“Hattie, thank God.” I launched myself at her the moment she appeared in the café, the hug tight and a little too long.
“All right,” she said, extracting herself and taking one step back. “Good to see you too, Ems.” Hattie wasn’t one for big shows of emotion. “You’re a hugger,” she’d once told me, “I am very much not.” It was funny really; she and Dan had such a warm family, yet it was me with my cold upbringing who was desperate to pull everyone I loved into my arms.
I half-dragged her to our table. “I ordered you a wine, I figured we needed a glass. OK, I needed a glass,” I gabbled, sitting down and watching impatiently as she draped her green woolen coat over the back of her chair, tucking her handbag under it.
“Why are you being crazy intense?” she asked, noticing me tapping my foot, making the table jiggle.
“I’m not,” I protested, a fraction too loudly. The waiter in the reindeer ears looked over. “OK,” I admitted, gulping wine, I was almost down to the final mouthful. “I need to talk to you.”
“I need to talk to you too,” Hattie said, her face drawn as she sat down, a black-and-white-striped sweater in contrast to her blonde hair.
“Hattie,” I said, a flash of guilt. Hattie never really pushed herself into the center of things—sometimes I’d have to remind myself to ask her questions or we’d spend the whole catch-up on me. She was like that, always topping up my wine with a follow-up question. But I was so desperate to explain, today really felt like it had to be about me. “Honestly, I’m freaking out. So today, right? Isn’t today,” I said, leaning across the table to her. “It’s not Monday, it’s Tuesday. Well, it should be Tuesday but it’s not, it’s Monday. Again.”
Hattie lifted one eyebrow. “Um . . .” she lifted her glass of wine, then returned it to the table shaking her head. “No, I’m sorry, I’m already lost.”
“It’s Monday again. Today. Everything is happening all over again.”
“Yeah. That’s how the weeks work,” she said, giving me a funny smile. “It’s Monday every Monday.”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said taking a breath; the waiter swiveled his eyes as he passed carrying a tray with two mugs. “What I mean is I have lived today before. I lived it yesterday.”
Hattie’s forehead creased. “What? Like déjà vu?”
“More than that. Like I literally lived it all. But no one else seems to have.”
“What do you mean? So we did this yesterday? OK,” she said, a tiny smile playing on her lips, “what did I order?” She lifted up the menu and waved it at me.
“No,” I said, realizing she wasn’t taking this seriously. I needed her to understand. I suppose I couldn’t really blame her—what I was saying was mad. Would I believe me? “I didn’t see you yesterday.”
“But you’re seeing me now?” Hattie said slowly, as if talking to a child. “Isn’t everything the same?”
“No, I didn’t . . . we didn’t meet yesterday.”
“Did you ignore me yesterday?” Hattie said and sat back. “Cow!”
“I was really busy.”
“But you’re really busy today. Because today is yesterday,” she pointed out.
“Well, yes, I am, but now, well, does any of it matter because I did it, or didn’t do it, or can catch up if I haven’t and . . . Oh GOD.” I finished the wine. “I can’t explain.”
The waiter appeared, summoned perhaps by my empty glass. “Ready to order? Our special today is a Prawn and Gorgonzola Pasta and our Soup of the Day is Leek and Potato.”
“We’re still deciding,” Hattie said to him, giving me a curious look.
“I’ll give you some time.”
Hattie nodded distractedly.
We sat in silence for a second, my face glum and Hattie’s perplexed. She was the first to speak. “So why do you think it’s happening?”
I looked up at her. “Why what?”
“Why today?” she asked. “Why has your brain fixed on today?”
“I don’t think my brain has fixed on it.” I knew she was humoring me; I knew Hattie too well. She was earnest and logical and didn’t believe in anything otherworldly. When her mum had died she had never taken comfort from the friends saying she was in heaven looking down. She would always point to her head and say, “She lives in here now, Emma.” She would recall memories with a fond smile. Her mother lived on every time she spoke about her.
Hattie bit her lip, looking to be swallowing back her next few words. “So has anything happened that’s so terrible?” She gave me an encouraging smile. Too nice to shut the conversation down when she could see I was clearly fretting about it.
“Yes, actually . . .” I said, a couple nearby looking up from their meal. I quieted, realizing with a sinking feeling that, of course, Hattie was the one person I couldn’t tell. How could I admit what happened when it would be telling her I saw her brother die? That we rowed, that he got run down and it was . . . sort of my fault.
I thought back to a shaking Hattie bent over Dan in a hospital bed a decade ago, her hand clutching his, pale face jabbering as she tried to explain what had happened to him. I slumped in my chair. I couldn’t frighten her all over again. She’d been devastated then, quiet for weeks when she’d been faced with the thought of losing her big brother. And Dan was here, he was alive . . .
“Well, what happened?” Hattie asked.
I licked my lips, buying myself time. “I had a fight with Dan,” I said slowly.
“Well, that’s OK,” Hattie said, “Everyone rows now and again.” She glanced away then, fiddling with the sleeve of her sweater. “No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, do they?”
“I guess not,” I said, distracted for a moment by her strange expression.
“So that doesn’t sound too bad, then. Just . . . don’t row,” she said, her face clearing as she gave me a small smile.
I squirmed in my chair, desperate to go on but aware how upsetting it might be for her. She adored Dan. I had a flash again of the road spattered with glass, his cheek flat against the hard ground, that strange familiar feeling creeping over me. Something about the scene that struck me now as being important . . .
“No one knows what really goes on in a relationship,” Hattie continued.
“Yeah,” I was distracted, still lost in that hideous moment from the night before. Outside the café a dog barked and I thought of Gus’s howl. I shivered.
“What was it about?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“The row?”
“Oh.” I swallowed, shaking my head to dislodge the images. “I forgot our anniversary.”
“But it’s not your anniversary. You got married on the twenty-sixth of August. I know because it’s the day after Mum’s birthday.” She said the last bit quietly and I couldn’t stop myself reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. I knew how much they both missed their mum. She had been the sun they’d all orbited. I might not have known what that felt like, my mum was barely a planet in my solar system these days, but I wanted to be the kind of mother she’d been.
“So?” Hattie said, typically removing her hand and straightening. Never one to put her own feelings first.
“It’s the anniversary of the day we met,” I said, leaning back again, “We write letters to each other.”
Hattie swallowed quickly. “I remember that. Wow, you really still do that?”
“Well, we’re meant to, but I didn’t,” I admitted. There was no way I would be making that mistake again today; I would carve out proper time to produce one. “He was rightly upset. It’s always been really important to us,” I explained.
And it had always been important. It had happened so naturally over the years. Dan’s letters always funnier than mine, but more honest in many ways. Some of those early letters had really altered the course of our relationship—an opportunity to truly reflect on where we were and what we needed to do. He’d even written me one in those bleak months when he’d moved out. Hand-delivered, it had been the sweetest, saddest letter. And when I’d heard he was in hospital the next day I just knew I had to race there. That letter brought him back into my life at a point where I really thought I’d lost him.
“It’s a lovely thing to do. You two have always been sickening.” She gave me a small smile, but why did I feel the words were delivered with an edge?
“You can talk, Ed buys you a present anytime he leaves your side for a second!”
Hattie’s smile slipped for a second and I remembered again that she wanted to talk about something. Was something wrong with her and Ed? I knew he found the medical stuff they’d been going through hard—it was a lot of pressure to heap on a relationship.
“So you’ve forgotten again,” Hattie pointed out before I could ask her.
“What?”
“Well, if today is yesterday then . . . you’ve forgotten it’s your anniversary again.”
“No, well yes, sort of. Because I haven’t forgotten, obviously.”
“So you can fix that today at least? Avoid the row.”
I could avoid the row. My chest ached as I wondered if I could avoid the rest. God, I was desperate to tell her the truth. But I’d seen the impact of her mum’s short but devastating illness. Could I really land her with the thought that she could lose the brother she adored?
And it hadn’t actually happened, I reminded myself. He was there this morning, not a scratch on him; he’d replied to my WhatsApp less than an hour ago: it really was Monday. If I didn’t say it, I wouldn’t hurt another person.
“Maybe that’s what your dream was about?” Hattie mused. “Giving you a second chance?”
“It wasn’t a dream,” I said desperately.
Hattie pressed her lips together, tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear.
I bit my lip. “But maybe you’re right, maybe it sort of was . . .” Could that be it? A really intense experience to remind me about today? Not mess up like I did last year? Write the letter, pay attention, fix the promise? It was possible, as possible as living it all before.
Hattie tipped her head to the side. “Emma,” she said carefully, reaching a hand out and smoothing her napkin. “You’ve been so busy lately. Well, I know you’re always busy. Dan told me he’s barely seen you.” She didn’t meet my eye. “Have you wondered whether maybe it’s just stress? This thing . . .” She waved a hand. “Maybe it’s a bit of a sign you need to ease up a little, take some time for yourself?”
“It’s not a thing,” I insisted. It was true I had been stressed. The endless juggle of work and home life, my upcoming meeting with Linda that loomed, the Arthur mess over the weekend amplifying the fact she still saw me as her dogsbody. I had to bring about change, and yet I was terrified to upset things.
The waiter appeared at that moment disrupting my thoughts, my blood pressure already rising again as I thought about what I had to do. “Have you had enough time, ladies?”
I looked at him, the café fading away as I glanced across at Hattie, worrying at a strand of her hair, something distant in her eyes. “Have we ever?” I replied.