Page 13 of The Love of Our Lives
I pat down the coat I’m wearing until I feel something wallet-shaped in the pocket.Thank god. With fumbling hands, I pull it out and am relieved to see a few notes sticking out the top of the soft beige leather. At least I can pay, even if I still don’t understand what’s going on here. As the taxi zips down the road, I look inside. I still have that sense of guilt, messing around with someone’s stuff like this. Because, clearly, I’ve somehow ended up in someone else’s flat. That must be it.
There are a few cards in the side compartment, and I pull the top one out – a gym pass for somewhere in London. With my heart hammering, I stare at the picture.
My stomach falls out of me. Because it’s the same image I saw in the mirror earlier: same eyes and hair and features. I quickly scan the details to the side.
Emily Perin, thirty years old.
‘Like me,’ I whisper.
Oh god, oh god.
It’s one thing hallucinating another image in the mirror, but a driver’s licence too? A whole identity, in the past?
Looking outside the window, I see we’re out of the centre of town now. Almost there.
Just breathe, Maggie.
Eventually the taxi pulls on to my parents’ street, and I let out a sigh of relief, but at the same time, regret floods me. This is going to absolutely ruin my family’s day, their week, their month.
But I’ve got no other option right now.
‘Just here,’ I croak, as we approach the worn white gate. As soon as the man has stopped, I take a note out of the wallet and push it through the divider.
‘Keep the change,’ I say, before launching myself out the door and on to the pavement. Running up the gravel pathway to our old semi-detached house near the water, I realise what I’m doing and force myself to slow down: no point exerting myself and making everything worse. Walking up the steps, I only vaguely register that my wheelchair ramp has gone as I start fumbling for my house keys.
I stop.
Because I don’t have them, of course – or any of my own possessions, for that matter.
Oh god, it’s all too much.
I knock, but there’s no answer. They’re probably all out looking for me, probably checking every possible place I might have gone, which is nowhere really. I head around to the kitchen door instead, honeysuckle waving at me in the breeze as I go. Summer light floods towards me on the ramshackle path, and I imagine, on another day, Mum would be out the back weeding, or hanging up laundry to dry now the sun’s out.
Desperation tears through me and I close my eyes briefly as I try to work out how to handle this. What am I going to say to her? I don’t even know what’s happening myself.
But, ultimately, I know Mum will take me straight up to the hospital, which is exactly where I need to be right now.
I’m about to walk out on to the freshly cut lawn, when I stop. Because Mum really is there, hanging out laundry like normal.
Energy punctuates the air, and my stomach curdles.
Something isn’t right.
‘Mum,’ I start to say, and almost walk towards her, but a sound makes me stop. A voice.
And there’s something about it that makes all the blood rush to my head and my body turn cold. Retreating back on to the shady pathway, I press myself against the wall as I try to process what it is I’m hearing. Who I’m hearing.
‘Are you almost finished work?’ Mum says.
‘Getting there,’ the other voice says, ‘just finishing up a little tour of Italy for a honeymoon. Did you know that Michelangelo didn’t even want to paint the Sistine Chapel? He actually saw himself more as a sculptor than a painter.’
‘I didn’t know that, dear,’ Mum says, and I hear sheets being shaken out, as my mind scrambles to keep up. It’s like I’m watching a car crash unfold, or rather hearing it – horrified but unable to move away.
‘You went there once, to Italy, didn’t you?’ the other voice says.
‘I did, a long time ago now with your dad.’ A small laugh. ‘That was a very fun trip now you mention it, before you girls were even born. I was playing with the orchestra there and your father came to meet me when we were done. We explored the city by day, stayed out dancing till dawn every night.’
‘Seriously?’
