Listen, it wasn’t as if this was the first time I’d ever woken up and not known where I was. I mean, six months ago, that happened to me regularly. At least this time, I recognised the guy lying next to me.
But waking up and being surprised by surroundings you don’t recognise at once happens to all of us from time to time. You need a few seconds to reorient yourself. “Ah, we’re at my mum’s,” or “Of course, we crashed out at Dixie’s.”
I waited for revelation to spring itself upon me, but nothing happened, so I ran through what I did know. I was in a large, comfortable bed, with clean sheets that smelled strongly of fabric softener. There was a window to my left and daylight shone through the curtains. The décor was modern and smart.
And, reassuringly, Josh was next to me.
“Mum! Dad!”
The shout beyond the bedroom door startled Josh. His eyes sprung open. I watched him working through the same thought process I did. Where am I? I don’t know where this place is—before arriving at the same mental destination—the I don’t know where I am one.
The door burst open, and a tall, gangly teenage boy flung himself into the room, coming to rest at the foot of our bed, hopping in agitation from foot to foot.
“Guys! C’mon, get up! You’ve got to take me to the auditions!”
I sat up in bed, modestly clutching the duvet to my chest, inadequately covered by a thin nightie, and exchanged an incredulous glance with Josh. He returned the glance in full, but his incredulity mingled with intense curiosity, and I groped for my glasses, thankfully left, as usual, on the table next to my bedside.
The boy in front of us undoubtedly looked like both of us. Curly-haired (we’re both cursed with frizzy mops), blue-green eyes (my boyfriend), a wide face (me) and approximately 6ft 2ins (me too).
Kidding. The height was all Josh.
“Five minutes, guys!” The teenager grabbed hold of my foot and waggled it, and the unfamiliar touch sent a jolt through me. I needed to concentrate hard on not jerking my foot away.
“We’ll see you downstairs then,” I said. He gave both of us an intense look, a ‘hurry and get up’ glare and left the bedroom in roughly the same way he’d entered it.
“What the f–”
“Let’s just deal with the immediate,” I said. “We’ve got to take this guy somewhere. What do you think he’s called?”
Josh shrugged elaborately. “I don’t f–”
I cut him off. “Language! The audition guy might hear you!”
Josh looked at me once more in disbelief. “But this is just so–” he stopped abruptly, staring at me. “Lottie, you look funny.”
“What, funny ha ha or just bad?” I asked, removing my glasses so he could stare at my face properly.
“Shit, to be honest. You look like you, but not like you.”
I put my glasses back on. “You do too. I mean, like you, but not like you.”
Our fancy bedroom had an en-suite. I dived into it, cutting him off. The image that looked back at me in the bathroom mirror made me put my hand to my mouth in fright. It was me, but I looked like one of those ‘before’ versions in a Botox ad. I had wrinkles around my eyes and deep lines going from mouth to nose. What the hell had happened to us? Josh joined me by the mirror, staring at himself in similar shock and we turned to each other.
“What happened last night? And where are we? I don’t recognise this place.” Josh prodded the lines on his forehead in disbelief. “I need to stop drinking.”
“Roger that,” I nodded, “but we still need to get this guy to his audition. He seems to know us.” I picked up the pink toothbrush beside the sink, and Josh shrugged. “Can you see any clothes out there? We’ll need to hurry up.”
See, it was the people-pleaser in me. I didn’t want to let …whoever he was down.
When I emerged from the en-suite, Josh was dressed. He pointed at the large, built-in wardrobe at the end of the room. A quick glimpse at him revealed he was wearing what looked like smart-casual clothing: chinos and a dark blue sweater over a polo shirt. Expensive, if a bit middle-aged, like something someone’s dad would think was trendy.
I opened the wardrobe door and found the same transformation had happened to my clothing. It had that up-market smart-casual look to it too, with brands I didn’t usually wear or buy, mostly because I can’t afford anything more than twenty pounds for any one item of clothing. Inside this wardrobe was what looked like the kind of clothes people who do important jobs wear: pencil skirts, cashmere cardigans, silk shirts and tapered trousers.
Now dressed, the two of us opened the bedroom door cautiously. The house had that unfamiliar smell of other people’s homes. It took a few minutes for my olfactory senses to adjust.
“Where do we go?” Josh whispered.
I pointed to the left. “That way?”
Josh looked at me and shrugged back. “Son!” he yelled, and the expression he shared with me was still disbelief, but mixed with something else. Fatherly pride perhaps? “We’re ready! Where are you?”
Josh high-fived me. I slapped his palm back. It was an excellent demonstration of initiative.
“Kitchen!” came the shout back. We turned right towards the sound, feeling our way gingerly along the unfamiliar corridors, painted in a goes-with-everything tasteful colour paint manufacturers would describe as ‘honeysuckle’.
“Stairs!” I exclaimed, and we hurried down them—wooden, natch—following the sound, and the smell of toast.
There was a picture on one of the landing walls, a wedding photo taken roughly twenty years earlier judging by the hairstyles and outfits. The bride in the picture looked like me, and the groom was Josh. Something stirred in my head. It felt disconcerting.
I nudged Josh in the ribs: “Yikes, I’m wearing a meringue!” but his face had taken on an ‘I can’t handle any more weirdness’ expression. I looked at the picture one more time and decided to park the image somewhere else for the time being.
The kitchen was exactly the kind of kitchen my mother would swoon over. There was an American-style fridge-freezer in tasteful black, a range cooker with five hobs and the kind of washing machine that looks as if it picked the clothes off your bedroom floor, washed them, dried them and hung them back up neatly in your wardrobe for you. Naturally, there was a dishwasher and microwave too.
Parked in the middle was a kitchen island; to the back a large table and beautiful copper pots and pans hung on hooks, making the place look like the sort of kitchen a celebrity chef would love. Whoever we were in this life, we appeared to be very wealthy.
There were two or three childish paintings and pictures on the fridge door. I assumed I’d held on to these examples in tribute to the child prodigy in front of me, so I searched them for useful clues. A childish signature scrawl, for instance, that might give me an idea of audition boy’s name.
No such luck.
The guy in question was standing at the kitchen island. “Here,” he said and pushed a flask of coffee into Josh’s hands. He buttered a thick slice of toast and cut it in two, shoving one piece into my hand and the other piece into Josh’s mouth, which was hanging open once more.
I noted that he put marmite on my half and blackberry jam on Josh’s—exactly what we would have chosen ourselves. Josh chewed his piece furiously. Perhaps he was hoping that toast and jam would have a therapeutic effect on blood sugar levels and take him from total confusion to clarity.
Audition boy dangled a pair of keys in front of his face.
“C’mon! C’mon! Man, I can’t wait to pass my test, and then I won’t need to rely on you guys.”
He moved towards the door. Dazed, we followed him to a huge garage.
“Do you think the car has got satnav?” Josh whispered to me.
“Bound to,” I said. “We seem to be very middle-class.”
The three of us got into the car, which was indeed a RAV4, which suited our new, wealthy status. “So,” Josh’s hands gripped the unfamiliar steering wheel, “remind me where these auditions are?”
“Merin Court Arena, duh! We’ve only got twenty minutes to get there.” Audition boy rolled his eyes.
The satnav delivered us to Merin Court within twenty minutes as the roads were quiet, thankfully. And totally unfamiliar. Did we still live in the same city? Leaning forward from the backseat, I noticed whoever he was flicking through print-offs. I read the name, ‘Sean Berkley’, at the top of what looked like instructions for auditioning. As he got out of the RAV4, I called after him, “Good luck, Sean!”
I watched him run off. It looked as if there were lots of other people going to this audition and I felt kind of protective of him.
He turned back at the turnstiles as he heard me and grinned, then his face changed. He looked horrified.
The warm glow that had started in my belly and spread itself through every inch of my body ever since he’d burst into our room froze. Josh’s hand grabbed mine. Had Sean realised that we weren’t…
“Guys! What about Tildie?” he shrieked, running back to us. He rested his hands on the open window at the driver’s side.
“Tildie?” said Josh, but I had a nasty feeling I knew what was coming next.
“Yeah, like duh, Dad! Tildie, my four-year-old baby sister? The one you guys have just left all alone in the house…?”
He ran off, and Josh slowly lowered his head, thumping it a few times on the steering wheel.
“What the f–”
“Language,” I say automatically, even though it didn’t matter anymore.
“But…look, I don’t get this,” Josh said. “Yesterday we were, like ordinary nineteen-year-olds, yeah? And we’ve woken up, and now we’re…” he trailed off, staring into the distance.
“And now we’re the parents of two, apparently,” I finished off, equally incredulous. “One of whom we’ve just abandoned in a house halfway across the city.”
©Emma Baird 2017
