Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

She looks behind her, politely, to give the world time to adjust. When she turns back the tree is gone. She hears a clatter from above. She thinks: where is he, has he gone? Then she thinks: okay, so I remember him.

And she hears her phone in the kitchen, ding , and she rushes through, and it's a text from an unknown number, Lol Brighton no thanx , and a picture of a grey view of a grey sky and a grey sea, then that disappears and a couple of minutes later there's a new message from another new number, Okay yes sydney babyyyyy then no picture of the sea though, obviously we are a forty minute drive away in deep suburbia and then a photo of a blurry moon over dark rooftops, Look the moon's the right side up again, miss you heaps tho xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx

"Honey?" she hears from the landing. And she turns around, and there he is. Her new husband.

But not new: it's what's-his-face. That guy again. The husband, the first one. Michael.

She thinks it's Michael. There have been a lot of husbands to remember and she was either drunk or hungover or an unpleasant mix of the two for most of the time she and Michael spent together. But he was the first.She'd remember him. Right?

The first question is: is it him? "Michael," she says, experimentally.

"Yeah?"

The second question is: what the fuck?

The third question, which is kind of a subset of the second question, is: is this a loop? Does that mean she's due for Jason soon? If she cycles the husbands for long enough, will Carter eventually climb down again?

Bohai never mentioned a loop, but he's drawing on a larger pool of possible spouses: more genders, more countries, more cupboards. It might be that she's exhausted her possibilities while Bohai has a thousand left to try, the fucker.

Michael is still looking at her. "Let's go to the pub," she says.

"It's New Year's Day," he says. "Are they even open?"

Shit, so it is. "Let's go to the park."

"Aren't Toby and Maryam coming for dinner?"

Again? It's only twelve hours since she saw them in her last world. "Yeah," she says. "Tell you what, though, I'm going for a walk, clear my head. Want me to get anything while I'm out?"

"Won't the shops be closed? Are you okay?" he says.

"Yes! Yes, I'm fine, I'm just going to have a think about the…new year. I'll be back in an hour, that'll work with dinner plans, right?"

"Should do," he says. "Will you have time to ice the cake?"

She looks into the kitchen again, and this time notices the wire rack and large round cake. "Yeah," she says. She can always dust it with icing sugar.

Around the corner it turns out the pub's open after all. The coffee machine's off but they make her a cup of tea and she sits outside with her phone. It's very cold.

She messages Bohai, at his Sydney number: I think I'm in a loop?? Then she checks Facebook to confirm: yes, Michael Callebaut. And she scans back and looks for pictures, and finds: oh.

WHAT? she gets from Bohai.

Wait never mind , she texts back. I'll get back to you, it's complicated

The photos are different.

She has seen lots of pictures of big white dresses, but you never forget your first retrospective wedding. The puff of the skirt, the flowers she didn't recognise when she first saw them but now thinks were probably peonies, Michael's brown suit.

And yet here on Facebook is a wedding from a couple of years ago, and she's wearing a close-fitting dress instead of a huge puff, it's off-white with pale-green leaves on it, and instead of a big outdoor party they're in a room with maybe fifteen other people.

Same husband different life? Is that possible, she sends, with one of the photos. Pandemic wedding??

Oh yeah!!! she gets back. Had repeats a few times, I think it's when I met them some other way but we ended up together anyway?? Which husband, is it a good one?

Michael, the first one, he was fine, she sends back, and goes to check the messages she's been sending the husband: shopping lists as always, questions about dinner, back and forth. There is not—and this is the one thing she remembers for sure—there is not a picture of a pear with googly eyes on it, even when she scrolls back and back and back again, months into the past, to the days before Elena's hen do and further still.

So. Not a loop.

She goes to text Bohai again but he's sent another message: 2a.m. here anyway so I'm off to bed but good luck with michael 2: the return , and then moments later mIIchael and then no michaeII sorry and then, after a two-minute gap, twichael , and she decides to leave it.

What does it mean that she's married Michael in two different worlds?

When she finishes her tea and heads back to the flat he has a big pot of bolognese heating up on the stove. Not another husband with a special bolognese recipe, she thinks, this is against her rules; but fine, let him add his tablespoon of balsamic vinegar or his cinnamon stick or his mince with a particular fat content. It does smell good. And the flat is looking great: tidy, nice bright paint colours, and in the kitchen the dent in the wall has been fixed again, just like the first time.

She has no idea what sort of cake she's made but she finds a chocolate ganache recipe in an open tab on her phone, some chocolate on top of the microwave, and some cream in the fridge. Sure! She'll give it a go. She opens her playlists and finds one labelled December and puts it on while she warms the cream, and it's songs she doesn't know, girls singing with pianos, and she wonders if that means she's sad, but probably it just means it's cold and the days are short. Michael comes in to stir the bolognese and sings along to one of the choruses. He's got a nice voice.

○○

The ganache isn't perfect, grainier than the photo in the recipe, but she tries a spoonful and it tastes okay.

Toby and Maryam come up at seven. She knows so much about them that they don't even know themselves, she thinks. But they've always been together, in every world.

They must know a lot about her that she doesn't know as well. What her ganache is meant to taste like. What her hobbies are. What her job is, for that matter. Whether she's happy.

And maybe the different disjuncts and asymmetries are okay, maybe they balance out, because the four of them sit together in the living room, eating Michael's bolognese, talking about the new year, and it's good. Maryam recounts her hospital's best A according to her calendar, she has a HIIT class at the gym around the corner. If she's looking for a world she's willing to stick with, then she needs to try living the life she finds there.

The class is horrible, and the instructor knows her and calls encouragement by name, which makes it even worse. But once she's recovered she is gratified and a little shocked by her body's capacity, the ease with which she can touch her toes, the way this version of herself has cultivated so much flexibility and strength. And the next day, when she gets home from work before Michael, she tries a handstand against the wall, like when she was a kid. Her legs go up, her arms hold—ten seconds later she lets her legs down, pushing off from the wall, left leg first and then gravity and momentum pulling the right after it until she has inverted herself again, back to standing. She stretches her arms above her head like a triumphant gymnast.

She's seen so many husbands. Not thirty-seven per cent of all the possible husbands, probably, but maybe close enough. Maybe enough to get a decent idea of what's out there. She thinks back to the lists she made with Bohai, and the things she wanted, and compares them against Michael. Vegetarian: no. Cute: yes. Genuinely notices her: yes. Feels like a good life: yes.

On the sixth of January she leans over in bed and kisses him, and grabs his hair, and he pulls her on top of him and laughs, and she rolls them both back the other way, and as the morning proceeds she discovers that in this world she owns, and uses during sex, a vibrator. She doesn't quite take to it, but there's no denying its efficiency, the pressure cooker of orgasms. Perhaps, like a pressure cooker, it takes practice to get the best out of it.

On the thirteenth of January, Bohai is in London; she calls in sick, and they meet for coffee.

What if it doesn't work , she sends, what if we bring together two different universes and destroy everything?

Yeah prob we won't though and if we do we won't know, he sends back.

They meet at the park where they had breakfast that first morning, and he's fifteen minutes late, which gives her plenty of time to worry; but then he sneaks up behind her and taps her on the shoulder, and she turns and squeezes him, and there they are, back in the world together.

"Wow," she says. "You look—so different."

"I know, I look like shit, all I have here are these big flannel shirts and these leggings. And god, this haircut . You look great; this coat looks expensive, you rich again?"

"We're doing okay," she says.

"Ooh," he says. " Doing okay. That's rich but embarrassed."

"How's the new life? You in town long?"

"Nah," he says, "I'm off after coffee, look at this sodden fucker of a season, plus there's black mould in our flat and I'm not an expert but I've heard that's bad. What about you?"

"I'm still with Michael," she says.

"No! The one who came back on New Year's Day?"

"Yeah."

"Wow," he says. "So that's almost two weeks, right? Is it love ?"

"I mean, he definitely hits a lot of the assessment criteria."

"So romantic."

She laughs. "Yeah, I mean, I do really like him? And the flat looks great, he's an architect, did I say?"

"Like, at least four times."

"And," she says, "I'm still at the council but I've been promoted."

"I'll be honest, I never really understood your job."

"That's fair," she says. "It's pretty boring. But, also, if I mess up, then real people's lives get worse. Anyway, now I can ruin even more people's lives at once if I'm not careful." She's been struggling a little with the higher workload and the meeting-heavy days, and she has a funding application that she's been putting off, but it's not impossibly hard, it's not a whole different category of how to behave and what to do, and she's been feeling surprised and even proud at how well she's managing. She did wake up in the middle of the night once to worry about her team's productivity targets, but she soothed herself back to sleep by making a little to-do list and remembering that she could just change the world if things got really behind schedule.

Bohai buys them takeaway coffees, and they walk around the lake. Steam rises from their cups.

"Hey," she says, "if you end up back in London this weekend, do you want to come round to lunch? Bring your whoever, we can say we're old uni friends. Michael's a really good cook too."

"Probably won't be around," Bohai says, "the weather at home at the moment is, god, it's nicer than any weather you've experienced in your whole life, I reckon? It's hot but it's dry and everyone's still a bit Christmas lazy. And I bet I can find somewhere I'm away on holiday if I scoot through ten or twenty lives. Like: I step out of a beach hut directly on to the sand, there's the big ocean in front of me, some husband in tiny Speedos lying on a towel. Not that this frozen mud isn't also a delight."

"Yeah, okay," she says, "run on back to your spiders and sun damage."

"But," he says, "I think the weather's gonna turn and get sweaty and gross in a few days, so I could wardrobe back over then, maybe we could do something next week?"

"Can't believe you're going to abandon your sexy Speedo husband so fast," she says. "Next week would be good."

"You still gonna be with Michael?"

"I don't know." She's embarrassed to say too much in case she's wrong, in case it doesn't work out. "Maybe?"

"You are , aren't you?"

Her chest and her chin are tight with hope; she laughs and lets it out. "Look, he's just nice. I don't know."

She has always hated being wrong , the idea of doing something that turns out to be an irredeemable mistake. And with Michael she is always working out the best thing to do, and then doing it. Figuring out the ideal way to be.

"Sounds terrible," Bohai says, "but if you like it I guess you'd better lock up that attic." And he buffets her sideways with his shoulder.

She has, sort of: a few days ago she stood on a chair and put a chain and padlock around the struts of the mostly-folded-up ladder to stop it from unfolding further, and then shoved it back up and closed the hatch. If Michael pulls it down it'll only reach halfway, and of course he could still get in if he really set his mind to it and if not she'd definitely have some explaining to do. But it's something.

"That's practically a proposal," Bohai says.

"We're already married."

"I'm so happy for you."

"It's only been two weeks." She might, she thinks, be blushing. "We'll see how it goes."

○○

They spend a few hours together, then Bohai heads off for a new life. "See you next week?" he says. "I'll message you, but maybe Wednesday?"

"Yeah, perfect."

When Michael gets home he's brought orange juice, lemonade and some plain white bread. He makes her triangles of Marmite toast. "I know what you like when you're sick."

She feels a little bad, because she's had a big lunch with Bohai and she's not actually ill, but also, Michael's so nice! She's faked a lot of sickness over the last six months and she's seen who brings things home for her, who gets annoyed that the flat isn't clean even though she's been home all day , who takes an illness as a personal affront or instantly declares that they have the same cold but somehow more so. Worst of all are the husbands who bring jars of vitamins and special teas and check in every five minutes to see if she's okay, the husbands who won't just let her be fake-ill in peace.

But Michael sits over in the armchair and reads, and every now and then he looks up at her and smiles. Maybe the attic knew what it was doing first time round.

○○

There are a few things she doesn't like. Michael's parents are fine, but they live quite close, and his mother isn't great at calling before she pops round to drop off a bag of kumquats she saw on sale. Another objection, harder to justify: the flat is perhaps too stylish. Her clumsily painted succulent has been relegated to a shelf in the bathroom.

The maintenance required to keep up this elegant and energetic life is also a lot. Work is good, but harder. The flat is always tidy, and if she leaves anything on a table Michael will look at it and sigh and put it away. They get a weekly veg box which is great in theory but in practice she doesn't always want to tackle a knobbly celeriac or hyperspecific squash. Plus she's calling her own mum twice a week, and babysitting Magda and Caleb a lot—she's done it three times already and there's another evening in the calendar before the end of the month. She loves them, but they're so tiring.

"Magda's climbing," Nat warns her on her third visit. "Everything. She got a metre up the curtains yesterday, like a little mountaineer."

"Okay," Lauren says.

Nat's long-standing refusal to believe she's a capable adult was useful the first couple of times, because it meant she ran over bedtimes and what to feed the children despite Lauren's apparently regular babysitting slots, but she feels like she's got the hang of it and could now go without another run-through. But Adele, at least, trusts her, and drags Nat out of the door. "Come on," she says, "she's a grown woman, she organised a whole fundraising fair for Magda's nursery, she can microwave some mashed vegetables."

She organised a fair ? But she hunts out photos and: yep, looks like she did.

It's good to have your life together tho, Bohai messages from another new number. I mean, i imagine

"It's a lot," she says to Magda, who is hitting Duplo with more Duplo. "It's good. But it's a lot. Michael and I are meant to spend all Sunday making stock and freezing it."

Magda fits the blocks together. "Yeah," Lauren says, "that's it. Keep it up. You're doing great."