Page 112 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

she’d fainted . . . that was what she liked about fainting, the restful darkness that

bathed your eyelids. After what felt like an hour (or two?) she held her phone up
to her face to check the time, still couldn’t see anything, and decided she might
as well just sleep.
—

SHE WOKE UP feeling chilly; her feet were sticking out from under the covers. A
head had been resting on the pillow beside hers—all the indentation marks were

there. She picked up her notepad and wrote that down. Even though she’d made
the marks herself they contributed to a sense of not having slept alone. It was
twelve-thirty, the latest she’d woken up in a while, and the room temperature
was unusual for an early afternoon in July. She checked the thermometer and
wrote the temperature down. Low, but it felt even lower. She put two jumpers

on, made tea, plugged headphones in, and called up the first recorded
conversation on her computer screen. There was Jacob, smiling at her, speaking.
At a much lower pitch she heard her voice answering his: “Your singing makes
it cheesy. I love that song . . .” There were strings of words that she remembered
in the correct order, and she tried to say them before her recorded voice did, but
the cold threw her off balance and she was left just listening and watching
instead of participating. She added that observation to the others in her notepad.

—

A VISIT TO HER greenhouse in Sevenoaks yielded a discovery: She hadn’t woken
up at twelve-thirty. Twelve-thirty was still two hours away. When she checked
her phone on the train the time changed, and she asked five other overground
passengers, six . . . Yes, yes, it really is ten-thirty. Sam and Lena were at the

greenhouse, tending to the tea plants beneath swiveling lamps. They were
wearing matching floral-print wellies and Sam preempted her derision: “Yeah I
know, we deserve each other.”
Jill hesitated before she told them about Presence. What if they said Jacob?
Who’s Jacob? or reminded her in voices full of pity that Jacob had been “gone”
for months now? She couldn’t be confident in what she said to them when she’d
just stepped out of an icebox into a sunny July day and the time outside wasn’t

the same as the time in her flat. Well, they were her friends. If at all possible
your friends have a right to be notified when you’ve downright lost it. But it
seemed she was still sane. Lena and Sam had a lot of questions, Lena kept