by Fiona Harper
‘I know,’ I reply with a sigh.
After lunch I go in search of Dan. I find him at Al’s, nursing a cup of half-cold tea. I sit down opposite him. ‘Sorry,’ I say and he looks at me warily. ‘Put it down to hormones and the stress of looming exams.’
His jaw remains tight, but there’s a softening in his eyes. ‘We’re alright, then?’
I nod. As alright as we can be in this version of our life, I suppose.
He surprises me by half-standing, leaning across the table and planting a lingering kiss on my lips, right in front of Al and the rest of his motley customers, then he pulls away and looks at me seriously. ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,’ he says. ‘I can hardly believe I’m the lucky man you picked. Always remember that. Always make me remember that.’
A lump forms in my throat and my eyes grow moist. All morning I’ve been imagining what it would be like to say yes to Jude, but now I don’t know what I want. Could I make Dan remember how he feels about me in this moment, even years from now when he really doesn’t want to? Our whole lives could be different if I could.
CHAPTER TEN
Three days. Two days. One.
My brain is counting down to the inevitable. I know it’s coming. Dan’s proposal. Even my fit of extreme bitchiness last week hasn’t seemed to have put him off. If anything, he’s trying harder than ever because of the seed of doubt I’ve planted in his mind.
When I’m with him it really is like the old days and I don’t have to fake the affection in my smile, but when we part … well, that’s when the old memories – the ‘forward’ memories – start creeping in.
What do I do?
Up until now I’ve been doing my best to just go with the flow, do what feels good. It was easy when I thought I’d wake up and realise this has all been a vivid dream, but it’s been over two weeks now. I’m also pretty sure this is no waiting room for heaven.
Which leaves only one possibility: this is real. Somehow I’ve jumped backwards in time, fully conscious of the life I’ve already lived and I’ve got to do it all over again. I’ve always thought the opportunity to go back and change the things you regret would be a blessing. Now the prospect of it frightens me.
If I’m staying here I can’t keep messing around. If I’ve really got to do it all again I’ve got to start thinking about the choices I’m making. Making the wrong one tonight could ruin everything.
I shake my head as I look in the mirror. I’m supposed to be getting ready for a meal out with Dan, but all this mental wrangling is making it a heck of a job to do my mascara. I keep poking myself in the eyeball or blinking before it’s dry and being rewarded with a row of black dots under my lashes and then having to wipe it off and start again. I take a deep breath and will my hand to stay steady.
Dan’s done a good job of being nonchalant about this date, but I know he’s booked a posh Italian restaurant in Putney and afterwards he’ll suggest a walk along the river and then he’ll take my hands, look me in the eye and my future will be sealed.
Last time I was so sure what I wanted.
They say hindsight is twenty-twenty. What they don’t tell you is that it’s crystal sharp and painful.
My heart is telling me to run, to veer off course and to do the things I’d always wished I’d done: to travel, love furiously and have wild affairs, to find a job I love and excel at it, but my head is urging caution. I wish I could dismiss those doubts, but unfortunately I keep coming up with very good points.
What about Sophie?
Could I stand a future without her in it?
Because if I don’t choose Dan, she might never exist. Or even if I do, there might not be any guarantees. What if we have sex ten minutes later that night of conception? Will I end up with a different little girl? Or was Sophie always meant to be? What if she’s more than the sum of two joined sets of chromosomes?
I put my mascara brush down and stare at myself in the mirror. There are clumps on my upper left lashes and a smudge on my right eyelid but I really can’t face another attempt. I’m too tired.
There’s a knock on the door as I’m putting my lipstick on. Red. The sort of colour I never wear any more. The sort of colour I didn’t really opt for much when I was this age the first time around.
Becca answers the door and when I walk into the living room, she and Dan are standing there, laughing at a joke I’ve not been privy to. He turns to look at me and hands me a bunch of red roses. There’s hope in his eyes, but also nervousness.
Becca makes the same sort of noise Sophie used to make when watching cute cat videos on YouTube. ‘Awww … aren’t you sweet,’ she tells Dan and then she gently prises the roses from my hand. ‘Why don’t you two get off? I’ll put these in water.’
I want to snatch them back. I want to tell Becca I’d rather do it myself, to delay the moment when I have to walk out that front door with Dan and be on my own with him, but I don’t. I don’t know how to say it without seeming rude. Or slightly insane.
Becca practically shoves us out the front door and into the hallway. ‘I won’t wait up!’ she jokes and, as the door closes behind us, I wonder if she knows, if Dan has confided in her, and two things strike me – one, that I wonder why I hadn’t twigged that he was going to propose this night the first time around, because I had a suspicion at the time he was working up to it and, two, that I’m jealous. I don’t like the fact that my husband-to-be and my best friend have shared a secret and left me out of it. Hypocritical, really, when I’m seriously considering breaking his heart this evening. Until I came back here I hadn’t realised how selfish I can be, how wrapped up in my own stuff that I don’t see what’s going on under my nose.
‘Shall we?’ Dan says, and offers me his arm. I smile at him, a smile that’s warm and bright and about as substantial as candy floss.
Dinner is a blur. I eat, I drink, I nod and laugh in the right places, but the only sensation I can really remember when it’s over is a growing sense of panic. As Dan takes my hand and heads towards the river my heart starts to pound. I can hear the echo of it rushing in my ears.
We walk past the crowded pubs with drinkers spilling out across the narrow street and onto the embankment. We keep going until their laughter and chatter is more distant, until we reach the rowing club. There’s a break in the railings and we walk down to the far edge of the shallow concrete slope the rowers use to put their boats in the river. As we stand there, staring across at the tree-lined bank on the other side, I can hear the music of the water slapping against the hulls of the little motor boats moored close by.
Dan seems paralysed. I keep shooting glances in his direction, wondering when he’s going to make his move, but he just keeps staring at the darkness in front of him. Was he like this before? I wonder. If he was, I didn’t notice it. I remember the night being balmy and warm, the lapping of the gentle river waves romantic.
Just when I think he’s chickened out, he sucks in a breath and turns to me. We’ve been still for so long it makes me jump, and that makes him smile. The serious look he’s been wearing for the last ten minutes vanishes.
He reaches for my hands and I swallow.
‘You know how I feel about you …’ he says softly.
My heart can’t help cracking a little at his words. How can you love and hate a person at the same time? I want to slap him across the face, hard enough to make my fingers sting, but I also want to kiss him.
‘… and I know that we’re young and everyone is going to say this is a bad idea, but I can’t imagine my life without you in it.’
I still don’t say anything. Partly because I have no response, but partly because I’m realising I really can imagine my life without Dan in it. It’s been something I’d been doing even before this strange experience happened to me, after all. I just hadn’t expected my wishing to make it real or, at least, the possibility of it real. Dan, however, takes my silence for agreement and he carries on.
My heart stops. Just
for a beat. Because as he draws his next breath I know exactly what words are about to come out of his mouth, and I still don’t know what my answer will be.
‘Maggie,’ he says, and his voice catches on the last syllable, ‘will you marry me?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I stare back at Dan. His face is full of hope. Hope, I realise, that neither of us have left for our marriage back in our other life. A hole rips open inside me, deep and long. How can this man – the man who looks at me with such tenderness and worship – have turned into the one who’s sneaking around behind my back, who’s let slide all the promises he’s been holding so faithfully for the last twenty-four years?
I don’t have an answer for him. Not the one he wants, anyway. Not the one I gave him last time. ‘I don’t know,’ I finally stammer, and then I watch all that hope melt away and turn to confusion.
‘Don’t you love me?’
I nod. ‘Yes … no … I don’t know.’ And then I begin to cry.
He scoops me into his arms and holds me tight. I can tell he’s staring over my shoulder, asking the night sky what went wrong. I know he’s hurting and confused, that his instinct was to back off and protect himself, but the fact he’s chosen not to do that, to comfort me instead, just makes me cling on to him all the harder.
‘What’s wrong?’ he whispers. ‘You haven’t been right, not for the last couple of weeks.’
I let myself mould against him, just for a moment, and then I lift my eyes and look at him. I shake my head as the tears fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and then I find I can’t stop. I say it over and over and over.
‘No,’ he replies and silences my litany with a kiss. ‘I got ahead of myself. It’s too soon.’
I shake my head, because I know in another version of our lives it wouldn’t be too soon. The problem is, I’m not sure I want that reality any more, even though the thought of losing him suddenly seems much bigger and more final than I ever realised.
It’ll be like him dying.
Because I won’t just grieve him the way I would if we’d split up when I was twenty-one. I’ll grieve for all the extra years we’ve had that he’ll never know about – the way he looked when Sophie was born, as if he could burst with pride and love for the both of us. How nervous he was on our wedding night. Even silly little things like that cup of tea he always brings me when he gets home from work.
That Dan won’t ever exist in this world, and I feel the loss of him like a physical pain in my chest.
He hasn’t got a hanky, so he uses the cuff of his shirt sleeve to dry my tears.
It’s not you, it’s me, I want to say, but I’m aware it sounds over-used, even in this decade, so I don’t. Or maybe it’s us. The us we will become. I’m setting us free from that, from the boredom and the simmering resentment. From the disappointment of knowing that even though we once thought we could be everything to each other, we clearly can’t.
By silent agreement we walk back towards the High Street, heading for the bus stop. When we reach my flat, I open the front door that leads into the communal hallway of our converted Victorian house, but Dan doesn’t cross the threshold with me.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
He shakes his head.
‘This doesn’t mean I’m breaking up with you,’ I say. ‘Just that I need time to think. You’re right – we are both so young, we need to be sure this is the right thing. For both of us.’ I stop then, because I know that I’m lying, that as much as I’m pretending nothing’s changed, there’s been a seismic shift in our relationship.
He shrugs and looks at his shoes. ‘I know that. It’s just that … I need time alone. I need time to think too.’
I would have accepted that without a doubt once upon a time. After all, it’s a perfectly natural response for someone whose proposal of marriage has not been as enthusiastically received as it was delivered – especially for a man like Dan, who likes to lick his wounds in private.
‘Where are you going to go?’
Another pause. I can almost hear him thinking his response over.
‘I dunno. Just for a walk, I expect.’
Totally understandable. And I would have believed him, I really would, if when he looked at me he hadn’t worn that same expression he always used in our future life, the one that accompanies his oh-so-innocent declaration that he’s off down the pub with a long-lost mate who is actually having a second honeymoon in Prague.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The flat is empty and I sit down on the sofa in the dark. The ugly sunburst clock above the electric fire ticks.
I did it. But I don’t know whether to feel sorry or relieved.
I don’t know what to do now. This is the first time since I’ve been living this crazy … whatever it is … that I’ve veered completely off script. I was still friends with Becca, still doing my uni course, still with Dan. But now I haven’t just amended a bit of dialogue, skipped a scene or fudged a bit of stage direction; I’ve completely changed the ending.
I think about that night – the other night like this. The two realities couldn’t be more different. In that one I was laughing, happy, full of hope. In this one I’m just … numb. And wondering why my almost-fiancé is lying to me about where he’s going.
I shiver as I recall the look on Dan’s face.
I thought the fibs, the sneaking around, had been a new thing. What if it isn’t? What if he’s been doing this the whole time and it’s just taken me this long to catch on?
I screw up my face and squeeze my eyes shut, as if by doing so I can stop the spinning in my head. I can’t believe that’s true. It doesn’t fit with the steady, reliable, slightly boring Dan I know. But then I think of women who find out their husbands have had a secret family on the side for years, or whose husbands have committed rapes or awful sex offences and they truly have no idea.
Maybe I made the right call after all.
The numbness fades a little and just the tiniest smidge of peace seeps in. I breathe out. I haven’t burned my bridges yet, I suppose. I’ve just told Dan I need time, which is just as well, as I need at least a week to work out what I’m going to do.
A thought flashes through my head: Jude.
Dan’s proposal wasn’t the only surprise on this night. My heart skips into a higher gear.
I need to see him, I realise. I need to hear him say those words again. Not just because I’m keeping my options open, but I need to know I haven’t romanticised that scene after all those Facebook-prompted fantasies. If I’m really going to change my future, I need to be sure.
I stand up, grab my handbag from where I dumped it near the door and head out again. It only takes me ten minutes to make the usual fifteen minute stroll to the Queen’s Head. When I push through the heavy oak door with the etched glass panel, I stop in my tracks, confronted by two colliding realities. I look over at the corner where Dan and our friends had gathered that night, laughing and celebrating, and there seems to be an emptiness, even though all the tables are filled.
I order a lager and black, take a quick sip and then head out to the pub garden. It’s started to rain now. Hard, like it had been that night. A heavy shower after a sunny day had sent all the drinkers scurrying back inside. Not bothering to cover my head or put up the umbrella I have in my bag, I look around, and then I look again. My stomach goes cold.
He’s not here.
Of course he’s not.
He has no reason to be. I’m not thinking this through clearly.
Jude only came to the pub because he’d heard Dan and I were there. If I don’t say yes to Dan, word won’t have got round the college grapevine. The tiny flame of hope I’ve been carrying inside since I walked out my flat door falters and flickers. I sit down on the end of an empty picnic bench, deflated. It had all seemed so easy in my head.
I could look for him, I think, as rain splashes into my hair and runs down my scalp.
I could, but I go back into the pub, find a wall to prop myse
lf against and drink my lager and black, ignoring the chattering people around me. But maybe that won’t be the same either. Jude doesn’t know he might lose me forever. Without that very specific kick up the backside, he probably won’t come looking for me at all.
I drain the last of my half pint and stand up. I have to try. I can’t just let this life drift by without fighting for it. I did that with the original one, and look how happy I was.
I plant my empty glass down firmly on the bar, then walk through the crowds and out back onto the main road. I turn and head in the direction of the college, the Student’s Union bar, to be more exact. Jude is a bit of a regular.
I shake my head as I walk, not only to clear the rain from it but to clear my mind. I was so stupid. Complacent. Letting so many chances slip by me. They say youth is wasted on the young, but not this twenty-one year old. Not this time.
I trudge out of the Student Union. I’d been in there for about an hour, nursing a warm and rather sweet white wine. Thank goodness student prices and minus-twenty-four years of inflation meant I only paid about a pound for it. I’d have been miffed otherwise. I really can’t understand how I stomached the stuff.
No Jude.
The rain has stopped, but the pavements are slick and shiny. I frown as I start to walk, not really caring which direction I go. I thought this would be easy: pick a man and that would be it. Heads or tails. Jude or Dan. I hadn’t really considered I might end up with neither.
When I look up I find myself at the edge of the lake, just short of where the reeds provide a natural barrier to prevent inebriated students from tumbling into the water. The rain has stopped now, the dark clouds pressing on towards central London, leaving the lake still and the grass sparkling clean. I spot a smear of sludgy green poop on the edge of my shoe and I start to try to use the damp lawn to wipe it off, but it’s been freshly mowed and all I succeed at doing is adding grass clippings into the mix. I’m so busy doing this I don’t notice someone walking up beside me. I’m precariously balanced on one leg, and when he speaks it surprises me so much I almost topple right into the lake.