I Married the Face From a Decade of Dreams

There was a face in my dreams that belonged to nobody. It started when I was about seventeen: not romantic dreams, mostly mundane ones — queues, classrooms, train platforms — into which the same young man would wander. Sandy hair, a chipped front tooth, a way of frowning while smiling. Over the years he aged, which unsettled me most when I finally noticed it. My dream extras never aged. He did.

The recurring scenery was a blue door with a brass knocker shaped like a bee. Sometimes he stood in front of it; sometimes it was just the door alone. I sketched it once in a diary when I was twenty-three, bee and all, because a dream where he silently handed me keys had felt oddly ceremonial.

At thirty-one my flatmate and I were hunting for a cheaper place. Third viewing of the day, a shared terrace house, and I was checking my phone on the pavement when my flatmate said 'this one has character.' I looked up at a blue door with a brass bee knocker, and the pavement did a slow quarter-turn under me.