MINDSLIP

4 Understanding

'Best to go to your school. Someone will help you,' I said in a reassuring voice. He was an eleven-year-old boy in the body of a forty-year-old man. It wasn't just me affected.

'I can't, miss.'

'Why?' I asked sharply, cringing at him continually calling me miss.

'I don't know where I am.'

That made sense. I lived in Guildford and was now in Notting Hill – if the magazine on Suzy's table was to be believed.

'Where should you be?'

'Withington, miss.'

'Withington? Withington, Manchester?'

'Yes, miss. I was at school.'

He'd been plucked from his classroom and was now two hundred miles from home.

This whole situation was becoming crazier by the minute. It was obviously real. No dream lasted this long. I wasn't the only casualty. Which was worse, finding yourself in a girl's body younger than you were or being eleven and discovering you were a man approaching middle-age? Was someone in my body on the Waterloo train? Perhaps the pilot of the crashed plane was suddenly replaced by someone with no flying ability. How awful.

'Come with me. We'll see if we can discover what has happened.' I guided his arm to have him accompany me into Suzy's flat.

Inside I gave him the TV remote and asked him to flick through TV channels to see if he could find some live news.

'Would you like some tea?'

'Thanks, miss.'

'Milk and sugar?'

'Please, miss.'

'How many sugars? And you can stop calling me miss, my name's –' I could hardly say I was Geoff. I wasn't Suzy either. 'You can call me Chris.' That was unisex enough to get away with for the time being.

'Okay, Chris. I'm David. Two sugars, please.'

'Okay, David. You try to find a news programme while I make the tea.'

I joined him on the settee with our tea and some biscuits from one of the cupboards.

'Anything?' I asked. He shook his head.

My God, if this was general, what about my kids? What on earth was wrong with me? Anxiety hit me like a tsunami. A pit opened up in my stomach. This was happening countrywide.

I'd assumed the children would be safe with Caroline or in school, but now, knowing this bizarre situation might be nationwide – the worry took centre stage. They could be anywhere, like this poor lad from Manchester. I felt physically sick that I'd not thought about them.

There wasn't a landline in the flat. I picked up Suzy's phone and touched the screen in hope rather than expectation. Thank God, it wasn't locked. I dialled home.

Brrrr, brrrr... brrrr, brrrr... brrrr, brrrr... brrrr, brrrr... brrrr.

'Yes,' Caroline answered the phone. Everything must be okay.

'Cas?'

'Who?'

'Caroline, is it you?'

'No, or I might be.'

'What do you mean "you might be"?'

'My name's Jane, but I'm in someone else's body and it says, "Caroline Arnold" in her bag.'

My God. Whatever this is, it's throughout the country. Someone else was in Caroline's body. Where was Caroline?

'Are there two children there? Sandra who's eight, and Wilson ten?'