Chapter Fifty-Eight
Amina doesn’t talk, she just sits with me as I try to process this new piece of information.
‘Why didn’t I know?’ I ask eventually.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, why didn’t I realize she wasn’t here. When I woke up. I should have sensed she wasn’t here.’
Amina reaches out and touches my hand. ‘You’ve had a shock, but you need to be logical.’
I snap my head up, ready to defend myself, but then I see the look on her face and the sympathy playing across her features.
‘You are in a world a billion miles from your own,’ she continues, her voice soft. ‘You’ve had kind of a lot to deal with. And while, given the evidence of you sitting here in front of me, we cannot deny the existence of a fully formed consciousness, perhaps even a soul …’
‘I—’
‘That doesn’t mean you can feel your sister.
’ She interrupts me to finish. ‘That is the kind of phenomena you would watch on a four-part documentary that could have been half an hour long and still ends inconclusively.’ She offers me a small smile so I’ll know she isn’t being unkind.
‘You’re a scientist, Bethany. So let’s stop with the self-recrimination that you should have known. ’
I nod and drain the dregs of my glass of wine. I feel numb. Like none of this is really happening, not to me.
‘Good. So, I’m going to the bar for more wine and then I’m going to give you two choices.
’ Amina has flipped into efficiency mode, the same way that Alesha does in the office back in my world.
‘Choice A is that we share stories about Cesca, that we celebrate who she was and give your brain time to catch up with the reality in this world.’
‘You never met her.’
Amina rolls her eyes. ‘You think this Bethany never talked about her?’
‘Oh.’ I guess that makes sense.
‘Or Choice B is that you tell me what Tyler’s idea was and we figure out how to make it work.’ She doesn’t wait for me to tell her which I’m going to choose, just spins round and stalks off to the bar.
She returns with wine and a wooden spoon with the number 9 on it. ‘I ordered chips,’ she says as she puts the spoon into the holder on the table.
I suddenly realize how hungry I am. All I’ve eaten is that pastry with Tyler and the cinnamon bun on the train but that was hours and hours ago. ‘Thank you.’
She flaps her hand as if to say it’s nothing. ‘So … A or B?’ The question is light, no hint of which way she thinks I should go. She’s leaving me to drive how I process the news about Cesca and I’m extremely grateful.
‘Choice B,’ I reply. All my life, I’ve dealt with difficult emotional stuff by doing something else, solving another problem to give my subconscious time to catch up and process the reality I don’t want to look in the face.
‘I thought you might.’
‘Is it what this Bethany would choose?’ I ask.
‘You are far more similar than you seem to think.’
Except this Bethany has made the worst life choices imaginable with the most horrendous impacts on the people around her, before deciding to rip apart the fabric of space and time instead of maybe seeing a therapist. But I don’t say that.
And besides, I think I’d probably destroy the universe before I went to therapy too.
‘Tyler’s idea was just to replicate what this Bethany did,’ I tell Amina.
‘Obviously,’ she replies.
‘You’d thought that too?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Of course.’
‘But you didn’t suggest it.’
‘Because you wouldn’t do it.’ She’s totally matter-of-fact.
I wait for her to elaborate.
‘It isn’t perfect,’ she continues. ‘There are issues, outstanding questions, uncertainties. So before I made the suggestion I needed time to think.’ She pulls out a notebook from her bag and flips it open to a page full of tightly written text.
‘You have a plan?’ I ask, trying to decipher the words, but I can’t read upside down.
‘No. I have answers to the questions I know you have. So what are the barriers? What are the things stopping you from going through with this and I’ll tell you what I think the solutions are.’
‘How do we know it’ll send me back to my own world?’
‘Because I know exactly what parameters this Bethany used. Replicating the experiment perfectly is easy.’
Okay. ‘What if this body has another bad, or even more catastrophic, heart attack?’
She pauses as she looks at her page of notes. ‘You’re on medication now. And I might have an idea on how to make the experiment safer for you physically.’
‘So what about the Bethany who is sent here the second you send me back?’
‘I’ll be there to meet her and walk her through everything. If you’re right and she was the one who ended up in the coma, then she’ll probably be relieved to know what really happened.’
That’s actually a really good point and a potential plus point of the plan. ‘What about all the other Bethanys? This could move hundreds, thousands, millions of us. It could go wrong and scatter us all across the universe.’
Amina scowls at the page in front of her, running her finger down the list of questions and answers she’s meticulously planned out.
‘Umm …’ She starts again at the top. ‘Right,’ she says as she gets back to the bottom.
‘So, that question might not be on here.’ She looks up at me and grimaces slightly.
‘Leave it with me. Give me twenty-four hours.’
I appreciate her tenacity, and she does have incredible confidence in her own ability that I can’t help but admire. But it’s too much of a risk. And we both know there isn’t a solution to it.
I’m trapped here.