Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

The relief of it. For the next week they stop a dozen times a day to laugh, or to say it out loud.

Nice flat you've got here, glad I climbed out of your attic.

I like this big blue pot you've brought, much better than the tartan plates the last husband had.

They figure out that they met online; no friends in common, no workplaces, different parts of town, different hobbies, lives that almost didn't touch.

"But okay, this is more fun," Lauren says. "I'm reconstructing from messages to Elena so no guarantees, but…it looks like you proposed at that little park near Liverpool Street, you know, where there's all those plaques to dead Victorians?"

"Oh yeah, makes sense. Love that shit. Mother, I saved him, but I could not save myself. Literally feeling teary now. Bet I didn't plan it or anything, it was probably, like, birds were singing and I was thinking I cannot fucking believe I've found someone who'll come and watch me cry at heroic plaques. "

"God," she says, "I don't think I want to know what your wedding speech was like."

They search for stories about attics and read things aloud to each other all afternoon, then write partner priorities on the Post-it notes that Bohai bought and stick them to the window.

GOOD HAIR, Bohai writes on one Post-it, then adds, OR NO HAIR. "Nothing in between."

She puts FOREARMS on one. INTERESTING SKILL. KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS. OWNS SCARF.

They look up significant exes. Bohai's Jack is single, and has just been promoted. His LinkedIn account features a recent post on the importance of insight.

"The thing we forget about insight," Lauren reads aloud, sonorous, "is that it's only possible when the subject you're addressing is just that: in sight ."

"I know," Bohai says. "Obviously the business chat isn't something I'm actively looking for. But he didn't talk like that at home, you know? I miss him, I miss how he could always tell when I was lying, I miss his three-thousand-dollar suits." He takes another Post-it and writes, LOOKS GOOD IN FORMALWEAR. "Anyway," he adds, "I'd like to see your rich business husband do better."

She searches for Felix, who seems like he might be married to the nanny, or perhaps to someone else named Delphine. No LinkedIn, though, which makes her feel a little smug, and there's a recording of a talk he gave at a conference that's been watched thirty thousand times. She presses play, and it's incredibly boring, she gets thirty seconds in before Bohai makes her mute it, but Felix is, somehow, charismatic once the sound's off, serious face, measured gestures, lots of eye contact, the occasional business smile. They stream it to the television and watch him gesticulate silently.

"You know what," Bohai says, "I kind of get it."

Michael is married to someone else this time, not the woman who died, and his child is a tiny baby, huge-eyed, curly-haired. Jason is still running his own garden business; single, as far as she can tell. Carter isn't in Denver with his usual partner; instead, he's in Seattle with a tall blonde.

"You're prettier than her," Bohai says. "And actually he's not that good-looking either."

"He doesn't photograph well. It's partly the walk," she says. "The stance."

Bohai writes, WALK AND/OR STANCE IS SOMEHOW ENTICING on a Post-it and holds it up.

Lauren remembers something she read a few husbands ago, after a morning spent googling How do people decide who to marry. Searches again, finds what she's looking for. "Hey," she says. "Have you heard of the secretary problem?"

He hasn't.

"Okay," she says. "A while back I was trying to figure out what I'd have to do if I wanted to find a husband to keep. And it turns out someone's done math about it. Like, the math that gives you the highest possible chance of finding the best partner, or hiring the best secretary."

"Those feel like really different problems."

She shrugs. "Sure, let's start with the secretary side of it, then. You're trying to find the best girl—"

Bohai raises his eyebrows. "Is this math guy from 1952?"

"—and you've got a load of interviews lined up. And each time one of the candidates comes in, at the end of the interview you decide if you want to hire her. But you have to decide right there. If you say no you can't go back to her later. And if you don't hire anyone you're stuck with whoever's last, even if she's terrible."

"I just don't think that's how job interviews work, even in 1952."

"Sure, no. But what do you do?"

"Have a set of predetermined scoring criteria so that you can work against your unconscious biases?" He gestures at the Post-it notes. "Call in references? Take them on a trial basis?"

"Mathematically," she says, "you should say no to the first thirty-seven per cent of candidates, then yes to the first person you see who's better than any of them."

When he's thinking hard, his eyes flick round, left, right, looking at imaginary logic. "What's thirty-seven per cent of infinity?"

Yeah, fair. "Wait, no," she says, "you're gonna die, right?"

"That's such a rude thing to say."

"How old are you?"

"None of your business."

"I'm your wife," she says.

He rolls his eyes. "Fine. I'm thirty-five."

"Then let's say you live till you're eighty-five, so fifty-five years of partners."

"Gimme till ninety-five," he says. "My family lives super old. In most lives I've still got four out of four grandparents."

Well, good for him. "That means you've got sixty-five years of spouses from when you started, so thirty-seven per cent is"—she pulls up the calculator on her phone—"twenty-four years, and you started at thirty so you should keep—shit, you should keep switching till you're fifty-four? Then you stop the first time you get someone who's the best yet."

He groans. "No. I'm not gonna do it. That'd be, what, two thousand spouses? I know what your math guy says but listen, I've been through four hundred already, it's not like I don't have a sense of the range of people who…exist.I'm not going to get any new information from making out with another sixteen hundred strangers."

"Okay," she says, "so you're looking to settle down?"

He makes a noise, ugggh , and sits up. "Yeah," he says, "look, things ended badly with Jack, and that was only a few months ago, and I was in that world for ages, so half the length of the relationship to get over it, right? I reckon I've got another six months or so before I need to start thinking about dating seriously. Marrying seriously."

She hadn't realised Jack was so recent. "Yeah," she says. "Okay."

"But I want to stop again," he says. "Of course I do. I want a life where I know where I'm going to be in a week. I want to…pre-order something. I want to buy an overambitious spice mix and then never open it and throw it out three years later way past its best-before date."

Yeah. "Me too," she says, and she hadn't been sure before but as she says it, it feels true. "I just have to find the right place to stop."

○○

Between the Post-its and the stories and the glory of talking openly, they neglect everything else, including their calendars, so they're surprised when, at half past seven on Sunday, Elena and Rob turn up at the door.

Lauren prepares her lie, but she doesn't need to use it: Bohai is already there, explaining while she gathers up the notes still stuck over the wall.

"I'm so sorry," he says, "my sister had to go in for emergency surgery, only appendicitis but it's still a shock, and we were waiting for news and we totally forgot you were coming. But we've just heard: she's out of surgery, she's woken up, she's doing well, they've got the appendix out. We might have to order delivery for dinner, though!"

It's perfect: a good enough excuse, but one that won't put a pall over the evening. If anything, it adds joy to the night.

In the toilet, she messages him: Rob and Elena, Elena's the one with the hen party, they got married this summer. But when she comes out, she finds him opening the bottle of wine Rob's brought and laughing at a joke, absolutely convincing.

"Anyway, Rob's mum," Elena says over dinner, "thinks that now we're married we have to start having kids immediately, and when we told her we were getting a dog she looked like we'd stabbed her. It's not like people can't have a dog and a baby at the same time!"

"No," Lauren agrees.

"But we do need to get a move on or else she's going to heist an egg and gestate a baby for us in the microwave, she is obsessed. "

Elena looks at Bohai expectantly.

"That…sounds sensible," he says.

"So is there any…news?" Elena asks.

"On…"

Is Bohai…donating sperm? Surely if that was an issue with Rob, Elena would have told her some drunk night or other. Elena continues: "…on the dogs?"

Oh. Oh. Lauren remembers Bohai's first day, the research they did into his life in London. "The guide dogs."

Bohai blinks at her.

"That you train," Lauren adds. "For your job."

"Any adorable flunk-outs?" Rob says.

Lauren can only watch Bohai, but he catches up fast. "I'm so sorry," he says, "but we've got a bumper crop this time. Sometimes I try teaching one wrong when the other trainers aren't looking, to see if I can get her to fail for you, but they're all too smart."

At the end of the night, the door closed at last behind their visitors, he flops back on to the sofa. "Oh my god," he says, "fuck," long and drawn out, "the dogs. I'd forgotten I even had a job here."

Lauren had, too. She sits on the armchair and stretches her legs on to the coffee table, and searches. "Here you are ," she says, turning the iPad to show a photo of Bohai and three beautiful dogs. She is drunk on triumph and wine.

Bohai takes the tablet and finds another picture of him with a dog. "Definitely not my worst job. One time I did funerals. And once I did organic skincare sales."

Lauren takes the tablet back. "What's the most different the world's ever been for you?" she says. "The biggest change."

"I check the news a lot," he says, "but there's never been, like, the megafauna are back, or Australia's just won the World Cup, or the climate's settled down and we don't have to rinse out our recycling any more. Which is obviously a mixed bag because it'd be great to get to a universe that's less fucked, but it's comforting too, means we're powerless against the forces of history so we might as well watch Mindhunter ."

"I guess. I mean not Mindhunter specifically."

He looks at her speculatively. "Hey, do you think we're meant to be together?"

She says "What?" like she doesn't understand, but it's not as if it hasn't occurred to her.

"As far as we know we're the only people this has happened to. If there were thousands of us, someone would've written about it, right? We'd find it somewhere . Instead it's just, like, there are those movies where a hard-working city girl gets hit on the head by a Christmas tree and she wakes up married to some guy with a chin, and she learns the true meaning of Christmas and then when she gets back to her original world everything is normal again but she decides to go home for the holidays after all and on the plane the guy is sitting next to her and Santa winks. You know."

"What? No."

"Yeah," he says. "Really? You haven't seen…? Look, we can watch it later. God, I'm making a mess of this, sorry, but look." He sets his glass down. "We haven't really talked about what I'm doing here but I was thinking maybe it'd be nice to stay for a while longer? Not for ever, I'm not being weird, I don't really think we're meant to be together. I don't want to keep you from your husbands. But it's good to be able to talk about it, right?"

They're pretty sure they'll be able to stay in touch after he moves on, that they'll both remember, that they'll be able to email each other or get a coffee whenever Bohai's in London, but they can't be certain till they try it. And there's something special about being in this world together.

It is. "Yeah," she says. "That would be great."

"Maybe," and he sounds a little bit nervous, like he's asking too much, "maybe a month or two? It's fine if not, no problem, obviously, it's just that I'm still kinda dealing with the Jack thing and this is a great break and, you know, not to get soppy or anything but it's nice to be somewhere I don't have to constantly lie about every important thing in my life."

"I'd love that," she says. "How about you stay till the new year?"

He smiles, that admittedly quite charming smile. "Perfect," he says.