While You Were Dreaming
A warm and uplifting tale, perfect for fans of Dorothy Koomson.Lena has always kept her two sisters Millie and Cara in check.Beautiful but lazy Millie relies on her sister for everything. She needs to pull herself together and get a job but is constantly distracted by the string of men in her life…Cara runs a successful bar with her adoring boyfriend Ade.He can’t wait to start a family but Cara isn't ready. Will she ever be?But when Lena is involved in an accident her sisters forget their own issues and rush to her side.As they desperately try to wake Lena from her deep sleep, they begin to learn things they never knew about themselves and discover their much-loved sister had a few secrets in her closet…A funny and heartwarming tale about family, love and living for the moment.
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LOLA JAYE
While You Were Dreaming
If friends are the family you choose–
this one’s for my sisters!
Table of Contents
I tried my best not to puke up my lunch, standing in the doorway, watching the man I was supposed to love having sex with another woman.
A cauldron of emotion sloshed about within me–disbelief, denial, anger–before the inevitable star of the show, Acceptance, finally appeared, letting me know that this was real and it was happening. To me. With my boyfriend and with a woman I had trusted.
If only it was possible to teleport back in time, say, to twenty minutes ago, when I was sitting in a cafe across the road, tucking into a giant piece of chocolate cake and daydreaming. Well, in fact I’d been daydreaming most of the day–in between thinking about all the massive things that needed changing in my life. Things I had previously been so scared of discussing but suddenly felt more ready than ever to talk about.
But here I stood, watching my boyfriend’s Oscar-winning porn performance, and all those so-called plans began to shatter into miniature shards of hopelessness.
I felt for the notepad and yellow fluffy pen in my back pocket as a shiver sprinted through my entire body; the forgotten half-empty can of ginger beer fell from my hand, its contents spilling out over the hard wood floor. That’s when they both stopped, opened their eyes and whipped their heads round, like the girl from The Exorcist.
‘Lena?’ Justin gasped, sounding like a complete stranger and not the man I’d spent the last two years with. I lifted my face up and felt my eyes betray me and begin to moisten. My mouth widened to speak, but nothing came out. I just knew that I had to get out of that flat and as far away as possible. I had never witnessed anything so painful in my entire thirty years on this earth.
Backing out of that door, my knees were ready to buckle. I reached for the banisters to support myself as Justin called out to me in a pathetic, yet desperate-sounding voice. ‘Lena!’
My legs were turning to blancmange. I had to get out of there. To refocus. To think. My mind was jabbering something incoherent and silly, as my body was too damn numb to respond. I was now moving in slow motion, heading for the stairs, placing one foot on the first step in front of me.
I needed to think.
Second step.
I needed to be alone.
Third step.
I needed space.
I suppose, in normal circumstances, I’d have noticed the sparkling sandal that clearly wasn’t mine, jutting out from the fourth step and glistening in the sunlight that was pouring in from the window. I’d have kicked it out of the way in rage, or at the very least avoided it. But in my current state I wouldn’t have noticed an elephant dressed in a tutu; all I could focus on was the rapid beating of my heart, very runny nose, and the tears that were now coursing down my cheeks. So I’d no chance against that sandal as it attacked my left foot and sent me flying down those stairs. My stomach juices swished about like the inside of a washing machine: porridge, plantain chips, lychees, the giant slab of chocolate cake–all conspiring together to form one big indigestible mass.
My body finally landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs in a position that would rival any advanced yoga devotee. And then I waited. My mind entering a place where nothing could get to me any more.
I waited for the onset of pain that was sure to come.
I was ready.
Go on, hit me with it. It’s not as if the day could get any worse.
My eyes slowly flickered shut like a malfunctioning antique television. I knew it was coming. It was definitely coming…Yes…it was almost here, now…
The pain.
So much pain.
And then. The darkness.
Cara would always remember where she was and what she was doing the day she found out about Lena.
She was where she’d always been on a Tuesday evening–serving some pig of a customer who this time was insisting she’d incorrectly handed over change for a ten-pound note when he’d actually given her a twenty.
‘It was a tenner, I can assure you,’ she said plainly, at the same time indulging in a fantasy that involved ramming said ten-pound note down his throat.
‘I suggest you check at the till and see the last note you placed inside, Miss,’ he said pompously.
Cara rolled her eyes, unable to care if he noticed. Ade was always going on about the customer always being right and, in all honesty, she’d always taken great offence to that line. This was her bar (well, hers and Ade’s) and the only person who was right (in this instance especially) was her, and she was about to prove it.
