The Other Us: the RONA winning perfect second chance romance to curl up with

I expect Becca to get all post-divorce militant on me, tell me to deck him one or go and take my best dressmaking scissors to his suits; but instead, she exhales loudly and says, ‘Oh, Mags …’

That’s when the tears start to fall. I wipe them away quickly with the heel of my hand. I don’t want Dan to know I’ve been crying when I go back inside. Stupid, I know. Why does this little secret even matter when there are much bigger ones eating away at the heart of our marriage?

‘You’ll get through this,’ Becca says, and her voice is both soft and full of confidence. ‘I know you will.’ We say our goodbyes, with Becca telling me to call her, day or night, if I need her.

I stand in the garden, watching the sun go down, and imagine her faith in me to be real. I let my mind play out what surely must be coming: the inevitable tears and accusations. The confession. Dan moving out. I fast-forward over it all, just alighting briefly on the main scenarios, then imagine what it’ll be like if I ever get to where Becca is now: stronger, happier, freer.

Maybe I’ll find a wonderful new man too.

My mind quickly drifts back to where it’s been going all afternoon: Jude.

Maybe we’ll meet again at the reunion. It’ll be too soon then, of course, too fresh and raw, but we’ll chat. We’ll keep in touch. He’ll text me now and again, just when I’m feeling most down. And then one day I’ll find him on my doorstep with a big bunch of flowers and I’ll just know I’m finally ready to have my own ‘glow’. Dan will be nothing but a distant memory.

I sigh, wishing it could be true, that I could jump forward to that moment in reality, not just in my mind, and that I wouldn’t have to experience all the in-between bits.

Don’t be silly, I tell myself. Things don’t happen just because you wish them, and I put my phone to sleep and walk back inside the house to cook Dan’s tea.

We sit eating our pasta. Neither of us has much to say. Dan keeps his focus on his plate most of the time, hoovering up the large portion I gave him – extra cheese on top – and while he eats, I look at him. I wonder who this is, who my husband has become.

You never really knew how to reach me, I tell him in my head. I always thought you’d figure it out some day, but now you’re not even trying. You’re probably too busy trying to ‘reach’ into some other woman’s knickers.

I chew my pasta and wish I’d cooked something that makes more of a crunch. Another thought creeps up on me, and then another and another.

What if it’s not just sex?

What if he’s falling in love with someone else?

What if he knows how to reach her, this mystery woman he must talk to on the computer?

Then I’ll rip his chest open with my bare hands and kill him.

The force of my rage stops me cold. I put down my fork.

I’m shocked. I thought my love for Dan was comfortable, like a bath you’re not quite ready to get out of, even though it’s well on its way to lukewarm. I didn’t know there was enough left to prompt such fury.

I get up and scrape my food into the composting bin, then dump my plate in the dishwasher.

‘Are you OK?’ Dan asks, pausing from his pasta-shovelling marathon.

My face feels so stiff I’m surprised I can answer. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You didn’t finish your pasta,’ he says, his mouth still half full. I want to reach over and slap it closed. ‘It’s your favourite.’

No! I scream silently inside my head. It’s your favourite. Why can’t you ever remember that?

‘Wasn’t hungry,’ I say, then I leave the room. I want to slam the door but I don’t. I might as well have done, I suppose, because, a second later, Dan yells after me, ‘What the bloody hell have I done now?’

CHAPTER FIVE

What if …? becomes an itch I can’t stop scratching. As the days roll by, I find myself thinking about Jude all the time. In my mind he has mellowed with age, lost some of that youthful arrogance but is still ruggedly good-looking. He wears cashmere coats and Italian shoes, I imagine, as I kick Dan’s muddy trainers towards the shoe tidy and hang his windbreaker on a hook.

Safe bet? Hah! I put all my chips on Dan and yet he’s wasted almost a quarter of a century of my life. I think I hate him for it.

I haven’t done any more digging into his secrets, although I know I should. I won’t ask him if he’s banging one of the perky PE teachers at school and he’s not asking me if anything is wrong, even though we’ve hardly said more than a handful of words to each other in the last few days. I feel like I’m in a fog; everything is fuzzy and boring and grey. The only sharp thoughts in my mind are the ones I conjure up about Jude. Those are colourful and sweet and juicy. I want to live in that place, not even thinking about Dan. I am an ostrich and my head is firmly down the hole of my fantasies.

Becca comes into town on Dan’s ‘Thursday night with Sam Macmillan’ and we go for drinks. ‘Come on …’ she says, as we install ourselves at a table in the Three Compasses. ‘We’ve talked about it, now I think we just ought to do it!’

‘I told you,’ I say wearily. ‘I’m not following Dan. It would just be too … sad.’

I don’t want to be that desperate woman. I want to be her even less than I want to be a slowing fading, middle-aged empty nester, and that’s saying something.

‘Not Dan!’ she says, although she looks ready to be persuaded if I changed my mind. ‘I was talking about the reunion – it’s next week. Next Friday. Let’s go.’

‘On our own? What about Dan?’

Becca shrugs. ‘Someone mentioned in the Facebook group that they’d invited Jude.’

I study my large glass of Pinot Grigio. ‘Really?’ I haven’t told Becca about how he’s hijacked my every waking thought since we last talked of the reunion. It’s strange, I think. Becca tells me everything – Sophie calls her ‘the Queen of TMI’ – but there’s a lot I don’t tell Becca. I didn’t tell her about Jude asking me to run away with him, not back at the time and not even now. I also didn’t tell her I almost packed a bag and tried to track him down three days before my wedding.

‘You never liked Jude.’

She gives me a little one-sided shrug. ‘Maybe I was wrong about him. I was wrong about Grant, and we both might be wrong about Dan.’ I see her eyes glaze over and her jaw harden. She’s deep in thought. ‘Bastard …’ she mutters, shaking her head. ‘Just when I was starting to think not all men were cheating lizards, as well.’

I reach over and lay my hand on hers to comfort her, which seems topsy turvy but I get it. I haven’t been properly happy with Dan for five years. Maybe ten. But while Becca was stuck in her lousy marriage, she always held Dan up as the pinnacle of everything a good husband should be. She’s acting as if he’s let her down too. I don’t know if she’s ever going to forgive him for it.

‘Anyway, I think we ought to go.’

I take a long sip of wine to give myself time to think. ‘I really don’t know … Even if he’s there, he might just swan past me with his fabulous, ex-model wife. Or worse, he might not even remember me!’

‘You don’t know he has an ex-model for a wife,’ Becca says dryly, then her eyes twinkle with mischief. ‘You don’t even know he has a wife!’

‘You’ve lost your mind,’ I tell her. Not because she’s suggesting a bit of payback with my first love. Because she seriously thinks ‘done well for himself’ Jude would be even remotely interested in me these days.

‘Come on, Mags. This is you we’re talking about. You won’t be doing anything wrong. It’s not like you’re going to drag him out of there, get a room and have your wicked way with him, is it?’

While, technically, I know it will all be tame and above board if I bump into Jude at the reunion, I’m also aware how out of control my fantasy life has become in recent days. In my head I’ve done just what Becca said. Every time I think of it, my heart starts to race and I catch my breath. I feel like a teenager in the grip of her first boy-band crush. It doesn’t feel like ‘not doing anything wrong’. It feels as if I’ve already crossed a line I shouldn’t have done. I start to wonder if people who say that fantasises are harmless really know what they’re talking about.

A voice whispers in my head, Dan’s already crossed that line. Why not?

I don’t know that for sure, I reply.

Only because you’re too much of a coward to find out, the voice jeers.

I don’t have an answer for that, so I tune back into Becca on the other side of the table. ‘Please come with me, Mags?’ she says softly. ‘I really want to go.’ She shakes her head. ‘Stupid, really. I feel it’s something I need to do to put some of these ghosts behind me.’

I feel my resolve gently slipping. ‘Can’t New Guy go with you?’

She shakes her head, but doesn’t elaborate. ‘I really don’t want to walk into the room all by myself. It’s just … I’m not the same since Grant. He knocked my confidence.’

I know that. I’d watched, stood by helpless, as I’d seen him rob her of it bit by bit, unable to do anything but be a listening ear until she was ready to leave him and move on. I thought she’d done just that. I thought she’d bounced back.

I suck air in through my nostrils then puff it back out again. ‘OK. I’ll go.’

Becca lets out a huge sigh of relief and that’s when I realise this is what the constant badgering for me to go has been about all along. I feel awful I didn’t realise that before.

‘That’s it, then,’ she says, draining her glass. ‘It’s decided.’

When we’ve polished the rest of the bottle off, we book a cab to take me home and then drop Becca at the station and I give her an extra big hug.

‘Love you,’ she says and hugs me before I scramble out the car.

‘Love you too,’ I reply huskily, and then I close the door and watch the mini-cab drive away.

When I get back inside the hall light is still off. I dump my handbag on top of the shoe tidy and trudge upstairs, then I get into my pyjamas, slide between the cold sheets and try not to wonder why my husband isn’t home yet.

Dan and I don’t talk about it when we get up the next morning. I remember waking at 11.30pm and the bed was still empty, then again at 2am and he was there.

We waltz around each other in a practised dance as we have our breakfast – me passing him a knife from the drawer before he asks, him handing me the milk out the fridge so I can splash some in my tea. It’s odd that we know each other’s movements so well we can do this without thinking, while another part of me is wondering if I’ve ever known him at all.

We don’t talk about it in the evening either. Instead, we watch The One Show. When it’s finished Dan turns over to BBC Two. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t ask if I mind, so I have to sit in silence and try to be interested in cacti for the next hour. By the time the credits roll, I never want to see another of the spiky little suckers in the whole of my life. ‘That’s an hour I’ll never get back,’ I mutter.

Dan clicks the TV off and turns his head to look at me. ‘If you didn’t want to watch it, you could have said.’

‘You could have asked. Once upon a time, you would have. Not just assumed. Not just taken it for granted.’

He frowns. ‘Bloody hell, Maggie. I told you I would have turned over.’

I shake my head. He just doesn’t get it. ‘You never think about what makes me happy any more.’

Dan lets out an incredulous laugh. ‘How did we get from a stupid TV programme to this?’

I exhale and look away. Oh, for a man you didn’t have to explain everything to with brightly coloured flash cards! We’ve been together for close to twenty-five years. He should know me by now. Suddenly, I’m very angry that he doesn’t.

That was the unspoken promise on our wedding day, I’d thought. That we’d grow old together, mesh our souls so tightly that we’d finish each other’s sentences, share that weird kind of telepathy I’d seen between my grandparents before they’d died. But Dan has never once completed a sentence of mine, and I seem to have to explain myself to him more than ever nowadays.

You were supposed to at least try, I wail inside my head. That was the deal.

I will him to understand me, but after looking at me for a few seconds, he huffs, picks up his half-empty mug and leaves the room. I slump down on my end of the sofa and cross my arms. Part of me hasn’t got the energy to knock this into his thick skull; the other half wants to follow him and pick a fight.

I collect my mug, swill down the last of my cold decaf and head for the kitchen, where I let him know, at volume, just where he can put his effing muddy shoes.

CHAPTER SIX

1992

I stare at my face in the bathroom mirror. The young me. The wrong me.

‘Maggie!’ Becca calls again. ‘Are you there?’

I hear her walking into the kitchen, looking for me, probably. If I remember rightly, she has some juicy gossip to deliver about her night with Stevo Watts and she won’t want to wait. I screw my face up and close my eyes. No. That’s wrong. How can this be? How can I be here, now, and still … remembering. It’s not possible.

I turn the tap on and splash the cold water on my face, hoping it’ll wake me up, but all it does is cause freezing droplets to run down my neck. I shiver.

What do I do? This can’t be real. Can it?

‘Margaret Alison Greene!’ Becca yells, doing a passable imitation of my mother when she’s in a snit. It’s not quite perfect, though, because I can hear a smile in her voice. My bedroom door squeaks as she continues her sweep of the flat. I realise I can’t stay here in the bathroom, hiding. Eventually she’s going to find me.

‘Maggie?’ she calls and this time the smile is gone. Her footsteps get faster.

Don’t think about it, I tell myself. There’ll be time for answers later.

I nod at my reflection and notice that the young girl looks tense and serious, much more like the woman I’m used to seeing in the mirror, then I dry my face, take a deep breath and walk out into the hallway. I find Becca in the kitchen, making herself a cup of tea.

‘There you are!’ she says, grinning at me. ‘I was starting to think you’d been abducted by aliens!’

I just nod. I can’t seem to find my voice.

It was weird enough seeing Young Me in the mirror, but seeing Young Becca is even more surreal. I’m caught in the grip of déjà vu so strong that it makes my stomach roll.

‘God, are you alright? You look like you’re about to faint. Bad night, huh?’ She puts a hand on my shoulder then gives me a cheeky look. ‘Or should I say a really good one?’

‘Something like that …’ I manage to croak.

‘Well, whatever your night of debauchery was like, I doubt it could be as bad as mine!’

Wanna bet? I think.

She turns to grab two mugs off the wooden tree near the kettle. ‘I’ll tell you all about it, but after I’ve done this. I’m gasping for a cuppa!’

I watch her in silence as she begins to make the tea. Her hair is still a mousy colour with a hint of honey that I remember, the colour it was before she discovered highlights and started covering up the premature grey. That’s not the only difference to the Becca I know in my real life. I’d thought present-day Becca glowed? Not compared to this. There’s a sense of energy and bounce to this Becca – resilience – that’s been eroded from my best friend of twenty-plus years. All the scars, all the knocks in her confidence from her crappy marriage and her horrible divorce, are gone and they’re all the more glaring for their absence.

A rush of love for her hits me, for the friend she once was and for the survivor she will become. I launch myself at her and hug her hard.

‘Hey!’ she says, as she drops the teaspoon she’s holding. It bounces on the Formica counter, but she giggles and hugs me back.

‘I’ve missed you,’ I say into her hair.

‘Daft mare,’ she mutters. ‘I was only gone for one night!’ She pulls away, shakes her head affectionately, finishes making the tea and hands me one. I keep expecting senses in this dream … this whatever it is … to be dulled, muffled, so the heat of the cheap ceramic mug against my fingers shocks me.

Becca traipses into the living room, where she collapses onto the end of the velour sofa, tucking her legs up underneath her. I follow suit, taking up my spot on the opposite end. ‘So … how was it? How was he?’ I ask, wondering if I’m a good enough actress to pull off being shocked and outraged when she tells me. I remember the details of this little escapade all too well.

Becca looks at me over the rim of her mug. ‘Disappointing.’

‘He was no good?’

‘Never got that far,’ Becca says darkly. ‘His mate Dave was throwing a party so we ended up at his flat. Ten minutes after we arrived, I went in search of a drink and when I’d got back Stevo had disappeared.’

‘No!’ I say with my best attempt at disbelief. Becca seems to buy it, but probably because she’s so wrapped up in retelling her tale she hasn’t noticed my lousy performance. ‘Where did he go?’

‘He skipped off to one of the bedrooms with Adrienne Palmer, that’s where! All those years dreaming he was the perfect guy, and thinking, if only he’d notice me my life would be sorted!’

I don’t remember much about Stevo Watts, but I do remember that as a third-year student, he’d had a reputation for prowling round the freshers. ‘Fresh meat’, I’d heard he’d called them.

I realise my best friend’s strategy with men hasn’t changed much: she finds the most good-looking, alpha jerks to swoon over, is completely bowled over if they notice her and then falls at their feet and does anything they want. That’s how she’d ended up with the horrible ex. I’ve been crossing my fingers hard that the lovely new man back in our real life is going to break that pattern.

‘You need someone who loves you for you, not just because you’re their devoted follower,’ I tell her. ‘Someone who is ready to do as much for you as you are for them.’ I have no idea if she’ll listen to me, or if she’ll even remember this next time she spies one of her ‘guys’, but at least I’ve got to try.

‘I know.’ She sighs. ‘I wish I could find someone like Dan – faithful, capable of a proper relationship. Not a total turd, in other words.’

I hold my tongue. University Dan might fit that description, but present-day Dan might be giving it a run for its money.

‘That man is gold dust, Maggie. You’re just lucky you nabbed him before anyone else did!’ she adds, laughing.

I ignore the comment and lean forward. I’ve been guilty of taking present-day Becca for granted, not looking hard enough, so now I study her counterpart. ‘Are you OK? Really?’

She sighs again. ‘Yeah. Nothing much damaged but my pride.’

‘Hey, why don’t I treat you to breakfast? To cheer you up?’

Becca grins. ‘At Al’s?’

I stand up. ‘Where else?’

How could I have forgotten Al’s Cafe? He served the best greasy fry-ups in south-west London. There’s no Starbucks, no Costa, here and now, I remind myself. No organic cafes where you can get porridge and compote or chia-seed smoothies. If you want to go out for breakfast, a full English or a bacon buttie it is.

Before I head off to my bedroom I run my fingers through my fringe. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any spare hair grips, have you?’

‘What on earth for?’

I flatten the short hair of my fringe to the side of my head. ‘I want to pin this back.’

Becca just laughs at me as she fetches a couple of grips she’d left on the bookshelf. ‘You only had it cut like that on Saturday! Honestly, Mags, one of these days you’re going to have to make your mind up and decide what you really want – none of this flip-flopping between different options until the rest of us want to smack you senseless.’

I smile at her, but I take the grips from her open hand. ‘Thanks. I’ll be back in two secs …’

CHAPTER SEVEN

I look down with glee at my two sausages, bacon, beans, and eggs with bursting yellow yolks. It’s been almost twenty-five years since I’ve had one of Al’s breakfasts and I can’t wait. I take a bite of the bacon, a bit with crinkly brown edges, close my eyes and let out a moan of satisfaction.

‘Steady on,’ Becca says, with a mouthful of egg, from across the table. ‘I don’t want you going all Meg Ryan on me!’

‘It’s a distinct possibility,’ I mumble as I shove another mouthful in. ‘Oh, my … It’s every bit as good as I remember.’

Becca frowns. ‘We were only in here on Wednesday!’

I shake my head. ‘I really shouldn’t eat so much junk.’

‘We’re young. What else are we going to do?’

I chuckle, because I realise she’s right – I’m young again. No more boring forty-something life! No more ties and responsibilities! I’m free. I’ve got at least another ten years before my metabolism slows and I have to start worrying about piling on the pounds.

The thought floats through my mind quite benignly, but then it slams against a brick wall and I go cold all over. What am I talking about? This isn’t real. I’m not staying. I don’t even want to start thinking like that in case I jinx it and don’t wake up.

Oh, God. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m in a coma! And this is just my subconscious having a field day while my family stand around my hospital bed and cry.

‘Dodgy sausage?’ Becca asks, seeing the look on my face.

I shake my head, but I don’t explain.

‘So what’s the plan for today?’ she asks.

I pause. Maybe I am in a coma or having a psychotic break, but I look outside the cafe window, where the sun is shining, announcing the promise of an empty, unspoilt day; I feel Al’s breakfast warming my belly, and I can’t quite bring myself to believe it. It all seems so real.

Isn’t this what I wanted? To wind back the years? I have no idea how long it’s going to last, when I might wake up with a tube down my throat or wearing a fetching white jacket with straps and buckles, so I might as well make the most of it.

‘We probably should be revising,’ I say. Finals start next week. I know that much.

Becca makes a face and I laugh. Usually, I’m the sensible one and she’s the one who’s the bad influence, but today I sense we’re going to have something of a role reversal. I’m not going to waste this glorious day stuck indoors bent over a textbook.

‘I think we ought to start with shopping,’ I say. ‘Serious shopping.’

Her eyes twinkle. ‘Kingston?’ she asks hopefully.

I shake my head. ‘Oxford Street.’

The twinkle in Becca’s eyes reaches her mouth and she grins at me.

‘And after that, whatever we want to do, whatever takes our fancy. As long as it’s fun!’

‘Good plan,’ she says, then snaps to attention and does a Benny Hill backwards salute at me. ‘Reporting for Maggie and Becca’s Day of Fun!’

I smack her hand away from her head and laugh. ‘Shut up.’

‘Oops, don’t look now.’ She nods to something outside the window. ‘Here comes lover boy … Just don’t you go changing all our perfect plans on me now he’s arrived.’

I turn and a jolt of electricity first stops then restarts my heart.

‘Dan …’ I whisper.

‘Oh, God,’ Becca mutters. ‘I think I’m gonna puke.’

I can’t take my eyes off him as he walks past the plate-glass window at the front of the cafe, grinning because he’s spotted us, and then opens the door and walks in. He leans down to kiss me softly, lingering in a way he hasn’t done in years, then sits down beside Becca so he can keep looking at me. My heart is going again, but it hasn’t yet resumed a normal rhythm.

I am honestly struck dumb in his presence, part of me shocked at how young, how good-looking, how energetic this version of Dan seems to be, and part of me wanting to reach across the table and slap him hard for making me feel this way when Future Dan is quite possibly having it away with Miss Perky Gym Teacher.