‘Sorry. Just tired,’ I reply and motion to the steaming mug of coffee. ‘Not enough caffeine yet to get the brain into gear.’
She relaxes. ‘I’ll get you another to take with you,’ she says waving a to-go cup towards me.
‘You’re a star,’ I reply and return to the muffin. It really is excellent.
I walk into him in the park. And when I say I walk into him, I mean Iliterallywalk into him. I’m forced to swerve out of the way of a small child on a scooter and he’s on the other side of the path, staring at the screen of his phone as if it holds all the secrets to the universe.
‘Fuck!’ I shout, as my takeaway cup slips from my grasp and splashes – thankfully now lukewarm – coffee up his legs.
‘Language,’ the mother of the small scooter monkey says as she passes me, ignoring any part she has played in this debacle by virtue of having zero control over her kid.
‘Bethany?’ Tyler asks the top of my head, seeing as I’m crouching on the ground trying to dab at his trainers with the sleeve of my jumper.
I only just avoid cracking my head on his elbow as I straighten back up. ‘Sorry about that,’ I mumble.Why?Of all the people in the world, of all the people even in this square mile of London, why did it have to be Tyler I walked into?
‘That’s okay.’ He looks at me. Really looks. ‘Are you all right?’
I stare back at him.No, I want to say. No, I am very much not all right. I mean, I’m wandering around the park at eleven in the morning, clutching a coffee because it’s not socially acceptable to drink at this time of the day, and trying to ignore the wolf clawing at my chest that perhaps this is all my entire life is now. A few days here, a few days in the next place, and the next and the next. Nothing matters any more. Nothing means anything. I have no future.
I turn and run from Tyler. I don’t want to have this conversation. I don’t want to have to explain to him, yet again, that this keeps happening and he keeps appearing and we still can’t fix it and none of it matters anyway.
But the next morning, I’m still in this world and so I go through the motions, because … well, why not, I guess.
I send him an email. The one that lets him know I’m not a lunatic and gives him just enough information to know I’m telling the truth.
He’s on my doorstep half an hour later, smelling likecoconut shampoo and holding a pack of custard creams. ‘You look a bit better than yesterday,’ he says matter-of-factly, his eyes raking over me.
It’s not a difficult feat. I’ve washed my hair and put on some clean jeans and a light grey T-shirt. I even brushed my teeth and spritzed myself with this perfume called Alien Goddess I found on the dresser. Note to self: buy this one when I get home; it’s seriously nice.
‘I apologize for yesterday.’ The words come out more stiffly than I’d hoped.
He tilts his head to one side. ‘I think you can get a teeny bit of slack. I mean, given everything that’s been happening.’
We have tea and custard creams and I take him through the theorem and all the thoughts the other Tylers and I have had. But my heart isn’t in it and he can tell.
‘We can do this,’ he says, but the conviction doesn’t quite make it to his eyes, which still shine with what I think is pity.
I collapse on the sofa next to him and lay my head on his shoulder. I’m done. Out of energy. Out of ideas. Out of everything. ‘Nothing works. Nothing matters.’
‘If none of it matters,’ he whispers into my neck, ‘then in the next world, come and find me. Tell me the world might be about to end and there is only one logical solution for how to deal with the problem.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask, my voice snuffly.
He pulls back from me a little, his eyes boring into mine. And then his face breaks into an almost impish grin. ‘Where is the one place you’ve always wanted to visit?’
‘New York,’ I say without thinking.
‘Well, then. Running away to New York it is.’
I laugh, but then it turns to tears and he holds me gently as evening turns to night and then I fall asleep in his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I wake up with sun streaming through the curtains, which are completely ineffectual thin muslin things incapable of blocking out any light at all. Why would this Bethany have bought them? What is the actual point?
Cracking open a single eye against the ocular onslaught, I realize that everything in the bedroom is white. White bedding – although the high thread count is definitely to my taste – and white wooden furniture and a white lampshade and a white rug on the floor, which is … you guessed it … whitewashed floorboards. It’s almost blinding, like being in some super futuristic spaceship. I look down at myself and yep, even my pyjamas are white.
I pad into the living room, where the white is tempered by various shades of grey: from the charcoal sofa to the pale wash on the walls and the brushed chrome furniture. There are two books on the coffee table and things become slightly clearer; one is calledMonochrome For a Peaceful Mind. I remember picking this up in a hipster bookshop in Hoxton during Cesca’s – thankfully short-lived – Russian literature phase. There was this girl she fancied who had told her all aboutThe Master and Margarita, telling her it was ‘part love story and part Menippean satire’ and ‘she absolutely must read it’. She bought a suitably battered copy and managedto get through ten pages before she threw it across the room and declared that perhaps she wasn’t quite hot enough for that shit.
