The sound of a car wakes Sunny. At first she assumes it's Martha going out because there's no way she's slept for hours, until she glances at the digital clock on her bedside table and sees that it's five fifty-five and the crunch outside is Sylvia returning. First comes the fleeting disappointment that a six-hour nap hasn't miraculously solved her problem. Second is the fog that comes with a long sleep in the middle of the day. There was a fleeting moment when she first regained consciousness that she didn't think about anything but the comfort of her bed, though it didn't last and now she's lying here planning how to dodge any bullet that could out her to her parents as an accidental time traveller, or someone in need of urgent medical attention.

There isn't much time to plan. A couple of minutes later, she hears the creak of the stairs and the soft groan of cautious footsteps on the bare floorboards outside her room, and then the quietest knock. She doesn't register it at first, until the door inches open a tad.

"Sunny? Are you awake?" Martha asks in a low hush.

"Mmm."

The door opens wider and she steps in wearing clean jeans and a loose button down, one hand on the antique ceramic door knob. "Hey, dozy-doe. Feeling any better?" She eyes the untouched pint glass of water. Sunny props herself up on an elbow and downs it, even though her bladder's already full.

"Yeah, a bit," she says, and she's surprised to find it's the truth. In one way, it's a pressure taken off – now she knows for certain that sleep won't send her back, that it's not a dream, that chances are she really is stuck here. So she's going have to suck it up and make the effort.

"Mum's home, if you want to come down," Martha says, referring to her wife. Her own mother died decades ago.

Sunny's desire to see her mother outweighs any of the many other feelings crashing around inside her skull, so she slinks out of bed with a yawn – how the fuck is she going to sleep tonight? – and follows her mother downstairs.

"We're having a glass of white in the garden," Martha says, "though I assume you won't want a drink?"

Sunny's expression says it all. She's not much of a drinker on the best of days. Worse than coffee, alcohol puts her straight to sleep and that's the last thing she needs, so she pours herself a blackcurrant squash (in a new glass, which drives her mother up the wall) and heads out to the sun trap that is the paved square of the back garden. There's a table with a mosaic tile top that Sylvia made herself and a pleasant trickle of water from the rocky fountain that doubles as a cat bowl, and there on a faux wicker seat is Sylvia herself with today's newspaper. Each day she chooses a different paper, regardless of affiliation, because she likes to stay informed outside of the echo chamber.

Today it's The Sun which, while objectively terrible, did give Sunny's sexual awakening a nudge when she first came across Page 3 at the age of eleven.

Sylvia stands when she sees her daughter and her wife, and she grins as she holds her long arms out. "Sunny, honey. A little birdie tells me you're not feeling so good? Did you come home for a bit of TLC?"

Sunny reaches out for the hug first, before she greets her mother with words. She folds herself into Sylvia's arms, her head tucked against her mother's chest – she may be five nine, but that's short to Sylvia, who could easily pass as a model. She's a runner bean of a woman, tall and thin with a jawline that could cut glass and a pair of caterpillars for eyebrows that she refuses to pluck – trends change too often to bother following, she says, and one day it will surely be cool to have thick eyebrows that almost meet in the middle. Her hair, long and shiny and conker brown with slivers of silver, is usually held off her face in a claw clip for work but at home it flows free over her shoulders. Sunny gets a mouthful of it when the breeze picks up as she tries to talk.

For an hour, the three of them enjoy the early evening sun in that cobblestoned patch of the garden. They do the crossword from yesterday's Guardian and Martha goes quiet as she takes over the puzzle page to do the sudoku, the birds once again making the most noise. A couple of the cats – Dingo and Ursula – are milling about, occasionally (and fruitlessly) pouncing in the general direction of a pigeon. Kiki is lying in a shaft of pure sunlight and Tom is curling himself around all three pairs of legs as though no-one has paid attention to him in weeks.

And then a cat that Sunny doesn't recognise emerges, a squishy looking little one with big ears and a fluffy tail, its black coat streaked with grey when the light catches it. It makes sense, of course, that her cat-addicted parents would have somehow taken in a new creature in the last year, but she doesn't know this one's name. She makes the obligatory kissy noise to call it over, an instinct that never abandons her any time she's presented with a cat – she can't help but want to touch it. The cat slinks over and jumps onto her lap and she scratches between its ears, and it starts to purr as loud as a freight train rattling down a rickety track.

"She misses you when you're not here," Sylvia says, stroking the cat's back. "Don't you, Britney?"

Sunny suppresses a laugh. The newest cat is called Britney? Her parents must have consulted her for a name in the midst of her obsession with anything and everything Britney Spears – which is, to be fair, an ongoing obsession. That's not going anywhere soon.

"Such a pretty girl," she says, snuggling Britney. "I wish I could have a cat in my flat."

"I'm sure if you ever move somewhere that allows pets, Brit will be the first to follow you," Martha says, her eyes still glued to the sudoku as she holds all the numbers in her head, never making note of which numbers go where. "There's something about the bond between an abandoned kitten and the cat lady lesbian who finds her."

While cat lady lesbian could describe all three of the women at the table, Sunny knows her mother is talking about her, which means Britney is her rescue project. She wants to know more but she can't figure out a way to dig for information without alarming her parents further, so she waits for one of them to say something else. They're a pair of nostalgics, suckers for recounting stories like this, so she doesn't wait long.

"Who'd have thought you came from a box on the side of the road?" Sylvia says, still stroking the cat. Britney seems to love it because she loses control of her back end, lifting her bottom to meet each stroke with a rowdy purr, rubbing the side of her face against Sunny's pointed knuckle.

"Who'd do that to such a cute little baby?" Sunny asks, marvelling at this cat, who can't be more than a few months old. She must have been abandoned in the thick of winter.

"I still can't believe how lucky she was," Sylvia murmurs. Britney finds a comfortable spot on Sunny's lap and sits down, curling her tail around her body. "What if you hadn't been coming over that day? The poor mite would've probably starved to death, or frozen. It doesn't bear thinking about."

Hedging her bets, Sunny says, "She seems to have settled in really well."

"She's a little princess," her mother agrees. "It was a little rocky at first. The others got so jealous of her because she needed a lot of extra care, but look at her. She's thriving now. Even Mitsy's come around to her."

That makes six cats, Sunny thinks. Mitsy and Britney and the four on the lawn. It's not like there isn't the space for them. There are plenty of outbuildings for mouse hunting, plenty of warm sofas and soft laps for curling up on inside, more than enough love to go around. The Shelleys were cat people before they were ever people people - they had three moggies long before they ever had Sunny, whose birth was unplanned but appreciated. Martha and Sylvia's attitude to children had been if it happens, it happens. And it had happened at the last possible minute, when Martha was closing in on forty and had long since decided she would only ever be a cat mum.

Sunny's attitude is a little different. She doesn't ever want children – her babies will be her animals. While she lacks direction in her life, she knows for sure that she wants to end up in a nice house of her own with a couple of cats. She doesn't know how she'll get there on her meagre salary, but she continues to buy a lottery ticket each week, just in case.

They make it through the entire evening without any more slipups. Sunny manages to answer the majority of her parents' questions about how her life is going at the moment, fending them off with answers about Ravi and Delilah and Fraser, bigging up her friends because they're one thing she's sure of. When they ask about work, she assumes – hopes – it's the same old same old. The subject of her love life doesn't come up, and it seems that after years of having nothing to report, they've given up on asking. That would help. That would really help.

Until, after they've eaten at long last, and they're settling in to watch Have I Got News For You (thanks to which Sunny finally knows that it must be a Friday). Martha and Sylvia are curled together on one sofa in the snug – a small, book-filled sitting room with an ashy fireplace and deep-cushioned sofas – and Sunny's in a wide chair that lets her sit cross-legged with a blanket over her knees and Britney on her lap. Her stress levels are remarkably lower than they were this morning, her shoulders looser and her heart slower, until her mother catches her off guard.

"How're things with you and Vivian?" she asks. "You haven't mentioned her all day. Are you two all right?"

Sunny freezes. This is too big a lie to construct on the spot, one she'd hoped she wouldn't have to tell, and she can't think fast enough. She doesn't know how much her parents know but whatever it is, it's more than she knows because hey, they know her name without having to ask.

"Oh, honey," Martha says, inferring an answer from Sunny's stricken silence. "I didn't realise. What happened?"

"We're just ... going through a weird patch," Sunny says at last. She doesn't elaborate on just how weird that patch is. "I think we need to take some time, figure out who we really are." Her hand is on Britney's back, feeling the judder of her purring body, and it goes some way to keeping her level.

"Oh, Sun." Sylvia gives her a sympathetic frown. "Whatever it is, I hope you can work through it. She's such a lovely girl. You two make a wonderful couple." She meets Martha's eye; the two share a look. "She's good for you, Sunny. Unless she's admitted to hating cats, I think you should try to keep her around."

It's so fucking strange to hear her parents talk about her relationship like this. Like it's something they're a part of, something she has shared with them. She doesn't know what to say, staring at her parents and waiting for them to continue. Maybe, if they fill the silence, she will learn about Vivian from them.

"I know it's intense and scary, your first big relationship," Martha says, muting the TV even though Stephen Fry is on the panel this week and she adores him, "but Vivian is a rare specimen, and I know how much you love her. Don't let something small get in the way. What happened?"

There's no escaping this. Sunny has never been one to hide from her parents; they've always had open and frank discussions, ever since she was a child. Her parents have always treated her like her voice and her opinions matter, even when she was three and her opinion was that their new cat should be called Mr Whisker Biscuit.

"I..." She rearranges her position, holding onto Britney and hoping she won't jump off. She doesn't. She is anchored to Sunny's lap, melting into the blanket like a puddle of charcoal ice cream. "Sometimes I feel like we're on different timelines."

It's hard not to let the slightest twitch of a smile free. She's proud of that line, something that sounds feasible and also describes her wild new reality.

"Do you want the same things out of your relationship?" Sylvia asks. Sunny shrugs.

"I'm not sure."

"Then you need to have a conversation. Don't quit at the first hurdle, babes. It sounds like the two of you need to sit down and have a chat, figure out what you want together and from each other. I think, if the chemistry is right, there's very little that can't be worked through."

She and her wife share a look, and Sunny reminds herself of everything they went through as a couple, every storm they have weathered. They have made it more than four decades and they are still disgustingly in love, sticking closer together through thick and thin. No matter how the world tries to shut them up as a queer couple, no matter how much the world tries to discredit them as a couple who stayed together through Sylvia's transition, they are stronger as a pair.

If they can handle all that, then Sunny can handle the small matter of having slipped through some kind of black hole into an alternate reality.

"Yeah, you're right," she says with a sigh. Because that's the only answer, really. Top of her to do list should be talk to Vivian you stupid girl! You cannot hide from this!

"God, if I had a penny for every time I thought your mother and I were on different pages..." Sylvia laughs. "I could probably afford to retire."

"And if you had a penny for every time we talked it through and realised we were in the same place?" her wife asks.

"I'd double my money."

They both look at Sunny with soft, knowing smiles. They probably think that whatever she's going through, it's nothing they haven't already handled ten times over. The thought makes Sunny smile to herself, imagining that her parents are secretly time travellers too.

"I'll talk to her," she says. "But can I stay here a bit longer?"

"Of course you can, darling. You know we love having you around. This place is so quiet without you, we were thinking about getting one of those yappy little dogs."

Sunny gasps. "Are you calling me a noisy bitch?"

That cracks Sylvia up. Martha is momentarily horrified before realising her daughter's teasing her and she rolls her eyes. The tension is broken and Sunny's heart rate is coming down again – laughter really is a pretty decent medicine, she thinks, and vows to line up a couple of comedies to rent for after she and Vivian have had the conversation. Maybe it won't be so bad and awkward and damn weird if they can follow it up with a double screening of Sister Act and Mrs Doubtfire.

"Stay with us as long as you need," Martha says, reaching across the gap to squeeze Sunny's socked foot, "and then go back to Vivian and tell her how you feel. Okay?"

Sunny nods. Closes her eyes. Swallows hard. "Okay."

*

do you think you'd be able to get away with losing a year without your parents noticing?