David Ambrose - The Man Who Turned into Himself

I lay in bed, listening to the silence of the house and trying to recall the dream that had woken me with such a start of fear. I remembered running through wide, battle-scarred streets under a flame-filled sky, but whatever demons had been pursuing me had already slipped back over the horizon into unconsciousness.

Anne was breathing softly at my side, miraculously undisturbed by the twisting and turning I must have been doing. I could tell I wasn't going to get back to sleep easily, so I slid out from under the covers, pulled on my slippers and robe, and padded downstairs.

There was still a smell of wood-smoke in the living room, but all that remained of the evening's log fire was a pile of white ash in the hearth. I pulled back a curtain and looked out. It was a clear Connecticut night with a touch of frost under a nearly full moon. In that light our rambling, half-wild garden became a place of secrets and enchantment, conjuring up memories of the cozy, old-fashioned children's stories that my grandparents used to read to me at Christmas around a roaring fire in their Devon farmhouse.

My father worked for a firm of heating engineers in London. When I was ten, he was offered a job in Philadelphia. Neither he nor my mother ever really settled there, and as soon as he retired they moved back to the south of England, which they still thought of as home. But by that time I was at Princeton, and in love.

Anne and I lived together for almost four years before we married, then waited another two years before deciding that we could afford to start a family. Charlie was just a few months old when we found this house. We had both loved it from the moment we first saw it. We wanted more children and lots of space to have them. We also wanted to live outside the city. The loan we took out was bigger than we could afford, but we gambled on being able to make the payments, and so far we had been lucky. In fact I sometimes felt that we were luckier, and happier, than we had any right to expect. Now Anne was pregnant again, just as we'd planned.

I shivered, suddenly aware of the cold, and let the curtain fall back. Had the nightmare that woke me come from the fear that good things were given only to be taken away, as though by some sadistic Manichaean principle? Did I really believe in that kind of a universe?

Maybe I did. Somewhere.

I switched on a lamp in a reflex effort to push these thoughts away, then debated whether to pour myself a whiskey or go through to the kitchen and make a hot cup of chocolate. I settled for the chocolate because I'd drunk enough with dinner and wanted a clear head for the morning.

As I stirred the pan on the stove I became aware of someone watching me. Anne was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, feet crossed. She wore a robe like mine. We had bought them together. Her short, dark hair was tousled and her eyes, normally wide with an expression between surprise and laughter, were sleepy.

'I'll have whatever you're having,' she said.

'I'm sorry I woke you.'

'You didn't. The empty bed did.' Her eyes followed me to the fridge for more milk and to the shelf for more chocolate. 'What's worrying you? Are you afraid that now you've made up your mind, they're going to change theirs?'

'It's not about tomorrow,' I responded, with a touch of impatience in my voice. She arched an eyebrow sceptically. 'Of course not,' stifling a yawn and smiling at the same time. 'It's just a coincidence that you're up at 3 am making yourself comfort drinks.'

'Everything's set for tomorrow. The meeting's only a formality.'

She came towards me, slipped her arms over my shoulders and looked into my eyes, first one then the other, the way she always did. 'All I want is to be sure you're doing it because you want to, not because you think you should for me, Charlie and the bump.' The 'bump' was her pregnancy that didn't even show yet. She pushed it against me, rubbing softly.

'Are you accusing me of putting my family before personal preferences?'

'It's possible.'

'You're calling me a wimp?'

'Yes.' She pressed her face to mine as my hands slid under her robe. 'Rick,' she murmured, and didn't have to say any more. I hoisted her gently up and she locked her legs around my waist. Somehow I managed to switch off the stove before I carried her out. I almost tripped on her robe as she dropped it, wobbled painfully on one of Charlie's Ninja Turtles on the stairs, and gave a muffled curse as I banged my elbow on the door at the top. 'It's never like this in the movies,' I said, lowering her, and myself with her, to the bed.

'No,' she whispered, a little breathless even though I was the one doing all the work, 'there isn't room in those narrow seats.'

***

Charlie woke us ten minutes before the alarm went off to say that he could hear Gummo, our Siamese cat, stuck on the roof again. I pulled on an old tracksuit and climbed into the chilly loft to let him in through a skylight. Charlie waited anxiously where I'd told him to on the landing, circled by Harpo, his mongrel terrier, who pierced the air with a repeated nervous yelp.

The cat was really freaked by something. I tried everything I knew to get him in, including coaxing, cajoling, and even having Charlie run down to get his food bowl filled with his favourite breakfast. It was no good; the wretched animal just prowled up and down the tiles, making plaintive meowing noises and staying carefully beyond my reach. I realised I was going to have to go out and get him. I hauled myself up through the skylight, inwardly reflecting that domestic bliss, like most kinds of happiness, had its shortcomings.