Get out, you ungrateful girl! boomed her fathers voice, echoing through corridors that seemed to bend and drift like mist. Alice pushed through the door and floated away from the house, trailing memories of eight years since her mother disappeared like a whisper in autumn. Now, at eighteen, Alice had finished her final year at medical school, gold medal shimmering in her dream-hands. She yearned to follow in her mothers footsteps, but her fathers intentions twined around her like ivy. He unveiled his birthday surprise: her engagement to the son of his old friend.
Caught between longing and duty, Alice wandered to a student dormitory that stretched and stacked upwards, impossibly tall, and began working half-shifts at a curious little café where the clocks ran backwards and the cups were always slightly different sizes. One evening, as she gathered her things and wiped down marble-topped tables that shivered slightly, she noticed a sharply dressed man, dark-haired and angular, whose shoes tapped in time with the music only she could hear. He seemed misplaced, too formal for their shadowy little café, and she wondered, between blinks, if hed stepped out of someone elses dream.
Outside, fog weaved through lamplight and familiar shapes blurred. A car shimmered at the kerb, and the same dark-haired strangerRobertstood waiting. Alice, I need to speak to you, he called, his voice folding through the mist. Startled but curious, she paused to hear him.
He revealed himself as her surprise fiancée, arranged by her father for her eighteenth birthday, though delays had kept him from arriving on time. My names Robert, he said, extending a business card that felt warm and heavy in her hand. Lets use first names. I have a business propositionlisten first, then decide if you want in or out.
Robert described his tangled situation: he sought to start his own company, but his fathers ultimatum thumped like thunder in the backgrounda forced marriage or the business would be whisked away, lost in the ether. He offered Alice a sham marriage, promising financial support, her own personal space, and full independence, with no interferencejust two names on a paper, drifting side by side.
Alice drifted along, astonished, uncertainty pooling like rainwater in her shoes. Robert handed her his card and asked her to call when her mind had finished wandering the labyrinth of choices. Days blurred by, time zig-zagged, and at last Alice dialled his number.
The wedding, held in a room that felt both enormous and tiny, included only their parents, whose faces shifted and flickered in the candlelight. When their lips met, a spark ran through them, crackling quietly in the half-light. Alice leaned in and whispered that she liked himeven though the dreams logic made her words sound like leaves rustling. Robert replied with a joy that lifted them both.
In the months that followed, the spark grew brighter, transforming into a wild flame that chased away shadows of obligation and uncertainty. Eventually, within the dreams shifting walls, they both realised their hearts were making the same music, echoing together in the strange realm between memory and morning.
