Chapter 11 Jules “Somebody That I Used to Know” #3
Marching her straight up to Chef Marcel’s wife, I make her sign up for both Chef Marcel’s cooking course and Anna’s French lessons, slapping her credit card down.
So long as I keep the credit card statements hidden and get some extra gigs to pay them off, then Adam need never find out, I leave her thinking. And even if it means less money now, in the long term this has got to be a good thing, right?
***
I gasp as I land back in the shed.
I’m shaking as I stand up and open the Sony CD panel, taking out the CD, which looks blistered and burned. I nearly toss it in the bin, but then Adam might find it and work out what I’ve done. Panicked, I hide it at the back of a box of his dad’s old sandpaper scraps, somewhere he’ll never look.
Making sure nothing else appears out of place, I hurry up to the house, slipping in through the back door, my mind whirring with what I’ve just experienced, but also with a twisting in the pit of my stomach.
I really have betrayed him this time, haven’t I? Changing our past so purposefully.
If it’s even worked…
Sacré bleu!
I stand in the doorway, eyes wide. This kitchen is not my kitchen.
The horrible lime-green units have been replaced with quirky, open-plan wooden shelves.
Ones that I now remember Adam fitted for me after finally relenting and then throwing himself into the kitchen renovation project, joining me on trips to antiques markets and car boot sales.
He’d been triumphant when he sourced those shelves on eBay for a song.
“C’est magnifique,” I marvel—my accent perfect, as I admire the strings of rose de Lautrec garlic, onions, and herbs in cute crockery on display, as well as a stack of well-thumbed French cookery books.
Holy guacamole!
Je n’en crois pas mes yeux! I speak French. Je parle francais. Je parle vraiment bien francais!
Of course I speak French. My new memories hit me thick and fast. How I studied the language with Anna while simultaneously learning part-time how to cook with Chef Marcel at his cookery school over in nearby Alfriston.
I also remember how, for the whole four-year period I studied for Marcel’s diploma, I hid my credit card statements and lied to Adam that Mum had lent me the money for the course.
How I scrimped on the housekeeping to pay for it and held back part of my money from the new weekend job I’d taken for a caterer at the football grounds, even though I knew it annoyed Adam that he couldn’t cycle as much as a result.
Not that he said. He told me he was happy to support me as I tried to build up my clients.
Memories of my culinary prowess wash over me like gentle waves on a C?te d’Azur beach.
Like they’re nothing to be frightened of.
Like they’re the most natural thing in the world.
The digital radio is playing FIP, a French internet station I now know I like to have on when I cook.
I walk over to the spotless rustic French wooden farmhouse table with its pretty pot of flowering peonies and grab the menu Darius dropped off earlier—clearly reading what I couldn’t before—meaning, yeah, all that still happened on this timeline, like all I’ve really changed is my ability to speak French and to cook like a native.
Because bon sang ouais, I’m now fluent in French cooking too…
Foie gras with truffles and celery…oui, d’accord, all very straightforward.
I’ve made that fifty times before. Galettes andouille de Guémené fumé…
uh-huh, un morceau de pisse… pancakes with that delicious smoked chitterling sausage from Brittany, un jeu d’enfant, and yet another French staple I’m an expert at now.
And this is amazing. Incroyable. La merde la plus cool qui ait jamais existé!
Yet…hang on…What if something else has seismically changed and not just me and the kitchen?
Something my new memories haven’t yet informed me of?
Panicking, I check my phone. Nelly is getting her bike fixed over at Gee Whizz and Liam is at the studio in town helping out on the recording session of some new band.
While on my Find My phone app, I quickly locate Adam at work.
Hmm. With bloody Meredith, the “babe,” no doubt. Putain!
Even so. It means everything else is normal, right?
Sitting down at my laptop, I let out an excited yelp, noticing the screensaver is of me with Chef Marcel receiving my diploma.
Bien s?r. D’accord.
I’m a bloody qualified French chef.
Opening a new document, I start rattling off the menu I’m going to make on Thursday for Darius’s corporate gig.
Thanks to my new memories, I already know where I’ll source all the ingredients.
The guys down at the French emporium on Sydney Street keep all my favorites on hand for when I call.
I’ve also remembered that after finishing my studies, I grew a thriving events catering business for posh dinner parties and the like, until lockdown scuppered it.
My menu will not only be easy to make…it’ll be a joy.
Singing along to Jacques Brel’s magnificent “Quand on n’a que l’amour,” I put some tomato sauce on to simmer.
This is bloody marvelous, but it is still cheating, really, right?
Yet already the guilty me who just stepped out of that shed is fading.
Am I really so different from how I was before? I’m still the same old Jules, aren’t I?
Just a bit more French.
—
I’m still immersed in the cooking zone by the time Nelly gets back from work. But the second she walks in, I register that she looks different. She’s thinner and somehow more brittle.
I go over to kiss her, but she shrugs me off—like I now realize she always does on this timeline.
Watching her, fresh from her bike ride back from working at Darius’s office, now guzzling a glass of cold water fresh from the tap, I realize that I really have been too reckless.
Because her life on this timeline has been altered by my decisions too, hasn’t it?
Like me not being here over all those weekends when I was studying in Alfriston.
And her and Adam getting closer as a result.
With a sickening sense of dread, I compute that my current relationship with Nelly is not good.
Not good at all. In fact, I have to walk on eggshells around her, unable to mention her unhealthy relationship with food—which Adam thinks is my fault because I’m obsessed with food myself.
While I think her unhealthy obsession with exercise is his fault.
In fact, our conversations about Nelly have become so fraught and full of blame, it’s caused a rift between us that I don’t know how to heal.
And now, as I blend in with the new, French-speaking me, I long for my snarky, and sometimes difficult, but deep down always present and engaging Nelly. The real Nelly. I’d take that any time over this Cold War, where more and more I feel she’s just freezing me out.
My need to confess to her feels so great, I almost blurt everything out, but instead I skirt as close to the truth as I can.
“You know, it’s funny, but today I had a really vivid memory of that food festival. Do you remember? When they used to be on the lawns? And you were raising money for the famine in Somalia?”
She shrugs. “That was just a stupid phase I was going through.”
“It wasn’t stupid.”
“Yes, it was. You even said so at the time.”
“What?” I exclaim. “No, I didn’t.”
She gives me a look, clearly skeptical about my protest. “Well, I don’t remember exactly what you said, but that’s how it felt.”
I stare at her for a beat. Oh, shit. I do now remember how dismissive I was.
“Well, I was wrong.”
Nelly’s eyebrows shoot up.
“It just made me remember that you always cared about other people way more than yourself. I mean, you should have seen the light in your eyes.”
“It was years ago, Mum. You can’t possibly remember that. Besides, I’m not that little kid anymore.”
“You are, though,” I insist. “Good people don’t change. And…I’m telling you, if anyone is going to save the world, it’s still going to be you.”
I give her an encouraging smile, but she throws up her arms, her look suddenly thunderous.
“Oh, Jesus! Give me a break! I’ve just got in from work and now you want me to save the world?”
“I don’t mean it like—”
“Why are you always putting such high expectations on me? Just because your life didn’t go according to plan. Not that we don’t hear the bloody last of it. How you could have been this or could have done that. Could have lived somewhere else.”
Is this really what she thinks? And worse, is she right? My God, I can speak French, I have a snazzy kitchen, and a moderately successful career of sorts, but apparently, it’s still not enough? For her, for our family, for me? But yes, she’s right. My new memories tell me this too.
“Okay, so my big dreams may not have worked out, or not yet, but that doesn’t mean yours can’t,” I tell her.
Nelly stares at me, and for a second I see a chink in her armor.
“I mean it. I’m worried you’re settling, darling.
Or settling too young. I’m scared you’re forgetting all that passion you used to have.
You wanted to travel, remember? You were going to go everywhere. ”
“I do go to lots of places. On my bike.”
“Yes, but I don’t just mean Portslade and Dorking. You used to have a world map when you were little, remember? You used to say good night to people in places you couldn’t even pronounce. You always wanted to travel the world and make a difference.”
She twists her lips and sighs. “Yeah, well, that was then. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
But as I look into those deep, thoughtful eyes of hers, I know that she’s listening.
“Well, that’s not surprising. You don’t get a second to yourself to think. I know you’ve got a good job and things are better now you’ve got your own office space, but I’m still not convinced it’s the right path. I don’t think you are either.”
Her eyes narrow and I worry that maybe I’ve pushed it too far.