What happens to this world’s Bethany? Does she make it back here? And if she does, what happens then? If she was so miserable here she built the machine to escape, what will she do when she finds herself back here once more?
And then there’s all the other Bethanys. What about them? If we’re right, and everyone was shuffled once to make space for this world’s Bethany and then again for me to come back, then I’m going to shuffle them again. What if it goes wrong and every other Bethany ends up in the wrong world, all of them displaced? There could be hundreds, thousands, millions of Bethanys.
I take a few deep breaths to slow my heart rate back down. I can feel it more in this place, the weakness in my heart, like a threat just below the surface.
What if this body couldn’t take another shock? What happens if there’s one less body for all the other Bethanys to shuffle through?
One of us dies.
But which one?
I need time to think and I can’t do that in Reigate. So I jump off the train in Redhill and stand on the platform, searching the departure boards for inspiration. There’s a service to Brighton in five minutes. Perhaps the sea air will help clear my head?
An inspector boards the train a few stops later and demands to see my non-existent ticket. I try to explain the situation, saying I’d changed my plans and asking nicely to buy one now.
‘That isn’t how it works, miss,’ he tells me, a smirk on his face showing me how much he enjoys these petty power trips. ‘We treat this kind of thing very seriously.’
I feel a wave of pent-up anger and frustration rising in my chest but I push it down. It isn’t worth getting kicked off the train in the middle of nowhere. ‘So how does this work?’ I ask sweetly instead.
‘No need to get lippy with me, missy.’
‘I’m not. I just want to know what happens now.’
‘I was going to be nice, but with that kind of attitude you’ve left me with no choice but to issue a penalty fare.’
The fare is over a hundred pounds but I pay it without question. I have far bigger problems to deal with.
The scent of salt tinges the air as I walk down Queens Road towards the sea and the pier. Every possible ‘what if’ I thought on the train crowds my brain.
What if it fails?
What if I get stranded somewhere else?
What if it kills this Bethany?
What if everyone ends up scattered across the universe?
There are too many things that could go wrong. Too many chances for this to fail.
I don’t think I can risk it.
Which means … what? That I’m stuck here, in this awful world, a world so bad that this Bethany leapt into the unknown rather than stay and face her problems.
I duck into a stationery shop and buy a new notebook and a pen. There’s a free bench overlooking the sea and I settle down, ready to make a list of all the things I would need to fix to stay here. But what does it even mean to ‘fix’ this world? The most obvious solution would be to turn it into my world, change everything to how it should be.
Leave my husband.
Buy the flat I live in back home, decorate it just right, so it looks exactly the same.
Get my job. That sounds tricky, I don’t have the right qualifications here. But I could study, prove myself to them, make sure I could walk into the lab and they would have no choice but to give me my job.
Find a way to reconcile with Cesca. I mean, what even happened between us? Surely nothing is so badly broken it can never be fixed.
This could actually work.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I tuck the notebook back into my bag and walk towards the pier. Everything here looks exactly like it does in my world. Cesca and I have come to Brighton for Pride every year since Britney headlined in 2018. That was the week after I broke up with Nick and all I remember is getting very drunk, dancing like a fool and a hundred people telling me I was better off without him.
