The Woman Who Borrowed Tomorrow

Lucy (0:12)

Hello, and welcome back to Sleepy Stories.

I'm your host Lucy, and my friends and I will be reading you a sleepy bedtime story every week to relax you and to help you to drift off into a restful sleep.

From time to time, we will also read you a relaxing, peaceful meditation that will take you somewhere beautiful and calming.

Once we have read the stories, we will then read them a second time. But this time, they will be read even slower. This will help you to relax even more. Before we begin, I would like you to close your eyes and breathe in and out nice and deeply.

Take a few seconds to inhale, and then hold your breath for a few seconds more.

And then release and breathe out. Do this a few times if you need to, while you listen to the music and you listen to my voice.

Give yourself time to let your body relax and your mind settle.

It's important that we allow time for ourselves to feel safe, cosy and completely at ease.

And now it's time for this week's story.

The Woman Who Borrowed Tomorrow Long ago, in a town between Kyoto and the mountains, there lived a woman named Aiko who was always waiting for her real life to begin. She was 38 years old, although she disliked saying so. 38 sounded suspiciously close to 40 And 40 sounded like an age at which a person ought to have worked everything out.

Aiko had not. She lived above a little tea shop on a narrow street lined with wooden houses. In spring, cherry blossoms floated past her bedroom window. In summer, cicadas sang so loudly that Aiko sometimes shouted at them to be quiet. They never listened. Every morning, she woke at six.

Every morning, she put water on to boil. Every morning, she looked out of the window at the mountains and thought, surely there is supposed to be more than this. Then she went downstairs and opened the tea shop. Her parents had owned the shop before her. Her father had died six years earlier, and her mother now lived with Aiko's older sister in Osaka.

Aiko had once dreamed of becoming a photographer. At 22, she had planned to travel across Japan taking photographs. At 25, she had planned to travel across Asia.

At 30, she had planned to travel around the world. At 38, she mostly travelled between the tea shop, the supermarket and her bedroom. There had been romances too.

One particularly serious one, with a man named Ren.

Ren had asked her to marry him when she was 31 Aiko had said she needed time to think. Apparently, seven years was more time than Ren had been prepared to give her. He was now married to somebody else. Aiko had discovered this when his wedding photograph appeared on social media. She had stared at it for 11 minutes.

Then she had accidentally liked it, then unliked it, then liked it again, while trying to check whether she had definitely unliked it. Finally, she had thrown her phone across the room. Fortunately, it landed on a cushion.

Unfortunately, it bounced off the cushion and landed in her soup. That was the sort of thing that happened to Aiko. She wasn't unhappy, not exactly. She was simply waiting.

Waiting for something exciting, waiting to fall in love, waiting to travel, waiting to feel different, waiting for tomorrow.

And then, one rainy Tuesday, tomorrow came looking for her. It had been an especially irritating day, a delivery of expensive green tea had arrived damaged. A customer complained that his tea was too hot. Aiko pointed out that this was generally considered one of tea's defining characteristics. He did not appreciate this observation. Then, the toilet blocked. At 6 o'clock, her sister telephoned. Are you coming to mother's birthday on Sunday? Of course, you forgot last year. I didn't forget. You telephoned her at 11.53 at night. I remembered with 7 minutes remaining. That's forgetting enthusiastically.

Aiko sighed. Outside, rain hammered against the windows.

I've had a terrible day.

Her sister laughed. You always say that. No, I don't. You said it yesterday. Yesterday was also terrible. And Monday. Monday was Monday. It didn't need any additional help.

After they hung up, Aiko closed the shop early. She didn't want dinner. She didn't want television. She didn't want Tuesday. She put on her coat and walked. Rainwater ran along the gutters. Lanterns glowed outside restaurants, and somewhere behind a wooden door, people were laughing. Aiko felt irritated by their happiness. Show offs, she muttered. She turned down a street she had walked along hundreds of times. Then stopped. There was a shop between the florist and an old stationery store. Aiko frowned. She was certain there hadn't been a shop there yesterday. A wooden sign hung above the door.