Dream a Little Dream (9 page)

‘I can wait.’

It took her only half an hour to prepare her treatment room for the morning – she and Fenella were working this Saturday. Dominic did stuff on his phone as she moved towels from the washer to the dryer and put more in to wash, wiped her dispensers, laid out fresh towels on the couch, folded the rest into her cupboard and fetched her coat, ready to drive him back to Middledip.

Outside, he shoehorned himself into her Smart car with exaggerated difficulty. ‘Nice golf buggy.’

She sighed as she strapped herself in. ‘When I can pop into spaces other cars can’t, the smartarse remarks tend to stop.’

He grinned. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to hit a nerve. It’s, um, compact. But don’t let Ethan see it or he might put it in his toy box.’

Even if she’d been driving a stretch limousine, space in the car park beside The Three Fishes wasn’t an issue so early in the evening. The bar was more than half-empty and Dominic led the way through it, under the arch of rust-coloured stone to the dining area, where it was even quieter. Just one other couple looked up from their menus to say hello. Liza noticed the woman’s eyes on Dominic as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the back of his seat.

Tubb, whose mouth turned down at the corners when he smiled, not that he smiled much, brought the menus and took their order, and Liza waited until he’d delivered tall glasses of water to the table before demanding, ‘How do you think you’ve dropped me in it?’

Dominic’s eyebrow curled in a frown. ‘A sleep attack was trying to get me and I somehow repeated what you’d said about him needing new ideas. He pounced on it, and said that I’d obviously been talking to you. Which was true. I didn’t come up with a way to deny it and he … vented a little.’

‘Oh.’ She absorbed the information. ‘He did seem unjustifiably angry today.’

‘Sorry. Again.’ He smiled. ‘I seem to have the knack for making things awkward for you. Would it help if I talked to him?’

Sinking down in her seat, Liza made a face. ‘Relations between Nicolas and I have been deteriorating. I think he’s a stick-in-the-mud, he thinks I’m ridiculous. And, today, I thought he was a sweaty, annoying little tit and he thought I was a fluffy, airheaded, pie-in-the-sky, too-big-for-her-boots little blonde with big ideas.’

Laughter shook its way slowly up his body, making his eyes dance. ‘Nobody held back?’

‘Not much.’ She smiled, reluctantly.

‘Can you continue to work together?’

‘Immediate short term, we’ll have to.’ She hesitated, wondering how much to tell him and, still sore from Nicolas’s scorn, half-suspecting her plans
were
pie in the sky. ‘I’m not sure how things are going to work out.’ She nodded at his drink: water, slices of lemon and lime bobbing at the top with the ice, like hers. ‘Good choice. Water will help you detox.’

He pulled a face. ‘That’s only because you’re breathing down my neck. What’s your excuse? I would have thought that after a bad day in the treatment room you would’ve been glad of a drink.’

She picked up her spoon and checked how she looked upside down. ‘I’m driving.’ And then, truthfully, ‘I stopped.’

‘You’re really that much of a health-freak?’

‘Not at all. It’s a control issue.’

‘Oh?’ Curiosity laced his voice. But then his steak arrived and he addressed himself to the business of disposing of ten ounces of beef and a potato-field worth of chips, so she allowed herself to relax as he chatted about Miranda’s admirable whole-food, wholemeal, additive-free dietary philosophies and his corresponding yearning for meat, fat and sugar, preferably with a side order of salt.

‘I’m not vegetarian but basic healthy eating is good for you and for your energy levels,’ Liza observed. ‘Your steak’s good protein, and so would the roast veg be, if you weren’t just leaving it on your plate. But look at that mound of chips! Carbs unlimited. After the initial glucose peak, your blood sugar will plummet and that’s when you might feel sleepy.’

He looked amused. ‘So I should eat my veg, like my mum always told me?’

She shrugged. ‘All the veg and about one-quarter of the potatoes would contribute to a stable blood sugar and, therefore, energy level.’

But, by the time she’d drunk jasmine tea and he’d drunk more water with the long-suffering air of the beer-deprived, it was she who was smothering yawns. ‘I’ve had it. Want a lift home?’

‘But—’ he began. Then, after a beat, ‘OK, thanks.’ Laughter lurked in his eyes. Probably coming up with a new miniature car joke, she thought, pulling her jacket on crossly.

They hurried across the dark car park, wind buffeting and icy rain prickling. But it wasn’t until they’d gained the safety of her car and she was clicking herself into her seatbelt, saying, ‘You’ll have to remind me where Miranda lives,’ that she discovered what he thought was so funny.

‘Great End.’

She halted. Spearing him with a glare, she twisted the key in the ignition and flipped on the wipers, dropped the clutch and shoved the car in gear. ‘Great End …
there
?’ She nodded at the long, narrow cul-de-sac diagonally across the road.

He made a show of peering through the windscreen into the windy darkness. ‘That’s it.’ He threw back his head to laugh at her exasperation. ‘It’s the kind of distance that golf buggies are designed for, right?’

Fury buzzed suddenly through her veins, shorting the circuit to common sense and reason. ‘What
is
this? National Treat Liza Like a Stupid Blonde Day?’ Boiling blood floored her accelerator and his reply was shoved back down his throat with a satisfying, ‘Oof!’ as the ‘golf buggy’ rocketed to the exit, engine protesting. Slamming on the brakes, she performed a scant one-second check each way for traffic, stamped again on the accelerator, catapulted across the road to two-wheel it into Great End – and found herself facing a Range Rover in the middle of the road. ‘Oh
fuck!
’

Hands clenching around the steering wheel, she mashed the brake pedal, yanking the wheel violently to the left towards a shrinking gap that she feared was too skinny even for a Smart car.

She screamed.

The car jerked and stalled.

With an angry
blaaaaaah
of its horn, the Range Rover wheeled slowly past, its doors almost touching Liza’s window.

Sudden silence.

Liza felt herself begin to shake as the adrenaline that had flash-flooded her system gurgled away in disgrace.

Slowly, Dominic unpeeled himself from the dashboard, his expression unreadable in the darkness. ‘You OK?’

‘Of course,’ she began, hoping that the thundering of her heart would soon stop making her feel sick. Then she noticed him rubbing his forearms. ‘You weren’t wearing your seat belt!’ she said, horrified. ‘I’m
so
sorry. I can’t believe I did anything that childish.’

He laughed, albeit breathlessly. ‘I suppose I ought to be complaining bitterly about being thrown against the dash, the door and the seat in a five-second journey. And that I saw my life flash before me when we were careering head on towards that Range Rover. But it was fun.’

‘Fun?’ She’d never felt more mortified. ‘It was a stupid overreaction to your stupid jokes.’

He was still rubbing his arms, so they must really be stinging. ‘But at least I know I’m awake.’ His grin glinted in the light from Great End’s only streetlamp. ‘I ought to apologise for pissing you off but I’m actually tempted to go for a goodnight kiss, just to see whether I can handle the flame-breathing, demonic goddess of passion it might unleash.’

She giggled. But her heart was still bouncing off the walls of her chest and, somehow, the giggle broke. And became a sob. Appalled, she clapped a hand across her mouth.

Dominic pulled back. ‘Wow, it was a joke. I’m not going to try anything. I don’t hit on a woman when she’s down.’

She swallowed. ‘It’s not—’ But post-adrenaline-rush tears prickled her eyes.

Dominic slid one arm cautiously about her shoulders. ‘You’re shivering. Come indoors, I’ll make you a hot drink.’

She shook her head. In fact, she shook all over. ‘I can’t go in like this. Miranda will think something awful has happened and insist on ringing my sister.’

‘That’s true. Miranda’s been in mother-hen mode over me, since narcolepsy came into my life, so she’ll cluck all over you, too, given half the chance.’ He hesitated. ‘
Has
something awful happened? You seem on an emotional hair trigger.’

She half-laughed. ‘Not recently.’ She shook harder, all the tension and guilt of the past year apparently awoken by her stupid mad dash.

‘Shall I drive you home?’

She wanted to chirp, ‘I’ll be fine!’ But she was vibrating as if her muscles would soon shake from her bones. ‘I’m not usually a wuss.’ She shivered. ‘But I’ve turned to jelly.’ Jellyfish. Blindly stinging, uncaring at inflicting hurt. And she’d just almost got both of them hurt. Badly. Sickness swam over her in waves as she unfastened her seatbelt and he jumped out and ran around the little car, opened the door and waited as she slid over to the passenger seat, taking her seat belt and clicking it into place for her. Then he dropped the driver’s seat down and back before taking her place.

Then she remembered. ‘But you’re not supposed to be driving!’

‘Nope.’ He put the car into first, nosed into a nearby drive that she supposed must be Miranda’s, reversed around and drove to the mouth of Great End. ‘My licence has been suspended. Where do I go?’

‘But won’t you get in trouble?’

‘We both will, if we’re caught. Left or right?’

‘Left.’ She directed him down Main Road and right into The Cross. It took only three minutes. They drew up outside number 7 and she didn’t object when he eased her out of the car as if she were ill, took her key and opened her front door. Still absurdly gripped by post-meltdown shakes, she let him deposit her on her sofa. He draped his coat over her, and she huddled and trembled while he clattered around in her kitchen and presently returned with two steaming mugs. ‘I couldn’t find proper tea or coffee, so it’s that jasmine stuff.’

She nodded. Her eyes felt squinched half-shut and gritty. ‘I don’t do much caffeine. I’m sorry. I’m never like this.’

Dominic frowned as he slid the mugs onto the table. ‘What’s wrong with caffeine? You’re still shivering.’ He dropped down onto the sofa beside her and slowly, delicately, as if giving her plenty of opportunity to object, put his arm around her.

Gratefully, Liza shared his body heat. ‘Dull skin, high blood pressure, headaches. I’m
honestly
never like this.’

‘It also keeps you alert. Want me to get your sister or one of your friends?’

‘Cleo’s got enough on her hands with the kids. And my friends live in Peterborough.’

‘I can’t leave you on your own like this. Are you ill?’

‘No, it’s emotional.’ Her teeth chattered.

‘You don’t get emotional for no reason.’ He waited, as if leaving a blank for her to fill in. But she remained silent. His voice dropped. ‘I’m a good listener. Sometimes crap has to come out.’

He was warm and comforting and she let her head fall onto his shoulder, her arms sliding naturally around him. It seemed a long time since she’d nestled against the bulk of a man’s body. ‘Sometimes it stays hidden because it’s really ugly.’

‘True.’ He paused. ‘How about I tell you mine? It might be uglier than yours.’

‘Bet it’s not.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ His arm tensed. ‘I left my girlfriend the day she phoned and told me she’d had a miscarriage.’

PWNsleep message board:

Tenzeds: N was diagnosed at a really bad time for me. It changed everything.

Nightjack: There’s a good time? *Ironic laugh*

Sleepingmatt: I think he’s got a point. If other things in your life are good and you have support, it’s got to be easier than if not.

Tenzeds: ‘Supportive’ my partner was not.

Girlwithdreams: That’s harsh. I hate it that a person would be like that.

Dominic’s chest rose and fell on a sigh. ‘Natalie’s career in marketing was going well and we didn’t mean to start a baby – in fact, we were both shocked to find ourselves the creators of living proof that no contraception’s foolproof. She actually tried to hide the pregnancy, but morning sickness gave her away. Once I got over the shock, I was pleased about the baby, but it threw her for a loop.’

‘Oh no.’ His sweatshirt was soft beneath her skin but, under it, she could feel his muscles working against her temple as he swallowed.

‘It came after we’d been through a patch so sticky we could walk on ceilings.’ He smiled, crookedly. ‘I guess we kissed and made up too thoroughly.’ His voice became husky. ‘Natalie wouldn’t have been a stay-at-home mum, not like Miranda, but other couples seem to combine family and careers. I didn’t know it was narcolepsy at that point and was still trying to get well enough to return to work but we could have afforded a nanny after Natalie’s maternity leave … Anyway, she was all over the place. Said she felt invaded, a host to a parasite, and how was I going to do my share with a baby? I might fall asleep if I was in charge, or be impossible to wake when the baby cried during the night. And I couldn’t reassure her, because she might have been right.’ She felt him wince. ‘She’d never wanted to get married but I suggested it again, anyway. It didn’t help. Things were causing arguments that never had before – suddenly she had issues with Kenny, who I’ve been mates with since school. I know Kenny’s a bit of a one-off but she’d always seemed fine with him. And she’d say things like, “Dominic, please get better,” as if I just wasn’t trying. When I dozed off during cosy activities like watching a DVD on a rainy Sunday she said I must find her boring. I asked her to just wake me but she kept letting me sleep, then being upset about it.’ Thoughtfully, he added, ‘It’s difficult to explain, but her not waking me felt like a kind of betrayal. She knew that I was massively frustrated about wasting my life on unscheduled sleep, but she not only let me do that, she made me feel guilty about it. Normally a reasonable and articulate person, she became irrational, and unwilling to talk about why.

‘But I tried. Really focused on her. She calmed down a bit and I began to hope that she was over the shock of the pregnancy.’

‘Like it had been denial hormones, or something?’

He hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Is there such a thing?’

‘I don’t know, either. But my sister managed to deny her first pregnancy for months, so I suppose there must be.’

‘Maybe, because she did begin to say that she wanted to find a way to work things out. Then she went off to a conference in Manchester – and rang to tell me that she’d miscarried. I felt sick.’ His shoulder rose and fell on a sigh. ‘I was concerned for her, especially as she sounded really odd. I assumed she was feeling terrible, maybe out of guilt for not wanting the baby. But she brushed away any suggestion that she should have stayed in hospital, or that I should go up there. “It’s not as if you can drive, is it?” she said. But I got on a train.’ He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I found her at the Marriott in Deansgate, exactly where she’d told me she would be – but the conference facilities were all listed as in use by other organisations, not hers, and I didn’t see any of her colleagues around.

‘Her best friend, Virginia, was with her in a room with two double beds, though. And it’s
so
not Natalie, sharing a room. Virginia said that “the hospital” had told Natalie not to be alone for a night or two. But when I asked the name of the hospital they just looked at each other.’ His voice hardened. ‘I got curious about why Virginia was so conveniently in Manchester, as she’s a vet who lives in Islington, and Natalie hid behind wounded dignity, saying that I obviously didn’t trust her and so there was no point talking about it.’

He took a long, deep breath, making Liza’s head lift. ‘It was a nightmare; Natalie stuttering and stammering and Virginia trying to head me off really obviously with exclude-the-man remarks like, “Do you really think you ought to be badgering a woman who’s just been through something so major?” and refusing to leave, even when I swore at her. Then a nasty suspicion began to dawn on me and I asked Natalie if she’d got rid of our baby. She was like a statue. Just wouldn’t answer. Or couldn’t, I suppose, if she hadn’t expected me to turn up and thought she still had time to get her story straight. I saw panic in her eyes, and my knees … I don’t know if you’re clear about how cataplexy works? It comes with emotion. It had only been a sort of fuzzy weakness in my legs before when I laughed or got angry, but this time I felt as if my knees had disappeared. My head tipped back off my neck and I hit the deck. That was when I cracked my shoulder.

‘Natalie and Virginia were
watching
. They just stood there, Natalie crying and Virginia wringing her hands. I couldn’t speak, I had to stay down and wait for my strength to wash back in.

‘When I was operative again, I rang a guy on Natalie’s team in Hertford. I knew him pretty well and so I asked if Natalie was at the conference. He started to say, “What conference?” then got all flustered as he realised that there probably was a reason that I was asking him, not Natalie, and did a last minute, inadequate, job of trying to cover for her.’ He laughed, humourlessly. ‘I ended the call and asked Natalie to explain and—’ he cleared his throat – ‘she just carried on crying, and Virginia stared out of the window as if waiting politely for me to leave. So that’s what I did. My knees had come back and my head was on straight and I got back on the train and went home to pack. I moved into a motel for a while then, as Kenny was starting a contract in the States, I sublet his place in Royston. Natalie did ask a few times if we could meet and talk, but I couldn’t see much point, if she’d aborted my baby.

‘Ironically, it was the scene with Natalie that allowed the consultant neurologist to confidently diagnose the narcolepsy, because not all narcoleptics have cataplexy but all cataplexy sufferers are narcoleptics. So then I had to cope with the shock and what narcolepsy meant. No more career as a controller. Driving licence not coming back for a while. Parents bewildered. On top of that, there was no more baby.’ He swallowed. ‘Losing Natalie became only a part of it.’

Liza tightened her arms around him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Yeah. It sucked.’

His body heat had chased away most of her shivers but she wriggled her arms through the sleeves of his coat so that she was wearing it back to front, and passed him one of the cups of jasmine tea. He sniffed it cautiously, before sipping, and made a not-as-horrible-as-I-thought-it-would-be face. She settled back between an arm of Dominic and an arm of sofa. ‘Is there any feeling left between you?’

He shrugged. ‘When she realised I’d really left her she seemed totally shocked. Said that splitting up wasn’t what she wanted and she knew that she’d handled my illness and her pregnancy badly. But she had to admit that she’d had an abortion, so there was no going back, for me. And I doubt she would’ve stuck around when I got my diagnosis, anyway. Not once she knew it isn’t the kind of thing you get over.’ He sipped, pensively. ‘How would she have hacked having a boyfriend who had gone from normal to disabled, a good job to no job? She was more about what it meant for her than what it meant for me. At work, there are laws to protect you, but there’s no legislation to say your partner’s got to deal with your bad diagnosis.’

‘Ouch,’ said Liza, sympathetically.

‘Our house was sold. I got on with learning about living with narcolepsy, developing my sleep hygiene routine, taking drugs, being a zombie most mornings and folding up under sleep attacks during the day. If it wasn’t such a bad joke, I’d say it was a nightmare. And I get those, too.’ He glanced down at her as she pulled his coat away to let some air in, the tea warming her from the inside. ‘You OK in there? I can move into a chair if you want.’

She discovered that she didn’t want. ‘Not unless you do. It’s sort of comforting to share the sofa, to be honest. A break from relationships isn’t so much about no sex but about no physical contact, except cuddles from Cleo and the kids. Which are not so much reassuring as consolatory,’ she added, honestly.

Gently, he looped his arm back around her. ‘So would this be OK?’

‘If you don’t mind?’ she answered, politely.

‘Not at all. You could even move onto my lap, for a more complete cuddle experience?’

‘Don’t spoil it!’ She frowned in mock reproof. Her voice sounded odd in her head with her ear squashed against him. She closed her eyes, listening to the comforting beat of his body. And suddenly she was talking. Telling him what had happened to her. ‘I was in a relationship with a man called Adam. He was a really good guy. A good boyfriend. Or he would have been for someone else. Not me.’

‘Why not for you?’

A sigh began in the arches of her feet and heaved out through her chest. ‘I’m just a crap girlfriend. Adam did everything right. He loved me and made me feel special. He put me first, he bought me presents, he was thoughtful in bed. He was everything I felt as if I ought to want. Cleo had this awesome relationship – in her own peculiar way – with Justin, and I wanted to feel that way about Adam, too.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘I tried.’

‘You shouldn’t have to try.’

‘No,’ she agreed, despondently. ‘But I thought that if I could make myself into the kind of woman who would be happy with Adam, then I
would
be happy with Adam. But there were a lot of differences between us. I’m not close to my parents because they’re very much absorbed in their own little world, but he has this huge family: three brothers, two sisters, at least five-hundred-and-forty grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It meant a superabundance of family occasions.’

‘Don’t all families have gatherings of the clan? I don’t have siblings but I do have a load of cousins, aunts and uncles, and I regularly have to put on a tie and turn up at a wedding or christening.’

She struggled to express the scale of the issue. ‘But Adam’s mum, Ursula, and all of Ursula’s sisters, throw every one of their children a proper birthday party, every year. Not just when they’re twenty-one or something.
Every
year – and that’s before they even get started on engagements, weddings and christenings. Ursula Überhostess is a vicious competitor. A fortune goes on balloons and streamers, work-of-art handmade cakes and enough homemade food to save a starving nation.’

‘Sounds a bit full on,’ he admitted.

‘I began to feel like the Queen, obliged to dress up, turn up and smile for hours, whether I liked the company or not. So I generally drank my way through it. And Ursula would take it upon herself to “have a little word with me” about how “bubbly” I was getting. The more little words she had with me, the more I’d bubble. Every time a party invitation arrived, I’d say to Adam, “Why don’t you go to this one without me?” and he’d be so hurt and dismayed that I’d go through the whole torture again.’

‘Definitely girlfriend abuse.’

She laughed, unwillingly. ‘I suppose it sounds as if I’m making a lot out of nothing? But I felt I was being stuffed into a straightjacket of other people’s expectations, and that Adam never saw the real me – just what he thought his girlfriend should be. Anyway, along comes Adam’s thirtieth birthday party. Because it was a “special” birthday, Ursula rented a hall and planned a big bash, mostly populated by Adam’s enormous family, and I really tried to conform. But while Adam got deep into doing the rellies thing, I got—’

‘“Bubbly?”’

‘So bubbly I could hardly stagger about.’ Trying not to let her voice waver, she told him about the helium balloons and how the duck voice had seemed so hilarious. Until Adam’s proposal. And her brutal refusal. ‘… and the whole room went deathly quiet. Then some people began to laugh, as if they knew I could only be joking.

‘But I wasn’t. They realised the depths of Adam’s humiliation and there was this horrible shocked silence, instead.’

Liza closed her eyes against the images of Adam lurching to his feet, death-white, eyes enormous with pain. Stumbling down the steps, blundering through his party guests. The old familiar cold corkscrew of misery twisted her insides.

Dominic held her a little tighter. ‘Public proposals are manipulative because they’re difficult to refuse.’

‘But, unfortunately for him, I didn’t find refusal difficult,’ she pointed out, sadly. ‘He ran off. Rochelle and Angie got me home and I rang him …’ Tears began to slide down her face. ‘I told him how sorry I was and then, well it seemed like the right thing – I said that I thought we were probably over.’ She was drowning in boiling tears, now, choking, sniffing, forcing the words out. ‘Then Adam slashed his wrist.’