Chapter Fourteen
He calls an Uber – well, actually it’s a Volt; a service which runs entirely on electric vehicles and something one of my colleagues has been working on for at least the last year – evidently here he is a bit further ahead in his research – and we make our apologies to Cesca and Helen.
Cesca gives me a small grin and an almost imperceptible wink.
I stick my tongue out at her.
She giggles and for a moment I feel warmth fill my stomach. ‘Call me when you’re home,’ she says. ‘And you’d better look after my sister.’ She addresses this to Tyler. ‘She’s very special to me.’
Helen makes a harrumphing noise and once again I push down my anger towards her. Why is it that she’s having such an effect on me? I’m never normally so quick to judge people.
Back at my flat, Tyler walks me all the way to the door.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asks.
I want to tell him that I’m fine, that I don’t need his compassion, his pity. But I need his help. And today has been a fucking rollercoaster and I want him to take my hand and save me.
‘Coffee?’ I ask.
He quirks an eyebrow.
‘I mean actual coffee.’ I tell him, deadpan.
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘But you go and sit down; I’ll make it,’ he adds as we cross the threshold.
I mumble thanks and slope off in the direction of the sofa, suddenly bone-weary and desperate for comfort.
A few minutes – and a lot of clattering around the kitchen – later he emerges with two steaming mugs.
‘Um … your kitchen is …’ He trails off.
Shit! I’d completely forgotten about this Bethany’s decanting obsession.
He gives me a look, one that is half terrified and half fascinated.
‘Do you think I’m mad?’ I ask him.
He shifts his weight, not looking at me.
‘But you believe in the multiverse?’ I ask him.
‘Of course. It’s pretty fundamental to my research.’
‘So you know that what I’m saying, about not being this Bethany –’ I motion around me – ‘could be true?’
‘Well, yes, I mean. In theory.’
‘It’s no longer a theory. It’s fact.’
I explain everything, taking him from the moment I slid my feet into the white flip-flops that should have been beige, all the way to right here, right now.
‘When will you next … you know?’ he asks.
‘Skip?’
‘If that’s what we’re calling it.’
‘You have a better idea?’
‘No need to be snippy,’ he says.
I ignore him and simply say, ‘I don’t know. At first it was every day, but last time it was four days.’
‘There’s no pattern?’
‘You really think if there was a pattern I wouldn’t have already figured it out?’ I cross my arms over my chest. Cheeky bastard.
‘No, I guess you would have. You are rather a genius.’
It’s probably the first nice thing this Tyler has ever said to me, but I act as if I didn’t hear the compliment.
He sits back, deep in thought. I wait for him, hoping for something profound. Hoping for an answer.
‘When you next skip,’ he says slowly, choosing his words carefully. I lean forward to make sure I don’t miss a word of wisdom. ‘You need to come and find me immediately.’ He sits back and looks slightly smug.
Is that it? Is that really all one of the greatest minds on this planet can come up with? Jesus Christ. Fat lot of good he is. ‘Seriously?’
‘I can help you, but I need more time. And you’ll need to give me a head start in the next …’ He gropes for the word. ‘Place?’
‘First things first, we need a vocabulary,’ I say, only partly joking.
‘You need something to tell me. Something that will make me one hundred per cent believe you and stop us from wasting time.’
‘Something only you, as in another version of you, could have told me?’
‘Exactly.’ He pauses. ‘But what?’
‘Something about Helen maybe?’
‘Helen?’
‘Yeah, well, other people could’ve told me stuff about you. The physics world is hardly big and you know what massive gossips everyone is as soon as they get a wine in them.’
He nods sagely.
‘But why would anyone know things about Helen and why would they tell me even if they did?’ I add.
‘She’s dating your sister.’
That’s a fair point. ‘But only in this world,’ I add.
‘Really? Interesting.’ He pauses. ‘But even if Helen and Cesca weren’t together, you could know one of my other siblings.’
‘How many do you have?’
He laughs, a short sharp bark of a laugh. ‘There are six of us.’
‘Six?’ I’m shocked. Mainly because I’ve never heard he has brothers and sisters and how do you hide that many? ‘How do you have five brothers and sisters and no one talks about it like it’s gossip?’
‘Why would anyone care?’
I shrug. I don’t know; people are weird and nosey. ‘How many brothers and how many sisters?’ I ask instead. Because I am ‘people’, weird nosey people wanting to know every last detail about him.
‘Three sisters: Helen, Penelope—’
‘Promise me you don’t have a third sister called—’
‘Clytemnestra.’ He laughs. ‘Yep. Poor Nessie got saddled with the worst of the lot.’
‘But they are such …’ I grimace. I mean, to name your girls after the daughters of Sparta is kind of a bold move.
‘Yep. Although my parents hadn’t actually read any Greek mythology and just thought they were such pretty names.
‘And then you have two brothers?’ I ask, not wanting to be too judgemental about the Adams’s name choices.
‘Yep. Markus is the oldest. And then there’s Zac.’
‘Is he older or younger than you?’
‘Older. Just. But, to him at least, those three minutes are very important.’ He chuckles to himself.
‘You’re twins?’
‘Identical. Other people say it’s uncanny how alike we are in looks. Couldn’t be further apart in personality though. And he has zero interest in physics.’ He says it like it’s a scandal. Which it is, let’s be honest.
‘Are you close?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. He kind of …’ He blushes a little. ‘It’s kind of … well, it makes me feel like a bit of a twat, but he is cool with it and it’s better than a stranger.’ He looks up at me. ‘Promise you won’t judge?’
I motion around me as if to ask who the hell would I be to judge.
‘He’s my PA. He does stuff for me.’
The memory of that morning in the hotel forms in my mind. The man with the coffee cup. ‘What kind of stuff?’
‘You know. Like books my flights and my hotels and collects my dry cleaning.’
‘And your Starbucks?’
‘Yeah. Oh God, that makes me sound like such a prick.’ He hides behind his hands.
‘It was him,’ I say under my breath.
‘What was him?’ He frowns.
‘That morning. In the hotel. The night after Nick had … well, we don’t need to talk about it.’
‘I’m not following?’
‘You blanked me. That morning after we’d been chatting in the bar.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, I get that now. But I thought it was you. I thought …’
Realization dawns across his features. ‘You thought I ignored you.’
‘Yep.’
‘Is that why you never called me?’
‘Well, I was hardly going to call the guy who had looked right through me as if I was nothing, as if he didn’t know who the fuck I was.’
‘That’s fair,’ he says contemplatively. Then he laughs.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘All this time I just thought you were a stuck-up, emotionally unavailable bitch who had used me.’
‘Wow,’ I reply. ‘Don’t hold back on me. Jesus.’
‘That is me holding back. I have called you every name under the sun. And it was all just a misunderstanding.’
Two hours later, we’ve devised a list of things for me to tell the next Tyler, things guaranteed to make him instantly believe my story.
I write them out carefully to ensure I’ll be able to remember the right wording; sometimes my photographic memory is a lifesaver and will be critical to making sure this works.
He finally gets up to leave and I berate myself for not being brave enough to ask him to stay.
‘Tell me all those things. And then tell me about Zac and the coffee.’ His eyes are soft and he’s looking at me in a way that makes me feel like I’m melting, just slightly, just enough to want to stay here for a while longer. He smiles at me. His fingertips graze mine.
‘Goodbye, Bethany Raven,’ he says.