Chapter 15

The darkness was absolute. There was not even a hint of moonlight. It was total and oppressive, and for a dreadful few moments she wondered if she had gone blind. In a panic, she reached out for the bedside lamp, but it wasn't there. There was just something soft and yielding at the side of the bed, and she withdrew her hand quickly, afraid it might be a rat.

"Johnny?" The sound of her own voice alarmed her. It was so frail and wavering.

There was nobody there. And that was when she realised there was something the matter with the bed. It seemed to have shrunk. There was no Johnny and not enough space where Johnny should have been. Her hand touched the other side of the bed.

"Johnny?" She was whimpering now. She heard the fear in her voice and despised herself for it, but she couldn't help it. Her heart was beating too fast, in strange, irregular rhythms; starting and stopping, making her feel slightly sick. Heart attack? She stretched her arm out further and her seeking hand hit something solid that fell over and rolled towards her. She managed to stop it just before it fell to the floor. A lamp! In her panic she wasted precious seconds trying to find the switch. It was neither near the bulb, nor on the base. At last her trembling fingers found it, on the cable. She had no lamps with the switch on the cable at home; couldn't remember if she had ever seen one. But she pressed the switch gratefully and the room was instantly flooded with light.

Not blind, thank God! But the light was so bright after the total darkness that she had to shut her eyes again for a moment. The image of the room remained on her retina. Not her bedroom. Not any room she could ever remember seeing before. Squinting, she opened her eyes again and took a good look around.

The room was small and furnished abysmally with old-fashioned, mismatched, heavy furniture, all of it shabby and uncared for. There was an enormous wardrobe in mahogany that must once have been impressive, but which now leaned slightly to one side, one of the doors slightly ajar. A dressing table in a lighter, cheap wood veneer was propped up under the window, the mirror fly-blown and spotted where the silver had worn off. There was a chest of drawers with several of the handles missing and an easy chair covered in a revolting floral material, its stuffing bulging out in a couple of places.

She herself was in a narrow bed with a wooden headboard. There was a bedside table at one side upon which stood a lamp with a pottery base and a truly hideous Victorian shade in dark green with an untidy fringe hanging down from its scalloped edge. At the other side was a kitchen chair with a pile of clothes stacked neatly on top.

The walls were covered in dingy wallpaper in some floral design and there were a couple of rag rugs on the floor.

It was quite the most appalling room she had ever slept in but, more disturbing than that, she was absolutely certain she had never seen it before in her life!

She closed her eyes again and tried to remember what had happened yesterday, but her mind remained frustratingly blank. All she could conjure up was a sort of compound memory of what she did every day.

Johnny usually got up first and made a cup of tea and then came back upstairs with a tray and they sat together quietly while they drank their tea and acclimatised themselves to the new day. She would give her right arm for a nice cup of tea now. And she would give her soul to have Johnny beside her. Where was he? Think, Tilly, think. You must remember something. What could have happened to make her end up in this awful place, alone?

She had probably got up, had her morning bath, made breakfast - always a proper cooked breakfast, none of this nonsense with cereals and skimmed milk. No wonder the children today all had allergies and psychological problems. None of them were properly fed. Stop it! Concentrate, Tilly! Then she would tidy the kitchen and wash up the breakfast things. Johnny would get on with some gardening if the weather was fine. If not, he would sit with his newspaper in front of the fire. She would do some baking or maybe get on with some knitting.

This was no good. It wasn't getting her anywhere. It couldn't have been like that yesterday, could it? Not if she ended up here. Something really unusual must have happened. So why couldn't she remember it? An awful thought came to her mind, leaving her feeling cold. What if something had happened to Johnny? If he had had an accident of some kind. What if he had been taken to hospital and it was so far away from home that she had to stay in a B and B? That would explain it. Something like that would be such a shock that it might cause short-term memory loss.

But it didn't feel right, somehow. None of it felt right.

Very well, she would try the logical approach. If she couldn't remember, she would go through the various reasons why she might be in a strange room alone.

Could they be staying with friends? She looked around the dismal room. Surely none of her friends would have such appalling taste. This looked like a junk room full of abandoned furniture. And why the single bed? Surely none of her friends would put them in separate bedrooms.

All right then, back to the hospital theory. Why on earth would Johnny be taken to a hospital so far away? Where might he have gone? He very rarely went further away than the nearest town since he retired. If he was going further afield, he would probably have taken her with him.

Could that be it? They'd gone out for the day somewhere? To visit a stately home, perhaps? Or a trip to the coast? She realised with growing terror that she didn't even know what time of year it was. And then she spotted something so bizarre that she couldn't see where it fitted into the picture at all.