Chapter 15 Jules “Across the Universe” #3
I quickly find myself tapping into more and more of this Jules’s “new” memories, bringing myself rapidly up to speed on the last eight years of my—our—life since I kissed Darius in the Robin Hood pub.
And oh my…the sheer devastation of that kiss. One that Darius still sees as a triumph, but she—I?—as a detonation. The magnitude of the hurt I’ve caused floors me, as Jules steps into the shower.
What have I done? And not just to Adam, but…oh my God…the kids.
More new memories. Of how I told the kids I wanted them to come to America with me. How I’d find a way, no matter what. Or at least that’s what I told little thirteen-year-old Liam and sixteen-year-old Nelly when I first left Adam for Darius.
I also really believed I could do it, didn’t I? That Adam would let me, that he wouldn’t fight.
But they hated me. All of them. They hated me for what I’d done. For selfishly putting my own happiness ahead of theirs. They never did come to America to join me. They flatly refused.
I left my children.
I left Adam.
I scream inside my mind.
Then, of course, I burned my bridges with them all for good when I got pregnant.
I was convinced I was too old and too premenopausal for it to be possible. But when Darius found out, he hailed it as a miracle and was over the moon.
As Jules—as I—gets dressed, the new memories just keep coming, drowning me inside her, leaving me gasping for air.
How in the US me and Darius just moved from one property to the next, each one bigger than the last, in tandem with Totally Sirius’s meteoric rise.
How, bit by bit, he burrowed deeper and deeper into his work, just like Adam once had with his cycling and his shed—and with me too busy mumming a small baby to be able to even think about a career of my own.
Yet all these memories I have seeping into me—of her wedding to Darius, of her pregnancy, of giving birth, of Phoebe’s first baby smile and word and baby steps—they’re not really mine, are they? They’re hers. She made them. She built this new life.
I’m nothing but a cuckoo in her nest.
But…but I love her, my six-year-old Phoebe. Now my only child.
Nelly still barely speaks to me, even after the countless trips I’ve made home over the years to try to patch things up. And Liam…he’s dropped out of uni and doesn’t speak to me at all. He never did take up music again.
Oh God, oh God, oh God…
And it’s not just me who thinks this, is it?
It’s her. This other me, who I’m becoming.
She regrets it. Achingly. Painfully. Deep down in her gut.
I can feel that too. No matter how much she loves Phoebe and—yes, in her own way—Darius, she’ll never truly get over the consequences of that kiss in the Robin Hood and how it veered her life so off course.
But she didn’t do that. I did. This is my fault.
I have to change things back right now.
Adam… I need to see Adam. He’s got to help me. He must.
And so I fight. I fight for myself, for my life. I fight to resist the terrible pull to just sink into her, to become one with this other new Jules, to end up here forever with her…
Until I finally feel myself slowly peeling my being away from her like a strip of Velcro, becoming two instead of one.
I walk her quickly downstairs and out to her red Porsche—even though they normally walk to the stables where Phoebe keeps her horse—and then I call Phoebe out to join her and tell her Mummy’s got an errand to run.
Then I sit back again and leave the driving to Jules, who puts on her and Phoebe’s Taylor Swift playlist, and the two of them sing along to “Anti-Hero.”
Phoebe gets out at the stables and Jules blows her kisses as, grinning and laughing, she rushes off to join her friends.
Then it’s me in charge again, taking control before Jules even has time to react—making her drive to our cul-de-sac back down in town.
—
Alongside the cool matte-black VW camper van parked outside our house is some kind of hire lorry with its side door open, our rusty old ?koda nowhere to be seen.
A guy in brown overalls is carrying a heavy-looking cardboard box in through the front door, where a pretty young woman is standing wearing shades with her blond hair tied up in a bandanna.
I make Jules get out of the Porsche and approach the house.
“Oh, wow. Okay.” The woman looks shocked to see me. “Jules, right?” she then says, trying to regather her composure.
I recognize her the second she takes off her shades—Meredith. What the hell is she doing here?
“Um…just put it through there,” she tells the overalls guy, and beyond her, I see that our hall is chocka with sealed boxes.
It’s not just me who’s realized who she is, Jules has too. I get another cascade of new memories, about how Adam has a girlfriend. An office romance, no less. And she’s his volleyball partner too.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you.” Meredith smiles, holding out her hand.
“You’re moving in?” I make Jules ask, but her voice is tight. This is clearly freaking the hell out of her too.
Meredith’s cheeks color. “Look, I know things with Adam didn’t end well, but maybe this can be a new chapter?
No reason why we can’t all get along. I mean, I get that it must be strange for you too.
” She glances back at what I now see is a removal lorry.
“But you moved on a long time ago,” she points out.
“And Adam and I…well, I really love him, and I know he feels the same about me.”
Jules and I both want to scream at her. But we don’t have the right, do we? We caused this. We left Adam.
“Can I see him?” I make Jules say.
Meredith hesitates. “He’s in the studio.”
The studio?
“The old shed,” she explains, and before she can change her mind, I quickly march Jules past her.
The dining room wall has been knocked down to make it open-plan—which actually looks great. As does the kitchen with its new sliding French windows. Framed on the wall is a large photograph of a mud-splattered Nelly and Adam on their mountain bikes, brandishing two gold medals around their necks.
My Nelly.
And looking good. Healthy, thank God.
Then I see that all Adam’s other clutter has gone…
Over by a retro turntable—but a good one, not like all that crap he kept in the shed—there’s a series of award certificates framed on the walls from various international gamer sites.
Photos of Adam and Doodles, going by the name the “Dadass Dudes”—and Jules’s memories come thick and fast hot off the press on this too, about how she’s heard on the grapevine that Adam and Doodles teamed up to get into games streaming together.
In one photo, she spots Ngozi looking sensational in a hot-red satin jumpsuit.
Flanked by Adam and Doodles, she’s holding a large “Media Agent of the Year” trophy and Jules remembers hearing that she’d left her law firm to become an agent.
Ngozi. Her best friend. The one who took Adam’s side.
Jules gets a fresh wave of bitter pain as she remembers the row she and Ngozi had just before she’d got into the cab to go to the airport.
It had been one of the only times Jules had ever seen Ngozi cry, as she’d begged Jules to reconsider, telling her over and over that she was making the biggest mistake of her life.
Hearing a familiar bark, I continue to control Jules, making her walk out into the garden. I straightaway notice that the shed is twice the size it was, but the garden somehow looks bigger too, with its scrappy old borders now neatly manicured.
Groucho Barx blocks the path. Wanting to cuddle him so much, I quickly step toward him, but he growls and bares his teeth, like he doesn’t recognize me. Or refuses to. Another one on Adam’s side.
Gingerly, I skirt round him and open the shed door.
Inside, there’s a lighting rig and cameras set up facing two scruffy leather armchairs. As Adam looks up at me, Jules’s stomach flips, as does mine.
“Adam,” I say. “It’s me.”
He laughs, but without humor. “Yeah. I know. But what are you doing here, Jules?”
Meredith appears at the door behind me.
“It’s okay, babe,” he says. “We won’t be a mo.”
Smiling, secure, just using her eyes to convey this, she shuts the door, and I hate seeing this level of communication between them. Like me and Adam when he was still mine.
“Adam. Listen.” I don’t know how to say this and so I’m just going to spit it out. “We’re still married. Or at least we were. Until about two hours ago,” I tell him, grabbing his arm, “or at least that’s how it feels to me…”
“Ooo-kay,” he says on an exhalation.
“The thing is we…well, actually, you… discovered a time machine multiverse thingy…”
“Have you been drinking?” He peers into Jules’s eyes. But whatever he sees there only makes him frown.
“No, I’m serious, Adam,” I make her say. “I’m not this person. I never went to San Francisco. Not on our original timeline. On our original timeline, we stayed here. We were happy. Or, okay, not happy. But not fucked-up. Or not as fucked-up as I thought we were. We were actually doing okay.”
Or rather we were, until we weren’t.
Adam’s still just staring at me, freaked.
“And you know, I don’t know, but maybe I think we’d just forgotten how to be kind to each other, and listen,” I hurry on, trying to explain. “We’d just forgotten…who we were… ”
“Jules. Please. Enough. Why don’t you let me call…well, not Darius,” he says, his expression darkening, “but maybe a doctor? A friend?”
“You’re not listening. It is possible,” I tell him, staring imploringly into his eyes. “Time travel. And not only that. The multiverse. It’s real.”
And there, just there, I see a tiny flicker of interest. He’s probably thinking how the hell do I even know what the multiverse is? But how to convince him before he kicks me out?
“It’s like, I mean,” I say, suddenly remembering what he said, “haven’t you ever wondered—and I know that you have—about what happens to Captain Kirk after he teleports? Whether the next him who materializes is even the same Captain Kirk at all?”
His eyes widen.