My Other Life Read online

  Contents

  The Hole in the Hospital

  The Second Hole

  Rav’s Theory

  The Centre of the Hole

  No One There

  Mum and Dad

  Rav

  Mandy

  Another Place

  The Surprise

  Mandy’s House

  The Fourth Hole

  Right Here

  The Hole in the Hospital

  I was in hospital when I saw the first hole.

  I’ve spent quite a lot of time in hospital.

  When I was quite young, I was diagnosed with severe asthma and if I get a bad attack, I often end up there. My mum says that we’ve had some “near brushes” which always makes me think of my old hairbrush, clogged up with tangles and dull, dead hair.

  I can’t remember properly the times I was unwell. My dad says I’m the bravest person he knows, but I don’t know what he means by that.

  My friend Rav says: “Mae, I think you’re the greatest. And your dad makes the best lunches.” I say: “Is that why you like me, because I have the best lunches – and I always give them to you?” He laughs and says: “Of course not,” but then he rubs his belly as he says it. I don’t think he even notices he’s doing it.

  My asthma’s not a big deal. Not really. And it’s got better now I am older and understand what I need to do. I know that I have to take my medicine every day. And I know that I have to get help if I feel a tightening in my chest, or a wheeze in my breath. And I also know that, unless I grow out of it, I will have to do this for the rest of my life.

  I don’t like being in hospital. It’s always just a bit too hot for one thing. When I get home after being there, the first thing I do is open up my bedroom window, as wide as it can go, and I leave it like that, all night if Mum doesn’t notice, so I can feel the breeze coming in and all around me. Sometimes, when I’m just dropping off to sleep, it makes me feel like I’m floating off my bed, the cold crisp air lifting me up, up and away.

  But the very first time I saw the hole was when I was in hospital.

  I’d caught some kind of chest infection and I was having difficulty breathing. My inhalers hadn’t made it any better, so Mum said we should go there right away.

  It had been a while since my last visit. Dad was away seeing Grandma for the night and so it was just Mum and me. She called an ambulance and though it came pretty quickly, I could tell she was getting worried; her large dark eyes glazed over with concern each time she looked at me.

  As soon as I was in the ambulance, they started me on oxygen and when we arrived at the hospital we got taken to a small room with a large window that looked down on the road below.

  A nurse had just woken me to check my levels and, as she left, Mum asked me if I was feeling any better. I said I thought I was, although I could still feel the tightness in my chest. I looked away from her, towards the door that the nurse had just left through.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  The hole.

  It was just a tiny sliver of space, which for a few moments – there are no other words for it – opened up.

  In the hole there were masses and masses of tiny black lines; loads and loads of lines all muddled together like someone had taken a black pen to a piece of paper and scribbled and scribbled and scribbled, so there was almost no white left there at all.

  “What is it?” I blurted out. “What’s that?”

  “Mae!” Mum reached for my hand. “Are you all right?”

  “There, by the door!” I sat upright.

  But as I pointed towards it, I could see the gap knit itself back together as though it had never existed. The black squiggles vanished completely. It was like there had been a tear in some fabric and now the two torn edges had been stitched back together, making it as good as new. It was just an ordinary room again.

  “What is it, Mae?” Mum looked worried and white, and turned towards the space that I was gesturing at, which now looked like just what it was: an empty space by a boring old hospital door.

  “I thought I saw...” I started to say but I didn’t know how to explain it, so I lay back again, feeling completely exhausted, like I could sleep for a hundred years if anyone would let me.

  “I’ll get the nurse,” Mum said, sweeping my fringe away and holding her hand to my forehead.

  “Don’t go,” I said, but I could feel myself drifting away from her under the waves of sleep.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, planting a kiss on my head. Then I heard the sound of her footsteps running out of the room.

  But I managed to keep my eyes open just long enough for me to see that, as she ran past the place where the gap had appeared, nothing out of the ordinary happened.

  It was as though the hole had never been there.

  The Second Hole

  “There she is!” Dad said, ruffling my hair with one hand and squeezing my arm with the other.

  He’d driven through the night from Grandma’s, and so when I woke up the next morning, he was the first thing I saw as I opened my eyes.

  It took me a few moments to remember that I was in hospital, but then I took it all in: the funny antiseptic smell, the green walls that were so different to the yellow ones of my bedroom.

  A doctor had come to see us and told Mum and Dad that they would monitor how I was doing, but I wouldn’t be able to go home today if my oxygen levels didn’t go up.

  “Well, that’s that,” Mum said when the doctor left, and then she sat back in her chair; she almost seemed to sink into its shiny fabric and become part of the seat. Dad reached out and rested his hand on Mum’s head gently. She looked at him gratefully and then reached her hand up to his so they could lock fingers.

  “Are you OK?” he asked her in a quiet voice.

  Mum nodded slowly and just at that moment, behind where Dad was standing, I saw the second hole appear.

  This hole grew bigger, in bursts, with each nod of Mum’s head. For a moment I was worried that the hole would grow so large it would swallow up the whole room and all of us in it.

  I sat up in alarm.

  “What is it, darling?” I heard Mum say.

  “Are you OK, Mae?” Dad said. “We’re right here, pet. We’re right here.”

  And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the hole folded in on itself and disappeared completely.

  Rav’s Theory

  “What do you mean – a hole?” Rav said. He was picking his nose with a squinted look of concentration.

  “I mean exactly what I said – a hole. Like a hole in the world.”

  “Like a crater?” Rav said, finger still fully inserted into his nostril.

  It was disgusting behaviour, but I suppose it sort of showed why I felt able to tell Rav what I’d seen in hospital. We’re not the kind of best friends that fall out and then become friends again and fall out again and then have another best friend. We’ve stuck together since the first day of primary school when we met. And we’ve always felt able to be completely ourselves with each other. I don’t have to put on a show for Rav; I can just be me, quiet little me, who has to go to hospital a lot, and Rav accepts me and likes me just how I am. And I put up with his nose-picking, and him always wanting my lunch, and a whole array of other Rav-specific things, and we’re friends. It’s just the way it’s always been.

  “No, not a crater. It was in the hospital room and it was there one minute and then gone the next.”

  “And you definitely didn’t imagine it. Did they give you some powerful drugs? My sister said she could see all kinds of things when they gave her something for the pain, when she had her appendix out. Like little goblins coming out of the ceiling that were eating their own ears. It’s true
– ask her.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t delirious. Or seeing things. I know it sounds weird. But it’s like there was something behind this –” I waved my hand around me. We were sitting on one of the benches in the corner of the playground; kids kept running past us in a swirl of noise and screams – “like this was just fabric and behind it there were lines, all kinds of scribbly black lines,” I tried to explain.

  “Like to another world or something?” Rav asked. “Like a portal?” Rav is very keen on video games that have portals in them.

  “Yeah – more like that,” I said. “More like a portal.”

  “Well, in that case,” Rav said, “you’ve got to find out what’s on the other side. If it’s a portal, then it will lead somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else?”

  “Yeah – like sometimes it could just be a different place in this world or it could be, well – anywhere... Got it!”

  Rav removed his finger with a flourish and flicked the bogey across the playground an impressive distance.

  “You really are disgusting, d’you know that?” I said.

  “But you’re the one who’s crazy – seeing portals,” Rav said back with a grin.

  “Hmm. Well, maybe I won’t see any more.”

  “Maybe it’s something to do with the hospital. Have you seen one anywhere else?” he asked.

  “No. Only in hospital, only those two.”

  “Well, that might be it then,” Rav said cheerfully. “So don’t worry about it too much.”

  “I’m not worried...” I started to say, but Rav was already laughing at me, his shoulders shaking.

  “I’m not worried,” he mimicked, screwing up his forehead into a big furrow.

  And I knew he was right. I was worried about it and I was also sure that I didn’t want to see another hole. I couldn’t tell you why exactly, only that I was hoping, hoping with every bit of me, that that would be the end of it completely.

  The Centre of the Hole

  Six months went by and life went back to normal. Dad went to visit Grandma almost every weekend, and we often went with him.

  I started to feel a bit wheezy on one of our visits to her, but I recovered pretty quickly when I used my inhalers, so we didn’t have to go to hospital or anything like that.

  To be honest, I found the trips to Grandma’s quite boring, although the only person I would admit that to was Rav. It was a long car journey and then when we got there we spent the whole time in Grandma’s little sitting room, which was just a bit too small when all of us were in it.

  We always talked about the same things over and over – the time when they used to live in Guyana when Dad was a small boy and Grandma was a nurse and about people who I’d never met – Grandma’s brother who had the funny nickname of Chewie and wore his hair in a big quiff and her best friend Jeannie who had died the year before.

  Mum said we needed to appreciate the time we had with Grandma and with each other, but I found it hard to do that when I was there. I spent most of the time staring at the dust balls in the carpet or at the shelf of funny little china ornaments that I wasn’t allowed to touch in case I broke them, counting down the minutes until Dad would slap his hands on his knees and say, “Afraid we’ve got to hit the road, Mum.”

  Then I’d kiss Grandma on her thin cheek gently and in that moment I would be able to smell the fresh scent of soap on her skin and would feel, oddly, even though I’d been bored stiff for the last two hours, that I didn’t want to leave her.

  One Saturday morning though, when we were packing up the car to go and celebrate Grandma’s birthday, which had been earlier in the week, I felt the familiar gripping around my lungs and my breath started to come in short, sharp gasps.

  Mum noticed straightaway.

  “Are you all right, Mae?” she asked.

  I tried to say “my inhaler” but it was too hard to speak and breathe at the same time. Before I knew it, Dad was in front of me in a flash with the nebulizer I have to use.

  “Take it slowly,” he said, his eyes warm and steady on mine.

  I gave him the tiniest of nods.

  “That’s it – nice and slow, Mae,” Mum said, kneeling down so she was right next to me. Her hand reached for mine and I squeezed it tightly.

  Dad had been cooking the night before to make some of the special dishes that they used to eat in Guyana. He’d packed two huge bags of food into the boot of the car; I could just make out the outline of the bags beyond us.

  “Well done, Mae,” Dad said. “You’re doing so well. Just keep breathing nice and slow, like we practised.”

  I felt Mum squeeze my hand. “That’s it, darling,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes to concentrate on my breathing, but even with my eyes shut I could feel and sense how close my parents were next to me. It felt like we made a triangle, and each of us was one of its points.

  “How’s that now?” Dad asked. I shook my head a little to tell him it wasn’t helping and without me having to say a word, Mum rang for an ambulance while Dad lifted me up and back into the house.

  They laid me down on the sofa and once they’d made me comfortable, Mum dashed upstairs to pack a bag for hospital and Dad went to find my other inhalers.

  Suddenly, in those brief moments while they left my side, another hole split open, right in front of me.

  It started small, just a little tear, but I could tell at once from the way it grew and swelled that it would become even bigger than the other two I’d seen.

  The scribbly black lines swarmed. They made my chest grow tighter when I looked at them. They were constantly moving and entangling with one another, like thousands and thousands of headless snakes writhing in a heap.

  This time the hole had opened close enough to me that I could touch it. I remembered what Rav had said about portals: that they had to lead somewhere. I reached one hand towards the black swirling mass.

  I could hear the sound of Dad’s footsteps running back down the stairs and Mum clunking drawers shut in my bedroom.

  My fingers stroked the air in front of the hole and then with one final push I found myself reaching through the black lines, and as the very tips of my fingers disappeared through the hole, I felt my whole body being pulled towards it.

  And though it was my movement of reaching forward, it felt like I had no control to stop myself. Before I knew what was happening, I was being drawn into the twirling chaos of the lines, and sucked right into its centre.

  No One There

  It felt like I was underwater.

  I was sure I could not breathe.

  The black lines were so thick around me, they were pressing in on me, almost crushing me. But just as I was beginning to panic, I was suddenly released.

  I opened my eyes and took in a deep breath.

  I was exactly where I had been before – lying on the sofa in the sitting room.

  I laughed out loud when I saw that nothing had happened; I hadn’t gone anywhere; the hole wasn’t a portal after all.

  I touched the space in the air where the hole had been but like the last time it had stitched itself up and there was no trace of it any more.

  Then I noticed that two things had changed: I could no longer hear the sounds of Mum and Dad, and the gripping, coiling feeling that I’d held inside my chest had lifted. My breath came easily once again, and the pain in my lungs that I’d felt was closing in on me had receded so far I couldn’t even think what it had felt like.

  For a moment I stayed on the sofa and listened a little more closely, but when the house remained silent I swung my legs from the sofa and padded upstairs.

  There was no one there.

  Mum and Dad

  Had I passed out and had they left the house for some reason? It seemed unlikely as we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

  Perhaps they were waiting outside? But when I opened the front door, there was no sign of them there either.

  I shouted out for th
em, even though I knew they weren’t there.

  I tried calling them on their mobiles but there was no answer. Part of me wanted to go and look for them but I didn’t want to leave the house in case they came back. I decided to message Rav, to tell him what had happened, but when I tried to do it, his number had gone from my phone. It had been playing up a bit recently, shutting down by itself and freezing sometimes, so I didn’t think it was odd, I thought it was something to do with that.

  As I walked around the house, I noticed that some things were missing – the picture on the wall of us in Grandma’s garden last year, the paintings that I’d made for Mum for her birthday. I couldn’t understand why they had been replaced with a bland picture of the sea and a sign that read: “Home Is Where the Heart Is”.

  I sat on my bed and waited, wishing for them to be there and for things to feel normal again.

  When Mum and Dad finally walked through the door a couple of hours later, they acted like nothing had happened, although they were perhaps a bit quieter than usual. They looked a little pale and tired, I thought.

  I had run down the stairs when I heard the front door opening and almost collided with Dad.

  “Where were you?” I demanded.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “We told you when we left this morning – we were at the conference.”

  “Conference?”

  Mum yawned loudly. “I didn’t think it was ever going to finish.”

  “What about the ambulance?” I said.

  “What ambulance?” Dad asked. He glanced out of the window. “Did you see one on the road? It might have been for Ivy. I haven’t seen her out and about for a little while. I wonder if she’s had a turn for the worse.”

  “No, for me!” I exclaimed.

  “What are you talking about, Mae?”

  “I was having an asthma attack.” I couldn’t understand why they were pretending they didn’t know what was happening, and what was this conference they were talking about?