I let out a long sigh as if I can somehow expel them both from me. Adam is home now. I have to focus on him. Him, and trying to get another job. Whatever Dr Sykes says, I can’t go back to the clinic. Even if David left, the place is too full of him now – too full of all this – for me ever to want to work there any more. It wouldn’t be the same. I do a half-hearted job search on the net, but there’s nothing suitable for me, and it makes me more miserable. Thank God I’ve got some savings in the bank to give me a few months’ breathing space, but they won’t last for ever, and then I’ll be back on Ian’s charity. I want to curl up in a ball until it’s all gone away. Instead, I drain the glass and then head to bed. Adam’s back and there’ll be no more lie-ins for me.
I fall asleep quickly. These days the night terrors are barely there, I’m in for a second or two, check my fingers, and then the Wendy door appears and I’m gone. As has become habit, I’m in the garden by the pond, and Adam is there with me, and although we’re trying to have fun it’s a grey, drizzly day, as if, even in the dream I’m controlling, my emotional mood has a say. I know the dream is all only a fantasy, and the fantasy isn’t living up to much with just the two of us here. David is not barbecuing tonight. I don’t want him here. Not with his if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from both of us so clear in my head.
I’m by the pond, but Adam has got distracted from the abundance of tadpoles and fish by the toy cars and trucks that are strewn over the lawn, and he barely looks up. I know that I’m putting him there – if I want Adam by the pond with me fishing for treasure then I only have to will it – but this also isn’t the real Adam, merely an imaginary creation of him, and tonight that’s not enough.
The real Adam is fast asleep in his own bed, tucked up under his duvet and cuddling Paddington. I think of him, sleeping so close to me, and picturing him there back in his room makes my heart glow, and I want to see him and hug him until he can barely breathe. I feel it with a mother’s ferocity, and then, suddenly, there it is again.
The second door.
It’s glowing under the pond’s surface like before, but this time it moves, rising up to stand vertically, and although the edges are still shimmering mercurial silver, the door itself is made of water. I stay still and it comes quickly towards me, and for a second I think I can see tadpoles and goldfish swimming on the surface, and then I’m touching the liquid warmth and passing through it and then I’m—
—standing by Adam’s bed. I feel momentarily dizzy with the change, but then the world settles. I’m in his bedroom. I can hear him breathing, slow and steady, the breathing of the very old or the deeply sleeping. One arm is over his face, and I think about moving it but don’t want to disturb him. His duvet is half kicked off, and at some point he must have knocked his water over and it’s spilled all over poor Paddington, who’s fallen out of bed. I’m glad it’s a dream. Adam would hate that Paddington needs drying out. He won’t even let me put him in the washing machine. I bend over to pick the bear up, but my hand can’t grasp it. More than that, I can’t see my hands. I look at where they should be. I have no hands. There’s nothing there. Confused, I try three times to touch the bear with my invisible fingers, but with each attempt I have the sensation of passing right through the soft, wet fur, as if I’m not there at all, as if I’m a ghost, and then I’m horribly unsettled and I feel an enormous tug from behind as I’m yanked backwards, and for a brief moment I’m terribly afraid and then—
—I wake up with a gasp, upright in my own bed, sucking in deep breaths of air. I feel jolted awake, like in those almost-dreams of falling you get when on the cusp of sleep. My eyes dart around in the gloom, trying to shake my complete disorientation. I look down at my hands and count my fingers. Ten. I do it twice before I’m sure that this time I truly am awake. My lungs feel raw, as if I’ve been out and smoked twenty cigarettes in the pub as in the days of old, but I don’t feel tired. If anything, I feel weirdly energised given how emotionally battered I am and how tired I was when I went to bed. I’m thirsty though. Desperately thirsty. Wine before bed. I’ll never learn.
I get up and creep to the kitchen and drain two glasses from the tap and then splash my face. My lungs return to normal, the rawness fading. Maybe it was just some echo of the dream.
It’s only 3 a.m. and so I head back to bed, even though I’m not sure I’ll go back to sleep, and I pause at Adam’s door and look in and smile. He’s definitely home. That part wasn’t a dream. I’m about to close the door when the bear on the floor catches my eye. Paddington. Fallen out of bed. I frown and come in closer. The plastic cup on the bedside table is on its side and empty. The bear is soaked. This time I can pick Paddington up, and he’s heavily sodden. I look at Adam, my heart starting to thump faster. One arm is over his face and his legs are sticking out from the half kicked-off duvet.