Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

The moment his foot disappears, doubt washes through her. Perhaps she will receive only worse and worse husbands, maybe he was the best available, this was her chance and she's fucked it up.

It's only a few seconds before a new man starts coming down the ladder. And keeps coming. He is bewilderingly tall, his entrance revealing more and more of his long body. No, she thinks. It's Friday. Elena and Rob's wedding is Saturday next week, eight days away. What she wants right now is to find someone to take with her, and when they go they will have to camp in a field together, and there is simply too much of this man for a tent. "Sorry, just a sec," she says before he even unfurls his whole self to her. "I heard something, could you look again?"

The next husband puts a foot down the ladder. He is wearing shoes with individual toes. Again: no.

Before the husband after that even appears, she hears a sound from the living room and turns to look: Mindhunter on the television, the same episode she saw with Jason. No.

But it's working, the process is working.

The next husband is wearing sneakers, and jeans, and a blue shirt with a small geometric pattern on it. He looks South Asian, solidly built but not ostentatiously muscular. His tongue juts out of the corner of his mouth as he climbs down the ladder, concentrating, and she likes that, it's cute. He is carrying an irregular blue vase in one hand, which he takes into the kitchen, and she follows him.

"Hey," he says, and smiles. She leans forward to kiss him, and he smells like the sea.

So far, so good.

And, even better: she hears a noise in the living room, and when she investigates it's her sister, Natalie, lying on the sofa, scrolling on her phone.

Perfect! She will have to find out whether or not the husband owns a suit. She'll have to look up her own job. But so far: she likes him. She can imagine taking him to the wedding, sitting at a table with Amos, admiring some horses, sharing a tent. And, bonus: she gets to talk to her sister! Without the kids! It's been weeks since she last went round to Nat's, and maybe years since she saw her without children. If the husband is a disappointment she can always exchange him later.

She turns back to the kitchen. It'll be easier if they go out: she doesn't want to chat to Nat and figure out the husband all at once. "Hey," she says to him, too quietly for Nat to hear, "Natalie's stressed about Magda stuff, I might take her out to the pub and calm her down a bit?"

"Okay," he says. "Magda stuff?"

"You know. Nursery. I'll tell you later."

"Sure," he says. He's not just cute: he's also obliging!

Then she goes through to Natalie, and: "Hey, he's"—with a head gesture when she realises she doesn't know the husband's name—"got a bit of a headache, maybe we could go to the pub and let him have a nap?"

"God, really? I just lay down. I've taken my shoes off. This is half my flat, remember, you can't just kick me out."

"Come on," Lauren says cheerfully, consequence-free, "up up up."

○○

This time the pub's outdoor tables are busy, despite the sky threatening drizzle, but the dark interior is almost empty. Lauren considers ordering a bottle of their most expensive white wine but she might want to stay in this world for a while and she hasn't checked her bank balance yet. She goes for the third-cheapest instead. Not the second cheapest! Fancy!

While she waits for the bartender to check the fridge downstairs ("We don't sell a lot of this one"), she finds the husband in her phone: Ben Persaud. She skims through photos. The two of them at a city farm, Ben beaming, patting a donkey. The two of them in a cafe sharing an elaborate ice-cream sundae. The two of them triumphant outside an escape room with unfamiliar friends, their hands joined and thrust aloft. Amos, of course, thought escape rooms were ridiculous, a hobby for people who missed doing homework , but she's never going to find a husband that's immune to every possible way that Amos could disapprove of a person.

Anyway, she knows where to turn for the real dirt. "Okay," she says to Nat as they sit, "tell me the top thing I'm doing wrong in my life." Where else is she going to get such immediate access to detailed knowledge about herself, her husband, her marriage, and whatever's not quite right about any of them?

"What? No. Let's just have a nice drink."

Of course the one time she wants to be told what she's doing wrong is the time Nat won't cooperate. Maybe she can ask again after a glass or two of wine.

"Besides," Nat says, "the deadline for that promotion was last week, right? So you've missed it anyway."

Work! God, if it's just work that she's doing wrong then that's fine. "I guess I have," she says, and leans back in her chair. What a magical thing to discover, that not applying for a promotion is her life's worst mistake.

"What a lovely day," she says, which is not at all true.

"Sure," Nat says.

"How's everything with you?"

"Yeah, pretty good."

Hmm. Lauren's been so preoccupied with the husbands (not unjustly, she thinks!) that she's struggling with a normal conversation. "How's Magda? Did you find a new playgroup?"

Nat frowns. "What?"

Maybe Magda is better behaved in this version of the world, and hasn't yet been kicked out for taking after her mother.

"Okay," she says instead. "How's Adele?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen her in years."

Wait. Shit.

"Sorry," Lauren says, "give me a moment. I know this seems weird. You used to date Adele?"

"Yes?"

She nods. "But…you broke up?"

"…Yes." Nat is watching her, waiting for something, waiting for this to make sense.

"Look. Indulge me. I'm sorry, but can you tell me exactly what happened?"

"I've apologised for this a hundred times, Lauren, if you can't let it go, then—"

"No," she says. "It's not that. I promise I'll explain in a minute. Please, Nat, just tell me what happened."

Nat leans back. "Okay," she says after a moment. "Fine. Adele and I broke up at your wedding because you were my little sister and you seemed so sure of things, you'd known this guy four months and you were getting married at this huge fucking party and I don't even know how you had time to plan it, and Adele and I had been together for years and I still wasn't sure. Twenty of your guests heard us break up. I'm crying in the background of half your wedding photos. The food was delicious."

It's hard to take this in. If Nat and Adele broke up years ago, how long has Lauren been married, how far back do the changes go this time? Why would she get married to someone four months after meeting him? If she rushed into it like that, can it possibly be as good a marriage as it seems? But most importantly, she thinks, piecing it together: "Ah. Fuck. And you don't have any children."

"What? No. Of course I don't have children. Is this because of what I said about your work? You literally asked me, what was I supposed to do, lie?"

"No," Lauren says, "shit, sorry, I'll fix this." She gets up from the table and starts to head outside but Nat follows her, so she pivots and goes into the toilets instead and locks herself in the big accessible stall, and calls—Ben, right? Yes, he's in her messages. She calls Ben. She ignores Nat, who is outside the door saying, " Look, are you okay? "

"Ben," she says, "are you still at home? I have a super-urgent question and I know this is going to be annoying but I need you to go into the attic and find a green box on a shelf. I need you to check it's there and send me a picture. I want to prove to Nat I still have it, she's really worried. I'll do the washing-up and laundry and I'll clean the bathroom, all of it, if you check right now, you're the best, thank you so much, I love you." She hangs up. This is, she thinks, the first time she's said "I love you" to a husband.

And she listens to Nat knocking, thinks about the step-by-step process Ben will be going through: pulling the ladder down, getting shoes on maybe. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two but Nat is still out there in the corridor, which means Caleb and Magda still don't exist, and she tries to breathe steadily but can't quite pull it off, and how long can it possibly take to climb into an attic?

The gap between knocks extends. Three seconds. Five, ten. Twenty.

She feels her chest unknot.

She splashes water on her face.

And she unlocks the door, and nobody is out there in the corridor, and she phones Nat, and gets a voicemail message, and phones again, and again, until eventually Nat picks up, What's wrong, is it Mum , and how can Lauren explain? "No," she says, "I just wanted to say hello." And she can hear, in the background, a furious baby shouting, a little roar over and over. "Is that Magda? That noise?"

"What? Yes, of course. Lauren, you don't call eight times in a row to say hello! I thought someone was in hospital."

"I know," she says, "I'm sorry. Can I talk to Caleb?"

"What?"

"I've got a dinosaur fact for him. It's a really cool one."

"Are you drunk?"

"No, I just have a dinosaur fact."

She waits. "Okay," Nat says eventually. "But he's meant to be doing his spelling. So only for a minute." And she hears Nat calling, and feet running, and then it's Caleb on the other end, and god, the relief.

"I don't like dinosaurs any more," Caleb says immediately. "I like space now. Uncle Rohan told me a meteorite killed all the dinosaurs and space is more powerful."

Uncle Rohan: the new husband, probably.

"Yeah," Lauren says, "I think that's true. Okay. I won't tell you a dinosaur fact." She didn't have one so this is for the best. "You can get back to your spelling now if you want."

She sits down in the pub where she was before, and takes deep breaths. It's all okay.

But she is going to have to be more careful.

She stands up and heads outside, where she leans against the wall. Michael. Nude guy. Feminist cook. Monsters, Inc. Kieran. Jason. Tall guy. Another half-dozen and she can't even remember why she dismissed them. Ben. And whoever's there now, whoever climbed down when Ben climbed up, Uncle Rohan.

○○

She will, she decides, keep him for the night unless she thinks he's a genuine danger: she will send nobody back for a bad T-shirt or a haphazard approach to home deodorizing, for cutting his own hair, for rewatching The Wire , for filling the living room with Funko Pops. She does not have the fortitude, tonight, to explore the parameters of the attic or mount a campaign to find the perfect escort for the wedding.

And besides, the rules of this situation are becoming clearer to her. All of her husbands are men that some version of herself might have chosen to marry, and who might have chosen to marry her. None of them are going to be radically dissimilar from the husbands who have already visited.

She will go home and she will meet another man. A man who—she can see as she rounds the corner—has changed nothing fundamental about the flat. And he will be a plausible husband for her. He will not be an astronaut or the king of Ruritania or a man whose great dignity forbids him the use of ladders.

He'll just be some guy.

○○

She unlocks the flat door. The carpet on the stairs is back.

"Heya, I'm home," she calls out.

"Prithee, fair maiden," says a husband in a red embroidered doublet and diamond-patterned tights, his brown skin glowing with health, his dark hair tied back with an enormous bow.

"Whence comest thou?" he says. "What outlandish garb thou wearest!"

Ah.