dog came from nowhere. Through the windscreen, the road, the shops, the faces of the families out for a daytrip all revolve: a kaleidoscope of colour and life blurring as the glass shatters. The car flips over and rolls two times. It stops moving: the sound of screeching metal is silenced. Her body is hanging upside-down by the seat belt, a small trickle of blood escaping the corner of her mouth, and the only sound other than the gentle tocking of the indicator will be the sirens in the distance.
Illness hasn’t really occurred to me. I scramble from the bed and face my bedroom mirror; leaning forward I begin to examine myself. I pull the skin back from around my eyes, open my mouth, turn my head this way and that, but nothing seems amiss. The laughter lines around my eyes remain happy, the bags beneath them are not holding any excess weight; my blue eyes certainly don’t hold the same innocence as Oscar’s and with what I’ve just been up to with Ed neither should they, but is there something hidden? I whip off my bra and begin feeling around.
‘You were not joking about your sexual peak!’ Ed says, throwing the covers back.
‘Shut up. I need you to feel my boobs.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he says reaching for the discarded sailor hat and putting it onto his dirty-blond-coloured hair.
I frown at him. ‘Not now, Ed. Feel. My boobs.’
‘OK, OK, but you’re going to have to clue me in a bit, Jen, is this like, Fifty Shades? Do I need a safe word, because, I’m all up for a bit of—’
I reach for his hand and he grabs my right breast. ‘Can you feel anything?’
He glances down at the tent that is emerging between himself and the bed sheets. I laugh but then straighten my face. ‘I mean in my boob, is there a lump?’
Ed pulls himself into a sitting position, his eyes narrowing, his expression changing into something more serious. ‘No . . . shall I check the other one?’
I breathe a small breath of relief as I turn myself towards the left so he can continue examining.
‘Nope. All clear. What is this about, Jen?’
‘Nothing . . . I’m just being silly that’s all.’
He lies down and I rest my head on his chest, listening to the reassuring thump, thump of his heart beating. How would he cope without me here? The image of me hanging upside down emerges behind my eyes: the trickle of blood escaping my red lips . . . what if he finds me? Ed pushes his way into the scene, calling my name, reaching in through the broken window, blood on his white shirt, panic across his face. I close my eyes and push the image away.
‘Do you remember the first day we met?’ I ask, my fingers circling the dark blond hairs on his chest.
‘I remember the first day I saw you.’
‘Tell me again.’
I know I’ve heard this story a million times, but I love hearing him.
He looks down and shifts his position, so I am lying in the crook of his arm. ‘I saw you on the train platform. It was just a split second. The doors opened and a bloke with a bike got off. You were waiting on the platform.’
‘I had a vile blue dress on.’
‘That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t know how someone could look so beautiful in such a hideous dress.’
‘I don’t remember that part,’ I say, my eyes filling with tears and goose bumps running across my arm like a swarm of ants. Another memory to cherish.
The sound of the key in the door startles us and we both bolt out of bed.
‘Nuts!’ I say, trying to reattach my bra.
‘We’re home!’ Dad shouts from downstairs.
‘Mummy!’ Oscar’s voice clambers up the stairs, his elephant-like step stampeding behind. Ed kicks his feet into his tangled jeans, leaning back on the bed in a flurry of denim and tanned torso.
‘Just a minute!’ we shout in unison.
‘Oscar?’ Dad’s voice booms from the landing as the door flies open.
‘Mummy and Daddy?’ He clenches his fists by his side ‘Why are you in bed?’
I do an over-exaggerated stretch and yawn, leaning my head backwards. I try to reply but in my exaggerated stretch I have leant back just enough for my hair to become snagged on my bra clasp. And so my red-lace-encased bosoms are now more vertical than they have been for the last ten years.
‘We were just having a little