Charlotte was dreaming about Kate again. This time, they were in a beautiful garden, just the two of them, with magnolia trees in full bloom, and birdsong, a host of pink tulips nearby, swaying gently in a whispering spring breeze. Oh, Charlotte was thinking in surprise, here you are, Kate! I must have got it wrong. Wrong all this time, and nobody told me!
She couldn’t stop looking at Kate’s face. Those rosebud lips, the rounded apple cheeks, the dark downy hair on her head. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ she said in wonder, holding her close, breathing in the warm soapy scent of her. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sob at the relief of it all, the feeling of Kate’s soft face against her own. It was the best feeling in the world. ‘But you were here this whole time. Why did nobody tell me you were here?’
‘And the headlines at seven o’clock this morning,’ a stern voice said just then, interrupting the moment, and everything seemed to shimmer, the sun passing behind a cloud. Charlotte took no notice. Not interested, she thought, arms tightening around her daughter.
‘A forty-nine-year-old man is being questioned about the murder of a police officer,’ the voice went on, and a cold wind blew through the dream-garden in the next second, silken petals dropping from the tulip heads. When Charlotte looked down, Kate had vanished.
‘No,’ Charlotte said, whirling around in distress. ‘Kate!’
‘Pope Francis is due to make a speech today about—’
‘No,’ Charlotte cried again, the dream splintering around her in shining fragments. If she could just get back there, she thought frantically, pulling the duvet up over her head to muffle the sound of the radio. Back to the moment when they’d been together, just her and Kate, the moment when everything had been all right again. Happy.
‘The Prime Minster is under fire this morning, due to—’
Go away. She reached out a hand and thumped the snooze button on her alarm, not wanting thoughts of the Prime Minister to crawl into bed with her. Because of course, she was in bed, and not in a garden. She was thirty-eight years old and waking up all alone in a small quiet flat, as she did every morning these days.
As for Kate . . . well, she was most definitely gone, and not coming back. Not ever.