If that’s the case, then one thing’s for certain: I’ll have to bite the bullet and tell Alice how I feel.
It’s not fair to stay with her – to marry her – when I’m still in love with someone else. She’ll be upset, of course, but it will be for the best in the end, for both of us. I don’t believe she’s truly in love with me either. I can feel that she isn’t. Maybe she’s just scared of falling too far behind Becky and Dee in the life-goals stakes.
The question is, though: what will I do after that? Daphne has moved on. She’s with someone else now; it wouldn’t be fair for me to try and ruin that for her too. No, I had my chance with her. I had hundreds of chances. I blew them all.
The future stretches out ahead of me, blank and unknowable, just like it did all those years ago in the maze at uni. But this time it doesn’t fill me with excitement; only with a hopeless, dizzying dread.
Alice screws the lid back on her final pot of cream and climbs into bed next to me. She lets out a tired sigh. ‘Well. It was a good day in the end, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah. It was.’
‘Although Becks was a bit much at lunch, don’t you think?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Just going on about the baby all the time. After a while, it’s like: OK, we get it. You know?’
‘Yeah.’
She reaches across to switch off the light, and I think suddenly about Daphne and her best mate, Jamila; the way they are together. The absolute polar opposite of Alice and Becky. I’ll never forget coming home from a night out a few weeks after we got married to find them both sprawled drunkenly on our sofa holding bags of frozen peas to their shoulders. It transpired they’d cricked their necks dancing far too energetically to the song ‘Whip My Hair’ by Willow Smith. I remember them groaning with laughter as they told me about it. I don’t think it’s possible to love anyone more than I loved Daphne at that moment.
In the darkness, Alice flips her pillow over. ‘Please don’t be weird with my parents tomorrow, OK? Just try and be … normal.’
‘OK.’
‘And definitely don’t say anything to Dad about the teaching thing.’
‘I won’t.’
She sighs again and rolls over, turning her back to me. ‘OK. Night, babe.’
‘Night.’
On the bedside table, my iPhone 13 tells me it’s just turned 11.58 p.m. For some mad reason, I decide to see if I can hold my breath for the next sixty seconds. As though maybe, if I manage it, I’ll somehow beat the system: make myself jump again, but this time back into the past.
Just as I’m about to explode, 11.58 becomes 11.59.
I breathe out raggedly. I’m still here.
This is it. This is the rest of my life.
Alice mutters something and turns over.
‘What was that?’
‘I said: what’s that noise?’ she mumbles.
I listen carefully. ‘It’s, erm … I think it’s …’
I hold my wrist up to my ear.
The watch has started ticking.
Chapter Forty-Seven
For years, when I was a kid, I used to have this recurring dream.
I’m in my bedroom at home – home home, Mum’s home – and the doorbell rings. I run out of my room and down the corridor, and as I get to the top of the stairs, I can see the outline of a person behind the stained-glass panel on the front door.
I jump onto the banister and slide down gracefully, but as I approach the door, I still can’t make out the figure behind the glass. I reach up to open the latch, and then … nothing.
Either I’d wake up, or the dream would just fizzle out.
I started having this dream when I was about ten, soon after my dad left, so it doesn’t exactly take Sigmund Freud to figure out that it might have been about him; about me wishing desperately that he would come back.
Anyway, it’s a dream I haven’t had – haven’t even thought about – for decades.
Until now.
As soon as I raise the ticking watch to my ear, everything goes dark, and there I am again: in my bedroom at home, hearing the doorbell ring out downstairs.
As usual, I sprint out and see that shadow behind the glass. And as usual, I slide down the banister and run towards the door. But this time the figure is clearer – I can make out that he’s wearing a blue suit and some kind of colourful tie – and the dream holds together even as I reach up and place my hand on the latch.
But when I open the door, there’s no one there. It’s not even my front door – it’s the door to another room entirely, a room I don’t recognise, dingy and grey and sparsely decorated, with two people sitting on a sofa in the centre.
I realise instantly what I’m looking at, and even though part of me somehow knows this is a dream, the shock is still visceral.
It’s me, as an old man, and Alice as an old woman.
We’re sitting at opposite ends of the couch – so far apart that we might be strangers – our heads bent, not speaking.
I cry out – I’m not sure what I say – but Old Me looks up suddenly, and I feel the same jolt of panic as when Rich glanced round to see me in the park.
