Free The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

every wall was buffered and every surface was covered. The muted silence of a pillow over your head.
April 1995
    An alarm wailed from somewhere. It was not an alarm that Megan recognised. Hers made a high-pitched buzz. This was more of a drone. She opened her eyes and forced them to focus. Boxes. Dozens of boxes. A bed sheet pinned over the window because they didn’t yet have curtains. A large bevelled mirror that was not hers, balanced against the far wall, in which was visible a tableau of two people on a brand new divan bed, one sitting up, looking back at her, the other still asleep. The person looking back at her was dishevelled and confused. Megan flattened down her hair and yawned.
    The droning alarm seemed to grow louder as it went on. It was not her alarm. It was his. Bill’s. She nudged the man sleeping by her side and said, ‘Bill. Wake up. Your alarm’s going off. You need to unpack it and turn it off.’
    Bill opened one eye and then closed it again. He smiled and snuggled himself into Megan’s rounded tummy.
    ‘Bill!’ she said again. ‘It’s driving me nuts! Please do something!’
    He groaned and unpeeled himself from her body. ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’ he asked raspily.
    ‘Yes. Of course it’s yours. I’d know if it was mine. I’m amazed you don’t recognise it.’
    ‘I’m pretty sure mine’s set to radio,’ he said. ‘I’ve definitely never heard it buzz before.’
    He swung his legs out of the bed and Meg watched him stumble, naked, through the city of unopened boxes thatsurrounded the bed. She smiled at him in amusement as he put his ear to each box in turn.
    ‘You look completely mad,’ she said.
    ‘I’m sure I do,’ he replied. ‘You could help, if you wanted.’
    Meg threw back the duvet and pointed at her swollen belly. ‘I am exempt from everything for the next two and a half months.’
    ‘Everything?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely everything.’
    The baby was not planned. Definitely not. She was only twenty-four. She and Bill had only been together for six months. It was ridiculous.
    But Megan had always wanted a big family. At least four. Getting an early start was a good thing.
    And from the moment she’d seen the test results held in her shaking hand in a toilet cubicle at work, it had felt right. Meg wasn’t a young twenty-four. She’d partied hard throughout her teenage years, had two long-term relationships and ten previous lovers. She’d experimented with drugs and decided she preferred alcohol. She’d drunk herself sick and decided she preferred moderation. She could cook a roast dinner, write to her bank manager, run her own car and drive on motorways. She had no overdraft and most of her friends were older than her. And then there was Bill.
    Bill was thirty-two. Bill ran an art gallery. He had an ex-wife. And a mortgage. He was losing his hair.
    In some contexts, twenty-four sounded young to have a child. But in the context of Meg and Bill, it was just perfect. So Bill had sold his little post-divorce love shack with blood-redwalls and zebra-print furniture above a barber’s on Chalk Farm Road and bought them a two-bedroom flat in Tufnell Park with a garden. He’d done this unquestioningly and happily. And this morning, a bright Easter Sunday morning, they were waking up here together for the very first time.
    Bill stood up triumphantly. ‘Aha,’ he said, in a stupid Russian accent. ‘I have located the device. I have thirty seconds to dismantle it before it detonates.’ He peeled the tape from the box and plucked the clock from it. ‘There,’ he said, hitting a button and bringing instant peace and quiet to the room that rang out like a high-pitched chime. ‘Sorry about that.’
    Meg smiled. ‘Not your fault,’ she said.
    ‘Ha, there you go. You see, my ex-wife would have told me that it
was
my fault. You are so wonderfully sane and reasonable. Please don’t ever change.’
    Megan loved it when Bill mentioned his ex-wife because