The Suitcase

I’m having a naughty dream. Semi-lucid. I know what I’m doing and I know it’s wrong. But technically, it isn’t cheating, right? Sleeping with another man if it’s just a dream. Hmm. A grey area, perhaps. Possibly a loophole. Possibly something Freud would have retired on. Either way, I’m getting right into it. Full penetration. Tangles in the sheets. Passionate sighing that sounds suspiciously like somebody wrestling an airbed into submission. I let out a hearty, triumphant — “Ohhh yeah…” — and suddenly a hand lands on my shoulder. “What the hell are you doing, Mandy?” My eyes fly open. Or at least I think they do. Dream awakenings are notoriously unreliable little bastards. Guilt grips me by the throat and pins me to the mattress before I even have time to figure out which dimension I’m currently occupying. Jesus Christ. I was almost — Actually, never mind. A girl can’t even lucid cheat these days without getting caught in the act. “Nothing,” I mumble. “Just having a nightmare.” Mat raises a suspicious eyebrow. The eyebrow. The one that has survived twenty years of my nonsense. “Strangled by an octopus,” I add quickly. Mainly for effect. The eyebrow remains unconvinced. Fortunately, he changes the subject before I have to explain why the octopus was in the bedroom in the first place. “It’s Phoebe’s birthday.” I laugh. Mostly because that’s ridiculous. Mostly because I’m relieved we’re no longer discussing my subconscious sex life. “I think I’d know when my own daughter’s birthday is.” “Evidently not.” He folds his arms. “Luckily I’ve saved your bacon.” Something about the way he says it immediately concerns me. “Oh God.” “I’ve got a suitcase full of gifts prepared.” “A suitcase?” “Yes.” “A metaphorical suitcase?” “No.” He sighs. “An actual suitcase.” Of course it is. Because this is Mat. Mat doesn’t buy presents. He stages interventions. If Father Christmas had anxiety issues and unrestricted access to Amazon Prime, he’d basically be Mat. I follow him downstairs. And there it is. A suitcase so overstuffed it appears to have entered the final stages of pregnancy. The zip is straining for its life while the sides bulge ominously. “What on earth is in there?” His face lights up. This is his moment. The annual Look At Me Being Thoughtful awards ceremony. He’s always been like this, although his generosity seems to come in waves depending on mood. When we first got together, he wanted to impress me. And when Mat decides to impress somebody, he doesn’t exactly start small. No. He reached for the BIG guns. And they don’t come much bigger than Paris. The most romantic city in the world. Actual Paris. Not a suspiciously sticky DVD called One Night in Paris. Paris Paris. For somebody who had barely ventured beyond British seaside towns and various shades of drizzle, it sounded impossibly exotic. My parents had already done all their travelling by the time I arrived as an afterthought. I was the happy accident — the bonus chapter nobody expected. As a result, our family holidays mainly consisted of caravan parks, service stations, and lengthy debates about whether it was worth setting up deckchairs in a thunderstorm. So Paris felt glamorous. Sophisticated. Romantic. And it was. Sort of. I remember a lot of road rage. A surprising amount of swearing. Taxi drivers communicating entirely through aggressive hand gestures and centuries-old grudges. And one homeless bloke, posing as a tourist photographer, who nicked our camera and then demanded a ridiculous amount of Euros to give it back. Which, when you think about it, is a fairly bold business model. Still. It was wonderful. A genuinely brilliant gift. One that, in a way, he’s spent the last two decades trying to live up to. The Traitors Experience came close. Or it would have come close. Had we actually gone. Those tickets are probably still somewhere in the house, quietly aging alongside several unfinished DIY projects and a graveyard of good intentions. Future archaeologists will uncover them eventually. “Evidence suggests the occupants enjoyed making plans but became mysteriously exhausted whenever those plans involved leaving the house.” Eventually, of course, I realised he didn’t have much money. Certainly not enough to sustain a lifetime of Paris-sized gestures. And I loved him anyway. The gifts were never the point. The thought was. It always was. Which brings me back to the suitcase. I unzip it cautiously. Half expecting a live goat to spring out. Instead, it’s packed with brand-new outfits. Sundresses. Sandals. Suncream. Bug spray. A sombrero. Several miniature toiletries. A first-aid kit. Enough supplies to survive either a family holiday or the collapse of modern civilisation. “Holiday,” he beams. Beams isn’t the right word. The man is practically glowing. “Aww.” I smile. “That’s lovely.” But he’s only just getting started. Naturally. Beneath the clothes sits a large scrapbook. “Open it.” He’s practically vibrating now. “Go on.” I do. And immediately my heart softens. Hundreds of photographs. Tickets. Notes. Little scraps of memory preserved between glitter-covered pages. It’s beautiful. Painstakingly so. The sort of project that takes hours. Days. Possibly months if you’re Mat. “This is lovely.” I run a finger over one of the photographs. “You’ve really poured your heart into this.” “Wait.” His eyes widen. “There’s more.” There’s always more. Under a pair of flip-flops sits a DVD. One of those mysterious circular objects younger generations regard with the same fascination as Stonehenge. “Play it.” “Who owns a DVD player in 2026?” “I do.” Somewhere deep inside Mat’s soul, it’s still 2004. He reaches into the suitcase and produces a DVD player. From where, I have absolutely no idea. The thing appears to have been hidden between the bug spray, the plasters, and what I’m now fairly certain is a small tear in reality. Minutes later, wistful music fills the room. Old home videos begin flickering across the television. And suddenly there we are. Younger. Happier. The five of us running hand-in-hand into the sea. Laughing. Splashing. Perfect. For a moment I barely recognise us. We seem so connected. So effortless. The sort of family Christmas cards spend decades pretending everybody is. My chest tightens. Because I know something those people don’t. I know what comes later. And real life, unfortunately, has a habit of turning up eventually. Then the front door bursts open. “What is all this shit?” Phoebe. Excellent timing. Every family has one person capable of accidentally driving a combine harvester through an emotional moment. Ours is Phoebe. Mat immediately starts trying to hide the presents. Phoebe gets there first. She wedges the suitcase open. Clothes explode in all directions. “Seriously?” she says. Her face scrunches in disgust. “What is all this crap?” “Happy Birthday!” Mat replies with forced enthusiasm. The kind of enthusiasm that’s already bleeding internally. I can see the hurt immediately. Mat wears his emotions like skin. “I thought it might be nice to go a little extra this year,” I say, attempting to rescue the situation before it bursts into flames. “Why on earth would you think I’d want this?” She yanks photographs from the scrapbook. Pages tear. Pictures flutter through the air. Memories drifting down like wounded birds. “Just give me money.” Ouch. The ungrateful little swine. “Save yourself the wasted effort.” Then she storms upstairs, dragging the enormous suitcase behind her. How she’s managing this remains unclear. Dream physics. The suitcase probably weighs three hundred pounds. “Well,” Mat says quietly. “That went down well.” “Give her time,” I say, squeezing his arm. “Perhaps she needs to sit with her feelings.” That’s what therapists say, isn’t it? Sit with your feelings. The thing is… What makes the whole situation feel so strange is that none of it should even be happening. Because in real life, Phoebe and her stepfather can barely tolerate being in the same room together. They’ve never really seen eye to eye. Years of friction. Years of disappointment. Years of misunderstanding each other so completely they may as well have been speaking different languages. In the beginning, Mat genuinely made the effort. Gifts. Holidays. Expensive trainers. Days out. Opportunities. Kindness. He kept showing up with arms full of olive branches. And somehow every single one came back and smacked him in the face. Nothing ever stuck. She didn’t want him there. Didn’t want him in her life. And she made sure he knew it. Repeatedly. With enthusiasm. She treated him appallingly through her teenage years, like something unpleasant she’d discovered stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Something to scrape off and disregard. It hurt him more than he ever admitted. Eventually he stopped trying. Not because he stopped caring. Because rejection, repeated often enough, starts to feel like punishment. You can’t force somebody to love you. You can’t buy acceptance. And sometimes money can’t buy love. It only buys another opportunity to be rejected. And standing there in this ridiculous dream, surrounded by torn photographs and abandoned gifts, I can feel all of it. Every failed attempt. Every unopened gift. Every disappointment. The rejection never really leaves. Later, I creep upstairs. Phoebe is lying on the bed crying. Real crying. Shoulders shaking. Mascara everywhere. “I’m sorry you didn’t like the gifts,” I say gently. She looks up at me. “It’s not even my birthday.” I blink. “What?” “It’s not my birthday.” Something about the way she says it makes the room feel colder. “I know,” I say quietly. “But he’s trying.” Her tears stop instantly. As though somebody has flicked a switch. She sits upright. A passport has somehow appeared in her hand. Dreams are funny like that. One moment you’re crying, the next you’re carrying government-issued identification. “So where am I going?” Before I can answer, Mat appears in the doorway. Beaming. Positively radiant. “A stepfather-and-daughter bonding trip.” Phoebe immediately bursts into tears again. The sort of devastated sobbing normally reserved for funerals, heartbreaks, and extended family holidays. And suddenly the entire dream makes sense. The suitcase. The holiday. The scrapbook. The birthday that isn’t a birthday. None of it was really about Phoebe. It was about him. Every gift. Every photograph. Every doomed attempt to build a bridge only one person wanted to cross. Twenty years of showing up with open hands and hoping this time might be different. But then another thought lands. Perhaps it isn’t really about him either. Perhaps it’s about me. Because underneath the ridiculous affair… Underneath the octopus… Underneath the fake birthday and the overstuffed suitcase… There’s guilt. The guilt of wanting two people you love to love each other. The guilt of never being able to fix it. And that’s when I wake up. For real this time. Mat is snoring beside me. The room is dark. The octopus is nowhere to be seen. I lie there staring at the ceiling. Thinking about suitcases. Because sometimes the heaviest luggage isn’t what we carry. It’s what we can’t put down. Guilt. Don’t you just love it?