Chapter Twenty-Six
I wake up with sun streaming through the curtains, which are completely ineffectual thin muslin things incapable of blocking out any light at all. Why would this Bethany have bought them? What is the actual point?
Cracking open a single eye against the ocular onslaught, I realize that everything in the bedroom is white.
White bedding – although the high thread count is definitely to my taste – and white wooden furniture and a white lampshade and a white rug on the floor, which is …
you guessed it … whitewashed floorboards.
It’s almost blinding, like being in some super futuristic spaceship.
I look down at myself and yep, even my pyjamas are white.
I pad into the living room, where the white is tempered by various shades of grey: from the charcoal sofa to the pale wash on the walls and the brushed chrome furniture.
There are two books on the coffee table and things become slightly clearer; one is called Monochrome For a Peaceful Mind.
I remember picking this up in a hipster bookshop in Hoxton during Cesca’s – thankfully short-lived – Russian literature phase.
There was this girl she fancied who had told her all about The Master and Margarita, telling her it was ‘part love story and part Menippean satire’ and ‘she absolutely must read it’.
She bought a suitably battered copy and managed to get through ten pages before she threw it across the room and declared that perhaps she wasn’t quite hot enough for that shit.
It certainly looks like this Bethany didn’t flick through the pages of Monochrome For a Peaceful Mind in vague amusement before putting it back on the ‘oddities’ shelf she’d found it on.
No, this Bethany appears to have purchased said book and treated it like some kind of interior design bible.
A shiver runs up the back of my neck at the realization of just how prone us Bethanys are to taking something kind of niche and making it our entire personality.
The notebook is white faux leather with a pale grey elastic to hold it closed and a sleek black Parker jotter in the pen holder.
I write down the theorem; small and neat, as if all this monochrome really has helped to make me less messy and less prone to scribbling down my ideas as they flash into my brain.
I can’t stay in this weird white shrine and so I pull on a pair of jeans (grey) and a T-shirt (white) and then slide my feet into a pair of matte black Havaianas. Twenty minutes later I’m outside his flat. Or at least the building he has lived in in every other universe.
Ten seconds after I ring the bell, he opens the door, looking cool and casual in pale jeans and a bright blue T-shirt that is just a teeny bit too small, just short enough to show me a flash of that V muscle.
I look away, but not before something in my stomach flip-flops.
He raises an eyebrow when he sees me and then furrows his brow. ‘Bethany Raven?’
I take a deep breath. I’ve rehearsed what I might say on my walk over here, but all the words fail me now as I stand like a fool on his doorstep. I should have sent the email. I clear my throat, once, twice, but still the words don’t come.
He leans against the door frame and studies me, arms crossed as he rakes his eyes slowly across my face. The silence yawns between us.
But once I start speaking I can’t stop. ‘I know I look like Bethany Raven, and I am Bethany Raven, kind of. Well … I mean, yes, I am Bethany Raven. But I’m not the one who’s meant to live in this world.
The one you know, here. I’m skipping. Jumping through the many worlds of different Bethanys and in each one I have to come to find you to ask you for your help.
And you have. Or at least you’ve tried to help, but I keep skipping; at least every few days, sometimes every night.
Nothing is working. And so, in the last world, you told me to just come and find you and that this time we wouldn’t try to stop whatever it is that’s happening to me and instead we would just …
’ I look up to find a gentle smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth.
‘This isn’t funny.’ I sound like a petulant school child.
He puts both hands up. ‘I didn’t say it was funny.’
‘You smirked. And I’ve seen that look before. Too many times. It’s the one you use when you’re trying to stop yourself from laughing because you know you shouldn’t laugh, because what is happening is actually really fucking bad for the person involved but you still can’t help yourself.’
The smile slides off his face. Because he does do that. But in this world I doubt he and Bethany are close enough for her to know that.
‘And you like custard creams. And fruity cider. And you always get lychee pearls in your bubble tea. And you wear those days of the week socks but …’ I pause to crouch on his doorstep and lift his jeans.
‘Ha! You’re wearing Tuesday even though it’s Thursday.
And tomorrow you’ll wear Monday even though it’ll be Friday.
And you hate giant rabbits. Well, actually you don’t hate them. They terrify you.’
He doesn’t say another word until I run out of steam and finally come to a stop on my own.
‘Okay,’ he says eventually.
‘Okay? Okay?’ The anger burns through me, hot and fast. ‘What the fuck does okay mean?’
‘It means okay. Okay, I believe you. Okay, I’m here to help. Okay, whatever you need from me, I’m yours.’
‘Oh.’ Well it’s kind of hard to stay angry when someone says that.
‘You told me … as in last you … other universe you …’ I’m making a complete screw-up of this.
He takes a step towards me, eyes on mine. ‘What did I tell you?’
‘That we should run away to New York.’
‘Okay.’