While You Were Dreaming. Lola Jaye

thought their lives quite normal, until one day she’d managed to blag an ‘excellent’ grade for her spelling test whilst her friend Margo only got a ‘satisfactory’. The way Margot’s dad almost hugged the life out of her outside the school gates was a scene Millie would never forget. Especially as when she’d handed over her own certificate to Donald that evening, he’d smiled awkwardly and said ‘Good job’ before going back to his newspaper. At the time, those two words had meant everything to the eleven-year-old Millie and she’d treasured that sky blue certificate as evidence that she could actually please her dad. But three years later, when he divorced the family, those words meant nothing.

      It was all right for the other two, they were adults and living away from home, plus, judging from their reactions, they hadn’t seemed that surprised at the split. But to Millie it had been a complete and utter shock. She’d returned home from doing a mock exam to see her father packing his things clumsily into a holdall, driving away in the family Volvo, and promising to call her.

      She had felt Donald’s absence hugely–it was a pain that never went away. Kitty on the other hand seemed to be energized by divorce, strutting her stuff around the world before finally escaping to Southampton to ‘find herself’, no doubt. But who was looking out for Millie?

      Who would find her?

      She turned her gaze to a group shot of her and her mates larking about at a club wearing orange feather boas and bright lipstick. Nikki and Tosin were her friends and they loved her, didn’t they? Or was it all about getting drunk and falling out of nightclubs on the arms of various guys? Lena loved her. But Lena wasn’t here. Not really. And not for the first time in her life, Millie felt incredible pangs of loneliness as she pulled out her mobile and slowly punched in the number, which, unfortunately, she’d come to learn off by heart.

      Two rings later. ‘Can I come over?’

      ‘You can always come over,’ replied the deep voice.

      She wiped her face and applied a fresh coat of lip gloss. She’d remain in the clothes she’d worn to the hospital, all too aware that dressing up would be pointless. Stewart would provide her with the company she needed. Make her feel loved, wanted and whole–if only for the night. And she would deal with the revulsion in the morning. She wrote a note for Kitty and pinned it onto the fridge door with the orange Kidzline magnet.

       Gone out. Back tomorrow morning.

       Mills x

       EIGHT

      The next morning, Millie walked into the house to the sound of a singing Kitty crouched on all fours.

      ‘I wanted to make myself some breakfast this morning, went to the fridge, and was almost knocked out by the smell!’ she said, head deep into the fridge.

      ‘It’s not that bad!’ said Millie, placing her handbag onto the wooden table.

      ‘It is!’ replied Kitty as she stood up and clocked Millie.

      ‘You look worse than me and I’m jetlagged. Partying, were we?’

      ‘Of course not!’ replied Millie, a little offended as to why Kitty would think she’d be partying whilst Lena was still in hospital.

      ‘Millie, surely you’re not so lazy that you can’t clean the fridge?’

      Millie stared at the batch of sweet potatoes and the thick ashy mould congregating on them. The garlic and apples were still okay, but the potatoes were definitely on the turn. Kitty grabbed the sponge again and got to work, as Millie remained rooted to the spot. Kitty assumed Millie must have got very slack over the years. But to Millie, these were some of the last things that Lena had bought before going to sleep. She’d picked them out, paid for them, and loaded them into the fridge with her very own hands. Chucking them away would be like chucking out something that Lena had been a part of.

      Millie knew it probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone but her, but it was simple; she hadn’t been ready to take that step. Just as she didn’t want to go into Lena’s room.

      As Kitty tied up the large bin bag containing the rotting groceries, Millie thought her heart would break. ‘Can you take this downstairs to the wheelie bins?’ Kitty asked her.

      Outside, Millie heaved the ‘rubbish’ into the big green bin and slowly shut the lid. It was a sunny day and a car whizzed by with its bass line blasting out. A neighbour two doors down was loading glass bottles into the recycling bin. Life was ticking along as it always did but for Lena, it was as if everything had frozen in time.

      If Millie had done a superficial clean of the house, Kitty had made it sparkle. They spent the day together and went food shopping.

      ‘Lets cook up something lovely for dinner. Cara could come over, too. Would be like old times, us all eating together!’

      Millie cast her mind back to their childhood, and remembered the umpteen TV dinners that Lena would dish up whilst their mother went to another audition or just shut herself away in her room. She was too polite now to taint her mother’s rose-tinted memory and didn’t want to spoil what had been a really nice day together.

      Millie called Cara, who said she didn’t want any dinner but would need to come over later anyway.

      Kitty was packing away the last of the dishes as Cara walked in.

      ‘I saved you some chicken,’ said Kitty.

      ‘I’d better not thanks though. Ade’s cooking later. I just came to check things like the bills and bank statements. I’m not even sure if there’s enough money in her account to pay for everything and keep things ticking over while she’s…away.’

      ‘She’s still getting paid, so there should be,’ added Kitty rather carelessly.

      ‘Well I’d better check through everything, see if there are any policies to be renewed. Like insurance policies might need to be renewed,’ said Cara as she parked herself on the cosy sofa that had cost twenty pounds in a car-boot sale. ‘You know what Lena was like–is like. She would have everything listed somewhere.’

      ‘The sensible one of my girls,’ said Kitty, which Cara took instant offence to. ‘Do you know, she has a list of everything that gets paid when, just so she can double-check with the bank? I found it in the drawer in the kitchen. I’ll go and get it.’