‘So,’ she raises her glass, ‘Joyeux Noël. Santé.’
‘Santé.’
We clink glasses and drink.
‘Thanks for today,’ I say. ‘It was great. The best day I’ve had since I’ve been here.’
‘No worries. I had fun too.’
I take another sip. The wine scorches my throat as it goes down. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ I ask.
Alice frowns. ‘My phone’s in the kitchen. Why – were you thinking of heading back?’
‘No, I just—’
‘Good. I was kind of hoping this wouldn’t be the end of the night.’
There’s a little pause during which we both look at each other, not saying anything, and my heartbeat starts behaving very irregularly indeed. Because, God, she looks incredible.
She leans forward and puts her glass down on the coffee table. When she leans back again, she’s very slightly closer to me. She lays her hand on my thigh and, almost automatically, I lay mine on hers. I close my eyes, and feel the touch of her lips on mine. And despite certain parts of my body screaming YES!, my head is suddenly full of Daphne. I instinctively pull away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly.
Alice looks at me blankly. She doesn’t seem particularly embarrassed or pissed off. She just seems like she’s waiting for an explanation. The best I can do, though, is stammer the word ‘sorry’ a few more times.
‘Is it Daphne?’ she says finally.
I nod. ‘Yeah. I guess.’
She picks her glass back up and takes a sip. ‘I thought it was over between you?’
‘I don’t know if it is or not, to be honest.’
‘But you’re not together right now, you said?’
‘We’re … on a break.’
She laughs, and then holds a hand up in apology. ‘Sorry, that was just very Ross and Rachel. Remember how pissed off you used to get at uni when I wanted to watch Friends, and you wanted to watch The Wire?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ My head feels heavy suddenly. I have no idea what I should do.
Alice sighs and shuffles closer to me. ‘Look, I don’t want to fuck things up with you and Daphne. But I guess I always thought there was something between us. And maybe, if it’s not going to work out with her in the long run …’ She tails off and swirls the wine around her glass. ‘I mean, you don’t exactly know what she’s doing in New York right now, do you?’
It’s true: I don’t. I never asked Daphne if anything happened in New York, just as she’s never asked me about Paris. I guess we both took it as read that the other had stayed faithful.
Guilt stabs me sharply in the chest, and all of a sudden I think I understand why I’m here: why I decided to come up to Alice’s flat. In 2020, I’ve arranged to meet Alice for a drink at her hotel. And this is how it will feel if I go. This is how it will feel to be on the brink of cheating on my wife; to be on the brink of knowing I’m about to lose Daphne for good.
Am I really prepared to go through with that?
Alice puts her glass back down and stands up in front of me. Without saying a word, she holds her hand out.
I stare at it for a second, trying desperately to decide whether I should take it. And that’s when everything disappears.
Chapter Thirty
‘Ben … Ben?’
I groan and roll over. I can feel someone rubbing my arm gently.
‘Ben, wake up. We need to get going.’
The feeling is the same every time I jump: dizziness, motion sickness, and a dull pain in my chest like I’ve just had the wind thumped out of me. My eyes flick open, and as I take in my surroundings, the first thought that enters my still-fuzzy brain is: I’m back.
Daphne is perched on the edge of the bed beside me, stroking my shoulder. But this isn’t the twenty-three-year-old Daphne I fell asleep with two nights ago in Balham. This looks more like the thirty-three-year-old Daphne I’m married to in the real world. In 2020. I inhale sharply, and glance around me. This is our flat. The flat we bought together. The flat we currently live in.
This madness is finally over. I’m back in the present.
The relief is so overwhelming that I scramble up and pull Daphne towards me, hugging her tightly. ‘Oh my God, Daff …’ is about all I can manage to say.
She hugs me back even tighter, her fingers tracing through my hair. ‘Shh, it’s OK … I know, I know … Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.’
I pull away to see that her eyes are red and glistening with tears. There are dark circles underneath them, as if she hasn’t slept properly in days.
The relief freezes inside me, turning instantly to cold, clammy fear. There’s something wrong here.
Was the watch-seller lying? Has the present changed after all? Maybe Daphne somehow knows about what happened in Paris.
‘We’ll get through it,’ she mumbles as she wipes her eyes. ‘Everything will be fine.’
My mind is fizzing and spluttering, trying to comprehend what’s going on.
And then, behind her, I see it. The black suit.
It dangles limply on the back of the bedroom door like an invisible man hanged for some terrible crime.
Daff puts her head in her hands and starts crying: hard, heavy, jagged sobs. And with a sickening jolt, it dawns on me. This madness isn’t over at all.
It’s about to get much, much worse.
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the green and white wreath by the door. Lilies. That was the decision in the end: lilies.
Tulips were Mum’s favourite, but apparently they weren’t suitable for the occasion. I can’t remember who said that – the funeral director, maybe, or Uncle Simon – but it was decided one way or the other.
I sit here in silence, watching the steam curl up from my undrunk coffee and feeling a dark, scary anger start to uncoil inside me at the thought of going through this again. Daff is standing by the stove, stirring a saucepan of porridge and intermittently pressing a tissue to her eyes.
She’s already dressed in her smart black outfit, her curly hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Despite her tired eyes and worried frown, she still looks beautiful.
I, on the other hand, must look anything but. I’m still wearing the T-shirt and pyjama bottoms I woke up in. I just couldn’t face getting changed yet. Putting that suit on would make it all seem real somehow, and I’m not sure I’m ready to believe yet that it is. So the suit’s still upstairs, on the back of the bedroom door, waiting for me to climb into it and relive one of the worst days of my life: December 10th, 2018.
Daff plonks a steaming bowl of porridge down in front of me and attempts a smile.
‘Here you go. Please eat something.’
She kisses me on the top of the head. Not the kind of kiss you give a husband or a lover: the kind you give a child. Then she mutters something about going to put on some make-up, and leaves the room.
I try a mouthful of porridge. It’s blisteringly hot, and I wince as it scalds the roof of my mouth. But, weirdly, the pain feels good – sharp and alive – in stark contrast to the numbness in my chest.
I swallow another spoonful. My watch is still stuck at one minute to midnight, but the clock on the wall says 10.35 a.m. I woke up much earlier on this day first time around. I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I had, somehow. I remember having a dream in which Mum was still alive. I had those dreams a lot in the months after she died.