The Other Us. Fiona Harper

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

       CHAPTER SIXTY

       CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

       CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

       CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

       CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

       CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

       CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       Extract

       About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

      My first thought is that I am dead.

      How strange, I think, as I lie very still, desperately trying not to open my eyes. Yesterday was such an ordinary day. I wasn’t ill, as far as I was aware. I went to the supermarket, watched something really dull with Dan on the telly and then we argued and I went to bed alone.

      Maybe that’s it. Maybe I popped a blood vessel in my head while I was sleeping, from all the stress. Only that doesn’t make sense. It was more of a grumpy tiff than a full-on, plate-throwing kind of row. After twenty-four years of marriage, Dan and I never do anything that involves that much energy – or passion – any more.

      It vaguely occurs to me that if I’d known the previous evening was to be my last on earth that I really should have spent it doing something more interesting, something less middle-aged, like tango dancing with a brooding Latin stranger or watching the Northern Lights shimmer across the polar sky. Instead, I’d spent it in the sleepy commuter town of Swanham in Kent, watching an hour-long documentary on the life cycle of a cactus – Dan’s choice.

      Slightly disgusted with myself, and feeling more than a little resentful towards my husband, I turn my thoughts back to the present.

      I don’t know how I know I’m dead. It’s just that I had a sense as my conscious brain swam up from the murky depths of sleep of being somewhere entirely ‘other’.

      I heave in some much-needed oxygen, pulling it in through my nostrils. Odd. I’ve always thought heaven would smell nicer than this. You know, of beautiful flowers and pure, clean air, like you get on the top of a mountain.

      Without meaning to, I move. There is a rustle and I freeze. Not because someone else is here and I’m suddenly aware of their presence, malevolent or otherwise, but because it sounded – and felt – suspiciously like bed sheets. For some reason this throws me.

      As I remain still, listening to my pulse thudding in my ears, I start to contemplate the idea that maybe this place isn’t as ‘other’ as I thought.

      There’s the sheets for one thing. And the fact that I seem to be lying on something that feels suspiciously like a mattress. As much as I get the sense that I’m not where I should be, not in my usual spot in the universe – lying next to Dan and pretending I can’t hear his soft snores – there’s also something familiar about this place. The smell of the air teases me, rich with memories that are just out of reach.

      I really don’t want to open my eyes, because that will make this real. I want this to be a dream, one of those really lucid ones. I’ll tell Dan about it over breakfast and we’ll laugh, last night’s spat forgotten. But there’s a part of me that knows this is different, that it’s too real. More real than my normal life, even. I’m scared of that feeling.

      It doesn’t take long before I cave, though. It’s just all too still, all too quiet.

      I blink and try to focus on my surroundings. The first thing I experience is a wave of shock as I realise I’m right: I’m not at home in my own bed, Dan snuffling beside me. Then the second wave hits, and it’s something much more scary – recognition.

      I know this place!

      I push the covers back and stand up, forgetting I don’t really want to interact with this new reality, to give it any more credence than necessary.

      The memories that were fuzzy and out of reach now become razor-sharp, rushing towards me, stabbing at me like a thousand tiny needles. I want to sit down, but there’s nothing to catch me but a thinning and rather grubby carpet.

      This is the flat I shared with Becca during my last year at university.

      I stumble through the bedroom door and into the lounge. Yes. There’s the faded green velour sofa and the seventies oval coffee table, which we’d thought was disgusting at the time but nowadays would fetch a pretty price at a vintage market.

      Why am I here?

      How am I here?

      I turn into the little galley kitchen and spot the furred-up plastic kettle that produced the caffeine that fuelled Becca and me through our late-night essay-writing sessions, a kettle I had completely forgotten about but now seems as comforting and familiar as my childhood teddy bear. It’s something to hang on to while I feel the rest of myself slipping away.

      I press down the button at the base of the handle and when it actually clicks on I start to hiccup bursts of hysterical laughter. I have no idea why this is funny. To be honest, I’m starting to scare myself.

       Breathe, Maggie, breathe.

      I close my eyes and it helps. For a moment the room stops spinning. I try to pretend I’m not here, that I’m back at home. For a second I ache for my dull little life, then I force myself to think this through.

      This can’t be heaven, can it? My student digs? I flick that idea away and replace it with another one. My eyes open again. Maybe this isn’t heaven. Maybe that’s too much for a tiny human brain to handle right off the bat.

      So maybe this is something else? A waiting room of sorts. Something familiar. Something pulled from my memory banks to help me feel at home.

      I frown as I look at the broken chipboard cabinets. Fabulous work, Maggie. Great choice. Of all the places you’ve been in your life, this was the one that rose to the surface? I haven’t travelled much, but what about Paris or that lovely beach in Minorca where we spent our tenth anniversary? Those had been pretty nice places. It must say something about me that I’ve subconsciously plumped for the grottiest place I’d ever lived. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I didn’t choose it. Maybe the place you go to reflects what your life was like before you came here.

      I can’t decide which option is more depressing.

      However, the decor might be dated, the windows so rotten they rattle in the slightest breeze, but, as I wander round, other memories start crowding in, stragglers that lope in late behind the initial onslaught.

      It’s weird experiencing a memory not only in the place it occurred but at the same time it occurred. The sensation takes my breath for a second, the recollection sharper and more colourful than it would be back in my little suburban semi with more than two decades insulating me from the moment.

      I don’t know how I can pinpoint it so precisely, but I know exactly where I am. When I am. It’s the morning after the May Ball. Becca is out, having finally caught the eye of the one guy she’s swooned over all through her drama course, and I’m in the flat all on my own. I remember waking up and just knowing that the world was full of possibilities and I was waiting at its threshold, one foot poised in the air, about to step into my future.

      That’s when I realise I know why I’m here, in this place, in this time.

      Instead of freaking out about my surroundings, I start walking around again, looking at things, greeting them like