Beginning

The bell still sounding, she struggles out of sleep. They mustn’t leave them outside in this heavy rain: delicate parcels and those folded rugs. She’s seen them bending low to put them down; the dyes will run. She clicks the light on in the hall and sees a different place: her own home and no rain falling. It has happened yet again – her dream leaping its boundary, spilling into real time, fooling her open eyes. What if one morning the confusion spreads, stains all her waking hours, unstoppable? But it is over. A matter of seconds. She hitches the shoulders of her dressing-gown, ties its belt and goes to put the kettle on – leaving a faint print in the hall: a figure, hair awry, standing perplexed. There are times she shatters it as she walks through. It splinters, reassembles, waiting. One day, she’ll slip inside its outline, fit perfectly the pre-cast shadow of herself as she will be.