minutes’ drive away. I agreed to meet him there in half an hour. However, once the phone was down and the feeling of euphoria I had felt at the sound of his voice had started to wear off, I was assuaged by feelings of guilt. Poor Lauren—or, rather, poor Lauren’s family, I thought. Suppose my theory was right and this wasn’t a dream? Her children would be waiting to visit her and wondering why their mummy wouldn’t wake up. On the other hand, I had no wish to jump back into her shoes any sooner than I had to. Apart from the children, there was Grant of course. He seemed like a nice caring husband, but I was not his wife and I could see that things could get very complicated there. If I could postpone the moment when I was back in her body by an hour or two, then that suited me just fine, especially if she was going to be allowed home today. I wasn’t looking forward to stepping into that minefield one little bit.
Anyway, I reasoned, as I brushed mascara onto my eyelashes and finished slapping lip-gloss onto my lips, this was all simply a wild theory. I would probably tumble into bed tonight and dream about something completely different. And even if I was somehow right, then I didn’t owe them anything. If their mother was dead, then that was very sad, but why was it my responsibility? I’d never asked for any of this, had I?
The pub was noisy and crowded when I pushed through the front door, and I was beginning to wonder how I would find Dan when he appeared at my side. ‘Shall we go through to the other bar?’ he shouted over the din, and I nodded, following him into the much quieter lounge bar, where he grabbed us a couple of seats at a small round table.
‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.
‘I’d like a still mineral water, please.’
His eyebrow went up, but he didn’t try to change my mind, as happened frequently when I was out with friends. I’d stopped drinking alcohol in any quantity a few months previously, not for any highbrow reasons, but because I didn’t like the feeling of being out of control. Now, with the lightning strike and my present state of confusion, I decided it might be more sensible, for the present at least, to abstain from drinking altogether.
Dan returned with my water and a pint of lager for himself, and we sat looking at one another warily across the small divide afforded by the table, sipping nervously at our drinks.
‘You’re very pretty when you’re clean and dry,’ he said at last, sitting back and licking a moustache of froth off his top lip with his tongue.
‘You brush up quite well yourself,’ I replied with a smile.
We sat in silence for a moment, contemplating each other over our glasses.
‘I’d really like to get to know you better.’ He blurted it out as if he’d been unable to prevent his thoughts escaping him.
I must have looked rather apprehensive about the unexpected remark, because he grinned widely and took my hand in his.
‘I mean, I’ll tell you something about my life, and you can tell me something about yourself.’
‘You start then,’ I said, trying not to show that it felt as though his touch was setting my hand on fire.
‘Okay. Well, for a start I’m not married,’ he said, answering the question I’d been itching to know. ‘I was engaged to a girl for a while a year or so ago, but she ran off with a friend of mine.’ He took a swig of his lager and looked me in the eye. ‘Your turn.’
‘I lived with a guy for a while, but it didn’t work out. I moved out and got a place of my own two years ago. I live alone now, apart from Frankie of course.’
‘My elderly father lives with me,’ he said. ‘He’s an old rogue, but his heart’s in the right place. You’d like him.’
‘I’m sure I would.’ I yawned suddenly and clamped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, especially after what happened…’
‘Come on,’ he said, downing his pint and pulling me to my feet. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you out this evening, especially as you struggled in to work today. You would have been perfectly within your rights to have stayed in bed all day.’
I longed to tell him that bed was the last place I wanted to be. That was the place where I was thrown into a bizarre alternate world, but that information wasn’t something I thought would go down particularly well on our first date.
He walked me to my car, and I apologised again for having to leave almost before our evening had begun.
‘I’ll ring again in a few days, when you’ve had a chance to recover properly,’ he said, giving me a chaste peck on the cheek. ‘Go on, get yourself home. What you need is a good night’s sleep.’
It was gone ten o’clock when I clambered at last into bed and snuggled down with Frankie on the floor beside me in her basket. I was so tired, I didn’t even have time to fret about what might lie ahead of me. My last thought was that the nightmare might all be over by now. Perhaps the lightning had, after all, induced hallucinatory dreams, and that being the case, maybe I would never have to be Lauren again.
As it turned out, there was no such luck.
I felt myself being shaken awake by Dr Shakir, who was standing over me looking extremely concerned.
‘How do you feel, Lauren?’ he asked as I opened my eyes.
‘Fine,’ I replied groggily. My head felt as if I was waking from the deepest of sleeps, my eyes were having difficulty opening, and I was sure my lids were puffed up like a pig’s.
‘We have been worried about you. Do you remember who you are?’
I contemplated for the briefest of seconds telling him that I was Jessica Taylor, but decided against it almost immediately. What was happening to me was the result of no medical condition Dr Shakir would ever have encountered. There seemed no point in doing anything other than playing along with this strange game in which I found myself once again.
‘I’m Lauren Richardson,’ I said. ‘I’m married with four children.’
‘Lauren, sweetheart!’ came a voice from the other side of the room. ‘You’ve got your memory back!’
I turned my head to see Grant advancing on me, eyes bright. ‘We—the doctors and I—thought you’d gone into a coma! We thought we were losing you all over again.’ And, to my horror, my husband gathered me in his arms and began to sob uncontrollably.
Dr Shakir snapped his fingers at Nurse Sally. ‘Fetch Mr Richardson a cup of hot sweet tea, would you, nurse?’
‘Grant,’ I said from somewhere beneath his shirt, ‘you’re suffocating me.’
‘Don’t do that again, my love,’ he said, releasing me, but taking hold of both my hands as he perched on the edge of the bedside chair. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you left us.’
I stared with some embarrassment into the tear-stained face of this man who was gazing at me with such love. I told myself to think him as if he were the husband of a good friend. I knew that if I were an onlooker and not the object of his love I might have been moved by his obvious devotion. The knowledge quelled my instinctive feelings of alarm and I found a small spark of compassion. Grant was not a strong man.
‘I’ve
