The Other Us. Fiona Harper
shakes his head. ‘I always knew that guy was trouble …’
‘It wasn’t him. It was me … or at least it was that I found myself thinking about him all the time, even when I knew I shouldn’t.’
This is the most honest thing I’ve said to my husband in about five years. I also realise that maybe if I’d told him this in the future, maybe if he’d had the guts to tell me the same when his eye had started to wander, that we wouldn’t have ended up in the horrible situation we did, lying to each other every day by omission, pretending we were happy when really we were just coasting.
We talk then. Properly. Honestly. It’s not comfortable and I’m not sure it makes either of us feel any better, but when he walks me to the front door, I feel as if we’ve reached a shaky kind of resolution. Only time will tell if it holds or not.
And then I walk out of Dan’s house, out of his life, and into my new one, full of the hope only a future full of blank pages can bring.
I spend the rest of the day with Jude. Even though he should be revising and I should be putting the finishing touches to my final art piece. We catch the Tube into central London, wander through Portobello market hand in hand and then through Kensington Gardens. It’s odd, expecting to see the Princess Diana memorial fountain there then realising it isn’t because she’s still alive somewhere, miserable in her fabulous life.
As we amble past the spot it will one day occupy, Jude stops, turns and kisses me. I have the sudden urge to write to Diana, to tell her she only has one life to live and she might as well grab happiness while she can. No one knows how many days they have left. I also consider telling her to wear a seatbelt at all times, but as quickly as the idea comes into my head, I dismiss it. Even if I sent it, the letter would be intercepted and rammed into a shredder.
‘Come back to mine …’ Jude whispers in my ear. I pull away and smile at him. I feel like a different person today, someone to whom yesterday’s rules don’t apply. For the first time in years I feel free to do what I want instead of what I should. Number one on that list is Jude. I’m tired of being the good girl.
So that’s what I do. I spent a lazy, warm summer afternoon in bed with Jude, and as the sun starts to set I kiss him at his door and leave him. I’ve promised I’ll go and see Becca’s drama performance tonight.
She’s already left the flat when I get back. I’ve forgotten exactly what time she needed to leave for the studio theatre to get ready and I must have missed her. Since we hadn’t planned to go together but meet up after the show, I potter round the flat, changing into the dress I bought in Oxford Street and grabbing a cropped denim jacket.
Becca is too busy to come out from backstage before the performance, so I find a seat with a few of her drama friends that I remember being on a nodding basis with and I watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Becca is playing Titania.
Afterwards, I go and wait outside the main entrance. The small studio theatre is used by both the drama and the dance department and doesn’t have anything as posh as a stage door. Most of the rest of the cast have appeared, been told in megaphone-loud voices how wonderful they were by their friends and have drifted off to the bar by the time Becca appears.
She marches out, looking a little strange in her stonewashed jeans and hot-pink T-shirt but with her green-and-silver-glittery stage make-up still streaked across her face. She nods at me then sets off at a blistering pace down the narrow path that leads back towards the main buildings of the campus.
‘What’s up?’ I ask, trotting after her. ‘You were amazing! Best I’ve ever seen you do it! Don’t worry about that fluffed line in your first scene.’
Becca stops, turns and looks at me. ‘You think I’m worried about missing a line?’ she asks, placing her hands on her hips. The stage make-up has the effect of making her look even more ticked off.
‘Aren’t you?’
She shakes her head.
‘Unbelievable … So wrapped up in yourself you just don’t ever see!’
‘What?’ I say and my volume increases to match my level of confusion. ‘What don’t I see?’
Becca pokes me in the hollow between the top of my right boob and my shoulder with an acid-green fingernail. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about? What planet are you on?’
I step back and rub the spot. It usually wouldn’t have been so bad, because Becca is a bit of a nail-biter, but she’s been adorned with long green plastic talons by the costume department. ‘Um … this one?’ I say tentatively. I’m getting that same reality’s-gone-screwy feeling I got when I first woke up here.
‘You broke up with Dan!’ she screams at me. ‘After he proposed, as well! What the hell’s wrong with you?’
I blink.
Oh.
I didn’t know she knew. I also didn’t know she’d take it so personally. It’s not her who’s broken up with him, after all! I stiffen and stand up straighter. ‘Nothing’s wrong with me, actually. Nothing at all.’
She throws her hands wide, shakes her head. My answer seems to have thrown her.
‘We’re not right for each other,’ I tell her, trying to keep my voice calm.
She gives me another one of those looks that tells me she thinks I’ve had an aneurysm or something. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve never seen two people more right for each other.’
‘Who told you?’
She inhales deeply through her nose as she stares at me. ‘Dan. He’s a mess.’
I feel a little kick of guilt down in my stomach, but I push it away. I’m being cruel to be kind, but I’m the only one who knows that. ‘He’ll thank me in the long run.’
Becca laughs, but it’s not her usual bubbly giggle. ‘What? For breaking his heart?’
I turn and start walking. ‘You’re just being dramatic now.’
I’m halted by Becca grabbing my arm, wrenching my shoulder in my socket. ‘What’s wrong with you, Mags? You’ve been acting really weird the last couple of weeks! You’ve changed.’
I pull my arm away from her and scowl. ‘How?’
‘You’re … you’re …’ She looks desperately at me, as if she really doesn’t want to let the next couple of words out of her mouth. ‘You’ve just started being really selfish.’
I blink again. Selfish?
Well, maybe it seems that way because I’m not being my usual doormat self – I’m not going along with what everybody else wants, letting life happen to me instead of taking it by the horns. I suppose if she wants to call that selfish then maybe I should let her. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Then explain it to me.’
For a moment, I actually consider this. Could I tell her? Could I tell her everything? But then I imagine the words coming out of my mouth and what her reaction will be. For all her wafting around like an unearthly being this evening, Becca is probably one of the most grounded people I know. She’ll just get even angrier with me, thinking I’m making fun of the situation. ‘I can’t.’
Her expression hardens again. ‘Or won’t.’
A sudden drop in my stomach alerts me to the fact that this is a crucial moment, that I have to handle it right. Dan and Becca are my anchors in this world, my only connections to the life I’ve left behind. I’ve cut one loose and I really don’t want to lose the other.
‘Remember that time we went to that gig at the Hammersmith Apollo,’ I say, ‘and we were a little bit