‘Okay.’ He pauses, deep in thought. ‘And then when you skipped again?’
‘That time I knew because Cesca was in the gym at seven in the morning and I wasn’t hungover from going out with her the night before. Oh—’
I stop myself. Because suddenly I remember a day. It was about a month before this all started. I was on the Tube, flicking idly through a copy of theMetrothat someone had left on one of the seats – I don’t normally read the paper,but I do like to have a quick glance at theGuilty Pleasuresceleb gossip when there’s a copy hanging about. There was an advert. A woman who looked a lot like one of the girls I went to school with. Felicity: all blonde hair and icy blue eyes and the kind of haughty expression you can only master if Daddy is an earl or at least a minor baron. It wasn’t actually Felicity – this girl in the advert was extolling the virtues of some nutritionally controlled food delivery service, something Felicity would never have even dreamt to put her face to – but it made me smile and I’d sent a picture of the page to Cesca.
She’d replied back with a stream of crying-laughing emojis.Imagine if it really was her?
Anyway, Cesca had been starting to worry about how often she was getting Deliveroo and Just Eat, so she decided to check out the service the advert was selling. She discovered it was over four hundred pounds a month and called me to say how f-ing ridiculous it was and how she couldn’t believe the audacity of this company to charge that much for a few ready meals and some shrink-wrapped oranges. They kept hounding her though, offering her a trial month at less than half price. Eventually I told her to block the email and the salesperson who kept calling.
Except, in the world where Cesca was in the gym at seven a.m., she hadn’t blocked them and had been suckered in when she was feeling low after consuming a family-size tray of spaghetti and meatballs from Casa Romano.
‘Earth to Bethany,’ a voice stage-whispers in my ear, making me jump.
‘Sorry!’ I try to shake off the memory of Cesca bitching about guerilla sales tactics in my world.
‘You were a million miles away,’ Tyler says.
Slowly the whiteboard in front of me comes back into focus and I see it clearly for the first time. ‘I feel like each time I skip, I’m less like the real me.’ I enunciate the words clearly,speaking slowly as my brain jumps ahead to try to chase down the conclusion just brushing the edges of my thoughts. ‘Like each life diverges further and further. Ohhh …’ I close my eyes.This is it. ‘It’s like the point of divergence is further and further back.’
He squints. ‘I’m not sure I’m following …’
I take the whiteboard pen from his hand. ‘It’s like this.’
I start by drawing a blob at the right-hand edge of the whiteboard, towards the top. ‘This here is me. The real me. I will be Bethany A.’ Then I draw a line running to the left, a straight horizontal line all the way towards the left-hand edge. On it I mark a series of diamonds. ‘Each of these represents a decision, or a thing that happened.’ I point to the one just to the left of the Bethany A blob. ‘This is me buying flip-flops at the start of the summer. In my world I bought beige ones. But in another universe I went with white.’ I draw an arrow down. ‘This is Bethany B.’
Then I take a step to the left and point at another diamond. ‘This is me telling Cesca to block the irritating food delivery sales team person. But,’ I hold up a finger, ‘what if in another world I didn’t tell her to block them and that was why Cesca ended up taking the discounted trial and therefore why she was in the gym at seven a.m.’ I draw a line downwards, a few centimetres longer than the last horizontal one from the flip-flops choice.
‘So, you’re saying that in each universe, thethingthat makes it not your original world is something that happened further and further back in your timeline?’
I grin at Tyler. This is why he’s so impressive, that brain just latching on to exactly what I’m trying to say. ‘Bingo.’ I wink at him and then my cheeks flare at just how corny an action it was, so I turn back to the board and continue to plot out the divergences. Eventually I get to this world.
‘So what is the key thing here?’ Tyler asks.
I wrack my brain, because what is it? Of course. The white hairs covering my black T-shirt are testimony to what is different here. ‘I have a cat.’ He makes the smallest grimace, so quick I almost miss it. ‘I know you’re a dog person,’ I tell him.
‘It isn’t that I don’t like cats, I just …’ He shrugs. ‘You know, prefer dogs.’
‘Me too. Which is why it is explicitly odd that here I have a cat.’
‘So, why do you?’ He cocks his head to one side as he tries to figure me out.
‘There’s only one time I’ve even contemplated a cat …’ I start to tell him but then I trail off. I’m not sure I want to tell him this story. About how, approximately six months after Nick and I broke up, I ended up in a pretty dark place, somehow convinced I’d never find love and I’d end up alone. I thought I may as well lean in to the whole ‘crazy cat lady’ thing and went to look at a litter of kittens one of the neighbours was selling. But then Cesca persuaded me that a week in the Maldives with her was a far better idea. All the kittens had been claimed by the time we came back and that was that.
‘Earth to Bethany,’ Tyler says, jolting me back to the present.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble, but then I realize something. The divergence in this life was in the winter of 2018. If we’re right – and I really don’t think we’re wrong – then I’m edging closer and closer to the biggest decision I’ve ever made. The one that changed me in more ways than I can ever articulate.
But what if I had made another choice?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I wake up to discover I’ve skipped again. The curtains in my flat have vanished, replaced with a fancy-looking venetian blind I can’t imagine myself buying. Even though I have to admit it looks quite nice. Perhaps this Bethany has good taste in interior design?
She does. The sofa is a glorious velvet affair in a gorgeous peacock green, punctuated with purple cushions in a sumptuous devoré. The bathroom is all marble and mirrors and I spend five minutes just marvelling at how nice it is. Although it must be an absolute bitch to clean. I guess you have to make certain trade-offs in life.
The notebook is a soft dove grey, the muted tone creating a lovely contrast to the vibrancy of the rest of the living room. She has left it at a perfectly perpendicular angle to the edge of the coffee table, a black Parker rollerball balanced carefully on top of it. I don’t pick it up immediately, padding back to the bedroom to get dressed. I find a range of quality loungewear in the wardrobe: joggers and T-shirts hung on padded hangers and arranged in colour sequence. Jesus Christ. This Bethany is odd. Tasteful, yes. But it’s all just a bit …much.Like she’s really trying to impress someone.
In the kitchen I stop in my tracks. Just like everything else, it’s modern, sleek and absolutely pristine. Like a show home.She doesn’t have a microwave. How does she make popcorn or heat up her coffee when she forgets to drink it? I open the fridge – once I find it amid the other handleless units – to work out what the hell this Bethany even eats. I grin.
