Page 73 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
I laugh. ‘Home, then,’ I say.
‘Good, because I find it impossible to be in this place and not get to work. I don’t know how you do it.’
‘Do I come in a lot?’ I ask.
But I know the answer. I do. This is where we all spend our time. My friend Dee, her husband Liam, Matt and me.
‘Can’t get rid of you,’ she says.
Back at Dee’s house, which I also managed to pick out of the houses on the street, Liam and Callum are watching an animated programme about numbers. They turn their heads in unison when we enter the room and I see how alike they look, while still seeing bits of Dee in Callum’s face too.
‘What’s brown and sticky?’ Callum asks.
And I know the answer, but before I can say it, Dee and Liam both shout it out.
‘A stick!’
‘His favourite joke,’ Dee says to me.
‘I knew it,’ I tell her. ‘I knew the answer.’
‘Well, aren’t you coming on leaps and bounds today? Liam, Shell took me to her house.’
‘Oh yes? That’s great. Did you go in?’
‘No. I wasn’t ready.’
Liam takes this in his stride. ‘There’s a cottage pie in the oven.’
And Dee goes over and kisses him, and I feel a stab of envy for this sweet life she has. I feel like mine, by comparison, is in pieces, and I have to put them back together before I even know whether it’s what I want.
We eat dinner, Callum chatting non-stop about someone at school who had a nosebleed in the playground and a dinner lady who just gives you more if you say you don’t like it, and thenstands over you making sure you eat it all up. I’m quiet, trying to take it all in. I notice Dee and Liam checking on me every few minutes, exchanging looks with unspoken words behind them. I feel like an intruder here, though they’ve done nothing to make me feel that way.
‘I won’t stay too long,’ I say when Callum pauses for breath.
Dee fixes me with a look. ‘You can stay as long as you like.’
‘Nanny is coming in a couple of weeks,’ Callum says. ‘And Mummy said if you’re still here then her and Daddy will have to give her their bed and sleep on the sofabed.’
Dee goes red. Says his name a little sharply.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Really. This is your home. Your family.’
‘You’re my family too.’
It’s the kindest thing she could say, and it’s almost too much to bear. I think of my mother, how she could be anywhere, or nowhere at all. How she could have died and I wouldn’t even have known.
‘I’m trying hard, to remember. And once I have, I’ll go back home.’
We’re all quiet then. Even Callum. But afterwards, when Liam is washing up and I search out a tea towel to dry, when Dee has taken Callum up to run a bath, he reassures me.
‘Shelley, we really don’t mind how long you stay. What Callum said, we were just talking logistics. We don’t want you to do anything before you’re ready.’
I thank him. And I wonder if he knows that the thanks are for his kindness towards me but also the way he has helped Dee transform from a sceptical single woman to a calm, contented wife and mother. It’s like he’s steered her away from danger, into calmer waters. He smiles at me, and I feel like we’re going to hug but his hands are wet and soapy, so we don’t.
I go to bed early. Dee’s been to my place and brought my toiletries and clothes, pyjamas and underwear and a few books.Everything I might need. I imagine her there, talking to Matt, him leaning against the kitchen counter, and her, talking with her hands and trying to reassure him. I pick up a paperback and the beginning is familiar. It’s about a woman who’s having a baby and finds out that her husband is leading a double life. Have I read this before? Was I halfway through it when the accident happened? I flick ahead fifty pages or so, try to see whether I recognise it, but I don’t. Frustrated, I throw it across the bed and it lands with a thunk on the floor. A few seconds later, there’s a knock at my door, and I get out of bed in my pyjamas to open it, expecting Dee.
Callum’s on the landing, dancing about. ‘I need a wee, and I heard a noise.’
