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

Jude laughs. Not one of his slightly cynical huffs, but a proper loud one, as if what I said tickles him. ‘Never really thought of you as the running-away type,’ he says and there’s an added edge of velvet to his tone. In an instant, the air around us changes.

I stop, turn and look at him. I know I’m being stupid. I know I could be endangering everything by just being with him, let alone feeling … this … with him, but it’s like having an itch I’ve been trying not to scratch and on a reflex I’m reaching for it, taking my satisfaction in shredding what’s left of my resolve to pieces with my fingernails.

‘Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.’

He answers me with a smile. A wicked one. ‘You’ve changed.’

I stare him straight in the eyes. ‘Yes, I have.’

He glances towards Derwent Hall and then back to me again. The sounds of the party are drifting through the open common-room windows and across the lake. The geese pay no attention. It’s nothing they haven’t heard before. ‘Then Dave’s a very lucky man.’

I hold my breath and stare back at him. I feel as if my life is teetering on a fulcrum, that if I make one false movement it’ll tip. I know this moment is crucial but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.

All I know is that Dan is going to propose to me in four days and not even the tiniest part of me wants to say yes.

Becca finds me the next day in the canteen, while I’m buying a sad-looking tuna-and-sweetcorn baguette. I deliberately pretended to be asleep this morning, because I didn’t want to talk to her about last night. However, it appears that may not have been the best call, because my boyfriend clearly got to her first. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asks. ‘Dan told me you were a total bitch to him last night.’

I raise my eyebrows and turn to look at her. ‘He said that?’

‘Those weren’t his exact words. But I can read between the lines.’

She picks up a bottle of Appletiser and joins the queue. ’You need to apologise to him.’

Part of me wants to remind her what she said on the phone the night I told her Dan might be cheating on me, but I know that I can’t. She’ll think I’m crazy. I also know she’s right. This Dan has done nothing. If I filter out all the things he will do and will say, and look at the situation objectively, I can only come to one conclusion: I was a total bitch to him last night.

‘I know,’ I reply with a sigh.

After lunch I go in search of Dan. I find him at Al’s, nursing a cup of half-cold tea. I sit down opposite him. ‘Sorry,’ I say and he looks at me warily. ‘Put it down to hormones and the stress of looming exams.’

His jaw remains tight, but there’s a softening in his eyes. ‘We’re alright, then?’

I nod. As alright as we can be in this version of our life, I suppose.

He surprises me by half-standing, leaning across the table and planting a lingering kiss on my lips, right in front of Al and the rest of his motley customers, then he pulls away and looks at me seriously. ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,’ he says. ‘I can hardly believe I’m the lucky man you picked. Always remember that. Always make me remember that.’

A lump forms in my throat and my eyes grow moist. All morning I’ve been imagining what it would be like to say yes to Jude, but now I don’t know what I want. Could I make Dan remember how he feels about me in this moment, even years from now when he really doesn’t want to? Our whole lives could be different if I could.

CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_938554d2-c364-5d9d-9580-d2ed9494b9aa)

Three days. Two days. One.

My brain is counting down to the inevitable. I know it’s coming. Dan’s proposal. Even my fit of extreme bitchiness last week hasn’t seemed to have put him off. If anything, he’s trying harder than ever because of the seed of doubt I’ve planted in his mind.

When I’m with him it really is like the old days and I don’t have to fake the affection in my smile, but when we part … well, that’s when the old memories – the ‘forward’ memories – start creeping in.

What do I do?

Up until now I’ve been doing my best to just go with the flow, do what feels good. It was easy when I thought I’d wake up and realise this has all been a vivid dream, but it’s been over two weeks now. I’m also pretty sure this is no waiting room for heaven.

Which leaves only one possibility: this is real. Somehow I’ve jumped backwards in time, fully conscious of the life I’ve already lived and I’ve got to do it all over again. I’ve always thought the opportunity to go back and change the things you regret would be a blessing. Now the prospect of it frightens me.

If I’m staying here I can’t keep messing around. If I’ve really got to do it all again I’ve got to start thinking about the choices I’m making. Making the wrong one tonight could ruin everything.

I shake my head as I look in the mirror. I’m supposed to be getting ready for a meal out with Dan, but all this mental wrangling is making it a heck of a job to do my mascara. I keep poking myself in the eyeball or blinking before it’s dry and being rewarded with a row of black dots under my lashes and then having to wipe it off and start again. I take a deep breath and will my hand to stay steady.

Dan’s done a good job of being nonchalant about this date, but I know he’s booked a posh Italian restaurant in Putney and afterwards he’ll suggest a walk along the river and then he’ll take my hands, look me in the eye and my future will be sealed.

Last time I was so sure what I wanted.

They say hindsight is twenty-twenty. What they don’t tell you is that it’s crystal sharp and painful.

My heart is telling me to run, to veer off course and to do the things I’d always wished I’d done: to travel, love furiously and have wild affairs, to find a job I love and excel at it, but my head is urging caution. I wish I could dismiss those doubts, but unfortunately I keep coming up with very good points.

What about Sophie?

Could I stand a future without her in it?

Because if I don’t choose Dan, she might never exist. Or even if I do, there might not be any guarantees. What if we have sex ten minutes later that night of conception? Will I end up with a different little girl? Or was Sophie always meant to be? What if she’s more than the sum of two joined sets of chromosomes?

I put my mascara brush down and stare at myself in the mirror. There are clumps on my upper left lashes and a smudge on my right eyelid but I really can’t face another attempt. I’m too tired.

There’s a knock on the door as I’m putting my lipstick on. Red. The sort of colour I never wear any more. The sort of colour I didn’t really opt for much when I was this age the first time around.

Becca answers the door and when I walk into the living room, she and Dan are standing there, laughing at a joke I’ve not been privy to. He turns to look at me and hands me a bunch of red roses. There’s hope in his eyes, but also nervousness.

Becca makes the same sort of noise Sophie used to make when watching cute cat videos on YouTube. ‘Awww … aren’t you sweet,’ she tells Dan and then she gently prises the roses from my hand. ‘Why don’t you two get off? I’ll put these in water.’

I want to snatch them back. I want to tell Becca I’d rather do it myself, to delay the moment when I have to walk out that front door with Dan and be on my own with him, but I don’t. I don’t know how to say it without seeming rude. Or slightly insane.

Becca practically shoves us out the front door and into the hallway. ‘I won’t wait up!’ she jokes and, as the door closes behind us, I wonder if she knows, if Dan has confided in her, and two things strike me – one, that I wonder why I hadn’t twigged that he was going to propose this night the first time around, because I had a suspicion at the time he was working up to it and, two, that I’m jealous. I don’t like the fact that my husband-to-be and my best friend have shared a secret and left me out of it. Hypocritical, really, when I’m seriously considering breaking his heart this evening. Until I came back here I hadn’t realised how selfish I can be, how wrapped up in my own stuff that I don’t see what’s going on under my nose.

‘Shall we?’ Dan says, and offers me his arm. I smile at him, a smile that’s warm and bright and about as substantial as candy floss.

Dinner is a blur. I eat, I drink, I nod and laugh in the right places, but the only sensation I can really remember when it’s over is a growing sense of panic. As Dan takes my hand and heads towards the river my heart starts to pound. I can hear the echo of it rushing in my ears.

We walk past the crowded pubs with drinkers spilling out across the narrow street and onto the embankment. We keep going until their laughter and chatter is more distant, until we reach the rowing club. There’s a break in the railings and we walk down to the far edge of the shallow concrete slope the rowers use to put their boats in the river. As we stand there, staring across at the tree-lined bank on the other side, I can hear the music of the water slapping against the hulls of the little motor boats moored close by.

Dan seems paralysed. I keep shooting glances in his direction, wondering when he’s going to make his move, but he just keeps staring at the darkness in front of him. Was he like this before? I wonder. If he was, I didn’t notice it. I remember the night being balmy and warm, the lapping of the gentle river waves romantic.

Just when I think he’s chickened out, he sucks in a breath and turns to me. We’ve been still for so long it makes me jump, and that makes him smile. The serious look he’s been wearing for the last ten minutes vanishes.

He reaches for my hands and I swallow.

‘You know how I feel about you …’ he says softly.

My heart can’t help cracking a little at his words. How can you love and hate a person at the same time? I want to slap him across the face, hard enough to make my fingers sting, but I also want to kiss him.

‘… and I know that we’re young and everyone is going to say this is a bad idea, but I can’t imagine my life without you in it.’