“Then suddenly we’re at the crossing and I’m waking up and I see…” I shut my eyes, then open them again. “Then I wake up and I’m screaming and Mum and Dad come in.”

Angela Harris’s eyes flick to the clock on the wall. She shifts position in her chair and closes her notepad with a decisive little snap, which I’m hoping is a signal that the session is about to end.

When I’m back in the car with Mum and we’re driving home, I think about how the nightmare really ends, with the two of us fighting. Except it’s me who’s doing all the pushing and hitting. And then the train is bearing down on us and it’s too late to get out of the way. But I never feel the impact. I always wake up in time.

18

NOW

It’s Monday morning and the bus is rammed. I rub a little viewing circle in the steamed-up window. All the gorgeous spring weather we’ve been having has disappeared overnight and left in its place nothing but steady rainfall and a sky the color of wet slate.

The left knee of the woman sitting next to me presses painfully up against my leg. Packed in among all these bodies, I feel hemmed in. Trapped.

It’s a good job I’ve registered at a different GP practice. I’d hate to bump into Ross today and see his concerned eyebrows shoot up. I’m not ready to tell him yet, not till I’ve processed the news myself. And now I know who else works there….

I think of Ross in proximity to Catherine Dawson and my throat constricts. Seeing her in my home was like something long buried breaking up through layers of soil. A disturbing image flashes into my mind: skeletal fingers pushing clods of earth aside like bulb shoots reaching for the light. I screw my eyes tight shut and try to think of something else.

Half an hour later and Dr. Ahmed, a softly spoken woman who’s probably in her early forties, comes into the waiting room and calls for me, hesitating slightly over my surname but making a passable attempt. I’ve been called a lot worse than Lizzie Molly-Noo. Luckily, I’ll be a Murray when we get married. Lizzie Murray. That’s much simpler. I even get to keep the same initials.

I follow her into her room and sit down. For some reason I can’t tell her I think I’m pregnant, so I explain that I’m considering starting a family and ask her what advice she can give me regarding my epilepsy.