The Game You Played by Anni Taylor Page B

I’ll have a long nap today. I’ll be fine.”
    “Look, I’m staying. I’m getting another alarm system. The one we have never worked properly.”
    “Okay,” I said softly, and I hugged him from behind. Luke had his mind made up, and I knew I couldn’t change it. We caught sight of each other again in the mirror. We smiled, but the smiles seemed obligatory . Did Luke see what I did? Sometimes, we were like strangers, just going through the motions of being a married couple. Were all couples like this? You realised that the person that had lit up your life was also the one throwing shadows on all your other possibilities.
    I hated it when those thoughts slipped in. He was my husband, and he’d been my rock. I needed to remember that.
    Luke stayed until the time was late enough for the hardware store to open, then he headed out. He’d insisted that he was going to buy an alarm system.
    Alone in the house, I felt a shift inside myself, a recalibration.
    Something important happened in my dream last night. What was it?
    My head was so, so hazy. I had to remember.
    I sat myself down on the edge of the sofa.
    Yesterday, after Trent Gilroy left our house, I’d had the words to the second letter hanging in my mind like a dark cloud. Trent had spoken of different possibilities—of a random person wanting attention, of a grudge against Luke, of a stupid prank. It wasn’t any of those things. The letters were for me. Only for me. The person, whoever they were, knew me. Those words, they were intended to wound. In the two years that I’d had Tommy, I’d never felt like a good mother . Sometimes, I hadn’t even wanted to be a mother. I used to see the mothers in the street and at my mothers’ group (with their doting voices and their full schedules of mother/baby activities) and think that Tommy would rather be with any one of those mothers than me. He’d run off and never look back.
    Someone, somehow, knew all of that about me.
    And if this person was someone who knew me, then I knew them .
    Surely, some part of me must already know who they were.
    I’d barely spoken to Bernice since I was sixteen. But Nan spoke about me to Bernice’s mother all the time. Just like Mrs Wick spoke about Bernice to Nan and Nan passed that information onto me. Bernice could know more about me than anyone, besides Luke and Nan.
    But I needed some proof. And I had none.
    But the dreams—the dreams were sending me clues.
    The night before last, Tommy had taken me all the way back to the exact place he’d gone missing. And the wizard man had given me a moth (injured).
    There was a thread running through everything. I just had to grab hold of the end and unspool it.
    Last night I’d taken the sleeping tablets. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t do that again, but the letters had changed everything. My dreams might show me what my conscious mind could not. Beforehand, I’d hidden the deadlock key to make sure I couldn’t get out of the house. In case I wandered.
    In my dream, Tommy visited his bedroom, and he’d wanted to play trains. He always used to ask me to play trains with him, but I rarely did. Last night, while we were playing, he was laughing, excited. Then, somehow, the old homeless wizard man had found his way up into Tommy’s room. He’d handed me an object—an eyeball.
    An eyeball.
    I sat up straight on the sofa. That was what I’d forgotten. The eyeball. It had looked around wildly in the palm of my hand. Startled, I’d dropped it. It’d rolled away, disappearing through the floorboards. Tommy had run from the room then, and I’d desperately chased after him.
    Why had the dream given me that ? I wanted a clue—a real clue.
    When I’d woken from the dream, I’d been in Luke’s arms, at the top of the stairs. He’d looked at me like I was a strange thing, and he’d spoken about taking me to see Dr Moran. I’d lied that I’d seen her recently. I hadn’t. I’d done my best to reassure him, to make love to