It felt as though the dream wrapped me in a thick, heavy fog, the sort that lingers over the Thames on cold mornings. In this odd, shifting world, I was suddenly marrying my girlfriend because, with a surreal sense of inevitability, she was expecting a child. After the weddingwhere the bells sounded more like distant church organsthe two of us crossed the garden maze of my childhood and moved into my parents old stone house in Surrey. It seemed there was no question of living alone, as if our independence floated away on the mist.
Time in this dream skittered about like hares across the heath. Before I knew it, I was cradling a beautiful boy with a whimsical English nameHenrywho looked up at me with curious eyes. We gathered enough pounds and pence for a mortgage, and like characters out of an English nursery rhyme, bought a cottage with walls thick with roses and secrets.
Soon, my wifes laughter, echoing through twisty corridors, told me we were expecting again. Out of the swirling mist arrived our little princess, Emily, with hair the colour of autumn brambles and more freckles than there are constellations over Kent. Both children grew faster than beanstalks after rain, sprouting tangled ginger hair and scattering freckles upon their faces. Strangest of all, neither Henry nor Emily looked much like me. Or their mother, for that matter. It was as if the old English fairy tales had spun them up out of wind, moss, and dappled sunlight.
Odd doubts gnawed at me. Were these children truly mine? The question nestled in my mind like a hedgehog in a pile of leaves. Against all sense and reason, and guided by that curious, slippery logic one finds only in dreams, I took them for a paternity test. Perhaps it was folly, but in that odd realm it seemed the only way to clear the twisting fog.
The days waiting for results stretched and squashed, clocks bending and chiming out of tune. When the call finally came, I dashed through cobbled streets to the lab, my heart beating like a cricket against a windowpane. The verdict was plain: I was their father. I returned to the cottage, slipping the documents beneath a loose floorboard, unsure why I didnt throw them away. In this dream, some things are never as they should be.
But secrets burrow deeper than badgers. My wife found the papers one dusk, tossing them at me with such force that the fireplace ashes shuddered. Her anger reverberated through the house, shaking teapots on their hooks and rattling muffins in the larder. I could hardly blame her; still, I wished it could have been settled over tea and quiet words, as the English so often do.
She could not forgive me. The years unraveled, indistinct and muffled. Five summers and five winters passed outside our garden gate, and she never once let me see Henry and Emily again. The dream closed in once more, somber and colourless. My idle curiosity, that old English cat, had made off with what mattered mostmy family.
Sometimes, as mists curl over turreted roofs and laughter echoes from beyond the hedgerows, I dream she will forgive meone day, perhaps, when the lawn glistens with dew and everything is made new.
