Hattie and I ate lunch in a disjointed way after that, periods of silence punctuated by half-started conversations. Me battling whether to tell her, unable to focus too long on anything else. My head woolly from the wine meant my thoughts were even more disconnected, another headache starting.
Hattie seemed to pick up on my strange mood too, and when I pressed her for news she just waved a hand away, “Nothing much.”
Was she holding something back about the tests she’d been having? Or was her quiet mood nothing to do with that? Hattie was rarely stressed about work; she worked in HR for a US tech company that gave her loads of autonomy and flew her out to LA for the odd conference. Maybe she wanted to discuss Dan and Ed; that awkward Sunday lunch had really brought it home how much he and Dan didn’t like each other.
I looked at her half-eaten food but didn’t push her. I knew I should have but kept losing myself in the memories of the previous night, picking up my mobile to check for more messages from Dan, then simultaneously feeling stressed as work and WhatsApp pinged away reminding me that life was moving on regardless. We spoke in a shallow way about work, the kids, Christmas plans, as if we were acquaintances and not best friends.
I told myself if I could get through today I could probe Hattie more tomorrow; I’d be sure to see her, to check on her. I loved Hattie. Loved her so much. I knew how lucky I’d been to find not only the man I loved but a best friend too. And she would tell me if something important was going on. Wouldn’t she?
We said an awkward goodbye at the tube near the top of the escalator Hattie was about to descend.
“And you really are OK?” I said, grabbing both her hands, someone skirting us with a loud sigh. “You’d say if you weren’t, wouldn’t you?” Did I just want her to agree because I knew I couldn’t quite face it if she wasn’t? Is that why I let her go, knowing something wasn’t right?
There was a moment just before she turned away when I thought she was going to say something.
She opened her mouth to speak and I lifted my eyebrows.
But she just snapped her mouth shut and removed her hands from mine, mumbled, “Bye Ems, love you. And take care, OK?”
“You too,” I said, seeing her eyes slide from my face. I moved right to the District Line, feeling hollow. And I never left Hattie feeling like that.
“Jas,” I called, stepping through the office door.
Silence.
I glanced at the hooks, no creepy fur coat there.
And then I remembered. “Jas, it’s OK, they’re not here.” I marched down the hallway and wrenched open the loo door.
“EMMA! What the—!”
She was there, wide-eyed in the dark, hand on her chest, mobile light glowing.
“I was just—”
“Here hiding from Linda and Arthur, yes?”
Her shoulders dropped. “That is, um, exactly right.” She peeped out of the loo fearfully. “How did you know?” She dropped her voice, “They were pretty loud before. It didn’t sound good. Then I thought they’d gone but I wasn’t absolutely sure.”
“I suppose they could be here,” I mused, watching her dart back into the loo, eyes wide with terror. How was I to know? If the meeting had gone differently, maybe their reactions were different? Although instead of a celebratory boozy lunch Linda was probably planning their next move over the red wine.
“Oh my God, say they left!” Jas hissed at me.
“No,” I said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “Arthur is right here behind me with his hand on my bottom.” I gave a bark of laughter.
Jas frowned and tilted her head. “Are you all right? I take it the meeting didn’t go well?”
“It did not,” I confirmed, and then, I couldn’t help it, I started laughing wildly. “Wow, it really did not.”
“Hold on,” Jas said, bending to scoop up the letters and books on the loo before squeezing past me. “Tell me everything. I’ll make you a coffee. I got new pods because—”
“Arthur can’t abide granules?” I said in a loud and high-pitched voice.
Jas slowed down on her way to the kitchen. “Yes. And you’re being . . . odd.”
“Odd is about right,” I said, following her the few paces to the kitchen. Books were piled so high in the corridor it always felt claustrophobic moving around the building.
“So Arthur didn’t charm them?” she asked, reaching for a mug. “He is the actual worst.”
“He is the actual worst,” I agreed, reaching for the paper bag on the side.
Jas pressed a button and the coffee machine started to rumble.
“So,” Jas said, her palms up, “what happened? How bad was it?”
I waved my hand dismissively. “He threatened to change publishers, but look, that doesn’t matter . . .”
Jas’s jaw dropped open. “Change. Publisher. Leave Charter? Are you for real?”
“Yes, but it really doesn’t matter,” I repeated, voice rising again.
It was Jas’s turn to get loud. “Shit. This is serious. We should be panicking. What if no one else wants him? Emma, why aren’t you panicking? You normally panic before me. Do you remember when we thought we’d deleted that pitch document we’d worked on all day and I had to make you breathe into the wastepaper basket? And the time we thought we’d been on mute in that Zoom to that American editor and you’d said cunt and I had to style it out for you and blame it on our connection because you just totally froze and I could see all the whites of your eyes and the American editor thought you were having a stroke . . .”
“Jas, JAS,” I called loudly, moving my hands to either side of her face and squashing her cheeks together.
She stilled, coffee forgotten.
“OK, Jas, I need you to listen to me. Other stuff is more important, OK? I need to talk to you.”
Jas nodded, her lips pushed into a pout.
“So,” I said, releasing her and turning to lift the paper bag in front of me like a sacrifice. “I know what’s in this bag.”
Jas stared at me, “It’s a—”
“SSSSSHHH!!” I said loud enough that she jumped a little. “Sorry. OK,” I said, feeling my breathing quicken, “I know this is an apple turnover.”
“Okaaaaay,” Jas said.
I opened the bag and spoke to it dramatically like I was some amateur magician, “Ha!”
“I bought it for you,” she said slowly.
“I know you did,” I said in my Wisest Woman voice. “You bought it for me and you were hiding in the loo from Linda and Arthur and . . . and . . .”
Jas was frowning again. Then I spotted her mobile. “AND,” I shouted, “you were reading a submission on your mobile that you love, or . . . or you don’t love but . . .” I tried to force my brain to recall her wording, “But you think it’s good. Or the worst. WITCHES, something about witches.”
At this Jas’s eyebrows lifted, the small silver hoop in her left one flashing in the light of the small kitchen.
“Oh,” I added, “and you want to talk to me about audiobook contracts. Something very modern and hip and I can’t recall the exact details.”
“Wait,” Jas had put up a hand. “Wait, Emma, EMMA,” she called over me scrabbling around for more examples. “What’s going on? Why are you having a nervous breakdown? You’re freaking me out.”
Jas handed me the coffee that had been sat in the machine, the familiar scent strong. “Drink this. Catch a breath and tell me how you seem to know everything today. You’re like the frickin’ Oracle. What’s that about? Have you done yoga again? You’re always odd when you’ve done yoga.”
“No, no yoga.”
Jas waved impatiently. “Drink.”
I couldn’t drink, I needed her to understand, “I’m not guessing, Jas. I’m not guessing. I know this because I lived it before. Literally before. We talked yesterday, which was today, and you were in the loo and I found you and you gave me an apple turnover and . . .” I took a breath. Hattie hadn’t really believed me; and I hadn’t been able to tell Hattie what I was really fretting about anyway. “. . . the whole thing. It’s a repeat. I’m repeating the day.”
I put my coffee down on the side and waited as patiently as I could.
Jas was quiet for a really long time.
Finally she said, “This so happened in a book I read. Where this man kept waking up every day and reliving it.”
My body relaxed a fraction. She hadn’t dismissed it completely. “Groundhog Day,” I confirmed.
“No,” Jas shook her head, “it was called something else.”
“OK, maybe, but it was based on the film Groundhog Day.”
“I’ve never seen that. Is it good? It’s an old one, right? Is it black and white or color?”
“Are you serious?”
She looked entirely serious. “Did they restore the color?”
“It was never not in color,” I said, my own problems forgotten for a second. Moments like this really brought it home that we were not the same age. Laughter bubbled out of me, “Color, for fuck’s sake: it was the nineties.”
Jas gripped and sipped her own coffee. “OK, so it’s Groundhog Day.”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s only the first time it’s happened so I think it’s just a one-off, maybe?” Christ. Could it be Groundhog Day? No, I dismissed that idea. No, it was just a freakish event, an anomaly. Something to give me pause, like Hattie had suggested.
“Maybe it’s all a coincidence?” she suggested.
“It’s not a coincidence, well, if it is it’s like ten thousand coincidences.”
“Maybe, like, the meeting went so badly it has put you into shock?” Jas suggested.
I gave her a disdainful look, “I’m not that sad.”
Jas was really quiet for a long time. I could hear the tick of the wall clock, the faint hiss of a bus outside the office. Then she looked up at me. “OK,” she said and shrugged in a sort of relaxed way.
“Do you . . . believe me?” I said, feeling this enormous wave of relief.
“Yep. That’s pretty freaky shit.”
I nodded. Distracted for a moment because her believing me somehow made it scarier. That this was a thing.
“I’m not sure why though,” I said, recalling the previous night, the images making my skin prickle, my stomach swirl with nausea.
“Well, what happened?” Jas asked. “There has to be some reason, surely?”
I looked at her and exhaled slowly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Dan . . . Dan died. I saw him, he was . . . dead. Last night, at the end of the day.”
Jas couldn’t stop both her hands reaching up to her face. “What?”
I couldn’t reply, not quite trusting myself, just nodded.
“I love Dan,” she said.
“I know you do.” The laugh was choked. “I mean I LITERALLY know because we had this exact conversation yesterday about how much you like him.”
“How does he die?”
I couldn’t stop my eyes filming over, my breath catching. “He gets run over. In the street near our house.”
“Fuck.” Jas’s coffee tips and splashes on the linoleum of the kitchen. Righting her cup, she stares back at me.
“I know,” I said, swallowing, feeling the weight of it all once again. “I know.” The panic swelled within me.
“Well, it’s obvious . . .” Jas said, placing the cup on the side. “You have to save him. You’ve been given a second chance. That’s . . . that’s pretty amazing.”
And I felt a heat spread through my body as she said it. She was right. Other things might go differently but I couldn’t let that happen. This was the point. It had to be why.
I’d been given a chance to stop it.