When my husband tried to kill me with a tray of grapes …

… I was wearing a cream-coloured nightie with long sleeves and a rip under one pit, and over that a pale blue cashmere cardie that had once been nice but had lost its shape, the way cashmere does.  I was ill and feeling cold, so I put the cardie on before I went to sleep. That’s when I dreamt my husband came into the kitchen carrying a tray piled with purple grapes. The grapes were covered in mould, it looked like cobwebs.  I said, ‘Nick!  Please  get rid of the grapes. That mould’s going to give me an asthma attack.’  In the dream, he looked down at the tray and shook his head, and then he said, his face set:  ‘No.’  That was all, just the one word.  I was astonished.  I said, pleading with him, ‘O, Nick, come on. You know what it’ll do to me.’ He said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ and that’s when I woke up, gasping for breath.

Over the nightie, a cashmere cardie that had lost its shape.

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