all for a while. Sleep it away. Maybe in the morning everything will somehow be better. I feel numb, but still part of me hates myself for sending him away when we could be in bed together. In bed with my David, not Adele’s. I keep seeing the look on his face when he realised I was wondering if he’d hit his wife. That awful disappointment. But then I also keep seeing the bruise on Adele’s face. All her fear and secrecy on display in those sickly greens and muted blues. Whether he hit her or not, something isn’t normal in their marriage. But then nothing about this is normal, and I’m probably the worst of the three of us.
I feel trapped. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I do the only thing I can and drain my wine glass, my head buzzing with the alcohol, and then close my eyes. Adam will be home soon and then I can cocoon myself in him, in the safety of us. I focus on thoughts of my boy. The one person I can love without guilt or recrimination. I sleep.
This time, as the sticky shadow tendrils reach for me and I open the Wendy-house door, I don’t go to my childhood home, but instead to the house that Ian and I lived in when we were first married. When we were both still happy. I’m in the garden and it’s a perfect sunny day – not too hot, but beautifully warm, and I’m playing with Adam. He’s six though, my Adam as he is now, not the tiny baby he was when we lived here, and we’re at the pond and trying to catch tadpoles. Our feet are muddy and wet, but we’re both laughing as we dip our nets and jam jars into the slimy surface of the water.
The smell of meat cooking on a barbecue drifts on the air, and even before I’ve consciously thought of him, I hear David calling out that the burgers are ready. We turn and smile, and Adam runs to him. I’m about to follow when I see something glitter in the pond from the corner of my eye. A shape under the surface. It shimmers at the edges as it forms, almost silver beneath the dark water. I frown, confused. This is my dream – I’m controlling it – and yet I don’t know what this is. I step out, onto the pond’s surface, and walk across it like Jesus – and almost laugh at that, I am the God of my dreams – until I can crouch beside it. I dip my hand into the liquid, rippling it, but the glowing shape beneath stays in place. It’s another door, I realise, and the edges glow brighter as if to confirm my thoughts. I look for the handle, but there isn’t one. A door without a handle that I haven’t purposely imagined. I don’t know why it’s here.
I stare for a moment longer, and then David calls for me again, and Adam too. They’re waiting for me before they start eating, and I want to be with them. The shining door fades, and then there’s nothing but pond beneath me.
I wake up early, just after five, dehydrated from the wine, and I’m disappointed with myself. The dream I created had been so perfect, the three of us playing happy families, and despite the thirst, I do feel rested, like Adele said I would. My self-disgust bites a little. I should have imagined Adele in the dream. My loyalty should lie with her. She’s been nothing but kind to me, whereas David is a cheating unreliable drunk and God knows what else, but still, if my dream is anything to go by, I want him madly. I might not have let him fuck me in my bed, but I certainly did in my head. Not just fuck me, either. In my dream I made him love me and I loved him and we were a family, no sign of Adele anywhere. I wiped her out of existence.
I groan and then get up for water and put the kettle on. I’m wide awake after my early night, and there’s no point in trying to go back to sleep just for an hour or so. As the kettle boils and I try to shake the vividness of my dream life away, I look into Adam’s bedroom and get a pang of excitement that he’ll be home soon, after which maybe I should ease myself out of my friendship with Adele. Take Sophie’s advice. Be free of both Adele and David and this stupid stupid mess I’ve got myself into.
I have a shower to wash away the dregs of my mild hangover, and then get dressed and ready for work, but by the time I sit down with a second cup of tea it’s still only 7 a.m. Sunlight glints on the dusty TV screen, and the second door in my dream, the shimmering one I saw in the pond, comes to mind. I get the notebook from its home in the kitchen drawer. Maybe Rob saw one too. My heart races. After last night I shouldn’t read any more. I’m doing enough damage here without delving into their pasts. But I can’t help it. I want to know about them. And the second door is my excuse.