Chapter Four
In time-honoured fashion, Cesca and I end up going for a glass of wine after the nail salon.
A glass turns into a bottle. Turns into another. My sister is a terrible influence.
We have an Aperol spritz because the cute bartender is flabbergasted – God I love that word – that Cesca has never had one.
There are some noodles from the fantastic Szechuan place.
A bright purple cocktail, which I believe was Parma violet flavour but I’m not one hundred per cent sure. It was good though.
Then warm cinnamon pretzels.
I should be hungover when the alarm blasts at six thirty the next morning. I deserve to be hungover. I should have a banging head and a mouth that tastes like a bear did something foul in it.
But I feel fine when I crack an exploratory eye open. I brace myself for the headache that doesn’t come.
I run my tongue over my teeth. I’m wearing my retainer. I never wear my retainer if I’ve been drinking; it only magnifies the bear issue.
‘Hey, sis,’ Cesca says as she answers my call. ‘Sorry, in the gym and it’s noisy as hell.’
Music blares in the background. Why is my sister in the gym – something she hasn’t done in at least five years – so early in the morning after we’ve been out?
‘Earth to Bethany?’ she calls.
‘You’re in the gym?’
‘Yeah!’ She’s chirpy. Too chirpy. Who the hell is this person impersonating my sister?
‘At six thirty a.m.’
‘Jesus, Bethany. Don’t you remember me telling you about the health kick? Are you okay?’ She sounds genuinely concerned.
‘Remind me again about this health kick,’ I say and wince in preparation for the response I’m suspecting to receive.
‘You sent me the article, remember? Anyway … No alcohol, no sugar, in the gym early every morning. It’s day ten and I feel fantastic!’
‘Oh.’ It’s a wholly insufficient response and I’m acutely aware of that fact.
And the fact I didn’t send that article.
I debated it a few weeks ago but decided it felt a bit spammy, like it was trying to sell you something dressed up as quality journalism.
‘Err … good on you, Cessie,’ I say eventually to fill the growing void of silence.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Her tone has taken on that concerned quality you use with slightly geriatric aunts who’ve lost too many of their marbles to count how many remain. ‘We talked about this yesterday. Over smoothies at that fabby new place just down from the pub on Oldridge Road.’
‘Yeah, sorry. I’m just tired.’
‘You’re working too hard, Beth. I’m worried about you. Maybe you should take a step back? See if the theorem presents itself when you aren’t looking for it.’
The theorem!
‘Yeah.’ I agree with Cesca, desperate to get off the phone.
‘Gotta get back to the treadmill. Call me later, okay? Love you millions.’
‘Love you billions,’ I reply on autopilot.
I swivel in bed to grab my notebook but it isn’t on the bedside table where it lives. Fuck’s sake! Where did I leave it? The living room? I catch sight of my feet as I swing my legs out of bed.
Bright red nail varnish on my toes.
I went for burgundy.
I know I went for burgundy.
I know I went for burgundy and then I know Cesca and I went out for drinks and greasy noodles and even more drinks. I know we did.
The notebook is lying on the coffee table in the living room.
Or at least it is a notebook. This one has a vintage cartoon of She-Ra on the cover and ‘for the honour of Grayskull’ printed in large block letters.
The notebook has the same vintage cartoon image but ‘for the honour of Grayskull’ is printed in German.
The German is a nod to the Bavarian guy I briefly dated last month who thought my love of She-Ra would extend to some bedroom-based cosplay …
and that he would dress up as He-Man in return.
The look on his pretty – but dumb as shit in a strangely alluring way – face was a picture when I explained She-Ra and He-Man were brother and sister and that was a line I was definitely not going to cross.
I told Cesca the story after one too many cocktails and she ordered the notebook immediately, paying an extortionate fee to have it couriered to me next day.
She almost passed out laughing when I rang to thank her, the sound of her snorting down the phone is seared into my memories.
Something coils in the pit of my stomach. A certainty that if I call Cesca and ask her she won’t remember, that she’ll simply say she saw this notebook in Paperchase and thought of how obsessed I was as a kid.
Flicking through the pages, I try to take deep and calming breaths.
The theorem is not there.
For a moment I pause, then flick through the pages again. Definitely not there.
And so I start to draw it out once more from memory. This time it’s even easier for me to remember, muscle memory combining with my perfect recall of what it looked like last time.
Have I explained yet about my research? Although ‘research’ may be too elaborate a term. It’s more of a theory – a hypothesis. An idea of something that I think might just have a tiny kernel of truth hidden deep inside. A nugget that will change the way we look at the world.
Oof, that sounds rather self-aggrandizing, doesn’t it?
Anyway, let’s start with the basics. If the universe is infinite, then there are infinite versions of ourselves.
So there’s a version of you who stopped reading a page ago and started reading something else.
A version of you half reading this and watching Friends at the same time.
A version of you who isn’t home reading on a Friday night because you’re on a date with a hot guy (but don’t worry that this version of you who is reading right now is missing out; he’s a dick).
Every decision you make branches off, creates a new universe in which both occurrences happen.
It’s a common theory. But … well, I have an idea of how we could – at least in theory – make contact with our other selves.
I understand that the practicalities require a number of obstacles to be overcome before it’s actually something I can test. But the theorem demonstrates the capability and that is a massive breakthrough.
Theorem recreated, I start to catalogue everything in my flat, taking mental notes of every detail.
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.