The Start of Us

The woman at the desk just in front of me sighs as she taps her keyboard. Her acrylic nails clack against the keys. She glances up before checking the silver mobile phone on the desk beside her. She obviously can’t see me. I try to think about who she might be, and why I’m here, watching her, but my mind is uncooperative: sticky and slow with the shock of being here, of what’s just happened with Mike.

I have never been able to move or able to reach out and touch the people I can see, and I am stuck in one position now too. I turn my head slightly, the only movement I can make, to look out of the travel agent’s window. I can make out cobbled streets, and I don’t think it’s Blackpool but that only tells me where I am not.

And then I see someone else who makes my heart stop.

She leans against the counter of what seems to be a currency change bureau and flips through a brochure, her eyes flitting over words, focusing on the shiny images of creamy sands and fluorescent blue seas.

It’s me. Or somebody identical to me.

It’s another Erica who has the same bone structure, the same fine dark hair and long fringe that falls into her face and green eyes and one stray freckle on her left cheek, as I do. But this Erica has a coloured braid in her hair, a sign of a recent trip abroad, an urge to change her look and shout about the fun she had. Her face is relaxed, her skin glowing. The tip of her nose is slightly pink as though she missed it with the sun cream, which I always do.

‘Looking for your next trip already, Erica?’ asks the woman who still clacks away at her computer as she talks. The sound of someone saying my name jolts me. I want to shout out, to say something, but nothing will come out of my mouth. I am mute, not really here.

The other Erica looks at her colleague and shrugs, a small sideways smile on her lips. Do I smile like that? Discomfort pulls at me as I watch her mannerisms that must be mine too. I can’t bear to see myself from so many angles at once but can’t stop looking either. How can you know yourself so well yet so little?

‘Maybe,’ she answers her colleague, her voice making me prickle with a self-awareness so intense I can barely stand it. It’s a sound that is foreign and mine all at once. ‘I’m thinking Australia. Or maybe Thailand. Just me and a backpack.’

‘You’ve only just got back to Yorkshire,’ the woman says, shaking her head and checking her phone again.

Yorkshire. The sound of the place I left so long ago quickens my pulse and I take a deep breath. There is so much that I don’t understand, but Erica is talking again and I can’t miss a second of it.

‘So what? It’s my twenty-eighth birthday next week.’ Erica wrinkles her nose and I put my hand up to my own nose self-consciously. ‘It’ll be my present to myself. I’ve saved for years. And I promised myself I’d see as much of the world as I can by the time I’m thirty. So I owe it to myself.’ As she speaks, she looks straight at me, as though she knows I am watching her, as though she knows I haven’t done any of the travelling that seems so important to everyone else. I try to back away, panicked at the thought of our identical eyes meeting. My limbs won’t move, but still I try to summon the power to try to make them. I squeeze my eyes shut to try and concentrate all my energy on stepping backwards, and as I do, overwhelming dizziness drags me down, making me fall. As I plunge through different worlds, scrambling to try and place my feet upon something solid, another scene flashes before me. A flash of road. A motorway sign.

And then I am flung back into Em’s bedroom, onto the soft tangle of purple that I left behind.

I sit up and place my hand on my chest, trying to steady my breaths. My legs are weak and nausea swirls through me. I stumble over to the window, lifting the heavy patterned curtains. It’s still dark outside, but that tells me nothing really: I could have been gone hours or minutes. It felt like I was there for only seconds, but I know from when I used to disappear like this that seconds in one world can be hours in another.

As I stare out into the backyard of the house I’m in, beyond to row upon row of terraced Victorian houses and bins and gates and children’s slides and cars all coated in the blue darkness of the night, I think about what I have just seen. The words I listened to whisper again and again in my mind until they take a shape and meaning of their own.

I was in Yorkshire, the place that I left when I was twelve years old and have never returned to. But the other Erica who lived there said that it was her twenty-eighth birthday next week, which means that whatever world I saw, whatever parallel universe it was, it wasn’t the past or the future. It was now.

I adjust my focus and see my reflection in the tall sash window. I see my puffed eyes and my pale skin, the fear from Mike ending things etched, somehow, into my features. I thought my disappearances that could happen any time I was alone, the blinding headaches and dizziness followed by the terror of the ground falling from beneath me, were behind me. The last one was years ago, and before tonight they had taken on the vague, uncertain shape of very first memories, the kind with no start or end or evidence for. I wonder, hot panic snaking its way through my body why they have returned here, and now. And I wonder when the other Erica’s life ended, and this one that I am living began.

Chapter 3

I’m woken the next day by the buzzer of my flat. My head is heavy, my mouth dry. My first thought is that last night my strange vision of the other me, and Mike ending things, was surely all a dream. A nightmare, I correct myself. I lurch the small distance from my bedroom to the front door. My eyes are sore with crying and the weight of anxiety and hurt slowly settles in my stomach like a rock. So, I realise, the Mike episode definitely happened.

But the disappearance can’t have been real. I can’t be going through this all over again. I’ve grown out of it. I shake off the images of the other Erica in the travel agent’s that still float in my mind. I try to distract myself from seeing her tanned face, its every crease so familiar, by talking myself through what must have happened. I probably fell asleep for a few hours, because Daniel came back into Em’s room as I stood at the window. It was about 3am then, and he phoned a cab to bring me home. I fell into my bed still fully clothed, peeling my boots off and throwing them across the room. I slept some more, which made the events of last night seem even more surreal. And so now, as I twist open the silver latch, it seems likely that I just drank a lot at the party and had a strange dream. Nothing more happened.

‘Good night?’ my friend Zoe asks as she stalks past me into my flat. She turns back and frowns at me as I stand motionless instead of following her. ‘Why are you wearing yesterday’s clothes?’ She looks more closely at me: my crumpled black dress, yesterday’s makeup smeared by tears.

‘Oh, God, Erica. What’s happened?’

I crumble, sobs forcing their way out of my aching body as I give an outline of the story Mike gave me. I need to let him go. He’s known for a while. Kath.

Zoe’s face is white. Nobody expected this to happen. I can see that everybody I tell will gasp like Zoe, their eyes wide and their faces ashen as I tell them what I tell her: that Mike’s made up his mind, he’s living our life without me in it, he’s fallen for somebody else who won’t bore him by staying in one place for too long.

‘I honestly had no idea he’d do this. What a bastard,’ Zoe says as she makes tea. She shakes her head. ‘Well. Look at it this way. You can focus on your job now. And maybe get something similar when your contract runs out. You don’t need to go away. It was Mike pushing you to do that.’

I think of the other version of me that I saw, or dreamt – surely dreamt – and what she said about travelling and try to ignore the nausea that accompanies the memory. I promised myself I’d see as much of the world as I can by the time I’m thirty. So I owe it to myself. Then I think of Daniel, the man at the party, making me toast my new future … So much happened last night that a lot of it is blurred together, but his words about buildings and changing plans are bright in my mind.

‘Well, maybe I will go abroad and see different places. Maybe it isn’t because of Mike that I want to go away. I could do it on my own.’

Zoe looks uncertain, takes a sip of her tea. ‘Do you really think it’s for you? No offense, Erica, but you only just moved out of your mum’s house a few years ago. You don’t really strike me as the lone traveller type. You were just going along with Mike, weren’t you?’

‘Maybe. To be completely honest,’ I say, looking down into my mug, because I feel like I’m never completely honest with Zoe, ‘I know I’ve always avoided moving. I hated it so much the first time, when we first came here to Blackpool.’ And I couldn’t trust myself to be alone in a strange place, I add silently.

Until I met Mike, my disappearances were too frequent, too unpredictable and frightening, for me to be alone. As long as somebody could see me, I wouldn’t disappear. But when they started happening less often, and then stopped altogether a few years ago, I decided that I could finally move on and rent my own flat. I swallow down my anxiety. It was a dream. ‘But now,’ I continue quickly, ‘life is passing me by. I think it’s time for me to be a bit braver. I owe it to myself.’ I parrot the other version of me, feeling self-conscious, as though by speaking the same words she did, our two worlds will brush against one another and cause an electric surge, a jolt or a buzz of energy. But nothing happens. Zoe leans forward, oblivious, and bangs her mug down on the coffee table.

‘You don’t need to change just because Mike told you to. You two were really different.’

‘That’s what he said. I always thought that was a good thing.’

‘Well, whether it was or not, you’re fine as you are.’

I smile. ‘Thanks. But thinking about travelling isn’t for Mike. It’s for me. I think on some level, I’m meant to be somewhere else.’

Zoe rolls her eyes. ‘Oh no, don’t go all meaning of life on me. If you’re sure about it though …’ she thinks for a minute, then takes her phone from her bag, jabbing at the buttons before handing it to me. ‘Here you go. There’s Nina’s number.’

‘Nina?’

‘Yes, Nina. You know, my cousin Jen’s friend?’

I try to think, to pull a memory of Nina to the front of my heavy mind. I picture her: white-blonde hair, even whiter teeth, a smattering of piercings.

‘She’s going to Thailand soon. Jen was saying the other day that Nina’s been trying to make Jen put off her nurse training for a year and go with her. She doesn’t want to go alone. But Jen’s set on staying here now. You could go with Nina instead, if you really wanted to.’

I nod and press call.

***

The conversation with Nina is short, slightly stilted at first, an awkward mix of silences and moments where we both speak at the same time so that neither of our words can be heard.

‘I heard you’re wanting a travelling bud—’

‘How’s the museu—’

‘Oh sorry!’

‘Sorry, go on,’

It goes on like this for a few minutes, until Nina bores of the small talk.

‘Did you mention the travelling?’

‘Yeah. I’m with Zoe. She said you want someone to go with?’

‘Yep,’ she says simply.

‘Okay. Well, the thought of going alone scares me a bit too, to be honest. I’ve only looked into the basics before. I was going to go with, uh, Mike, my erm … Well anyway, now I’m not with him and so I don’t really know where to start.’

‘You split up with Mike? God, sorry. Why?’

‘Oh,’ I say, waving my hand in the air pointlessly. ‘Long story. But it’d be good to chat about where you’re going, if you’ve found anywhere to work and things like that.’

‘Yeah, okay. I’m working my last shift at Coffee Mansion next week. Everyone gets free coffee for friends when it’s their last shift. If you want, I’ll let you know when I get my rota and you can come in.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I will.’

***

It’s Friday. My birthday.

‘I think I’d rather stay in tonight, you know,’ I say on the phone to my brother Nicholas when he calls to wish me happy birthday. Nicholas and his wife Amelia are driving up from Oxford today and we’re going out for dinner later on. The past few days have shaken me and I want to snap shut, refuse to let anyone in. I can’t really face the idea of going out where I might know people who will ask questions about why I’m not out with Mike on my birthday.

‘Not an option,’ Nicholas says. ‘I’ve promised Amelia a pub crawl around the finest of Blackpool’s bars. And Phoebe is looking forward to a night in with Mum.’

I smile, relenting. I’ve only seen my niece a few times since she was born last year, and the thought of her sweet, ripe skin and feathery blonde hair lifts me and makes me feel bolder somehow.

‘I’m so excited to see her.’

‘Oh great. It’s like this everywhere we go now. All about Phoebe. I think I might pop her in a taxi to Blackpool and stay here in bed for a few days. Catch up on sleep.’

I laugh. ‘No, don’t do that. I need to see you too.’ The image of the other Erica fills my mind, unbidden, and I ache to tell Nicholas about it. But I don’t. If I tell him, he might try to persuade me that it was real, and I can’t believe that right now. I can’t process the possibility that this might be happening to me again, because I can’t let it stop me from making the plans I should have made so long ago but was too scared to.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘we’ve just got a few more billion things to pack for Phoebe and then we’ll be on our way. We’ll see you at Mum’s, okay? She’ll give you a ring when we get there.’

We say goodbye and I wander into my bedroom and make the bed, pulling the covers straight. It’s ten in the morning. Nicholas won’t be here until about six. I have taken the whole of next week off work and the days stretch out before me. I pick up my mobile phone. The thought that I could text Mike flits through my mind like a brittle leaf in the wind. But no. I won’t do that. And I won’t give up on the day either. It’s my birthday. It’s a day to celebrate, not wallow.

I will go for a walk along the promenade. The rush of salty air never fails to make me feel better. It’s the reason I live in this tiny, boxy flat that has magnolia walls and magnolia carpets and the sound of a furious, howling baby from upstairs at regular intervals all through the day and night: I want to be near the sea. I was too angry to appreciate it when I was twelve and we first moved here. Mum and Dad had just split up, and Blackpool represented an enforced change that I didn’t want to be a part of. But Mum grew up here, so when she was finding somewhere new for us to live, she felt drawn to it. Now, the sea with its constant ebbs and flows, its power and sense of freedom, has become something that I take pleasure in. I looked around so many flats, and was uninspired by every single one except this one, which looks out onto the grassy walkway and grey waves of North Shore beach.

Just as I’m pulling on my black trainers, my phone buzzes in my hand. People keep texting to ask me if Mike is spoiling me, if he’s bought me anything nice. They don’t know not to ask that, because I still haven’t told many people that he’s gone, and he obviously hasn’t either. Not that he ever bought me anything nice. He was more of a joke gift kind of person.

I wait a few minutes before opening the text. When I do, I see that it’s from Daniel. I vaguely remember telling him it was my birthday today. He has my number because he made me text him to say I got home okay in the early hours of the other morning, after he called me a taxi home from the party.

Happy bday. Daniel x

I’m not sure why but Daniel has had a strange presence in my mind over the past few days. His words and kindness have been a welcome distraction from the stinging memory of what happened with Mike. I’ve thought of getting in touch with him a couple of times but I haven’t wanted to bother him after I took over his night at the party. Now, I hesitate for a moment then press the ‘call’ button above his message. He sounds surprised when he answers.

‘Thanks for the text,’ I say.

‘That’s okay.’

‘Most people are asking what Mike bought me. It was nice to get a text that didn’t ask me that.’

‘Why, what did he get you?’

It’s a bad joke, but I smile anyway. ‘You know too well. You suffered the brunt.’

‘Not really. I’m glad I was there. What are you doing today, anyway?’

I lie back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, the cracks in the wallpaper, the ugly green lightshade that I’ve never changed because my path with Mike never veered near home improvement aisles.

DIY? Really? Mike would have said if I’d suggested it. He would have made me go out to the pub instead. But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? As Mike fades out of my mind as soon as he entered it, I realise that Daniel is still waiting for me to answer.

‘My brother’s coming later with his wife. We’re going out,’ I tell him.

‘Sounds good. Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. I was meant to book somewhere.’ Everywhere seems a bit tainted now. Every restaurant that I like is now a restaurant that reminds me of Mike.

‘I tried a nice new Italian last week. It’s right in the town centre, opposite the Winter Gardens.’

‘A new place sounds perfect.’

‘I think it’s called Luigi’s.’

‘Thanks, Daniel. I’ll look it up.’ I pause, listening to static, reluctant to let our conversation come to an end. ‘Did you really have to work on Sunday, after the party?’ I ask. ‘It was late when we were talking and I was ordering you to get me drinks and tissues. And then you were still there in the early hours, phoning me a taxi. I hope you got through the next day okay.’

‘Oh, I was fine. I was just finishing off some plans, so I was working from home. And I liked doing the drink and tissue runs. Although next time I see you, I hope you cry less.’

‘I’ll try my best.’ The thought of seeing Daniel again makes something in me fizz, and then I think of Mike again, and the fizzing evaporates. ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘I should let you go, and stop interrupting your work.’

‘No. I’ve got what I needed to do finished so I’ve got the rest of the day off. Is your brother getting there soon?’

‘Oh, no. He’s driving from Oxford and he has a one-year-old with him, so I think he might have to make a few stops.’

‘Well, I was meant to play football over in Manchester later, but I’m awful at it. And between you and me, I don’t actually really like it that much. So if you want to do something, we can. Totally up to you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. Really sure. I’ve never even scored a goal.’

‘I meant about doing something.’

‘I’m sure.’

I stand up, wander over to my window and look beyond the grassy walkways, the churning waves in the distance. The sun is bright and high, the sky marred only by a few wisps of cloud. I love September and the way it can be summer one day, autumn the next. Today is one of those days that could shape itself into anything. I’m about to say just one word. It’ll take only one moment. But as I do, I feel the undercurrent of possibility – a tiny seed blooming into something bright that will change my landscape forever.

‘Yes.’

Chapter 4

‘Is he in love with you?’ Amelia asks, eyeing me over her wine glass.

It’s almost nine o’clock. We’ve been in Luigi’s for an hour or so, eating slowly and lazily: pleasantly oily garlic bread, silky pasta and crisp salad. I’ve had two glasses of red wine and feel strangely detached from the last few days, as though they happened to someone I was watching.

It happened again tonight. As I waited for Nicholas to pick me up, spritzing myself with my favourite perfume, the bottle dropped from my hand onto my carpet, my head feeling as though it would burst with pressure and pain. I saw a stretch of road, debris scattered along it. And then I was back, the sweet fragrance that clouded around me suddenly too much to bear, burning my eyes and making me heave. I was gone for only a few seconds, but I missed long enough of the song that was playing on the radio to make it clear that I couldn’t dismiss what had happened at the party as a dream for much longer. It was one thing when this had happened to me as a child, and it hadn’t been easy then. It affected my friendships and made me scared to become too close to anyone in case they found out my secret. But fear of what this might mean for me now, for living on my own and my job and the rest of my life, has been pulling at me all evening.

‘Who, Mike?’ I tear apart a piece of garlic bread and dip it into my pasta sauce. ‘Well, he sent one of his friends round to my flat today to pick up an Oasis CD, a toastie machine, and some socks. And I haven’t actually spoken to him since we split up. So it doesn’t seem as though he’s in love with me, does it?’

‘No, not Mike. Forget about Mike. I meant Daniel. He must have put a lot of effort into today.’

I put the garlic bread down, wipe the oil from my fingers and fan myself with the napkin, suddenly too warm. Amelia is right. Daniel picked me up soon after we’d spoken on the phone this morning and drove us to Lake Windermere. We talked all the way there, about the party, what we knew about Kevin and Sophie, our jobs and our friends and lives. Daniel parked the car a little way from the centre, and we bought ice creams on the walk towards the lake. The air was sharp with the late summer heat, salty and sweet with chips and freshly fried donuts. Daniel was energetic, his quick stride making me rush to keep up. In the end I laughed, breathless, and asked him to slow down, and he took my hand, told me to yank him back if he went too quickly and left me behind.

‘I’m glad I’ve seen you again today,’ I said to him as we sat on a bench that faced out towards the glittering lake, eating our ice creams. ‘Otherwise you’d have just thought of me as the strange crying girl from the party. Nobody wants to be that girl.’

Daniel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, erasing a trace of vanilla I’d noticed a few minutes before. ‘We’ve all been there. I’ve had a bad breakup in the past. It’s just that I wasn’t at a party, so nobody saw me at the worst bit. You were just unlucky.’

‘I don’t know. I definitely feel unlucky being dumped. But I can’t help feeling like it was lucky, in the end, that I was at the party when it happened. You made me feel better. So I’m glad I went. I bet you didn’t have someone to let you cry on them.’

Daniel shook his head and took out his chocolate flake before biting it in half. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Well, it really helped me. I want to say that I’ll repay the favour someday. But hopefully I won’t need to.’ I looked straight out at the water, at the boats, at the children throwing grains of food for the ducks onto the smooth pebbles, and then glanced sideways at Daniel.

‘Here’s hoping. I like to think I learnt from what happened with my ex and would do a better job of things next time. But you never quite know, do you?’

‘You really don’t. Are you over it?’ I asked.

‘What, the breakup? Yes. Completely. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would. She ended it. Went off with some guy she’d met in the supermarket.’

‘You’re joking? I didn’t think people actually met in supermarket aisles.’

‘Nope, me neither, until then. Thought I was safe when she popped out for milk.’ He laughs. ‘But things were all wrong with us anyway. I just didn’t realise it until after she was gone and I felt more like me than I had done when I was with her, if that makes sense.’

‘It does,’ I said. We sat quietly for a bit, the sun-scorched bench warm beneath us. ‘What aisle was it?’ I asked after a few minutes.