But my hand finds shorter fur and my palm cups a far smaller head and I pull it back as if I’ve been burned. I open my eyes to find a cat staring back at me.
The cat is instantly on edge, leaping to her feet and hissing at me as she backs away. She scurries to the kitchen, leaving my heart pounding in my chest at the shock.
I pad after her and discover she’s called Lulu, and once again I’m the kind of woman who lavishes her pets with all manner of material stuff emblazoned with their name, which they probably don’t need. I’ve obviously skipped again, and I feel bereft.
There is no Lily in this universe.
Lily is gone and the world tilts on its axis at the thought that I will never see her again.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do like cats. I mean, obviously I do or one of my other-selves wouldn’t have got one. I try to coax Lulu from where she has crawled under the kitchen cupboard. There should be a kickboard there, and I remember when Ifirst moved into the flat it was missing. I replaced it in my own world, but evidently this Bethany never got round to it.
‘Come on, puss-puss,’ I say, trying to sound light and friendly. I’m rewarded by another hiss. Crouching down I peer into the gloom, able to just about make out two glowing eyes like she’s possessed by the devil. Another long and low hiss greets me as she tries to tuck even further into the empty space.
I give up. She obviously doesn’t want to be anywhere near me. There are a few pictures attached to the door of the fridge with a range of magnets from various cities, mainly those that in my world I’ve travelled to with work for various conferences. In one of the photos, this Bethany is sitting on the sofa, Lulu curled into a ball on her lap. In another, this Bethany has taken a selfie from her bed, Lulu next to her with her head on the pillow, a look of adoration on her feline features.
From the looks of it, Lulu and Bethany are close. So why is she hiding under the cupboards from me? Does she know I might look like her Bethany but I’m a stranger on the inside?
I think of Lily and the way she had looked at me, her eyes piercing through my soul. She must have known I wasn’t her Bethany. Did she look at me and see a different soul staring back at her? Or did she realize that whichever Bethany I was, I was still the same?
Or am I just reading far too much into this?
I go through the usual checks for the differences in this world. Starting with a tour of the flat. This Bethany has the same basic taste as I do, in fact a lot of the furniture is from the same budget ranges from IKEA I bought when I first moved in. I promised myself – and Cesca, who was frankly horrified when I bought Billy bookcases and a Malm bed frame – I would replace everything over time as I earned a bit more and finished repaying my student loan.
My eyes roam over the living room, taking stock of the sofa I bought six years ago in the DFS sale even though it was uncomfortable and a rather hideous brown that Cesca said looked a bit too much like diarrhoea for me to ever want to sit on it for too long. Why hasn’t this Bethany replaced it at the earliest opportunity like I did?
Inventory of the flat complete, I make coffee and then stand uncomfortably in the kitchen to check through this Bethany’s digital life. Well, I’m not exactly going to sit on that sofa, am I? Just like in every world, this Bethany works for the same company and I’m relieved to discover she’s not due in the office today. She does have an Instagram account, but she rarely posts, and when she does it’s suitably bland stuff like the sunset over London from a rooftop bar or daffodils blooming in St James’s Park. Stuff that says exactly zero about who she really is and what makes her tick.
I scroll through her contacts list, which is just as sparse as all the other Bethanys’. Whatever our differences, it seems to be a constant that we all have a narrow social circle. I’m not great with people and it would seem none of us are. There are no messages from Cesca. Just a handful of times Rachel has acted as a go-between to try to get us in the same room to celebrate Dad’s birthday and other family milestones.
This Bethany doesn’t just have a notebook. She also has this huge daily planner monstrosity, full of quirky sketches and coloured stickers.
Two years ago, someone got me one of these planners as a secret Santa gift. The tag – which had been printed to fully obfuscate the gifter – said something along the lines of how it might mean I finally get my shit together. Now, I know I’m not the most organized or most put together person in the world.But I want to be – it isn’t like I love being a disorganized mess who never has clean socks or the right bra for the occasion.
Anyway, in this world, this Bethany obviously got kind of into the whole bullet journal thing. Our natural inclination towards mess trumped by our addictive personality that likes to hyper-focus on certain things.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had a journal though; there was a time in my life when I used to write down a few sentences about my emotions and all that stuff, trying to find a pattern in why I seemingly had it all but was still so goddamn miserable all the time. I stopped writing in it the day after Nick and I broke up, all the sadness and insecurity suddenly lifting from my shoulders. It was abundantly clear that the thing making me so fucking miserable was, in fact, Nick.
I flick through the bullet journal, marvelling at the little stickers and neat rows of tick boxes waiting for me to confirm I’ve met my five habits for the day. It’s pretty banal stuff: drink two litres of water, eat five portions of fruit and veg, do ten mins of yoga, read ten pages of a book, floss teeth. Apparently this Bethany does those things every single day like a proper adult who really does have her shit together and doesn’t make excuses, or spend so long playing stupid games on her phone she doesn’t have time to read, let alone do yoga.
Every. Single. Day.
But as I get close to today’s date I notice her handwriting has got a bit scrappier, the selection of stickers more erratic. There is even a day where none of the habits have been ticked off. And a tiny note, written in the margin in pencil, so faint I almost miss it.
This isn’t me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The note in the margin kicks my arse into gear and I quickly fire off the email to Tyler. I keep the opening the same, but tweak the part from the other Tylers. There are so many of them now, so many more snippets of information I could include to convince them that what I’m saying is all true.
Hi Tyler,
Six years ago we met in a bar and I told you all my secrets. We promised to go on a date and I took your number with the promise of a call. I never called. You cursed me, called me some rather rude things. Hardened yourself to me and have treated me like your mortal enemy ever since. But what you don’t know is that the morning after we met, you blanked me. Blanked me hard in the lobby of the hotel, your eyes going straight through me as if I was no one, as if I meant nothing to you.
But don’t be mad at Zac. It wasn’t his fault he inadvertently created a nemesis for his little – by three minutes at least – brother.
Now. I need you to sit down (if you aren’t sitting already, of course). There is something you need to know.
I am not the Bethany Raven you know in this world. I have skipped a number of times, each time waking upwith my own memories but inside the body of another Bethany in a world similar, but not identical, to my own.
