Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

She searches through emails and messages and photos, trying to figure out what happened.

In her original life, Amos broke up with her and quit his job and grew a beard and moved to Berlin for six months and then moved back to London, and tried desperately to stay friends with their mutual acquaintances as if he thought he could win them off her. In this version of the world it seems that instead of doing any of that, he stayed with her, moved in and bought a motorcycle.

They are not quite divorcing yet; they will give it some time, and presumably in six months or a year they will file.

She's in the house alone.

She texts Elena, Amos came round for his last boxes , and Elena texts back, You okay? , and she replies: Absolutely.

This is not a return to everything that used to be. The walls are terrible, the IKEA rug is a different IKEA rug, there is a small row of porcelain ducks on the windowsill.

But it's not too far.

And she is responsible to nobody.

She messages work and warns them that she's not feeling well. She is feeling amazing , warm and surrounded by space, no husband to decipher, no cohabitation to negotiate, no uneven split of the chores to resent or, less often, feel bad about. She looks at the wallpaper in the living room and starts taking things off the shelves, piling them in the middle of the room; then she realises that it's almost five o'clock and rushes out to the hardware store and buys a tin of the brightest white paint they have. Back at home she spins her roller over the feature wallpaper. It's textured and the paint doesn't always go into the crevices but she presses harder, big strokes, arcs of paint, as high as she can; she stands on a chair and accidentally smears a bit on the cream ceiling but never mind. She paints for an hour, then two. She texts Nat and Toby and (checking recent messages to identify other friends) someone named Taj, and asks them to come over, tonight or tomorrow or on the weekend, or the week after that, whenever they want, it doesn't matter, nobody else is going to be in the house, her schedule is clear.

The reset has wiped out her messages to Bohai and she doesn't know his number, it's always changing, so she emails him instead at his memorised address: Divorcing!! she says, Won't stop the attic working, right?

○○

Toby is the first to arrive; he knocks on the door and comes up to survey the living room and its streaks of white paint. Following a carpet mishap, she has laid bedsheets on the floor.

"I never liked that wall," he says. "But I thought you were meant to strip the wallpaper first?"

She tries to work the paint into the pattern's textured furrows. "There's a lot of things you're supposed to do. Do you replace your toothbrush every three months?"

"You okay?" he says, and she really is.

The mysterious Taj comes by. "Taj!" Lauren says, arms widespread, paint-streaked. Taj looks familiar, actually. Dark hair that juts out in a triangle, bright-green eye makeup, black clothes; then Lauren remembers. She met Taj at Elena's wedding! Taj was married to Amos! She hugs her and says, "Oh my god, Taj, I'm so glad to see you," and how wondrous that they have both escaped being married to the same man, even if only one of them is aware of it. Taj has brought wine, which Lauren declines but Toby takes.

Nat comes by too, with Caleb and Magda in tow, and she only has half an hour, and she doesn't immediately launch into advice about painting and/or dating so presumably she thinks Lauren has really fucked things up. But Elena comes at eight, just as Nat's leaving, with a bag full of bread and cheese and avocados and who-knows-what. While she cuts it all up in the kitchen, Lauren enlists the others to move the rest of the living-room furniture towards the centre of the room, freeing up more walls. She doesn't have another roller, so they can't help with the painting. But it's good to see them. She has been neglecting them for too long. She's so glad to have them back.

The piled furniture and paint fumes stop them from eating in the living room, and the kitchen's too small, so they cram into the spare room, sitting on the single bed and the floor, Elena's two salads and assorted charcuterie balanced on the office chair.

While Lauren was moving things from the bookshelves in the living room, she found a wedding photo. She looks at it, close up, then at arm's length. Long white dress, black suit for Amos, Elena her maid of honour in an unbecoming peach. She changed her name this time, which would be a fucking nightmare of administration to change back if she had to follow through on it. That said, Lauren Lambert is a top-tier name; probably she only took it because it sounds so elegant. Lauren Lambert. The former Mrs. Lambert. Glamorous divorcée Lauren Lambert. There's something rather chic about being divorced, she thinks.

"Come on," Elena says, "let's not gaze at wedding photos, I reckon. We could burn it if you like? Little cleansing ritual?"

"Nah," Lauren says, "I'm good," and puts it down.

"This seems great," Taj says. "I thought you were having a breakdown."

Elena half shrugs. "I mean, not to jump to conclusions but I wouldn't say it's necessarily advisable to paint over your wallpaper, or even realistically a sign of not having a breakdown. "

Lauren feels a little vehement, perhaps, a little excited, but it's not the sort of excitement that comes with a crash. It's the thrill of being able to do what she likes, of not having to figure out what a husband wants to do, what his expectations are, how they behave together, who sits where on the sofa, how he takes his tea and which mugs he likes, whether she should check before having her friends over, whose toothbrush is whose (a nightmare , every new husband). "Really great," she adds. "I'm excited. I'm excited to be on my own."

She's still excited to be on her own the next morning, when she wakes up early but due to some calling-in-sick forethought doesn't have to do anything except fall back asleep. Eventually she wakes up again and wanders from room to room, putting things in the wrong places, deciding .

She eats tinned peaches and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for lunch. She walks naked from room to room. She pulls the ladder down from the attic, and pokes her head up, watches the electricity flare.

She leaves the sofa and the rest of the furniture piled where they are; she'll finish painting the walls tomorrow, or next weekend. She is still excited to be alone—and the next morning, she is excited to be alone again when she wakes up to her own alarm, nobody else's, and can turn the light on right away, and rummage through drawers as loudly as she wants, and she doesn't even have to think about who is going first in the shower.

○○

Maybe she'll stay in this world for a week. Maybe for ever. She is at the council for work; goes into the office and says hello to everyone and is so delighted to see them. Wandering the area at lunchtime, she buys herself the huge ￡180 plant that Bohai got her for Christmas. She can barely carry it, one arm around the pot and another on the trunk, so heavy, she has to turn to get through doors without damaging its canopy. She's never going to manage it on the train at rush hour so she sits outside a Pret until it closes at eight, warming up with occasional teas, the plant on the seat opposite.

She has made notes of the care instructions imparted to her in the shop. She is happy to tend its leaves, happy with its manageable awkwardness, this big and touchy plant that needs to be taken care of, this plant that may one day be taller than she is, but which will never say Have you seen my socks or Is that your third glass or I told you my dad was coming round or in fact anything at all, ever. She carries it up her stairs, leaning it on every second or third step for a break, and finally nestles it into place near but not right by the window, among the piles of books and boxes that she still hasn't put back on the shelves. She doesn't name it but she does say, " There you go, buddy." Has she ever said the word "buddy" aloud before? It feels right. Hey, buddy. Need some water, buddy? Ah, come on, buddy, perk up.

She even looks up the brass plant mister she had at Felix's, but it costs eighty pounds, and her plant buddy isn't going to know the difference. She empties out a half-used bottle of beach-waves sea-salt crunchy hair spray, which is both expired and out of fashion, and fills it with water, and uses that instead. C'mon, buddy. Absorb that water. You can do it. Plump out those glossy green leaves.

Her phone dings: another unknown number, another update from Bohai on his cycle of spouses. So many vases what the fuck and a picture of four blue vases, then another larger blue vase, and a shelf of ten glass vases, transparent and pink and green, then an open cupboard with seven or eight glazed ceramic vases.

That night she sleeps on the sofa, surrounded by her towering piles, the curtains open so that she wakes with the sunlight. And she's still excited.