I’m not very tidy. I never have been. Some people love everything to be neat and to have a place. I like things to be ordered, don’t get me wrong. And I force myself to clean regularly so it isn’t like I live in a pigsty. But I don’t really see the mess; it doesn’t seem to register, like my brain just blocks it out as something unimportant, something irrelevant.
Nick – as in twat of an ex-boyfriend, Nick – hated the way I always left a trail of detritus in my wake. He almost had a heart attack the first time he saw my flat. I should have taken it for the sign it so very obviously was. Oh, and the fact that he said – bold as brass, not even trying to sugar-coat the misogyny – he’d ‘have to get someone to teach me how to be a proper wife, one day’. I mean, come on now. But why do we only see the red flags so much later?
I cringe at the thought. And the way he had wrinkled his nose at the sight of my home office. It’s covered in this stuff called Magic Whiteboard. And magic it absolutely is; an A1 sheet that sticks to the wall and converts it to a whiteboard. Okay, it isn’t actually magic, it’s static, but even my science brain is sometimes impressed by the sheer ingenuity of people who create products that solve the problems we never even knew we faced. I mean, who knew I wanted my entire office to function like a whiteboard? I didn’t. But I absolutely love that it does.
‘This is cute,’ he had said eventually, his tone suggesting it was anything but.
‘I’m a visual problem solver,’ I’d replied, waiting for him to look at the equations and the hypotheses and the – probably not very modest but true – sheer genius of my research.
He didn’t look. ‘It’s good to have interests,’ he’d said, an edge of condescension nibbling at his words. Or at least at the time I thought it was an edge. With hindsight,condescension was dripping from everything he said, every look, every minute raise of an eyebrow as if internally he was rolling his eyes. The sheer audacity of him. To think he was better, superior. To think I would actually tie myself to his mediocrity.
Anyway, I digress. Possibly quite literally. Haha. Sorry, back to the inventory. I open my wardrobe and stare at the chaos within. I know I’m meant to have a summer wardrobe and a winter one and put the wrong season away in those vacuum-sealing bags they constantly bombard my Instagram timeline with adverts for. Every year I buy a batch of them and think about using them, but instead I just push the wrong-season stuff into a bunched-up mess on the right-hand side and space the rest out. The floor of the wardrobe is the same with shoes and bags.
I’ve never been into fashion. You know that whole ‘mess-blindness’ I mentioned before? It extends to my general appearance too. Some people have this innate understanding of what is ‘cool’ at any moment, can effortlessly choose the right cut of jeans and accessories and colour palette. I do not have this, not in the slightest. I wear a constant rotation of black and blue, with an occasional splash of grey and green for variety, skinny jeans because they don’t need ironing and the only jewellery I ever wear is a silver and diamond tennis bracelet – the surviving relic of my mother who died when I was seven. Dad eventually remarried and our stepmother is a darling, keeping the bracelet until I was eighteen and would appreciate and look after it.
Inside the wardrobe is a dress I bought on a whim because I thought I should make more of an effort to look a bit more put together at the random investors’ dinners I’m occasionally invited to attend when the company tries to lure in more funding to keep us afloat for another year. I hold my breath as I reach for the zip on the garment bag – it was expensive and I wanted to preserve that sense of luxury by keeping it in the posh packaging I brought it home in. The deep burgundy colour matches my memory. I pull the zip down further and the matte silk fabric pours from the covering like water. It is beautiful. Extravagant.
And utterly wrong. The V-neck is too deep. I’ll have to wear a very specific bra, which I know will be almost impossible to find in my size. According to the woman who measured me in Marks & Spencer, I have a ‘broad back’ and virtually nowhere stocks a 38A.
I pull the dress from the hanger, slick in my hands, and hold it against myself. It skims just below my knees. The waist is slightly dropped. I do not feel like a princess as I stare at my reflection in the mirror.
Utterly wrong.
This is not the dress I bought with such uncommon exuberance a few weeks ago. The dress that made me almost hope to be invited somewhere I could wear it.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Chapter Five
I wake up the next morning to find the notebook is in the kitchen. She-Ra has been replaced by He-Man. There is no slogan – in any language – on the cover. The theorem isn’t there, so I copy it out, feeling soothed by the repetition of the numbers.
The dress in the wardrobe is a stretchy heavy jersey in a deep forest green with a full skirt and a halter neck. I actually really like it.
The Havaianas are silver.
My toenails are painted a deep plum. My fingernails are the same.
The face cream on the dressing table isn’t my usual No7 – or whatever is on special offer – in a plastic pot. This is glass, heavy; Beauty Pie in small neat lettering. I peer at my skin in the mirror and wonder if it has made a difference. Are my crow’s feet shallower? The slight discolouration at my temples that gets worse when I get my period does seem less visible. But it could be wishful thinking.
I suppose it’s time to address the elephant in the room. There are two possible explanations for what’s happening to me.
Explanation number one is there’s something seriously wrong with me and I’m misremembering huge and important aspects of my life. Perhaps some kind of psychotic break? Or a brain tumour growing and pressing against the area that controls short-term memory?
Explanation number two is that this isn’t my universe. That I’ve somehow managed to skip from my world into another Bethany’s life.
I don’t know which of these two options scares me more, to be honest. But I’ve always been very good at compartmentalizing my life, dividing things into those problems I can fix and those I have no control over so should just banish from my consciousness before I start to overanalyse them and drive myself insane.
So, for now at least, I’m just going to continue forward. Eventually I’ll get this all figured out and then I can put it right and it can be some funny story to regale my family with.
‘Oh, remember that time you thought you were living in an alternate universe?’ they’ll tease, in the way only family can, emboldened by unconditional love and acceptance.
‘Haha, you loser.’ That’ll be Cesca.
So, yes. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that this is actually very much Not. All. Right. But we’ll deal with it when we know what it is we’re actually dealing with, so bear with me.
