Chapter Fifty-Six
Tyler is already late for work and so we’re forced to say goodbye, promising to meet again tomorrow morning.
‘Thank you,’ I tell him, desperate to hug him but knowing that this Tyler would find that deeply uncomfortable.
‘I’m just glad I can help,’ he says with a smile. Then suddenly he leans down and kisses me on the cheek, resting his hands for a second on my shoulders. I want to savour the moment, but all too quickly it’s over. He turns and walks away, leaving me buzzing in the street outside the café.
This Tyler is so different to the others, but also so similar. I’ve missed having him in my life. That calming influence and the smile that makes my heart skip a beat.
My phone rings as I walk towards the train station. Nick. I don’t answer; I’m not letting him break my mood.
I’m going home. Back to my world and my Cesca and my job and all my beautiful books. I almost break into a dance right there on St John’s Hill.
Nick leaves a voicemail. And then sends me a stream of text messages, my phone vibrating in my bag.
Where are you?
You didn’t say goodbye this morning.
What’s going on?
You’re not still upset about last night are you?
I touch my fingers to my cheek, the skin warming at the memory of his slap. Luckily it didn’t leave a mark and so I haven’t needed to explain myself to anyone. Especially Tyler.
You know how angry you make me sometimes.
He’s blaming me. Making it my fault he hit me. And my sense it wasn’t the first time is obviously correct.
Don’t be like this, BeeBee. You know I love you.
He is the only person to ever call me BeeBee and the nickname makes my skin crawl.
Just message back so I know you aren’t mad at me.
He hasn’t said sorry.
I buy myself a cinnamon bun the size of a baby’s head from the cake shop on the station platform. I’m celebrating. Nick isn’t my problem any more. Or at least he won’t be for much longer.
The outskirts of London fall away to reveal suburbia, mile upon mile of the back gardens of Victorian semis. I wonder about the people who live in them, if they’re happy. The cinnamon bun melts on my tongue, sugar coating my lips.
But the closer I get to Reigate, the more my brain moves into overdrive and the confidence I felt with Tyler starts to dissipate. Is it really that easy to go home? Just simply copy this world’s Bethany?
What happens if we’re wrong?
Where could I end up?
What happens to this world’s Bethany? Does she make it back here? And if she does, what happens then? If she was so miserable here she built the machine to escape, what will she do when she finds herself back here once more?
And then there’s all the other Bethanys.
What about them? If we’re right, and everyone was shuffled once to make space for this world’s Bethany and then again for me to come back, then I’m going to shuffle them again.
What if it goes wrong and every other Bethany ends up in the wrong world, all of them displaced?
There could be hundreds, thousands, millions of Bethanys.
I take a few deep breaths to slow my heart rate back down. I can feel it more in this place, the weakness in my heart, like a threat just below the surface.
What if this body couldn’t take another shock? What happens if there’s one less body for all the other Bethanys to shuffle through?
One of us dies.
But which one?
I need time to think and I can’t do that in Reigate. So I jump off the train in Redhill and stand on the platform, searching the departure boards for inspiration. There’s a service to Brighton in five minutes. Perhaps the sea air will help clear my head?
An inspector boards the train a few stops later and demands to see my non-existent ticket. I try to explain the situation, saying I’d changed my plans and asking nicely to buy one now.
‘That isn’t how it works, miss,’ he tells me, a smirk on his face showing me how much he enjoys these petty power trips. ‘We treat this kind of thing very seriously.’
I feel a wave of pent-up anger and frustration rising in my chest but I push it down. It isn’t worth getting kicked off the train in the middle of nowhere. ‘So how does this work?’ I ask sweetly instead.
‘No need to get lippy with me, missy.’
‘I’m not. I just want to know what happens now.’
‘I was going to be nice, but with that kind of attitude you’ve left me with no choice but to issue a penalty fare.’
The fare is over a hundred pounds but I pay it without question. I have far bigger problems to deal with.
The scent of salt tinges the air as I walk down Queens Road towards the sea and the pier. Every possible ‘what if’ I thought on the train crowds my brain.
What if it fails?
What if I get stranded somewhere else?
What if it kills this Bethany?
What if everyone ends up scattered across the universe?
There are too many things that could go wrong. Too many chances for this to fail.
I don’t think I can risk it.
Which means … what? That I’m stuck here, in this awful world, a world so bad that this Bethany leapt into the unknown rather than stay and face her problems.
I duck into a stationery shop and buy a new notebook and a pen.
There’s a free bench overlooking the sea and I settle down, ready to make a list of all the things I would need to fix to stay here.
But what does it even mean to ‘fix’ this world?
The most obvious solution would be to turn it into my world, change everything to how it should be.
Leave my husband.
Buy the flat I live in back home, decorate it just right, so it looks exactly the same.
Get my job. That sounds tricky, I don’t have the right qualifications here. But I could study, prove myself to them, make sure I could walk into the lab and they would have no choice but to give me my job.
Find a way to reconcile with Cesca. I mean, what even happened between us? Surely nothing is so badly broken it can never be fixed.
This could actually work.