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Chapter 2

I wake up to find chinks of morning light edging underneath the drawn curtains. A glass of orange juice is on the nightstand and Maureen is bustling about in the corner of the room. The IV drip has magically disappeared, and I feel a lot more normal.Advertisement

“Hi, Maureen,” I say, my voice scratchy. “What time is it?” She turns around, her eyebrows raised. “You remember me?” “Of course,” I say in surprise. “We met last night. We talked.” “Excellent! That shows you've come out of posttraumatic amnesia. Don't look alarmed!” she adds, smiling. “It's a normal stage of confusion after a head injury.” Instinctively I put my hand up to my head and feel a dressing. Wow. I must really have whacked it on those steps. “You're doing well.” She pats my shoulder. “I'll get you some fresh orange juice.” There's a knock at the door. It opens and a tall, 22 slim woman in her fifties comes in. She has blue eyes, high cheekbones, and wavy, graying blond hair in straggly layers. She's wearing a red quilted waistcoat over a long printed dress and an amber necklace, and she's holding a paper bag. It's Mum. I mean, I'm ninety-?nine percent certain it is. I don't know why I'm even hesitating.

“The heating in this place!” she exclaims in her familiar thin, little-?girl voice. Okay, it's definitely Mum. “I feel quite faint!” She fans herself. “And I had such a stressful journey....” She glances toward the bed almost as an afterthought, and says to Maureen, “How is she?” Maureen smiles. “Lexi's much better today. Far less confused than she was yesterday.”

“Thank goodness for that!” Mum lowers her voice a fraction. “It was like talking to a lunatic yesterday, or some... retarded person.” “Lexi isn't a lunatic,” says Maureen evenly, “and she can understand everything you say.”

The truth is, I'm barely listening. I can't help staring at Mum. What's wrong with her? She looks different. Thinner. And kind of... older. As she comes nearer and the light from the window falls on her face, she looks even worse. Is she ill? No. I'd know about it if she was ill. But honestly, she seems to have aged overnight. I'll buy her some Creme de la Mer for Christmas, I resolve. “Here you are, darling,” she says in overly loud, clear tones. “It's me. Your mo-?ther.” She hands me the paper bag, which contains a bottle of shampoo, and drops a kiss on my cheek. As I inhale her familiar smell of dogs and tearose perfume, it's ridiculous, but I feel tears rising. I hadn't realized quite how marooned I felt. “Hi, Mum.” I reach to hug herbut my arms hit thin air. She's already turned away and is consulting her tiny gold watch. “I can't stay more than a minute, I'm afraid,” she says with a kind of tension, as though if she lingers too long the world will explode. “I'm due to see a specialist about Roly.” “Roly?”

“From Smoky's latest litter, darling.” Mum shoots me a glance of reproach. “You remember little Roly.” I don't know how Mum expects me to keep track of all her dogs' names. There's at least twenty of them and they're all whippets, and every time I go home there seems to be another one. We were always an animal-?free familyuntil the summer when I was seventeen. While on holiday in Wales, Mum bought a whippet puppy on a whim. And overnight it triggered this total mania.

I do like dogs. Kind of. Except when six of them jump up at you every time you open the front door. And whenever you try to sit down on a sofa or a chair, there's a dog on it. And all the biggest presents under the Christmas tree are for the dogs.

Mum has taken a bottle of Rescue Remedy out of her bag. She squeezes three drops onto her tongue, then breathes out sharply. “The traffic coming here was terrible,” she says. “People in London are so aggressive. I had a very unpleasant altercation with a man in a van.” “What happened?” I say, already knowing that Mum will shake her head. “Let's not talk about it, darling.” She winces, as though 24 being asked to recall her days of terror in the concentration camp. “Let's just forget about it.” Mum finds a lot of things too painful to talk about. Like how my new sandals could have got mangled last Christmas. Or the council's continual complaints about dog mess in our street. Or, to be honest, mess in general. In life. “I've got a card for you,” she says, rooting in her bag. “Where is it, now? From Andrew and Sylvia.” I stare at her, bemused. “Who?” “Andrew and Sylvia, next door!” she says, as though it's obvious. “My neighbors!” Her next-?door neighbors aren't called Andrew and Sylvia. They're Philip and Maggie. “Mum” “Anyway, they send their love,” she says, interrupting me. “And Andrew wants to ask your advice on skiing.” Skiing? I don't know how to ski. pqdm.com