Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

They settle into it fast.Bohai spends a lot of time out of the house: parks, bars, nights out with friends he's never met before.

They go to a pub quiz with Toby and Maryam. Toby does flags of the world and history; Maryam takes the lead on science, and barrels through a multiple-choice language round with her mix of Farsi, German and medical Greek and Latin. There are a lot of picture rounds and Bohai, to Lauren's surprise, is great at identifying ingredients.

They're doing well, but the next round is a list of the birth names of singers and actors, under a heading: Better Known As…

They stare at the list. "Just put Marilyn Monroe for all of them," Bohai says.

"For Alphonso d'Abruzzo?" Maryam asks.

"Look, one of them's going to be Marilyn Monroe, do we want to get one point or zero?"

Lauren goes to the bar. It's a shame she's not more useful in the quiz but she is, at least, good at carrying four drinks at once without spilling them. But when she gets back they're on another picture round, and it's flowers.

"Oh. Wait, no. I know this. Geranium," she says. "Nasturtium, hydrangea. Don't know that one. Wisteria. Sweet pea." Two more she doesn't know after that, then: "Oh my god." Is it? It is.

"That's a rose, right? Even I know that one," says Bohai.

"That," she says, "is a Blushing Pierre de Ronsard."

They look at her.

"A climbing rose. Opens pink, fades to a creamy white."

Toby is holding the pencil.

"Maybe it'd be safer to put ‘rose'?" Maryam says.

"Blushing Pierre de Ronsard," Lauren says firmly, and takes the pencil, and writes it in.

And she's right, and they even get a bonus point for it from the impressed compère, which is not quite enough to combat the fact that none of the people on the actors list was Marilyn Monroe. They land in fourth place, and win a voucher for thirty per cent off a pub meal ordered Monday to Wednesday before sevenp.m. It's a good night.

Bohai fits in with her friends so neatly. He joins local groups she's never even heard of, goes to see a show at the arts centre, heads up to Walthamstow one night to join Rob for a bat walk through the wetlands.

"A bat walk ?"

He shrugs. "Yeah, I think we look for bats. Wanna come and find out?"

"No!" She didn't even know there were any bats in London, and she doesn't care for the idea.

Lauren works from home most days, goes into the office a couple of times a week, but Bohai doesn't seem to have any daytime responsibilities. She asks whether he's still calling in sick.

"Yeah, nah," he says, "not really. I more quit my job. I mean, I guess they fired me? I haven't talked to anyone about it since I got here. I've got some savings, and I'll be off to another universe soon, right? I did answer when they called, to say, you know, fuck you I'm done . Then I blocked the number. I reckon it's good for employers to remember we can walk out, might teach them to treat everyone else a bit better."

"Yeah," she says. "You sure stuck it to those guide dogs."

○○

It's the end of October, and fireworks have been going off most nights: in the park, in gardens, a flurry of pop-pop-pop-BANG . They fascinate Bohai, it staggers him that it's legal to buy little exploding fires for fun. "You'd get kids burning down whole forests back home."

She gestures out of the window at the rain, the sog. "Good luck burning that."

He is only an okay housemate, careless about some chores and finicky about others, never makes the tea, but it's a joy all the same. They exchange stories. They make jokes. They spend way too much money on box tickets for a big new West End musical, at Bohai's urging: "Come on," he says, "we're in London! I wanna see the big fancy lighting effects, it used to be my job! Plus normally I never get to buy tickets for anything, or else by the time the event actually happens I'm long gone." So they do, and the lighting is certainly very impressive, but halfway through Bohai leans over and whispers in her ear: "You know, I'd forgotten that I hate musicals."

She turns. "We spent six hundred pounds on this!"

"I know!" he says. "Maybe it was a mistake!"

Oh well. Attic! she mouths.

Attic! he mouths back.

○○

The garden's a mess, but the succulent she got from Elena's hen party is putting out a new lobe, and one lunchbreak Bohai meets her at the council and they go to the fancy plant shop nearby. They've been continuing to go through money fast and, despite Bohai's encouragement, she can't bring herself to spend ￡180 on a tree almost as big as her, plus how would she even get it home, so she takes a medium-sized umbrella plant instead.

"Do you ever think this might be dangerous?" she asks Bohai once, scrolling through news stories.

"What, the buzzing stuff with the lights?"

"No, I mean bad husbands. Or wives, I guess."

"Oh, yeah, a bit. It's easy to get away from them if you just have to go into a wardrobe, though, right? Harder for you. Either way, at least they can't stalk you once they don't know you exist, no tangled-up finances, and you obviously don't love them so you're not trying to fight against, like, feelings."

"Yeah," she says, "I guess." She goes back to her phone, scrolls on. "No, I don't know," she adds after a moment. "I keep thinking about that thing, you know. That statistic. About how women get killed more when they're at home with a partner than when they're out walking around."

"God. Is that true?" He gets his phone.

"You don't need to google everything. "

They criticise each other a lot, never seriously. It's the relief, she thinks: not having to pretend. And it's also just because they can; because there's no way they're going to fall out and never talk to each other again. This huge thing nobody else will ever know about or believe, shared only with each other.

"I'm gonna make a page for if someone googles ‘infinite spouses' or ‘magic attic,'?" Bohai says. "Little note that says, ‘If you're caught in an endless loop of spouses, drop me a line.'?"

This seems to her like a bad idea for some reason.

"What, someone's gonna do us for bigamy?"

"Time hunters," she says. "Space cops. I dunno. No, you're right, you should do it."

He makes a Substack with one post: Hey! I went into a cupboard once and came out in another world, and now I'm working my way through an endless cycle of husbands and wives in different versions of the universe! If this has happened to you, email me.

"I didn't mention you," he says. "Just in case."

"Any reply?" she says after a couple of days. "To your newsletter?"

"Nah. I'll leave it up till I go, you never know."