Chapter 43

CHAPTER 43

It's okay.

It's okay. Her toe is whole again. She is lying on the carpet, legs half trapped beneath her, but her toe and her ankle are fine, the pain has stopped all at once, and she has nothing in her hands. There's no tangled dressing gown from Felix's place knotted underneath her, there's no Toby coming at her with terrified eyes, running unevenly on a leg billowing blood behind it, there's no sobbing from the attic. Just the footsteps of a normal husband doing something up there; whatever it is that normal husbands do.

It's worked.

She needs air. With the reset of the world all the chemicals have emptied out of her body, the adrenaline, the panic, but they're coming up again, she knows how this works, she's been here before; her face is clear but the tears are starting back up, and she scrambles to her hands and knees and retches, throws up, a thin yellow gruelly sick, the carpet can't get a break today, and she pushes herself to standing and rushes across the landing and down the stairs. Around the side of the house to the garden. There are a couple of plastic chairs there and she leans over on one, nausea and dizziness, and she hears someone in the garden next door and looks up.

It's Toby.

"Hey there," he says cheerily. Then after a moment, as she retches again but this time nothing comes out, "You okay?"

"God," she says. "No." She shakes her head, tries to clear it, to get air back in. She looks back up at him and stares and there's nothing in his face that speaks of his ridiculous hurtle or blood on the carpets.

How weird, she thinks, that she knows how he'd react if someone shot him, and he doesn't.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" he says. "We left packing the kettle till last," and she kneels in the wet grass by the chair and laughs and cries, and wipes the new crop of tears off her face.

"Yeah," she says. "Please get me a cup of tea."

○○

She is lying on her back in the grass, the empty mug in her hands, when she hears someone approach from the side of the house.

The figure draws closer, looks down at her.

A familiar face looms into view.

"Hello, Amos," she says.

"What are you doing?" he says. "You left the door wide open."

"Sorry," she says.

"And you threw up? And just came out here? You knew I had more soup reheating on the stove."

Ah, right, she thinks: Amos's pumpkin-and-lentil soup. She must have had some for lunch. That explains the thin orange-yellow on the carpet. "You're still making that, huh? You use too much cinnamon."

"And that's why you left the door wide open and the stove on?"

She doesn't have a fight in her. "I forgot," she says. "I'm sorry. Look, I'll be up in ten minutes, okay?" The sun has come out and is shining on her and the still-wet grass; she can see a pigeon perched on a branch that can't quite support its weight, and it's bobbing up and down, up and down. Her feet are bare and cold and wet, and she is maybe shivering a little, but her toes are still whole.

Amos frowns. "So you're going to leave me to clean up your vomit?"

"I'll clean it up. Give me ten minutes. Please."

He stares.

"Please," she says again.

"So I'm meant to eat my soup next to your vomit," he says.

"I guess so."

He doesn't seem to know how to engage with this.

"Please go away," she says and, after another moment, he does.

She's alone again.

Only a few of the leaves above her have started to turn yellow and brown, but she can see it coming, the colours at the edges of the green, the cold in the sunlight. Summer is over, another summer, and she's spent it looking after Zach and going to pubs with Adamm and resenting her friends for liking her husband so much and, oh yeah, shooting her neighbour. The months have passed and it's getting cold again and she's married to Amos.

She needs to stop.

She reaches into her pocket for her phone, to make notes or call Bohai or Nat or Elena, but it's not there. It'll be in the house, at least, and not next to a pool in Sussex. Instead she finds a library card, a sachet of sugar and a half-filled loyalty card for an unfamiliar coffee shop.

She's had so many lives, and some of them were bad, but a lot of them were good, and maybe there isn't a single best path forward that she has to find.

The garden is a mess, but there's a bunch of unruly yellow many-petalled flowers on what is, she presumes, a weed grown out of control. She rolls on to her hands and knees and starts to consider the different blooms and then stops; she can't think about this too much or she'll never get anywhere. She takes the biggest, brightest flower, digs her fingernails in and pulls the stem off from where it joins the main plant below.

She pulls a petal off: one more husband.

She pulls another: or stop right now.

She cannot trust herself with the attic. She cannot continue with the husbands. She cannot keep seeing how things go and never making her mind up, doing things with people she cares about and then wiping it all out a few days later. Which leaves two options.

She could stop this whole thing now. Go back upstairs and break up with Amos, and probably in the end that'll be horrible rather than satisfying but she'll get through it and so will he, and she can get his stuff out of the attic for him, and fill in the forms and work out the details and go about her life. Whatever happens, she'll have to trust her future self to figure it out, without a magic attic to help.

Or she could go for one more round, one more spin of the wheel.

All the husbands are people she has chosen and been chosen by. Whoever comes next will be someone she's capable of loving. The life they live will be one that she wanted.

She will check that everything's okay with Nat and Magda and Caleb, that she's in touch with her friends, that she has a job she thinks she can do, perhaps that they do not have insurmountable debts or a feature wall covered in lightly textured feather wallpaper, and as long as the life passes those tests, then whoever the husband is, she'll meet him with as much hope and care as she can muster. No Post-it notes; just trusting her past self to have made an okay decision.

She pulls another petal.

One more husband. Stop right now. One more husband.

And then she hesitates, because she started plucking with one more husband and that must mean she's hoping to end there as well.

Always start with the answer you want, Jason said.

If there's an answer she's hoping for, probably she should just do that. Probably she shouldn't defer to a flower. No more tricks, no more dodging: she wants something, and she's going to have to admit it.

She stands up, dizzy, damp clothes clinging along her back, then heads around the corner of the house, tucks the half-plucked flower into her pocket. Up the stairs, hesitating where Toby's blood and pasta sauce were spilled across the carpet. She puts her shoes on, gets a bag, gets her phone—no guarantee she'll have them with her when the world changes but it can't hurt.

Amos has, in fact, cleaned up her vomit, and she feels fond for a moment—maybe he's not so bad—but he looks up from the sofa and says: "I left the book open to the recipe in the kitchen."

"What?"

"The pumpkin soup. I checked. I used exactly as much cinnamon as the recipe says."

"Okay," she says. "I guess I'm wrong about whether I like it."

She's about to leave the room, then stops. "Amos," she says. "Thank you for cleaning up. I don't like your soup but I'm glad you do. I know about the time you wanted to go to Alton Towers instead of moving in with me, and I appreciate that you didn't."

"What? How do you—"

"And I think," she says, "I don't know if this advice will do you any good or if you'll be able to remember it at all, but let's try. I think you should consider moving to New Zealand."

"We live here," he says. "You wouldn't even move to Berlin."

"Oh, love, you wouldn't have liked it, you'd have been back in London in six months, I promise. But New Zealand might work."

"Do you want to take your temperature, you don't seem—"

She doesn't stop talking. "There might be someone called Katy, I don't know much about that bit. Now, I think you're right, and I'm not well. I'm going to have a nap. I've got a blanket in the attic, do you think you could get it for me?"

And he does. A little more complaining and confusion, but he does.

And while he's up there, she runs. She can't see the new husband climb down, she can't let herself start trying to appraise him, she can't lay out his characteristics against her long mental list, because the moment she does that she'll be back on the fairground ride, two days here and two days there, and her friends forgetting everything they did together and always another husband, another back-up option waiting. So before he can start to climb down she's out the front door, down to the main road, across at the lights without waiting for them to change, and into the pub.

She sits inside in case the new husband walks past, and opens her phone. Any new husband is always the one where the messages are just Could you get milk or Running five min late sorry . She finds him quickly, and she can't help seeing his user icon, which is a photo of a pigeon, and his name, Sam. Okay. Sam it is.

She sends him a message: Emergency babysitting for Nat, sorry, back in a few hours .

She can already feel the temptation to change her mind: to give herself the next ten husbands to pick from, to spend just a couple of hours with Sam to make sure.

But she can't. Even the urge is proof that she doesn't have the self-control to do it responsibly. She can act right now, fuelled by her guilt and the memory of her blood and Toby's on the carpet, Zach's sobbing face, the close call. But if she doesn't shut down the attic today, she'll keep it open for ever.

She sips her beer, searches, keeps herself to the basics. Her work: the council again, and honestly, could be worse. Pension, helping people, plus everyone leaves by half past five every day. Toby and Maryam: a group chat with photos of things they can't be bothered packing. Do you guys want an air fryer , a reply from the husband and his pigeon icon, We'll take yours if you take ours .

Bohai's number hasn't changed for months, but she doesn't know it by heart and it isn't saved in this life's phone. He'll be asleep anyway, and it's not like he'll be able to tell her anything about her day-to-day existence. But even so, she sends an email to his constant address: a link to an article she finds open in a tab about a species of Australian crab that likes to wear sea sponges as hats. Don't know why I was reading this but just in case it's relevant , she says. Message me when you wake up, I might have news.

Her most recent message from Elena is the words TWELVE CHEESES, LAUREN. TWELVE CHEESES . She scrolls back, and scrolls and scrolls, more than a year's worth of scrolling, until she finds the photo that Elena sent her of the two of them, on that first night, and the caption she still remembers: It must be difficult for everyone else that we're so beautiful . The photo is not, in fact, particularly flattering, but she copies it and sends it back : Look at our little faces

A few minutes later, she gets a reply: MAGNIFICENT accompanied by a new photo of the two of them in, as far as she can tell, the queue for a burger truck, Lauren in some sort of sequinned jacket, and maybe it's a picture from her own hen party or maybe it's just from some night they've had together, but it looks like a good time.

She has barely made a dent in her pint; she takes another sip, and calls Nat. She's already found a photo of Caleb with Magda on his lap, Caleb beaming and Magda glowering from under a tiny woollen hat, so she's most of the way there.

"What's happening?" Nat says when she answers. "Is something wrong?"

"No," she says, "I don't think so. Do you have a minute?"

"Not really, I'm at the supermarket."

"Okay, I'll just be a second. How's Adele?"

"What? Fine?"

"Okay," she says. "And just really quickly. How's my life? If I was going to change one big thing, what should it be?"

A moment's silence. "Last time I tried to talk to you about this you didn't want to hear it," Nat says.

"I do now."

"Well," Nat says. "Look. You know I think you should have gone for that promotion at work. But it's a bit late to ask for my opinion about that now, so I don't really know what to say. I guess, did you get a chance to look at that decluttering link I sent? They just email you every day and give you one little thing to do, each time it only takes five minutes but it really adds up. I think if you signed up for a few months you'd be really glad in the long run. Once you've got everything tidy it gets a lot easier to keep it that way."

"Okay," Lauren says. "I'll check that out."

"And I don't think those drinks Sam makes can actually be good for you, or at least not for your teeth, right? They're basically just vinegar and sugar. But look, as long as you're going for regular check-ups I suppose you can drink what you want."

"Thanks," Lauren says. "Is that it?"

"God, I mean, I'm just trying to find the frozen paratha and then I need to pay for all this and get it home, Lauren, it's not that I don't want to help but this is terrible timing. Can we talk tonight?"

"That's perfect," Lauren says. "Good luck with the paratha."

She sits back. Takes another sip of the beer. Whoever Sam is, she's chosen him, he's chosen her, they've ended up together, and maybe it'll be a mistake, but if she went out and found a stranger and got to know him slowly, that might be a mistake too, right? It's not like she's spent the last year demonstrating an unparalleled decision-making capacity and clear-headed ability to assess men. Who's to say that she'd be better at picking someone now than she was whenever she married this guy?

She's chosen her husband. She hasn't met him, but she's chosen him.

And if he's not right, she'll get out of it the old-fashioned way: an immense pile of onerous legal chores that wear her down over the course of many months, and a determination to keep it cordial that ultimately collapses over a missing vase that they both fixate on as a metaphor for their mutual failings.

○○

She heads back to the flat and hides in the back yard, right up against the window to Toby and Maryam's kitchen; out of sight, she thinks, from the upstairs flat. It must have rained again while she was in the pub, though she didn't notice; the ground is newly wet.

A noise: Toby behind her, opening his kitchen window. "Hey," he says, "are you—"

"I'm fine," she says. "I'm fine. I don't want a cup of tea." She recently shot him so she shouldn't be annoyed, but she definitelyis.

"Oh," he says. "Good? The kettle's in the van so I don't think I could anyway?"

"Sorry. But yeah, I'm fine. Actually, just a sec." Hiding in the back garden is an undignified position for life decisions, but Toby was the first person she talked to about the husbands, and this is her last chance to find out more. "Are you and Maryam doing okay? I mean generally, not today specifically, I know moving sucks."

"Huh? Yeah?"

"Okay, great. No hints from her about becoming swingers?"

He frowns.

"Sorry," she says, "never mind, none of my business, as long as you're happy. One more question." Does Sam have hobbies? Does he have a beard? What's the most annoying thing he does on a day-to-day basis? What's his accent like? What's his worst T-shirt? When did she meet him? Who proposed to who? What song did they pick for their first dance?

"Me and Sam?" she says. "We're doing okay too?"

"I mean," Toby says, "looks like it to me."

Good. "Okay," she says. "Thanks. Just double-checking."

Toby looks at her. "Is…that it?"

"Yeah," she says. And then: "Good luck with the move. I'm gonna miss you. It's been good having you here."

"We won't be far," he says, and closes the window.

○○

Next: to get the husband out of the house. Hey , she sends, really sorry but could you pop to the shops before they close and get some baking powder? I need it for a thing.

It's a final test, in its way, because maybe he'll say he can't, or he'll pretend not to see the message, or he'll say he'll do it but not quite get round to it, and none of those would even be unreasonable things to do; but if he does any of them then she won't be able to go ahead with her plan.

She moves to the edge of the building, where she can look down the side, along the narrow gap between their building and the one next door: past the bins, out into the street. The smell of rain and the smell of slightly rotting food battle it out for dominance.

A fast reply: np

And about ten minutes later she hears what she's pretty sure must be the front door. She tries not to look at the husband as he leaves, but she can't help seeing a figure, in a jacket and jeans, carrying a bag in one hand. Just a glimpse. Dark hair. A blur. Her husband.

She gives him time to get down the road, then walks towards the front of the house.

She hesitates at the door. Unlocks it. Looks up.

The carpeted stairs. The landing: light green this time. Strong choice.

The kitchen: medium mess. The spare room: a fold-out sofa, a long desk. The bathroom: herself in the mirror, hair more or less the right length, the wavering line on her forehead in its usual place, a spot on her chin but she supposes that isn't permanent.

The house isn't tidy, but it's not too bad. Her huge plant is in the living room, and she has bought it so many times and nestled it into so many versions of her life that it takes her a moment to process what this means, that she must have bought it in this life already. What a wonder: she loves it so much and she's dragged it back from the shop so often, the same unwise purchasing decision over and over again, the same exhausting physical chore, and here it's been carried out for her already.

What a wonder, yes. But also: what terrible timing.

"Oh, Buddy," she says, and touches its unruly leaves. "I'm so sorry about this."

She doesn't have much time. She opens drawers, cupboards, picks up anything that looks important. A folder of passports, her laptop, another laptop, presumably the husband's. A box of cards and photos. She sets them on the table on the landing. Another quick look: just grab some stuff, she thinks. Who knows what matters and what doesn't? An unfamiliar mug reading Coventry: Capital of Fun . A concertina file in the spare room on which someone, the husband, has written brBEAC , or, she figures out after squinting, Papers ; she has learned something else about him, namely that his handwriting is terrible. A pillow in the shape of an owl that must have sentimental value because it sure isn't there for the aesthetics, and a couple of exceptionally ugly dishes from the drying rack as well, while she's at it. A dog-eared novel that's lying on the coffee table.

And then her little cactus, and two big supermarket bags to jam everything into. At the last minute she checks the fridge, and there's a row of glass bottles in the door, red and purple and pink, some with herbs and fruit inside them. Presumably these are the vinegar drinks Nat was talking about. Sure, why not, one of those too.

All of it on the table, ready to grab and run.

She pulls the ladder down.

And she climbs towards the attic.

The light above her starts to warm as she enters.

She climbs further and turns to sit at the edge of the trapdoor, her legs dangling out into the cooler air of the landing, like she's back in Felix's swimming pool. The attic is still dark but her eyes are adjusting and the light above is slowly brightening, and she sees the shapes around her, the shelves, the boxes, the chairs, piled curtains, tinsel, suitcases.

She pulls her legs up and leans back. She is lying down, looking at the underside of the ceiling.

The buzz of static rises, gently. In a corner she sees a tangle of fairy lights and they, too, have started to glow, brighter and dimmer and brighter again, pink and red and yellow and green and blue.

She turns her head. A heater they must have put up here for the summer, which whirrs then stops.

This is the last time she will ever be here, she thinks as she stands up. The last time anyone will ever be here. She hid up here when she was little, Nat told her scary stories here, the two of them put boxes of their grandmother's things in the corner to deal with later and then never looked at them again, her winter coat was eaten by moths here when she shoved it up in a bin bag over summer five or six years ago. She has sent so many husbands up here to supposedly carry out so many tiny invented tasks.

She opens a box, and another, just looking, just thinking.

A clock radio, which surely has been up here since her grandmother's day, blinks to life, shows 00:00 and crackles. Another box: a fan inside, spinning already, slow but speeding up, dust clouding from the blades. The heater starts again, and this time it doesn't stop.

She looks behind a shelf and sees an old computer monitor on the ground. It shows jagged pink and green, flicks off and on again: misshapen grey rectangles cascade down the screen, then it buzzes and switches to blue and yellow.

The fairy lights start to pop, one at a time, glass splitting, and the bulbs go dark but the wire itself is glowing now, the coating melting away. A box of fireworks on the shelf ignites, the clear plastic shrivelling from the heat and giving way to showers of flaring sparks.

And the smell of smoke.

She doesn't know how long everything will take to catch, but it's working. For the last time, the attic is doing whatever it is that the attic does.