She put a hand to her stomach again and for the first time she noticed what she was wearing. Sneakers and white socks. Black shorts and a yellow sleeveless top with a shiny gold-foil sticker stuck to her top. It seemed to be a picture of a dinosaur with a balloon coming out of its mouth saying, “ROCK ON.” Rock on?

“Where did these clothes come from?” she asked Jane accusingly. “These aren’t my clothes.”

Jane raised a meaningful eyebrow at George.

“There’s a dinosaur stuck to my shirt,” said Alice, awestruck.

“What day of the week is it today, Alice?” asked George.

“Friday,” answered Alice. She was cheating, because Jane had told her they were doing a “Friday spin class.” Whatever that was.

“Remember what you had for breakfast?” George gently examined the side of her head while he talked. The other paramedic strapped a blood-pressure monitor to her upper arm and pumped it up.

“Peanut butter on toast?”

That was what she generally had for breakfast. It seemed a safe bet.

“He doesn’t actually know what you had for breakfast,” said Jane. “He’s trying to see if you remember what you had for breakfast.”

The blood-pressure monitor squeezed hard around Alice’s arm.

George sat back on his haunches and said, “Humor me, Alice, and tell me the name of our illustrious prime minister.”

“John Howard,” answered Alice obediently. She hoped there wouldn’t be any more questions about politics. It wasn’t her forte. She could never get appalled enough.

Jane made a strange explosive sound of derision and mirth.

“Oh. Ah. But he’s still the prime minister, isn’t he?” Alice was mortified. People were going to tease her about this for years to come. Oh, Alice, you don’t know the prime minister! Had she missed an election? “But I’m sure he’s the prime minister.”

“And what year is it?” George didn’t seem too concerned.

“It’s 1998,” Alice answered promptly. She felt confident about that one. The baby would be born next year, in 1999.

Jane pressed her hand over her mouth. George went to speak, but Jane interrupted him. She put her hand on Alice’s shoulder and stared at her intently. Her eyes were wide with excitement. Tiny balls of mascara hovered on the ends of her eyelashes. The combination of her lavender deodorant and garlic breath was quite overpowering.

“How old are you, Alice?”

“I’m twenty-nine, Jane.” Alice was irritated by Jane’s dramatic tone. What was she getting at? “Same age as you.”

Jane sat back up and looked at George Clooney triumphantly.

She said, “I just got an invitation to her fortieth birthday.”

That was the day Alice Mary Love went to the gym and carelessly misplaced a decade of her life.

Chapter 2

Jane said of course she would have come to the hospital with her but she had to be in court at two o’clock.

“What are you going to court for?” asked Alice, who was perfectly happy not to have Jane come to the hospital. That was quite enough of Jane for one day. “An invitation to her fortieth birthday.” What exactly did she mean by that?

Jane smiled oddly and didn’t answer Alice’s question about court. “I’ll call someone to be there at the hospital waiting for you.”

“Not someone.” Alice watched the paramedics set up a stretcher for her. It looked a bit flimsy. “Nick.”

“Yes, of course, I’ll call Nick.” Jane enunciated her words carefully, as if she were acting in a children’s pantomime.

“Actually, I’m sure I can walk,” Alice said to George Clooney. She never liked the idea of being lifted by people, even Nick, who was pretty strong. She worried about her weight. What if the paramedics grunted and grimaced like furniture removalists when they lifted the stretcher? “I feel fine. Just my head.”

“You’re suffering from a pretty serious concussion there,” said George. “We can’t muck around with head injuries.”

“Come on now, our favorite part of the job is carrying attractive women around on stretchers,” said the other paramedic. “Don’t deprive us.”

“Yes, don’t deprive them, Alice,” said Jane. “Your brain is damaged. You think you’re twenty-nine.”

What did that mean, exactly?

Alice lay back and allowed the two men to efficiently lift her onto the stretcher. As her head rolled to one side, the pain made her dizzy.

“Oh, here’s her bag.” Jane picked up a rucksack from the side of the room and squashed it next to Alice.

“That’s not mine,” said Alice.

“Yes it is.”

Alice stared at the red canvas bag. There was a row of three shiny dinosaur stickers like the one on her shirt stuck across the top flap. She wondered if she was about to be sick.

The two paramedics lifted up the stretcher. They didn’t seem to have a problem carrying it. She guessed it was their job to lift all-sized people.

“Work!” said Alice in a sudden panic. “You’d better call work for me. Why aren’t we at work if it’s a Friday?”

“Well, I really don’t know! Why aren’t we at work?” repeated Jane in that pantomime voice again. “But don’t you worry a thing about it, I’ll call ‘Nick,’ and then I’ll call ‘work.’ So by work I assume you mean, ah, ABR Bricks?”

“Yes, Jane, I do,” said Alice carefully. They’d been working at ABR for three years now. Could the poor girl have some sort of mental illness?

Alice said, “You’d better let Sue know I won’t be in today.”

“Sue,” repeated Jane slowly. “And by Sue, I take it you mean Sue Mason.”

“Yes, Jane. Sue Mason.” (Definitely loopy.)

Sue Mason was their boss. She was a stickler for punctuality and medical certificates and appropriate work attire. Alice couldn’t wait for her maternity leave to start so she could get out of the place.

“Get better soon, Alice!” Spin Crazy Girl called out from the front of the room, her voice amplified by a microphone strapped to her head. She was sitting astride a bike up on a small raised platform, facing the class. There was a television screen flickering above her head and a huge rotating fan next to her. All of the women except for Jane had climbed back onto their bikes and were pedaling slowly, their eyes fixed on some invisible horizon. As Alice’s stretcher reached the door, there was a burst of loud throbbing music and the lights in the room suddenly went out, plunging them into darkness. “Let’s go, team!” shouted Spin Crazy Girl. “We’ve got to make up for lost time! Where were we?”