Apart from Denise, you and your mother were the only ones in the store with access.’ Dad’s neck was getting red patches. He was starting to lose it, glaring at Mom like she should be doing something.
Mom jumped in. ‘Sabine, I don’t know what you … Maybe you could explain –’
But it wasn’t good enough for Dad and he cut her off. ‘It’s heart medication, Sabine!’ He stood up, scraping the chair roughly across the floor. ‘What were you thinking? If you think you can get high on that stuff, you’re sorely mistaken! You would’ve had better luck in the cough medicine aisle!’ He started pacing around the table.
Eyes wide, I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Mom was reaching across the table to hold my hand, as if pleading for an explanation, something that could stop this runaway train. Problem was, my mind was drawing a blank.
‘I didn’t –’
‘Don’t even go there! We know it was you. Even Denise knows it was you! How do you think that makes us look? Having staff who know that our own daughter would steal from us? Did you even think about what people would say?’
Dad’s foot snagged one of the straps of my bag and he stumbled, almost taking a nose dive. It was the final straw. After regaining his balance, he grabbed my backpack and upended it on the table.
I leapt up to stop him, but Mom’s previously comforting hand suddenly morphed into a vice grip.
It felt as if everything happened in slow motion. The contents of my bag spilled onto the table. Amid the stash of blood-soaked bandages sat a half-emptied box of pills and a box of extra-strength laxatives.
And just to complete the parental nightmare – the kitchen filleting knife landed with a dull thump.
Mom gasped and Dad looked at me as if every terrible thought he’d ever had about me had been leading to this moment of ultimate disappointment. Before I could think my mouth was open.
‘I can explain! Let me explain.’
Mom nodded, squeezing my hand and then releasing some of the pressure. Dad raised his eyebrows at me.
‘Go on then, Sabine,’ he said. ‘Explain.’ His tone was flat and dubious.
I took a deep breath, tried to start and failed. Heart pounding, I took another breath and mentally counted to ten. And then, my life of hidden truths, of divided worlds, my secrets, my wrongness … The walls I’d worked so hard for so long to construct tumbled down around me. I didn’t know if it was because I’d been caught out thanks to the change in the rules, or due to some dire need to defend myself and shock my quick-to-judge parents, but when I searched in the bottomless barrel of lies that never seemed to fail me … Nothing. Not one little excuse sprung to mind.
‘I have two lives,’ I blurted.
Mom looked perplexed. Of all the things she’d expected me to say in my defence, this was certainly not one of them. But then, as her mind ticked over the possible explanations for that one comment, the colour drained from her face and her expression changed to horrified.
I took another breath. ‘I’ve been this way ever since I was born – living every day twice. I wake up in the morning here, in my bed with you as my family, and I live my day. But every night, at midnight, I go through this kind of Shift – that’s what I call it. One second I’m here in this life. The next, I’m in another life and for the next twenty-four hours until midnight I’m in that life, with my family there. When I get back here, it’s as if no time has passed.’
Tears slipped down my face as I looked at my parents, desperately willing them to see past the crazy of my words to the truth in my eyes. ‘I know this is weird. It’s why I’ve never told anyone – I never thought there was anything I could do to change it. But … but lately something has changed. Before, if something happened to my body it would affect me in my other world – like when I got tonsillitis in this world, I had it there too. Now, for some reason things aren’t crossing over. So I’ve been … trying to figure it out.’ I swallowed.
‘You live in two worlds?’ Dad said very softly.
‘Dad, please believe me.’
‘You have two different families?’ Mom said, equally stunned, eyes welling.
‘Look, I know this sounds crazy. But I