Reality Check

By Carol Browne

Gillian Roth finds herself in middle age, living alone, working in a dull job, with few friends and little excitement in her life. So far, so ordinary. 
But Gillian has one extraordinary problem.
Her house is full of other people… people who don't exist. Or do they?
As her surreal home life spirals out of control, Gillian determines to find out the truth and undertakes an investigation into the nature of reality itself.
Will this provide an answer to her dilemma, or will the escalating situation push her over the edge before she has worked out what is really going on?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dilliebooks
• Release date: Sep 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393855491

Book preview

Thursday, 26th March, 2015.

My house is full of people who don’t exist.

They have no substance. They are neither alive nor dead. They aren’t ghosts or spirits. They aren’t in any way, shape or form here, but I can see them. And now I need to make a record of how they came to be under my roof.

Why now? Why today? Because we live in strange times, and today is one of the strangest days this year; this is the day that Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, was interred in Leicester Cathedral, with all due ceremony, 530 years after he was slain at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. How surreal is that? I watched the highlights on Channel 4 earlier. A couple of my house guests sat with me and together we marvelled at the event. They did Richard proud, no doubt of that.

I left them to it after a while and came up here to my bedroom to start writing a diary: this diary.

Life feels unreal today, as if time has looped back on itself and everything is happening now. And if I can set my thoughts down on paper, perhaps I can make sense of everything, make it all real somehow.

Where did it start, this thing that has happened to me? A couple of years ago? I can’t say exactly when. It evolved without my conscious input. The existence of my house guests was a fact long before I began to wonder at it. I do wonder at it now and I know I must keep track of what’s happening before I lose myself in this crowd of imaginary beings.

At first there was only a few of them, and I observed their doings without much concern. I watched them snooping around the place, choosing the most comfortable chairs to sit in, leaning against the furniture, inspecting the bookcases, checking the kitchen utensils, and peering into my photo albums. The house clearly passed muster and they stayed. In time, they knew me down to the marrow. I have never known them as well as they know me. They have an air of mystery, as though they have a life outside my house they will never divulge. Even so, I felt I was safe with them and I could tell them my problems. Tell them what no-one else must ever hear. And so these shades thickened, quickened; their personalities accumulated depth and solidity, as though they were skeletons clothing themselves in flesh.

I no longer came home to a cold, empty house, but to a sanctuary where attentive friends awaited my return. I was embraced by their jovial welcome when I stepped through the door. I never knew which of them would be there, but one or two at least would always be waiting to greet me, anxious to hear about my day and make me feel wanted, and for a while I could forget the problems I have at work (even the one that bothers me the most). Since then I have felt a subtle change.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I really need this to be a faithful account of the entire situation from start to finish, so I have to try to work out how it all began, even if I’m not sure when.

If I cast my mind back, it floats like a lantern through a city cloaked in fog. I must try to isolate the shadowy figures that flit up at me out of the murk. So, let’s begin with the friend I remember first. I was cooking my evening meal. My mind wandered. I remember feeling sad. And there she stood, at my right elbow, peering into the saucepan.

Watch you don’t burn that, she said.

I don’t have names for my imaginary friends, just titles, so I call her Kitchen Girl. She’s dark-haired with porcelain skin, and she’s tall and voluptuous. The sort of woman I’d like to be except I’m small with red hair and a ruddy complexion, and I need chicken fillets to convince people I’m female.

I suppose Kitchen Girl is rather daunting, with those fierce blue eyes and no-nonsense approach to everything. I can stand up to her though. I use humour as my weapon of choice and she appreciates wit and banter. I’d like it if she didn’t nag so much, if I’m honest (Use less salt... keep stirring... is that all you’re going to eat?) but, criticism aside, I know she’ll compliment me on the finished product as it lies uneaten between us on the table. Long conversations back and forth have been played out while the meals go cold on their plates. Fried eggs congeal and go waxen. Ice cream melts into a tepid sludge. Sandwiches curl up with embarrassment to be so spurned. You know how it is when you get gossiping. Someone wants to talk to me and that’s better than food.

And sometimes, it’s curious, but it’s Kitchen Girl who cooks the food and serves it to me like a waitress. She likes to surprise me with new dishes.

I have no idea how this happens.

Nor why she never leaves the kitchen. But I wish she’d do the washing up now and then.

Friday, 27th March, 2015.

I need to tell you a bit about myself. (Who is this ‘you’? Well, gentle reader, I have no way of knowing. Do we write diaries hoping one day someone will read them? Or is a diary just another imaginary friend we can tell our troubles to?)

I’m Gillian Roth. I’m forty-nine and have lived on my own since my divorce eight years ago. My childhood doesn’t bear close inspection - let’s leave it at that, okay?

I work in a mini-market in town. I can bus it in ten minutes so it’s very convenient. It’s not as dull as you might think. I can chat to the customers. I keep busy. Time passes. Then I come home.

Life doesn’t feel real there either. When you’re at work, you’re never yourself. You have to act a part, especially if you have a boss. You must be what they want you to be because they have power over you. Imagine if you came out and said what you really thought. No-one wants to get sacked, given the present state of the economy. My boss... well, I have a problem with him. Everyone runs around after him, undoing all his mistakes, while he gets a fat pay cheque at the end of the month and all the credit when sales are good. We all despise him but I have more reason to than the rest of the staff. He singled me out from day one. Him and his damp, floppy hands that remind me of dead fish. And those fat, greasy lips he wants to clamp onto mine.

There’s no-one I can tell. Anita might be a woman too but I know she hates me. Piotr and Abdul are young lads and they wouldn’t get it.  So either no-one would believe me (Get over yourself, Gill, ha ha!) or they’d call me a spoilsport, a bloody woman who needs to lighten up. Anyway if they did believe me, and he got into trouble with the police and his wife, then I’d get sacked. What would I do then?

Well, I’ll get a better job one day but, for now, bills must be paid. So I do my job and come home to my real world. And that’s a laugh, don’t you think? This is why I need to write everything down, come to terms with it all. What is the mechanism behind this thing I’m experiencing? What great, clanking cogs of the imagination are turning the engines of my fantasy world? How can this unreality feel more real than reality?

I’ve no answer to that yet so let’s press on with the cast list, shall we? Let me introduce you to imaginary friend number two.

I like to play music sometimes in the evenings and dance around or do exercises. I get restless if I sit around too much. I tend to do this after dark as a way of winding down before bedtime. I put music on in the lounge — quite loud too so I’m sure the neighbours are grateful I live in a detached house — and then I look round for my dancing partner. He never lets me down. He’s very tall and elegant and, like me, has more energy than he can handle: nervous, buzzing energy. He has to keep busy - moving, fidgeting, pacing, dancing. Loud