at my youthful body, I smiled at the lack of stretch marks and bruises, the dark body hair in all the right places. I wondered if blondes had to shave their legs. I hoped I would never have to find out.
The thought sobered me, robbing me of the joy I’d been experiencing since I’d woken up. Grabbing the soap, I worked it to a rich lather and began to wash vigorously. I might be home now, but the nightmare clung, refusing to simply rinse away with the soapsuds. At some point this body would need to sleep, and while it was resting, the nightmare might return. I had only dreamed the dream twice, but the fact that the second dream had seemed to continue on so smoothly from the first was dreadfully worrying. Suppose I found myself struggling with that other life again?
Lying back in the warm water, my mind dwelled on the possibilities. Dream or not, while I was being Lauren, her life had seemed as real to me as my own.
And what if I had to experience going home to that family? The thought brought a rush of terror. Yesterday, when I’d been dozing, I’d been aware of Lauren having her drip disconnected. Did that mean that every time I slept, I ran the risk of returning to continue the dream? If that were the case then I’d be constantly on the go, flitting from dream to reality without respite.
Watching a tiny bubble drift up to the ceiling, I was filled with the dreadful certainty that the real Lauren was dead. After listening to Dr Shakir’s account of her injuries I was sure he felt Lauren should be dead or irreparably brain-damaged, despite his outward claim that her quick recovery was nothing unusual.
The thought that the children’s mother had probably died not only shook me to the core, it brought a lump to my throat. She had been a stranger to me, of course, and possibly a figment of my imagination, but in my dream I had been there in her body and I felt an overwhelming grief for this woman I had never known. My heart went out to her husband and children. They had lost the wife and mother they loved, and didn’t even know they should be mourning her loss.
My lips trembled and I pressed them firmly together. There was nothing I could do for her now, I told myself. The best I could do while I was there was to try to keep her body from further harm, and I found myself wondering what another chapter of the dream might hold for me. Meanwhile, I rather guiltily thanked my lucky stars it had been Lauren who had died and not me.
I lay back in the warm water for a moment or two, pondering why I had survived and Lauren obviously hadn’t, when the whole situation suddenly seemed absurd. I sat up abruptly, slopping water over the edges of the bath onto the green bathroom carpet. What was I doing, allowing this incredible situation to take over my thoughts? I asked myself angrily. Why was I accepting this living nightmare as if it were a normal, everyday occurrence? I knew that what was frightening me most was the possibility that it wasn’t a dream at all. Not in the normal sense, anyway. And if it wasn’t a dream, then what?
Sitting in the rapidly cooling water, I gazed into space, wondering. What other explanation could there be, other than the shadowy fear that when I was awake I was Jessica, and when Lauren was awake I was her…
I groaned loudly, putting my hands over my ears as if I could shut out the clamouring of my own thoughts, thoughts which sounded as if they had come straight from watching the sci-fi channel on Sky TV. I had to believe that the dream was over now, or I’d be afraid to sleep ever again.
Frankie had heard the groan and was whining at the bathroom door.
‘It’s okay, Frankie,’ I called through the door. ‘I’ll be out in a mo.’
Still sitting up, I shampooed my dark brown hair, thanking God for the lack of burns to my scalp as I massaged it to a lather. The lightning hadn’t hit my head at all.
Perhaps, I thought, as I ran Saturday’s events through my mind for the umpteenth time, my lucky escape hadn’t been solely due to the protection afforded by my thick sheepskin coat. It might well have been partly due to the way I’d been hunched forward against the downpour, ready to dive into the passenger seat of Dan’s car, so that the force had missed my head.
Ducking under the water to wash the shampoo away and then wriggling upright, I stepped out of the bath, squeezed the excess water out of my hair, and wrapped myself in my towelling bathrobe. I glanced at the clock. Damn! I’d been so caught up in what was happening to me, I was going to be late for work if I didn’t hurry. I dressed quickly, shoved a piece of crispbread into my mouth and ran up the steps with Frankie at my heels. We walked for ten minutes while Frankie sniffed at lampposts and did her business, which I picked up in my trowel and deposited into a doggy-bin, then headed home at a brisk trot.
‘See you at lunchtime,’ I called as I closed the door to my flat behind me and, biting a chunk out of a juicy red apple, headed out onto the pavement for the ten-minute walk to work.
The legal firm I worked for, Chisleworth & Partners, was housed in a drab-looking building in a side road off the high street. I took the steps two at a time, and arrived at my desk about half a minute before my boss, Stephen Armitage.
Stephen was a good-looking man in his early forties and had been my boss for the last ten years, ever since I’d left secretarial college at the age of eighteen. He’d overseen most of my training to become a legal secretary and had encouraged me to work towards gaining extra qualifications in the legal field, taking me under his wing as his assistant and protégé. Stephen had been kind and attentive and we spent much of our working hours together, sometimes working late into the night when the office was quiet and we were gathering documents and files for court.
As I shrugged out of my coat in the narrow confines of the outer office, I was reminded of how our close working proximity had led one night to a gentle coming together, and while I had never been totally sure of my feelings for him, a relationship with him had seemed easy and inevitable. It had seemed sensible after a while to move into a flat he owned, though I retained my independence by paying him rent and splitting our everyday expenses. Although we had both known I wasn’t ready or willing to settle down properly, we had remained lovers for nearly six years.
Walking back to my desk, I flicked on my computer, unable to keep my mind from dwelling on past actions and decisions I had made. I knew my experience as Lauren was making me question my life here as Jessica, and it suddenly became clear that my doubts about Stephen had probably been obvious to him all along. That doubt was possibly the reason that he’d kept his own flat close to the office, and had influenced our joint decision to see each other socially several times a week rather than living permanently together. I realised now that I had thought him more of a friend with whom I was having a relationship than a partner, and cringed when I remembered I had even introduced him to my parents as such.
I stared blankly at the computer screen as it flickered into life before me, recalling how we’d muddled along in that unsatisfactory fashion until rumours reached me that he was seeing a female barrister on a regular basis. I knew it wasn’t so much the lies or the fact that he was cheating on me that prompted me to move out and put a down-payment on a flat of my own, but the fact that the news hadn’t bothered me anywhere near as much as I knew it ought to have done if I’d really cared for him.
It seemed that Stephen had felt much the same way, and somehow we’d made the difficult transition from lovers to friends, because I loved my job, even if I had to admit I had never really loved him.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, I knew how fortunate I was that the working day began late at Chisleworth & Partners. Stephen never put in an appearance until after ten o’clock, and as long as I was in the office slightly before him he didn’t seem to mind what time I arrived.
This morning he squeezed my shoulder affectionately as he passed my desk, which was a mistake as the high-voltage burn was still pretty tender. I winced with pain, and he was instantly contrite, asking what on earth was the matter. I told him about the lightning strike and he was suitably horrified.
Not as horrified as he would have been if he’d known I’d spent my sleeping hours since Saturday in the body of another woman, I thought to myself, as he asked me solicitously if I was well enough to be working. The nightmare seemed unreal, even laughable now, in the familiar surroundings of the shabby office,