The Other Us

by Fiona Harper

  There’s laughter, yes, and the odd bit of physical contact – Dan’s elbow nudges Becca gently in the ribs when she takes a joke too far, Becca ruffles Dan’s hair – but nothing that seems out of place. It’s as if, in this life, they don’t know if they’re supposed to be together.

  What is clear, though, is that he’s obviously more comfortable and relaxed with Becca than he is with me. Maybe we had a big bust up before I arrived this time?

  I mull that thought over and reject it. I don’t think so. Dan just seems to have got into the habit of expecting me to be on the offensive with him, and habits aren’t born overnight. Have things really deteriorated that far between us while I’ve been gone?

  Once we’ve finished eating, Dan retires into the living room to watch a quiz show and Becca and I stay at the kitchen table, drinking the red wine she brought with her to go with the chilli. It didn’t really work with the Thai food so we decided to wait until after.

  I’ve had a chance to consult my calendar in this life, and I’ve seen a couple of entries with ‘B’. No mention of a ‘G’ alongside it, so I’m carefully optimistic. She also hasn’t mentioned him all through dinner either, so I’m starting to feel hopeful.

  I have no idea what’s been going in in the life I’ve just landed in, so I pull one of my standard openers from my memory banks. Having to plug myself back into in each life when I arrive is making me a really great listener. ‘How are things?’ I ask.

  ‘Good,’ Becca says, nodding, but she looks slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  She looks down into her wine glass. ‘About this news …’

  ‘It’s good news, I hope?’

  She nods. ‘At least I think so.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Grant’s asked me to move in with him.’

  I’m so stunned my mouth refuses to work. The fact she’s still with him would be a hard enough pill to swallow, but the fact she’s thinking about shacking up with him? Is the woman crazy?

  My thoughts must be spilling out and painting themselves all over my face because she says, ‘I know you don’t like him, but be happy for me, will you, Mags? Please?’

  ‘I don’t like him because he hurt you! I don’t know how to forget that happened. I don’t know how to forgive him. You can understand that, can’t you? What would you say if Dan ever did that to me?’

  ‘Dan would never do that kind of thing.’

  I nod. ‘I know.’ Whatever our problems, at least I have that.

  We’re both silent for a moment, but I can’t keep it up. I can’t let it happen again. I can’t let it lead to marriage a second time. ‘Please, think about this, Becs. Please!’

  ‘He hasn’t done it again, not in years.’ There are tears in her eyes now. ‘And he’s so sorry. He was horrified with himself.’

  I shake my head. ‘But there are so many better men out there!’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say! You’ve got one.’

  I’m tempted to say, Here … I’ll step back and you can have him. I think you’re better for him than I am anyway, but I know it doesn’t work that way.

  ‘Why?’ I ask. I need an answer.

  ‘I love him,’ Becca says weakly. ‘And that’s what you do when you love someone, isn’t it? You give them the benefit of the doubt, you believe in them, even if no one else does. Real love is giving yourself to someone. Completely.’

  I want to tell her she’s talking utter rubbish, but I can’t. I keep remembering that reading from my wedding. On the face of it, Becca’s words hold the truth, but I can’t accept them. That can’t be what it means, can it? To lose yourself so completely in someone else that you let them treat you like dirt?

  ‘I don’t know what to say …’

  Becca nods. At least she understands where I’m coming from. At least we haven’t had another huge blow up with one of us storming out.

  ‘You know I’m saying this because I love you, right? I just want to see you happy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I can’t change her mind. All I can do is be there for her. ‘But if he hurts you again, I’m coming after him.’ Because I totally would have no problem ripping off Grant’s tender bits and making them into a chilli con carne any night of the flipping week. No problem at all.

  While I’m saying goodbye to Becca at the front door, I hear Billy grizzling in his bed. I go up to see what the matter is. He isn’t hot, isn’t clammy. There’s no reason I should take him into bed with us, especially the age he is now, but I do anyway, hugging him to me and smelling his clean, kiddie shampoo smell.

  ‘Great,’ Dan says as he rolls into bed and turns off the light. ‘He’ll be kicking us all night.’

  I don’t care. I also don’t care that I’ve given Dan another reason to be annoyed with me. I don’t belong in this world any more. I know I won’t stay here permanently, and I have the craziest idea that if I’m hugging Billy in my sleep, that next time I jump, maybe I can take him with me.

  I do wake up the next morning with Billy in my arms, but it’s because I’m still in my little three-bed semi in Swanham. Although I have a constant feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, I stay here. For now, anyway.

  One evening after dinner, I take Dan up a cup of coffee. I knock gently on the study door, hear a grunt and take it as permission to enter.

  There’s a document of text up on the computer when I walk in, but I’m not quite at the right angle to see what it is.

  ‘Thanks,’ he mutters and starts shuffling bits of paper, putting them into piles. Then, as if he’s just noticed it sitting up there, he closes down the file I glimpsed on his computer screen.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘Anything I might be interested in?’

  He doesn’t look shady when he answers, just really, really tired. ‘I doubt it.’

  I try not to feel hurt but I do. This man, who on our wedding night was so open, so giving, now won’t share anything with me. He doesn’t trust me with even the smallest details of his life. They’re all locked away inside his head, held captive by his smouldering resentment.

  The memory of lines of Times New Roman on the computer screen gives me an idea. I remember how he looked sitting next to Becca at my dinner table, talking about his children’s books. He needs a passion to follow, like Jasmine said. I was wrong to go down the route of pushing about his teaching career, I can see that now.

  ‘Was it something you’d written?’ I ask him, keeping my voice light and interested. ‘A poem or something?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t.’ Dan’s gaze back at me is pure granite. If he was any more annoyed he’d been baring his teeth and snarling, the way next door’s dog does when it sees the milkman.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, trying not to let the urge to lash back take over. ‘You ought to start doing that again. You were really good.’

  ‘Just back off, Maggie.’

  ‘What?’ I ask. ‘I’m just trying to be supportive.’ I’m not managing to hide the irritation now. I’m just about at the end of my rope with this surly, grumpy man. He never ever gives me the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘You’re just trying to make me do what you want again,’ he says, scowling at me. ‘Although, I have no idea why you’ve picked writing this time. You’ve always been dead set against it before!’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ He’s standing now, glaring at me.

  Suddenly, I can’t take any more. I don’t know how to get through to him. I turn and leave him to his nice coffee, to the secrets he keeps on his computer, and I go back downstairs and cry silently, watching EastEnders through my tears.

  For some reason that reading I found on our order of service floats through my mind, only this time the words have changed:

  Love is angry, love is rude. It thinks of itself first, rather than anyone else. It thinks the worst rather than believing the best. It keeps a record of every tiny transgression�
�

  If that is what our marriage has become, how far removed from what we believed it would be when we looked at each other and said our vows, then maybe what Dan and I have isn’t love any more. I’m shocked to realise that, if this is true, that even if I try really, really hard, maybe we shouldn’t be married any more.

  And the more I think about it, the more I realise I’m right. I need to set him free. All I do is make him miserable. It’s me. I’m the variant between this life and the other one, aren’t I? I’m the one who’s made him like this.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I wake up with a gasp. I felt something. I’m sure I felt something. A sensation of …

  Falling.

  I felt like I was falling. It must have been a nightmare.

  I can hear Dan breathing and even though I know he might shrug me away if he’s awake, I reach out for him. My fingers meet warm flesh and I gasp again and start to roll over, the sheet falling off me.

  It’s Jude. I’m touching Jude.

  I don’t know how I can tell just by the feel of him, but I can. My heart is beating hard in my chest. I gulp in air trying to calm it. I think I woke up right after the very moment of the jump. Maybe right in the middle of it. Was that important?

  Jude grunts and shifts. He flings his arm over his eyes and then his breathing softens again.

  I’m back already? Six days? I was only there six days?

  For the first time since I’ve begun this crazy journey, the first thing I feel at finding myself back with Jude is not relief but irritation. Not that I’m unhappy to be back with him. It’s just that I wasn’t there long enough. I didn’t accomplish anything. It’s going to take a lot longer than six days to burrow through Dan’s deep defences. And Becca? I’m scared for her. I feel as if I’ve abandoned her.

  I flip over and roll out of bed, stand up and head for the door. It’s only when I’m halfway across the room I realise I’m acting out of instinct. I was going to check on Billy. When I remember that there’s nothing in the bedroom next to ours but a rather lovely cast-iron Victorian bed, I want to cry. I walk across the landing anyway, open the door just to make sure. It’s horrible in its stylish perfection.

  I press a palm to my chest. It gets worse each time, the sense of loss. The gaping, tearing feeling right in the centre of me. I hoped I’d get accustomed to it, that it would get better.

  Without a sense of anything else to do, I trudge back to the master suite and collapse back down on the mattress. Jude rolls over and opens his eyes. ‘Hey, you,’ he says and kisses me on the nose. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Morning,’ I say.

  He frowns and reaches for my face, touches my cheek. ‘Are you OK?’

  I shrug. There are too many words to pick from and none of them form an explanation that will make sense to him. Once again, I’m stuck by how lonely this life-swapping lifestyle makes me feel. I’m the only one in on a secret I really never wanted to be part of. How can I tell Jude I’m missing a child that has never existed in his world?

  ‘Don’t think I slept that well,’ I say and I push my way out of bed again. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ Before he answers, I grab my robe from the back of the door and head downstairs.

  The kitchen is beautiful, all gleaming white cupboards and artfully placed bowls of lemons, but I can’t help wishing for the MFI kitchen back in my home with Dan. This whole house, stunning as it is, feels like a shell, a skeleton.

  Pull it together, I tell myself as I make a cup of tea. You’re back with Jude. That’s the important thing, isn’t it? You’re back where you’re supposed to be.

  When I turn on Breakfast TV, I discover I’ve arrived back with Jude the morning after I’d gone to sleep next to Dan’s silent back. Is it all slowing down? I don’t know. Part of me is relatively relieved I’m not hurtling through two lives at break-neck speed. Being away for only a short time should make this life much easier to slip back into.

  Or it should. Over the next week, I try to get back into the swing of this life, but it’s no good. It’s like a shoe that has, for no reason at all, begun to pinch or rub. I just can’t seem to get comfortable in it.

  After two weeks, I crack. I wait for Jude to come home from work one night. He has a dinner with a prospective client, a friend of Jasmine’s: someone big on the New York art scene who’s looking for a London pad for his son while he goes to university here. Instead of changing into my usual pyjamas to watch TV, I put on something comfy but a little more elegant. I choose a long grey jersey dress with deep leg splits in the skirt and tiny thin straps, and I drape a cashmere cardigan around my shoulders. Jude likes me best in power suits – or should I say he likes me out of power suits? – but I think that would look too formal, like we’re conducting a business meeting. I also don’t want to put him on the back foot by noticing something is different, so I’ve chosen something soft to the touch, his second favourite. I pour a glass of nice red wine and wait for him in the kitchen, pretending to read Elle Decoration.

  When he comes in I don’t hover round him instantly; I give him a good half hour. He slumps on the sofa in the corner of the kitchen and I listen to a blow-by-blow account of the dinner as I dish up some olives to snack on. It turns out Jasmine attended as well at the last minute, seeing as she was back from Guadalajara early. I wonder why Jude didn’t ring me up and ask me to join them, make up a foursome, but I bat the thought away. I have more important things on my mind this evening.

  When he finally kicks off his shoes and loosens his tie, I know he’s ready. Or as ready as he’ll ever be.

  ‘Jude?’ I say lightly, as I potter from one side of the kitchen to the other, putting the glasses that are still gently warm from the dishwasher away.

  ‘Hmm?’ he says. His lids are looking heavy. I need to get in now before he flatlines. When Jude’s brain switches off, it really goes. After that the only thing he’s good for is grunting and single-word sentences. And sex, of course. He never seems to be too tired for that. My body thrums at the thought. A way to kill two birds with one stone, I think, if this all goes my way.

  I walk over to him. ‘We’re in a good place now, aren’t we? I mean, financially?’

  He nods, looking ever-so-slightly pleased with himself. ‘Sure are.’

  ‘So what would you think about me taking some time off?’

  The sleepy look melts from his expression. He sits up a little straighter on the sofa, props himself up with an arm along the back. ‘How much time off? You’ve really built up some momentum at the moment, and you don’t want to lose – ’

  ‘About a year.’ I hold my breath, waiting for his response.

  ‘A year? Bloody hell, Meg!’

  I smile, the kind of barely there smile you do when you’ve got a lovely secret to share. I’m inviting him to join me in it. ‘Not right away,’ I say, ‘but if everything works out well, maybe I’ll need to in about nine months …’

  He’s fully alert now, all that wine-induced fuzziness gone. I see his eyes widen as the penny drops. ‘You’re pregnant?’ he whispers.

  I swallow. I’d like it if he sounded slightly less horrified. After all, he’s already turned thirty and I’m only weeks away from doing the same. All our friends are having babies.

  ‘Not yet,’ I say, ‘but I’d like to be.’

  His shoulders relax and he takes a huge glug of wine, draining his glass, then he looks back at me. ‘This is all about the other day, isn’t it? The dinner party?’

  ‘No,’ I say, and I’m telling the truth. Even though it was only last weekend, it feels like it was years ago. ‘You’ve always known I wanted children. You said you did too someday.’

  ‘I do,’ he says carefully. ‘But just – ’

  ‘Not yet,’ I finish for him. We sit in silence for a minute or so. He looks as if he’s about the change the subject. Usually, I’d let him. Save the battle for another day. This evening I don’t attack, but I do press on. ‘It’s OK for you, you know. You can father a child at a
ny age, but there’s a time limit for me. I want to be able to do it while I’m still young and healthy.’

  ‘Jesus, Meg!’ he says laughing softly. ‘You’re making it sound as if we’re about to start drawing our old-age pension. Anyway, people are having babies later and later these days. We’ve got plenty of time.’

  He stands up, walks across to put his wine glass on the counter above the dishwasher and starts heading for the door. Subject closed. Or at least postponed. I go and get his glass, upturn it and place it in the dishwasher. I’m standing there, staring at it, when I realise this is one of those moments. I can give in, drop the subject as Jude wants, or I can be bold and unafraid, like Jasmine is, and say what I’m feeling.

  Is that being selfish, though? Neither of us are wrong to want what we want. We just don’t want the same thing right at this very moment. I thought I was being patient, but maybe I’m pushing Jude the way I push Dan.

  I think about Becca. Both versions of her: the one who will do anything for the man she loves, who will capitulate on any point as long as he loves her, and the one who is cross because she thinks Jude doesn’t treat me as an equal. How can one person hold completely opposite views? And which one is right?

  I want to love Jude that way, but that doesn’t mean this longing for a child will go away. I don’t know what to do.

  I close the dishwasher and then I follow Jude into his office, the smaller reception room at the back of the ground floor, because I know that’s where he’s gone. He’s sitting there at his desk, the log-in screen waiting for a password, yet he’s staring into space.

  ‘I know we’ve got time to have babies,’ I say, ‘that we don’t need to rush. I suppose what I want to know is that we’re at least on the same page, that it’s somewhere in our future.’

  He nods. ‘It’s not that I don’t want kids, it’s just … I don’t know.’

  I do. He’s scared they’ll slow him down. That part of him that drives him, I always thought it was a good, helpful thing. A strength. Now I see it might have a darker side, that it maybe chases as much as it energises.