Chapter Fifty
I need a glass of wine. I know I shouldn’t, I’ve just come home from the hospital where this body spent six weeks in a coma.
But I don’t know how to deal with the knowledge of just how trapped this Bethany has let herself become and the soothing embrace of a Sauvignon Blanc seems like it might help.
I find a bottle in the fridge, already opened, one of those fancy bottle stops with a silver golf ball on top plugging the crisp and dry goodness.
My hand stills as I reach for it, wondering if Nick had shared the rest of the bottle with someone else.
Has Chris been here, keeping him company while I lay in hospital?
I shake the thought away and dump the rest of the bottle into a wine glass.
The first sip is delicious, sending a tingle through my synapses. Jesus Christ, I needed that.
I stand in the kitchen watching the light dying over the hills in front of the house.
I need to help this Bethany. I need to find a way to get her away from Nick, away from this sterile life he has built for them, away from nights spent alone drinking wine in the darkening kitchen while he’s out doing God knows what with another woman.
Except … the voice nags at me, the idea nebulous, only half formed. Because what if?
What if this is real?
What if this is my life?
What if all the other Bethanys were a figment of my coma-addled brain, a way of my subconsciousness keeping me alive until my body decided to catch up with the idea?
I take a huge gulp of wine, welcoming its softening embrace.
I’m still standing in the kitchen when he gets home.
‘Honey, I’m back,’ he calls from the hallway, startling me from my reverie.
‘Must be in bed,’ he mutters under his breath when I don’t respond.
I’m frozen into place, not ready yet to face him and his lies.
He hums under his breath as he hangs up his coat and then stashes his golfing gear in the special cupboard next to the downstairs bathroom.
He sounds happy and carefree. Like everything in his life is just peachy.
He switches on the kitchen light and screams like a tiny girl when he finds me standing there. ‘Jesus!’ He clutches his hand to his heart like a Victorian lady.
‘I was just getting a drink,’ I tell him.
‘In the dark? You almost gave me a heart attack.’ He takes a few steps towards me.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ The mask has slipped and his true colours are starting to show, even though I’ve known them all along.
His attitude is hardly a surprise. The only surprise is this Bethany lets him treat her like this. That maybe I let him.
‘Sorry.’ I can’t help myself from apologizing, from curling in on myself, from making myself look smaller. ‘I’m just going to go to bed.’
‘Yeah. Good idea. I might just have a glass of wine and then I’ll join you.’
I don’t tell him I already drank the Sauvignon Blanc. Instead I scurry past like I’m desperate to get away from him. Which I suppose I am.
I don’t sleep. Instead I spend the night oscillating between the idea I need to save this Bethany before I skip and the nightmare that I am this Bethany and the skips were just my overactive imagination.
Eventually the sun begins to paint the horizon and I slip quietly out of bed, wrapping a cotton robe around me and leaving Nick snoring.
In the kitchen I make coffee and then take it out into the garden.
The patio furniture is that posh rattan type with thick cushions and I sink gratefully into one, feeling like I’m being cocooned.
I need to think about this logically. After all that is what I do, what I’ve always done.
So. If I am this Bethany, then why don’t I have any memories of this life?
I don’t remember this house, or any of the holidays depicted in the pictures I found on the rather boring Instagram profile this Bethany maintains sporadically.
I can’t recall my wedding day, or that terrible prenup I apparently signed like a goddamn fool.
I remember every detail of my life as me, the Bethany who is best friends with Cesca, rivals with a devastatingly handsome fellow physicist called Tyler, and the owner of an inordinate number of special-edition books.
I want to speak to my sister and I’ve pulled my phone from the pocket of the robe before I remember she’s either blocked me or changed her number.
Or perhaps even both. The realization stabs me in the gut.
Maybe she’s on social media? But I search Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to no avail.
There is no Cesca Raven. I even check TikTok, despite how ridiculous the very idea of Cesca being on there is.
I can picture the look on her face when I suggested she give it a try, if only to watch cute dog videos.
She’d looked like I’d suggested running naked down Oxford Street in the middle of the final evening of late-night shopping before Christmas.
Nick leaves at half seven to go to the offices of PKR Solutions where – at least according to his payslip – he’s a strategic analyst. I have no idea what the company does or what his job actually entails, but it involves wearing a full suit and a shirt with cufflinks.
It’s so far removed from the casual scruffiness of my own office, where most people wear hoodies and jeans and ‘dressing up’ means making sure there isn’t ketchup on the cuffs.
But at least his departure gives me some space. And time. I need to get to the bottom of all of this. And first things first, I need to figure out just what this Bethany does all day.
The answer to the question falls into my lap half an hour later, just as I’m getting out of the shower. The woman on the other end of the phone has a voice like honey and sounds genuinely concerned about me.
‘How are you doing, darling? It must have been such an ordeal, you poor thing.’
My phone tells me this is Amina Samar. I make some noncommittal reply as I desperately try to pluck some information about her from my brain. But there’s nothing. I have no clue who she is or why she’s ringing.
‘Are you coming in today?’ Amina asks. ‘I know it must have been awful for you, but the other ladies would be thrilled to see you, even if you just pop in for a cup of tea.’
‘I … umm …’ I stammer as I put her on speakerphone and pull up my emails.
There she is. Amina Samar, a volunteer at the Aster Trust, a charity dedicated to supporting refugee women as they settle into life in Surrey.
From the sheer volume of emails we exchange, I must also be a volunteer.
And a pretty prolific one at that. When the doctor said I had a heart attack at work, the Aster Trust must have been where he meant.
‘It will do you good to get out of the house,’ Amina tells me, a decidedly mumsy tone to her. ‘But don’t even think about driving. I’ll swing by and pick you up. Give me forty-five minutes.’
And before I can say no, she hangs up.
So, it turns out I’m not just a volunteer, I basically run the entire operation.
I even have my own office, which feels suitably swish – I don’t even have my own office back home.
The other volunteers, all women, crowd round me, desperate to know if I’m really okay.
They are sweet and well meaning, offering me tea and cake ‘to help me get my strength back’.
But it’s all a bit much, so I feign a funny spell and retire to my office, terrified I’ll get overwhelmed and just blurt out that I’m not really this Bethany and it’s all a big mistake and I don’t belong here and tomorrow the real Bethany they know will be back and everything will be all right.
The office feels a little more like me. A bit of a mess, a collection of different-sized Post-it notes, an array of colourful books not quite lined up on a shelf.
Inside the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet I find a locked box, the kind my school used to use for the tuck shop.
For a second I think of the way Nick has something similar, perhaps my source of inspiration.
I close my eyes and think about where I would hide a key.
Somewhere I could reach from sitting down behind my desk.
Somewhere a cleaner wouldn’t inadvertently find it.
Somewhere not so weird that it would look suspicious if someone did find it.
I mean, imagine how intriguing it would be to find a key taped underneath the desk.
You’d start instantly looking for what the key was for; it’s just human nature.
The key is inside a pencil case in the second drawer down, tucked into the bottom so it isn’t visible from a perfunctory glance.
I check no one is watching, but it looks like the charity is pretty busy and everyone is occupied making calls and tapping efficiently at their keyboards.
This Bethany runs a tight ship, the place operating smooth as clockwork.
Inside the box is a stack of notebooks in every colour of the rainbow. I open the top one.
And then I know.
I am not this Bethany.
But I’m also not going to skip again.