Last year Nick spent a small fortune on dental work, all the receipts clipped together with a staple.
There are statements for two different savings accounts. One in both our names with just over £5,000 in it. The other in just his name, the balance almost £50,000.
We got married at a fancy manor house hotel in 2019. There’s a CD of photos, our stupid faces looking out from the cardboard case. I glance at the timer on my alarm, only fifteen minutes left and I don’t want to risk him coming home to find me poring over them. Was I happy that day? I can’t tell from my expression, but then I have always been pretty good at faking it when I need to.
I put the CD back and my fingers brush a manilla envelope.Drakeley, Cotterhill and Osbournewritten across the bottom. Only fancy lawyers have fancy stationery like this. The paper seconds this assertion, thick and creamy to the touch as I slide it out. It’s a prenuptial agreement. The terms of any divorce laid out in black and white, tangled in legalese, but the meaning is clear as day. If we divorce, for any reason, even if he cheats on me, I get the grand sum of nothing.
Sitting back on my heels I pull the strands together. Aprenup that gives me nothing. A joint savings account with only a few thousand pounds in it. A phone contract in his name. A car from his company. No payslips – who am I trying to kid, if there were any, he would make me print them out.
I have nothing.
That’s why this Bethany is still here.
She cannot leave.
Chapter Fifty
I need a glass of wine. I know I shouldn’t, I’ve just come home from the hospital where this body spent six weeks in a coma. But I don’t know how to deal with the knowledge of just how trapped this Bethany has let herself become and the soothing embrace of a Sauvignon Blanc seems like it might help. I find a bottle in the fridge, already opened, one of those fancy bottle stops with a silver golf ball on top plugging the crisp and dry goodness.
My hand stills as I reach for it, wondering if Nick had shared the rest of the bottle with someone else. Has Chris been here, keeping him company while I lay in hospital? I shake the thought away and dump the rest of the bottle into a wine glass. The first sip is delicious, sending a tingle through my synapses. Jesus Christ, I needed that.
I stand in the kitchen watching the light dying over the hills in front of the house. I need to help this Bethany. I need to find a way to get her away from Nick, away from this sterile life he has built for them, away from nights spent alone drinking wine in the darkening kitchen while he’s out doing God knows what with another woman.
Except … the voice nags at me, the idea nebulous, only half formed. Because what if?
What if this is real?
What if this ismylife?
What if all the other Bethanys were a figment of my coma-addled brain, a way of my subconsciousness keeping me alive until my body decided to catch up with the idea?
I take a huge gulp of wine, welcoming its softening embrace.
I’m still standing in the kitchen when he gets home.
‘Honey, I’m back,’ he calls from the hallway, startling me from my reverie. ‘Must be in bed,’ he mutters under his breath when I don’t respond. I’m frozen into place, not ready yet to face him and his lies. He hums under his breath as he hangs up his coat and then stashes his golfing gear in the special cupboard next to the downstairs bathroom. He sounds happy and carefree. Like everything in his life is just peachy.
He switches on the kitchen light and screams like a tiny girl when he finds me standing there. ‘Jesus!’ He clutches his hand to his heart like a Victorian lady.
‘I was just getting a drink,’ I tell him.
‘In the dark? You almost gave me a heart attack.’ He takes a few steps towards me. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ The mask has slipped and his true colours are starting to show, even though I’ve known them all along. His attitude is hardly a surprise. The only surprise is this Bethany lets him treat her like this. That maybeIlet him.
‘Sorry.’ I can’t help myself from apologizing, from curling in on myself, from making myself look smaller. ‘I’m just going to go to bed.’
‘Yeah. Good idea. I might just have a glass of wine and then I’ll join you.’
I don’t tell him I already drank the Sauvignon Blanc.Instead I scurry past like I’m desperate to get away from him. Which I suppose I am.
I don’t sleep. Instead I spend the night oscillating between the idea I need to save this Bethany before I skip and the nightmare that I am this Bethany and the skips were just my overactive imagination.
Eventually the sun begins to paint the horizon and I slip quietly out of bed, wrapping a cotton robe around me and leaving Nick snoring. In the kitchen I make coffee and then take it out into the garden. The patio furniture is that posh rattan type with thick cushions and I sink gratefully into one, feeling like I’m being cocooned.
I need to think about this logically. After all that is what I do, what I’ve always done. So. If Iamthis Bethany, then why don’t I have any memories of this life? I don’t remember this house, or any of the holidays depicted in the pictures I found on the rather boring Instagram profile this Bethany maintains sporadically. I can’t recall my wedding day, or that terrible prenup I apparently signed like a goddamn fool. I remember every detail of my life as me, the Bethany who is best friends with Cesca, rivals with a devastatingly handsome fellow physicist called Tyler, and the owner of an inordinate number of special-edition books.
I want to speak to my sister and I’ve pulled my phone from the pocket of the robe before I remember she’s either blocked me or changed her number. Or perhaps even both. The realization stabs me in the gut. Maybe she’s on social media? But I search Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to no avail. There is no Cesca Raven. I even check TikTok, despite how ridiculous the very idea of Cesca being on there is. I can picture the look on her face when I suggested she give it atry, if only to watch cute dog videos. She’d looked like I’d suggested running naked down Oxford Street in the middle of the final evening of late-night shopping before Christmas.
Nick leaves at half seven to go to the offices of PKR Solutions where – at least according to his payslip – he’s a strategic analyst. I have no idea what the company does or what his job actually entails, but it involves wearing a full suit and a shirt with cufflinks. It’s so far removed from the casual scruffiness of my own office, where most people wear hoodies and jeans and ‘dressing up’ means making sure there isn’t ketchup on the cuffs.
