Dream a Little Dream (27 page)

Liza stared at Cleo. ‘That can’t be true!’

Cleo, lounging on the sofa, helping Shona
practise
her S’s in scarlet gel pen on pink paper, smiled smugly. ‘It is. Seven hours last night and eight the night before.’

‘But Gus has never slept more than two or three hours at one time.’ Liza looked down at her nephew, sitting up in her lap, blowing bubbles and kicking his legs.

‘It’s bliss.’ Cleo dropped a kiss on Shona’s head. ‘No more colic. Goodbye whingey baby, hello sleepy baby. It just happened overnight.’ She sighed in pleasure. ‘Sleep affects everything.’

Liza kept her gaze on Gus, who rewarded her with a gummy grin, probably feeling great because he was getting so much sleep, but thought about Dominic, whose life had fractured and reformed in a crazy pattern, because of sleep. ‘True.’

‘How’s everything with you?’

Liza put on her bright voice. ‘Fine. I’m meeting Angie and Rochelle at a wine bar, later.’

‘Any news about what’s going on with the treatment centre, since the bust up?’

Liza shrugged, and tickled Gus’s nose to make him smile again. ‘Nicolas hasn’t been in for two days. Me, Fen, Imo and Pippa are just carrying on regardless, waiting to see what happens.’

‘What about your man? Hasn’t he told you what’s going on?’

‘Who’s Auntie Liza’s man?’ demanded Shona, golden hair dancing as she swung her gaze between her mother and her aunt.

‘I haven’t seen him since Monday. And he’s not my man, there’s no such person.’ She stroked Gus’s downy head. Glaring daggers at her sister’s dark smiling eyes, she mouthed, ‘Bugger off!’

‘Bad word,’ declared Shona, with four-year-old righteousness. ‘You only make words without saying them when they’re bad words, Mummy told me.’

Cleo shot Liza a mischievous grin. But then her expression softened. ‘But we love Aunt Liza a lot, don’t we? Because she does nice things like taking Shona and Gus to the play park.’

Gus reached out a slobbery hand to grab a fistful of Liza’s hair and Shona nodded emphatically. ‘Yes, we love you a very lot, Auntie Liza. A very lot.’

‘And we want her to be happy.’

‘Yes, we want her to be happy a very lot. I think Gus has done a poo.’

Liza, who had just come to the same conclusion, was glad of a reason to end the conversation before the threatening prickling in her eyes at being loved ‘a very lot’ turned into tears. But at least familial love was a love she seemed able to return. She dumped her noisome nephew in her sister’s lap. ‘Sounds like my cue to go. I’m meeting Rochelle and Angie. Kiss, Shona. Kiss-kiss, Gus-Gus.’

Shona turned her cheek up for her kiss, holding her nose. ‘Phew. Poo.’

Cleo slung her arm around Liza’s neck. ‘Say hi to Angie and Rochelle for me and have a great time. You look hot in that dress, by the way. Is Dominic going to be there?’

‘No.’ Liza searched through her bag for her car keys.

‘Oh. Well, anyway. Have fun.’

Outside, the air was sweeter, but cold. Liza’s little purple car waited at the kerb and she whacked the heating up full blast for the drive into Peterborough, wishing Cleo wasn’t so obviously keen that Liza have a good life. Because, sometimes, life wasn’t particularly good and all you could do to distract yourself from that hard fact was climb into a little black dress with a flirty hem and meet your fun friends in a wine bar, and hope that things would get better.

The wine bar was right in the city; a cellar, furnished, bizarrely, with old school desks and stools like barrels. With red light flooding the walls from downlights, it looked like a cross between a classroom and a troll’s cave.

Rochelle and Angie leaned on the bar, large glasses of white wine gleaming. Rochelle rolled her eyes when Liza bought a bottle of sparkling water.

‘I’m dri-ving …’ sang Liza, returning eye roll for eye roll.

‘Get a ta-xi ho-me,’ Rochelle sang back.

Liza looked at the bottles of wine gleaming seductively behind the bar. She thought about Adam who, thankfully, because she didn’t think she could have borne any more shit in her shitty week, had been conspicuous by his absence since his vigil on her wall last Saturday. But he could turn up, him and his wounded eyes, any time, and then she’d require a clear head to inch over the thin ice that was Adam. ‘Not tonight.’

Angie and Rochelle shared a sigh.

Angie announced, ‘We’ve decided to get you fixed up.’

‘I don’t want you to fix me up.’

Rochelle threaded a hopeful arm around Liza’s neck. ‘Because you’re hooking up with the luscious Dominic?’

‘No,’ Liza responded, shortly.

‘So being fixed up will be good for you. Oh, Liza! Don’t you remember how much fun we used to have before you let what Adam did turn you into an angel of purity? Talking to men in wine bars? The kiss-a-stranger game? A few drinks?’

‘I liked the kiss-a-stranger game,’ observed Angie, moistening her lips.

Sighing, Liza gave ground. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve made an effort. And,’ she pointed at her feet with both index fingers, ‘I’ve bought new shoes.’ They were perfect: hyacinth blue, with silver pin heels.

‘Seriously cool,’ Rochelle admitted.

‘But I’m not going to kiss strangers.’

‘Lol! You haven’t said you won’t talk to men,’ beamed Angie.

‘Right.’ Rochelle’s face was full of determination. ‘Let’s find some.’

For the next hour the wine bar filled up and Liza allowed herself to be drawn into conversation after conversation as Rochelle and Angie burst their bras to get her fixed up, manipulating people so that Liza always ended up standing next to some man. The room grew warm and the conversation louder and she tried to relax and just enjoy the evening, but felt her friends’ expectations pressing her down. Her bottle of water was renewed by a nice guy who introduced himself as Marcus, really attentive, good hair, tall, looked great in black jeans, and he didn’t query her not drinking anything stronger, so he’d obviously been briefed in advance.

Marcus was superseded by Shaun, who took the alternative approach, declaring he’d just landed a great new job and wouldn’t she join him in a glass of champagne?

Then Richie, who—

Liza pre-empted his pitch with a polite smile. ‘I’m just going to …’ She waved in the general direction of the Ladies. He smiled in a ‘Yeah, right, I’ve heard that one before,’ sort of way, and Liza hit the stairs.

Once up in the street, she caught her breath, sent mental apologies to Rochelle and Angie, and headed for her car.

PWNsleep message board:

Sleepingmatt: Struggling with depression, recently. Bad event kicked it off and it’s hard to shake.

Tenzeds: With you re bad event, mate.

Nightjack: My GP gives me antidepressants, if I ask. I don’t often ask. 

Sleepingmatt: I know it’s not just me. Loads of people with N struggle with it. When one of you guys doesn’t post for a while, I think, ‘Bet they’re down with the black dog …’

Dominic slumped on the sofa and stared at the television. He had a documentary channel on. Something about Concorde. He felt like crap. His watch was in the bedroom and he couldn’t be bothered to press the button on the TV remote that would flash the clock, so he didn’t know the time. The window was a dark square, but November days were short. Crosswind slept twitchily on his doggie beanbag. Dominic had managed to take him for a walk, earlier, fighting sleep as he trudged, his face a leaden mask, prising one eyelid up and then the other until he could stagger home. Crosswind hadn’t asked to be taken out since, so probably his circadian rhythm was telling him that it was night.

He could go to bed.

He could switch the TV channel to something he actually wanted to watch.

He’d slept a lot in the last couple of days. He thought, anyway. Heavy face. Forehead dragging. He’d tried to focus on his pain, because focusing on something was better than focusing on nothing. Kenny and Natalie. Behind his back. Together. The thought made him feel sick.

He hadn’t taken his meds, which was bad, and he vaguely regretted it. But he couldn’t be bothered to work out when to take them and sleeping blocked out black, bruising truths. Giving in to dark moods was bad, he knew, but the temptation to float into a limbo where dreams eclipsed reality … Natalie’s voice floated through his head,
I’m sorry
 
… I didn’t mean to
 
… I got drunk
 
… I couldn’t cope with you not coping. I didn’t know it was going to turn out to be narcolepsy
 
…
Fucking narcolepsy.
I’m so sorry, Dominic. Try to understand. I still loved you, but
 
…

That’s not how love works,
he’d said.
I’m over you, but you can’t expect me not to care about you screwing around. With someone I thought was a friend.

Her face had crumpled.
But I’m not over you
 
… let’s talk
 
… please!

Kenny’s
it was my baby
had boomed between them. Natalie had stopped. Covered her eyes.

The weirdness of REM sleep flipped his consciousness and he saw Natalie with a snake, a knife, a baby.

He felt like an idiot about the baby.

And then he felt disloyal, because it wasn’t the baby’s fault.

Then he felt like an idiot again, because loyalty didn’t come into it when it wasn’t his baby. It had been Kenny’s baby. He felt like an idiot about Kenny. About Natalie. Mess. Not the baby’s fault. Felt bad about the baby. Poor baby.

His eyelids drooped.
Natalie cradled the baby. She didn’t speak. Then the baby became Gus. The woman became Liza. Liza turned and stared and Natalie appeared beside her. She spread her empty arms. The baby was gone.

He pried his eyelids up. Natalie wasn’t real. The baby wasn’t. No Liza. No Gus. Eyelids so heavy.
Voices, whispering voices, lots of voices, talking about him. Telling him about Natalie. Why hadn’t they told him before? Then Natalie, Natalie was in the flat, he could hear her.
He lurched to his feet, half-waking, half-sleeping, stumbling around, checking each room.

Natalie wasn’t there. Idiot.

Collapsing back onto the sofa, he stared at the television, something about space probes, now, until his eyes began to close.

Kenny with Natalie, arms and legs wound around—

A loud noise. His eyes broke open. The TV was still on, bright, blaring. The noise came again. Not the TV. Crosswind uncurled himself, shook, barked and leaped up on Dominic. He was real because Dominic could feel the scrape of claws on his chest.

Noise. He knew what it was, if he could only think—

Again. Long, this time, repetitive,
beeeeeeeeeeee beeeeeeeeeeee beeeeeeeee
.

The intercom.

Somebody was standing at the outside door, pressing the intercom button. Somebody wanted to talk to him.

He didn’t want to talk to them. Anyway, he was made of concrete. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeee … Crosswind scratched at his leg. Kenny flickered into his head, trying to give him a headset.
He was in the control tower. An Airbus 320 was sliding along the runway, stretching longer and longer, and he reached for the headset. There was an alarm going off, the aircraft was in trouble, the pilot was trying to contact him for information. He must respond! The alarm, beeeeeeeeeee
 
…

‘Dominic!’

Crosswind barked right in his face. Dominic opened his eyes.

‘I know you’re up there because I can see your telly’s on!’

Liza.

Kenny, Natalie, and the aircraft, faded away. He moved his eyes to the window. The curtains were open. The window was open. The TV flickered on an ad for shaving cream, the On Screen Man looking as if smoothing the creamy white peak over his jaw line was about to give him an orgasm.

‘Dominic!’ Liza’s voice snaked through the open window.

Crosswind barked louder, tail whirring.
Come on, boss! Get with the programme.
Dominic felt shards of wakefulness. Liza. His heart rate picked up. But he didn’t know what to say to her about The Stables and … He’d talk to her tomorrow, when he hadn’t been in the same clothes for so long. Put his alarm on and start a new day. Take his meds. Call her.

‘Dominic, I know you’re there and I’m going to stand here and shout until you let me in. I’ll wake up your neighbours.’

But they’d go to sleep again. He stretched, feeling some of the numbness of the last couple of days retreating as the stimulus of Liza’s voice needled through his head. He suddenly realised that he was cold.

‘I’ll call the police! I’ll tell them that I’m worried you’re not answering the door and your phone’s on voicemail!’

He pulled it out of his pocket. Screen blank. Must have run out of charge.

Silence. She’d probably gone. But Crosswind was still whining and wagging, plainly wanting Dominic to return to normal. He would, tomorrow, he promised himself.

Then Liza’s voice came again, louder, deliberately threatening. ‘Dominic, if you don’t let me in,
I’ll fetch Miranda
.’

Crap. Miranda had a key and would burst in and start looking after him, tutting and clucking. He pushed himself to the edge of the sofa and to his feet. He staggered slightly, but he’d shaken out of it.

He was back.

Crosswind clicking at his heels, he crossed to the intercom box beside the front door and pressed the red button that would release the lock downstairs. Opened the upstairs door. ‘Wait, Crosswind.’ The little dog took up station on the threshold, ears up, tail a blur, as Dominic retreated, switching on lights, turning off the television.

Then Liza was in the doorway, blue eyes big, rubbing Crosswind’s head as he bounced for attention, but her gaze on Dominic. Her coat was open over a dress that hugged her body, completing his journey to alertness. Wow, she was a hot package. Relief washed across her face and she started towards him, nearly tripping over Crosswind. ‘Why are you shivering?’

Lifting his hand to halt her before she got too close, he turned away to close the windows. ‘Bit cold. I’m going to shower and shave.’

The ghost of a smile. ‘Good. You look like hell.’

‘Thanks.’ Funny, because he was feeling better all the time. ‘Um … Crosswind probably needs a quick visit to the outside world.’

‘I’ll take him.’ She clicked her tongue and Crosswind, the tart, scurried off happily down the stairs, a flash of white woolly tail beside her spiky blue shoes.

Into his room, stripping off his clothes, turning the shower on high, letting the hot needles warm him, washing away the last rags of dream Natalie, Kenny and baby.

Everything was clear. Vivid. Real.

From his bedroom he heard Liza return, talking to Crosswind, moving around, the sound of water rushing from a tap. He shaved, not getting the absurd amount of pleasure On Screen Guy had seemed to, but feeling better, brighter. Back. Clean boxers, jeans, sweater. Clock. Twenty past ten. Presumably at night. OK. He could deal with that.

Liza looked up as Dominic reappeared. Apart from a hint of strain around his eyes and a lingering pallor, he looked normal. A different man to the one who had regarded her so warily, blearily, disconnectedly, when she’d burst in on him fifteen minutes ago. She gave him a smile. ‘I’m making coffee.’

He hesitated. ‘OK.’

Her turn to pause. ‘Is that wrong?’

‘I don’t usually take caffeine in the evening, because it affects my night. But I’ve slept so much it’ll probably be OK.’

She tipped both mugs of coffee down the sink. ‘I have jasmine tea in my bag.’

Alarm flickered across his face. ‘Better idea.’ From the fridge he took a bottle of wine, peeling off the dark green foil and rattling through a drawer for a corkscrew, extracting the cork with a moist pop. ‘Alcohol isn’t ideal, but it’s better than coffee.’ He took two wine glasses from a cupboard and half-filled each with pale gold liquid. He came closer and put one in her hand and clinked it with his.

She felt really strange, holding it as if she was doing something wrong – that smoking-behind-the-bike-sheds feeling. ‘Why?’

He guided her to the sofa with a warm hand between her shoulders. ‘It’s symbolic. If you drink it, you’re refusing to be controlled by Adam.’ He pulled her down beside him. ‘You’re not an alcoholic so one drink won’t hurt you, and you never need to drink again.’

She tried to negotiate. ‘I’ll drink it, if you tell me what’s going on with The Stables. The therapists are restless.’

He sipped. The wine shimmered. His eyes challenged.

‘Start with what you’ve been doing for the last couple of days,’ she prompted.

The wine lay on his lips. He licked it off.

Slowly she lifted her own glass. The wine tasted weird. Metallic. It slid down her throat, chilled yet with that alcoholic warmth.

Immediately, he rewarded her with information. ‘We went to Port Manor Hotel, where Natalie’s staying, and talked. The edited highlights are that they had a drunken one-night stand whilst I was trying to recover from pneumonia and reeling from what turned out to be narcolepsy, because Natalie wasn’t coping with the new Dominic. When she realised she was pregnant, she panicked, because she knew it must be Kenny’s. Didn’t want to be a mother, didn’t want a lifetime of passing the baby off as mine and, maybe belatedly, realised she didn’t want our relationship to end. Then I found out about the abortion and ended things anyway.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘I can’t believe that I didn’t pick up the real reason Natalie suddenly took against Kenny. It’s no wonder Kenny thought that I was too sleepy to notice. In fact, I noticed everything, but misinterpreted one fundamental element – the reason that Natalie didn’t want to be pregnant.’

He stopped. Looked expectantly at the glass of wine. Liza took another sip. It tasted more familiar this time.

He continued. ‘Kenny was devastated about the abortion, but he’d always had a thing for Natalie and despite it, and her being desperate to brush the one-night stand under the carpet, he still wanted to get together with her when we broke up. When she didn’t want that, he blamed me. And for her getting rid of the baby.’

He paused again and Liza took another mouthful of wine.

‘So he took the job in America, brooding on his injustices. When I asked if he was interested in helping me get the adventure centre off the ground, he couldn’t resist coming to see what it was all about. He hid his resentment and began looking for ways to get back at me. That he found a way to do that by using Natalie felt like poetic justice, I guess, with a last ditch possibility that he’d finally end up with Natalie, too, if she couldn’t get back with me.’

‘Wow.’ Absently, Liza took a sip of wine, voluntarily this time, rather than using it as currency to exchange for information. ‘And all the time he was pretending to be your friend.’

He picked up her hand from the sofa and laced his fingers lightly through hers. ‘I knew that he thought everything came easy to me and hard to him, which is why he liked it if he could take a girl off me. It must have seemed like a major triumph when he thought he’d taken Natalie off me, too.’ He spoke lightly, but she could feel his sadness through his skin. ‘He flew to New York when they were both living in America and she was feeling isolated by the end of the relationship. Being in a new country, away from all her friends, intensified that. She didn’t particularly like her new job and when Kenny said he happened to be in the city, could they just meet as friends, she was glad enough to. And he kept in touch, waiting to see where it might lead, I suppose.

‘To twist the knife he’d already stuck in my back – “his” finance for the counterbid would come from Natalie’s share of our house, as well as from the sale of his flat. He had his first meeting with Isabel Jones whilst I was at your sister’s wedding.