Chapter Fifteen
Another new day. Another new bed. Another new pillow, new sheets, new nail varnish on my toes. This time it’s sage green and I have to admit it does not look good. What was I thinking when I picked green? Didn’t I even consider it would look suspiciously like a fungal nail infection?
The Havaianas are black. With a functional strap at the ankle to keep them snug. Not that I’ll be wearing them with the vile toe polish; no one is seeing that.
The kitchen is tidy, but without the neurosis of the last Bethany with all her jars and boxes.
This Bethany, however, does have a lovely pillbox, like the one old ladies have, each section stuffed with tablets. For a moment my heart beats in my throat. Am I sick?
But on closer inspection the tablets reveal themselves to be vitamins.
A hay fever tablet. Some green-coloured gummy that looks more than a little suspicious.
I look it up online and discover it’s sea moss, used for fatigue and to treat iodine deficiencies – which I’m fairly sure I don’t have.
I read some more about the pseudo-science underpinning it and then place the gummy back in the container.
I’m not about to take it, thank you very much.
This Bethany can keep her herbal shit to herself.
What else do I need to tell you?
She drinks coffee – thank God – and so I make myself a huge cup of gloriously bitter goodness.
In the living room I notice the shelves of special-edition books I’ve been carefully collecting for the past year or so have disappeared. I feel bereft.
The notebook is a pretty emerald green with a small dancing panda in the bottom corner.
Every page shows him in a slightly different position and I flick through quickly, watching him leap and whirl across the pages.
At least this Bethany shares my love of whimsical stationery.
As expected – because some things do appear to have been a constant – there is no theorem within its cute pages.
I write it out once more, carefully transcribing every symbol, making sure it’s one hundred per cent accurate.
There’s something I’ve been putting off, some sixth sense that I won’t like what I find when I look.
But eventually I review my phone log to see when I last called my sister.
Cesca and I haven’t spoken in two weeks and, even then, our contact seems to be limited to sharing an occasional cat meme.
There’s a chasm between us and one I fear is growing with every skip I make.
I look at her Facebook and discover she’s single, no trace of Helen.
She seems happy. But in a way it hurts even more, that she can be so happy without me by her side.
Why doesn’t she feel the loss of me? I feel like I’m missing a limb and she’s out having cocktails.
At exactly ten a.m., I send an email. I’m thankful that I wrote it out with Tyler so I could memorize the exact wording, the exact way he hoped another Tyler in another world would read it and go ‘Ah yes, of course, that makes perfect sense. Hello, Bethany from another world.’
Hi Tyler,
Six years ago we met in a bar and I told you all my secrets.
We promised to go on a date and I took your number with the promise of a call.
I never called. You cursed me and called me some rather rude things.
Hardened yourself to me and then treated me like your mortal enemy ever since.
But what you don’t know is that the morning after we met, you blanked me.
Blanked me hard in the lobby of the hotel, your eyes going straight through me as if I was no one, as if I meant nothing to you.
But don’t be mad at Zac. It wasn’t his fault he inadvertently created a nemesis for his little – by three minutes at least – brother.
Now. I need you to sit down (if you aren’t sitting already, of course). There’s something you need to know.
I’m not the Bethany Raven you know in this world. I’ve skipped a number of times, each time waking up with my own memories but inside the body of another Bethany in a world similar, but not identical, to my own.
This is not a delusion. This is a fact. A recurrent nightmare I am trapped inside as I slip through increasingly diverging worlds.
Still reading? Good. Tyler said you would be. Not you, Tyler. Obviously. But a different Tyler in a different place. This is a message from him:
You like to buy those days of the week socks and wear them on the wrong days.
Not randomly though, but in a very specific pattern of relativity to the actual day of the week.
When you were twelve, you called the teacher ‘Mum’ and lived with the shame for the one hundred and sixty days of the rest of the school year until your parents agreed to let you move schools.
You would never admit it, but you have an irrational fear of oversized animals, especially those giant bunnies the papers like to trot out at Easter.
You really love those lychee beads in your bubble tea and have been known to bulk-buy them from .
The person who sent you this email is Bethany. Not the Bethany you think you know in your world, who is probably annoying and uptight and ignores you at conferences. This Bethany is a good one. You need to help her.
You need to help her to get home. We’ve been working on it, but there are gaps, pieces missing that perhaps you can fill.
If you succeed, bravo! If not, pass this on to the next Tyler. Add to it. Perhaps one Tyler isn’t enough to save Bethany. Perhaps it needs all of us.
Laters, dickhead
I read it back to myself, hearing his words on the page, the timbre in his voice as he told me the exact things to say.
‘Will it work?’ I’d asked him.
‘Yes.’ He had been adamant.
I just hope he was right.
I get a reply within twenty minutes. It’s a single line and my heart skips before I can read the words.
I read them between my fingers, expecting something curt, dismissive.
Meet me at the bandstand in Battersea Park. Midday.
He’s sitting on one of the benches when I arrive, wearing a pristine white T-shirt and artfully ripped jeans. His hair is slightly ruffled, like he just got out of bed and hasn’t yet had time to fix it. His face breaks into a smile as he sees me approach and he stands to greet me.
‘Well, you look like my Bethany,’ he says, eyes crinkling even further.
‘Your Bethany?’ I ask.
He laughs. ‘You know what I mean.’ Then he cocks his head to the side and appraises me, his eyes searching my face.
‘Do you believe me?’ I ask. I don’t want all the preamble, the pleasant small talk. There isn’t enough time for us to pussy-foot around here.
He pauses and I can hear my heart beating. I resist the urge to cross my fingers behind my back. Eventually he opens his mouth to speak. ‘Yes.’
Phew. ‘Good,’ I say. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
‘But first, coffee.’ He points down one of the paths towards a kiosk that serves hot drinks.
He’s brought a tote bag with him and we head towards a patch of grass in the shade of a huge tree. He’s like Mary Poppins, pulling things from the bag with a flourish. A blanket. A large A4 notebook. A punnet of grapes. A packet of biscuits – custard creams, of course.
We sit down and I take a sip of coffee, feeling the creaminess of the full-fat latte on my tongue. I don’t normally allow myself this level of decadence but I’m feeling oddly at ease and comfortable and wanted to treat myself with a slightly posher coffee.
We get to work.
When we run out of steam, he goes to find us something to perk us up, returning fifteen minutes later with a bottle of prosecco and two plastic champagne flutes.
‘What are we celebrating?’ I ask as he saunters back to the blanket.
He looks sheepish. ‘That you don’t hate me any more.’ He blushes as he says it, then busies himself opening the wine.
‘I never hated you.’
‘Huh,’ he objects.
‘Okay. Okay.’ I put my hands up. ‘Perhaps a teeny bit. But not for a while.’
‘In your world at least.’
‘Actually,’ I say, thinking about the words before I say them. ‘In lots of worlds. You’ve been … kind and sweet and helpful a number of times now.’
‘How many versions of me have you met?’
‘You’re the fourth. Not including the Tyler from my own world.’
He nods slowly, a look of quiet contemplation on his handsome features. ‘What are they like. Those other Tylers?’
I pause for a moment. He is remarkably constant. Every version of him basically a cookie cutter of the last. Is he so sure of himself, his sense of who he is so defined it transcends space and time? ‘They are just like you,’ I say eventually.
How is it that I am so different, that each time I slip I move further and further away from the original me, but he is still the same?
He nods and I expect him to ask for more details but he doesn’t. ‘I’m glad you trust me enough to ask for my help,’ he says with a smile.
‘I’m glad you trust me enough to believe me without question,’ I tell him, tapping my plastic glass against his.
We fall into a companionable silence, both of us sipping our wine as the sun begins to set on the horizon.
Later that night, he offers me a hand to help me stand. The wine has gone to my head a little and I feel warm and fuzzy round the edges. He catches me as I stumble, arms around me to hold me up.
I look up into his face, his features softened by alcohol and moonlight.
‘Bethany.’ He whispers my name quietly into the night air, his hand tucking my hair behind my ear.
I see a flash of motion to my left and whip my head round in time to jump out of the way of a black and brown mass of fur as a dog races between us, destroying the moment forever.