“What you doin’ our Jeffrey?”

He turns toward the disagreeably sharp voice, her face drawn and eternally tired as she turns from the sink wiping her hands and leaving damp patches down her pinafore. Smiling at the softness of her eyes, hazel like his, he shrugs in mock offence as she tousles his hair.

Jeffrey wakes with a start, thin strands of hair the colour of ashes brushing the map of lines on his cheek. Gazing out in alarm at unfamiliar magnolia painted walls he feels the rise of a moment’s panic that occurs too often and too often refuses to go away.

“What’s for dinner?” He poses the question to no one in particular, his mind still stubbornly held by the aroma of baking bread.

“It isn’t time yet. You’ve only just had breakfast.”

Her voice is disagreeably sharp and he stares with eyes wide half perceiving the dream, half perceiving a much less familiar place. His panic growing as her image, face drawn and eternally tired, dissipates into the unfamiliar magnolia overlaid by another too much like one his mind won’t release to be different, yet just different enough to make him doubt. He should know, he knows he should, the electric clock tapping out the seconds as his mind searches the meandering paths for the place where he left her temporarily lost.