‘Is he in love with you?’ Amelia asks, eyeing me over her wine glass.
It’s almost nine o’clock. We’ve been in Luigi’s for an hour or so, eating slowly and lazily: pleasantly oily garlic bread, silky pasta and crisp salad. I’ve had two glasses of red wine and feel strangely detached from the last few days, as though they happened to someone I was watching.
It happened again tonight. As I waited for Nicholas to pick me up, spritzing myself with my favourite perfume, the bottle dropped from my hand onto my carpet, my head feeling as though it would burst with pressure and pain. I saw a stretch of road, debris scattered along it. And then I was back, the sweet fragrance that clouded around me suddenly too much to bear, burning my eyes and making me heave. I was gone for only a few seconds, but I missed long enough of the song that was playing on the radio to make it clear that I couldn’t dismiss what had happened at the party as a dream for much longer. It was one thing when this had happened to me as a child, and it hadn’t been easy then. It affected my friendships and made me scared to become too close to anyone in case they found out my secret. But fear of what this might mean for me now, for living on my own and my job and the rest of my life, has been pulling at me all evening.
‘Who, Mike?’ I tear apart a piece of garlic bread and dip it into my pasta sauce. ‘Well, he sent one of his friends round to my flat today to pick up an Oasis CD, a toastie machine, and some socks. And I haven’t actually spoken to him since we split up. So it doesn’t seem as though he’s in love with me, does it?’
‘No, not Mike. Forget about Mike. I meant Daniel. He must have put a lot of effort into today.’
I put the garlic bread down, wipe the oil from my fingers and fan myself with the napkin, suddenly too warm. Amelia is right. Daniel picked me up soon after we’d spoken on the phone this morning and drove us to Lake Windermere. We talked all the way there, about the party, what we knew about Kevin and Sophie, our jobs and our friends and lives. Daniel parked the car a little way from the centre, and we bought ice creams on the walk towards the lake. The air was sharp with the late summer heat, salty and sweet with chips and freshly fried donuts. Daniel was energetic, his quick stride making me rush to keep up. In the end I laughed, breathless, and asked him to slow down, and he took my hand, told me to yank him back if he went too quickly and left me behind.
‘I’m glad I’ve seen you again today,’ I said to him as we sat on a bench that faced out towards the glittering lake, eating our ice creams. ‘Otherwise you’d have just thought of me as the strange crying girl from the party. Nobody wants to be that girl.’
Daniel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, erasing a trace of vanilla I’d noticed a few minutes before. ‘We’ve all been there. I’ve had a bad breakup in the past. It’s just that I wasn’t at a party, so nobody saw me at the worst bit. You were just unlucky.’
‘I don’t know. I definitely feel unlucky being dumped. But I can’t help feeling like it was lucky, in the end, that I was at the party when it happened. You made me feel better. So I’m glad I went. I bet you didn’t have someone to let you cry on them.’
Daniel shook his head and took out his chocolate flake before biting it in half. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Well, it really helped me. I want to say that I’ll repay the favour someday. But hopefully I won’t need to.’ I looked straight out at the water, at the boats, at the children throwing grains of food for the ducks onto the smooth pebbles, and then glanced sideways at Daniel.
‘Here’s hoping. I like to think I learnt from what happened with my ex and would do a better job of things next time. But you never quite know, do you?’
‘You really don’t. Are you over it?’ I asked.
‘What, the breakup? Yes. Completely. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would. She ended it. Went off with some guy she’d met in the supermarket.’
‘You’re joking? I didn’t think people actually met in supermarket aisles.’
‘Nope, me neither, until then. Thought I was safe when she popped out for milk.’ He laughs. ‘But things were all wrong with us anyway. I just didn’t realise it until after she was gone and I felt more like me than I had done when I was with her, if that makes sense.’
‘It does,’ I said. We sat quietly for a bit, the sun-scorched bench warm beneath us. ‘What aisle was it?’ I asked after a few minutes.
He laughed. ‘I asked her that. She said it was the magazines.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s awful. If I were with someone like you, I’d never let anyone else chat me up at the magazines. Or anywhere, come to think of it.’ My face was suddenly too warm, tingling with the surprise of being so upfront with Daniel, with myself.
Daniel grinned and jumped up from the bench, his hand outstretched for mine. ‘You don’t know that. You never know who you might meet in the knitting magazines section.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t buy knitting magazines!’
He laughed too, moved his hand closer to mine. ‘Well then, I might be safe after all. Come on. You have an important decision to make. Boat trip or back home.’
***
‘Daniel isn’t in love with me at all,’ I say to Amelia now in the restaurant, the memories dissipating in my mind as I speak. ‘We didn’t even really know each other until today. I think he’s just a nice guy. He saw how upset I was at the party and wanted to check I was okay. And he knew it was my birthday. Plus, he wanted to get out of this football thing, so it worked for him too.’ My words rattle on and on, even though in my mind I’m willing myself to shut up.
‘Well, I’m glad you went with him,’ Nicholas cuts in as soon as I pause. ‘It’s only right that you were spoilt a bit today. It sounds like it was just what you needed.’
‘Of course it was,’ Amelia says with a grin. ‘She was swept off her feet! I, on the other hand, have spent most of the day in motorway services changing nappies in filthy toilets. We must have stopped about six times. You should definitely make the most of having a day of romance.’
I shake my head, laughing in spite of myself. ‘Anyway. Enough about me. What do you think Phoebe’s up to?’ I ask her. ‘I bet Mum’s spoiling her. We’ve all been so excited to see her.’
We chat about Phoebe for a while, and then Amelia takes her phone out of her bag to check it for messages. ‘I’ve not heard from your mum, actually. I wonder if Phoebe is asleep yet,’ she says. ‘I think I’ll pop outside where it’s a bit quieter and ring, just to make sure all’s okay.’
When she’s gone I smile at Nicholas. ‘It’s so good to see you. Thanks for coming all this way for my birthday. It means a lot. I know how busy you are. It’ll be lovely to spend a bit of time with Phoebe tomorrow.’
My brother grins back at me. ‘It’s great to see you too. It’s just a shame it couldn’t be for longer. But I was lucky I got out early today. No chance of getting in late on Monday. My timetable is awful.’ He yawns and I laugh.
‘If that’s how you feel about your lessons, I dread to think how your students feel.’
Nicholas laughs too, rolling his eyes at my predictable humour. He has taught maths at a public school in Oxford for years now, and is head of department. I’ve always joked about his lessons, as we are so different that I can’t imagine what he could possibly do to make maths engaging. His status at the school, his constant string of Outstandings and 100 per cent pass rates make my jokes funny because obviously, somehow he manages it.
‘I think it’s happening again,’ I say next, my voice quietening.
Nicholas doesn’t need to ask what. His laugh stops, and his blue eyes widen.
‘I’m scared, Nick. I tried to tell myself that I was dreaming, and was almost managing to believe it. It was quite easy not to think about it too much because I was so preoccupied by what had happened with Mike. But then it happened again tonight, just before we came out. It wasn’t for long. But I’m having to admit to myself that it’s happening again.’
Nicholas puts his fork down. ‘What did you see? When did you go back to?’
I shake my head. ‘It wasn’t the past I watched. It seems to be a different kind of thing now. I think I saw myself, in an alternative life.’
‘Wow,’ Nicholas says leaning forward, the weak light of the candle in the centre of the table making his face glow. ‘A parallel universe?’
‘Yes. It was another version of me, and I think I saw what I’d be doing if I’d made different choices. It seemed like I was in Yorkshire. That was the other day. Tonight I just saw a glimpse of a road, and I couldn’t tell if it was the past or the present. Nothing happened. There were no people there. And I was only gone for a couple of seconds.’
‘I can’t believe it’s happening again. It’s been years, hasn’t it?’
I nod. ‘Yes. I didn’t do it at all when I was with Mike.’
‘And what was the other version of you doing?’
‘It was only a glimpse, really. But I got the feeling that she was more adventurous than I am. She was working in a travel agent’s, and it seemed like that’s what she was into. Travelling the world and seeing new things.’
‘And were you with Mike in this … alternate universe?’
I put my fork down. ‘I don’t know for sure, but I didn’t seem to be.’ Just me and a backpack.
Nicholas leans back again. ‘So do you think you saw it to help you make choices, now that it’s over with Mike?’
I think for a minute. ‘I haven’t managed to work out why it’s started happening again yet. I’ve been worrying more about what will happen if I keep disappearing. When it used to happen, it was only ever school that I missed. And because I knew it would only happen when I was alone, I just stayed with Mum or my friends as much as I could. Then before I met Mike, just before it stopped, I was at college. It hardly mattered that I missed the beginning of a few lessons. But now, it’s different. I have my job, and a life. It’s making me think I shouldn’t have moved out of Mum’s or taken a job where I am alone sometimes.’ I finish the last of my wine, and push my glass away.
‘Try not to panic. Maybe it’s just because you’ve split up with Mike that it’s jump-started the disappearances again. It might just happen to you now and again when you’re going through something.’
We sit for a minute, watching Amelia hover in the doorway of the restaurant as she talks on the phone, an unspoken deal between us to change the subject as soon as she heads back towards us.
‘Anyway, I suppose it has made me think about my decisions, in a way. I think Mike was right about me. I need to do something interesting. There shouldn’t be anything stopping me now, should there? I’m going to get out in the world, and leave Blackpool behind.’
Nicholas narrows his eyes at me. ‘What about your job?’
‘I love my job,’ I say, picking my fork up and spearing a piece of pasta. ‘But my contract was only for three months. And that’s only if I can last that long, if this keeps happening to me.’ I lift the pasta to my lips. It’s cold and gluey now and I chew, forcing it down.
‘But it might not keep happening. And if it does then you’ll find a way to work around it. You don’t have to travel just because Mike told you that you should. It’s a bit cliched, isn’t it? Going off and finding yourself when you have a perfectly nice life here?’
‘There’s another life for me, though. One where I’m not too scared to do anything.’
‘There are thousands of lives for everyone. The only difference is that you’ve somehow seen one of yours. Come on Erica, you of all people should know it’s not that simple. Whatever alternate universe you’ve seen a few minutes of, it wasn’t your life. So you can’t make your life now exactly the same as that one. You won’t be able to work out where it started and the one you’re living now ended.’
Amelia comes back as Nicholas and I stare at each other, our teenage selves strangely brought to life by discussing what we always used to discuss when we were younger.
‘Phoebe’s fine,’ she announces breathlessly. ‘She isn’t asleep. But she isn’t screaming the house down either. So that’s good. What did I miss?’
‘Erica was just telling me that she might be going travelling,’ Nicholas tells her as she sits back down with us.
Amelia smiles at me. ‘Really? Where are you heading?’
‘I’m not sure. There’s a friend of a friend who’s going to Thailand. I might go with her if I can get things in place quickly enough.’
‘Wow. But what about your new man?’ she says with a wink.
I shake my head. ‘My new man probably has a wife or a criminal record he hasn’t told me about. The nice ones normally do. Come on, let’s go and get a drink somewhere.’ I reach in my bag for my purse, and pull out something wrapped in soft blue tissue paper.
‘Is this from you two?’ I ask Nicholas and Amelia. ‘It’s not mine. I didn’t know it was in here.’
They frown, shake their heads, as confused as I am, until I unwrap the paper to reveal a magnet in the shape of a boat.
I burst out laughing. ‘It’s from Daniel. He must have bought it for me and put it in my bag without me seeing. We looked at these in the gift shop today in the Lakes and he joked that he was going to buy me one for my birthday so that I’d remember our boat trip.’ Like I’d forget it, I find myself thinking. The balmy heat of the afternoon, the lazy gliding of the boat, the way Daniel bought our tickets and batted away my offer of money, the stark differences between him and Mike, who would have rolled his eyes at the whole day: the prices of a boat trip, the predictable ice cream on a bench, the lack of beer and friends and music.
‘That’s cute. And totally what a man who’s in love with you would do,’ says Amelia with a raised eyebrow. ‘But what the hell. There’ll be men who fall in love with you in Thailand too.’
‘Cheers to that,’ I say as we clink together our glasses.