Page 8 of The Love of Our Lives

Light again.

The metallic sound of something being unloaded somewhere outside. I’m warm and sleepy still, so I don’t immediately open my eyes.

Images float to me, running around in someone else’s body, trying on their clothes, wandering through the Meadows, a gorgeous guy across a hall. I roll on to my side and let out an audible sigh, as my eyes flutter slowly open.

Chipped wooden floor.

A clock lying on its face.

Hang on .

Eyes snapping open, I jolt bolt upright in the bed. The window, the blind I pulled down, this room.

It’s all the same.

Shit .

My heart is pounding and blood rushes in my ears. But how can this still be happening? I went to bed, then I woke up. I’m supposed to be out of this now. I’m supposed to be at the hospital, or at home, or just anywhere but here.

Launching myself out of bed, I feel my feet hit the cool wooden floor. I pick the clock up from the floor, stare at its face once again.

27 July now.

But still two years ago.

I walk over to the chest of drawers and stare into the mirror, only to see that face again, those features. My fingers go up to touch them, the soft cheeks, the neck, the long dark hair.

It’s all still there – this body, in this flat I’ve never seen before. And deep down, I know it’s not a dream.

Which means, I must be very sick right now: the other face in the mirror, this whole flat actually, is a symptom of my illness, or perhaps a side effect of the anti-rejection heart meds I’m on.

These are the only rational explanations now.

But oh god, this is still awful. My heart is pounding and I feel sick; outside of myself completely.

Dissociation – isn’t that what they call it?

I just need to get back home, then we can go to the hospital and explain what’s happening to me. The doctors will know what to do.

Pulling a blue raincoat off a peg, I grab the keys this time and stumble into the yellow trainers by the door. I feel vaguely guilty about stealing someone else’s clothing, but then I’m not even sure any of this is really happening. I’m still wearing the paint splattered dress I put on yesterday.

Before I can descend into a proper panic attack though, I head out of the flat and back down the tenement steps, making sure to slow down this time. Because if this isn’t a dream, then I was taking my life in my hands yesterday.

Outside on the street, I cast around for a taxi, throw my arm up high when I see one. The taxi driver glances at me briefly when I get in and I’m suddenly aware of how wired I must look. He probably thinks I’m crazy.

But then, maybe I am right now?

‘Primrose Street please,’ I say, before I’ve even sat down.

A furrow of the driver’s eyebrows in the rear-view mirror and the taxi speeds off.

More tenements flash by, pedestrians, shops, like everything is normal, and that overwhelming sickness comes over me again, that unrelenting panic.

I close my eyes, trying to stop the swirling feeling inside.

Make it stop .

Eventually I open my eyes again, the darkness is only making the nausea worse. I look down at my hands – still tanned. Still that lemony rose scent permeating everything.

I just don’t understand how this can have happened. My annual check was totally fine; I did everything perfectly. I managed to get to a year post-transplant with nothing going wrong.

So why would this happen now?

A flickering of red ahead. The amount on the taxi metre is going steadily up.

Shit.

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?’

‘Oh yes, your father used to love dancing, just like Cat.’

Silence stretches out, and I remember how Mum would tail off like that whenever she mentioned her.

I also remember this day, come to think of it – right before I got put on oxygen. Right before the ramp got put in.

This day has already happened, except, somehow, I’m back in it. And I’m here, and not there. I’m someone called Emily, and over there is Maggie.

This isn’t the meds.

‘You actually look quite pale,’ Mum is saying sharply now, all previous softness gone. ‘I’ll go and call Doctor Peterson, see if he’ll examine you.’

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ the other voice wheezes. ‘It was probably that walk earlier that got me. I’ll go get some water.’

‘No, I’ll get it,’ Mum says firmly, and a second later I hear the crunching of gravel.

My stomach drops, as I realise I’m beside the kitchen window. I know I need to move but something in the kitchen makes me stop.

Mum’s calendar.

With a sick feeling in my stomach, I peer through the glass at it – the twenty-seventh of July, two years ago.

Same as the clock.

A movement inside makes me duck down, and then Mum’s footsteps on the tiles come, quick and light.

I start to breathe hard. After a few moments, I glance inside again to see the familiar form of her at the sink, her back to me now, and I want to look away, want to scream at the horror of this all, but I can’t help staring.

‘What’s happening?’ I whisper.

She looks up sharply and I dip down again. Because I can’t cope with this; can’t process any of it.

Keeping low to the ground, I crawl back along the pathway until the extension ends and I can stand up again. Then I get up and walk quickly away down the drive.

I have no idea where I’m going now, or what I’ll do. All I do know is that I have to leave.

Feeling lost and confused a while later, I find myself drifting off down to my favourite spot on the beach, where I come to process things sometimes.

It’s the only other place I can think to go, because there’s something about the beach, about the millions of grains of sand and the crashing waves, that’s timeless and soothing.