Chapter Text
‘I’m going to make you so happy. I promise…’
The feeling of sweet tender lips kissing her forehead, a sensation of rising from her body, drifting weightless through the void, until –
Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…
Helen’s eyes blinked open with great effort. She was in the hospital. Evidently, she had survived. But her body didn’t feel as if she had been hit by a van with the force of a charging rhino. The drugs were clearly doing their job. She must remember to ask for a prescription.
Yet something about the world she had woken up in felt off. Wrong. Like she shouldn’t be here. Like she didn’t belong here. Like she had left the colourful land of Oz and return to her bleak, grey life. And, worst of all, the hand that was stroking her very long, very brunette hair, was not James.
It was Gerry Ashby.
Had Helen been able to move she would’ve shrunk away from him and/or punched him. She felt helpless as a lifeless doll.
‘Helen?’ whispered Gerry. ‘Can you hear me? Could you hear me, Helen?’
Yes, Helen could hear him, but it had not been Gerry who had promised to make her so happy. For it was Gerry who had made her so very unhappy.
Was any of it real?
Helen blinked and images flashes across her mind; the moonlit view of the Albert Bridge from the river… Fat Boy’s Diner… the train that had decided her destiny pulling into Embankment Underground tube station… All devoid of the person who had made these memories special.
The flashes of memory from her other life faded before her eyes, leaving her trapped in her new reality. No PR company. No boyfriend now fiancé. No James Hammerton.
James was right. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Helen sat up in bed in her grey dressing gown, conscious but still a little woozy from her fall down the stairs, which had resulted in her losing her baby – Gerry’s in this life. The sad, useless, no-good, shagging, horrible, despicable, no-good two-faced, lying, pissing, cheating wanker had just finished filling her in on everything that had happened. Helen had made it very clear that she knew about Lydia, in case he thought he could use the accident as a get out of jail free card.
So apparently, she had discovered that Gerry had been cheating – and with whom – last night at his mistress’s apartment. So missing the train that day had not only cost her the chance of catching Gerry in the sexual act with Lydia but had cost her meeting James Hammerton. Twice – for they had gone to Bertorelli’s Wine Bar and Bistro that night for a bender after her being fired and getting mugged on the same day. But of course, they were strangers, ships passing in the night; Helen out with her boyfriend and James out with his friend Clive discussing launching his new restaurant.
Had Clive managed to open his restaurant, or without the PR launch she had organised to give it press attention was it struggling?
Helen had been working two jobs to keep the money coming in – making and delivering sandwiches in the West End during the day before waitressing at Bertorelli’s until midnight – keeping her busy to enable Gerry to “write” and/or sneak off to see Lydia and go to Dorset with his mistress for a romantic weekend.
Helen’s grief was beyond tears or anger as Gerry finished struggling to explain himself. She was just full of empty bone-deep tiredness. Her PR company was just an empty office space or someone else’s dream business. Everything she had seen and done, everything she had achieved, everything she had gained was gone. And James was walking around with no idea who she was. Because they had never met.
Did that mean her “other-self” was inhabiting her happy life? Or had she died and now Helen was carrying on her legacy of loneliness?
Helen pulled her hands smoothly out of reach of Gerry’s and resettled them on her chest.
‘Helen, I swear,’ Gerry pleaded. ‘It was nothing. It meant nothing.’
So, Gerry slept with someone who meant nothing to him. Which meant that Helen meant nothing to him. Which meant the baby – babies – he had created with someone who meant nothing to him also meant nothing. And now he had nothing.
‘It… I… it was over.’
‘Two blows to the head and one to the heart,’ said Helen heavily, staring unseeingly at the ceiling. ‘That’s three strikes. You like baseball, Gerry. You know what that means.’
Gerry had no line of defence.
‘I’ll do anything you want, Helen.’
Helen’s eyes slid over to Gerry’s. He seemed sincere, humbled, full of regret. ‘Will you? In that case, I want you to stand up, walk over to the door, open it, walk through it, and close it behind you.’
Her gaze returned to the ceiling, unable to look at him a second longer. Her word was official. It was over. And Gerry’s defence was as weak as American tea. She wished him luck with Lydia. Gerry didn’t argue. He knew it too. There will be no absolution.
*
The intensive care doctor discharged her and Helen left her room, clutching her bag, ready to reclaim her life. She would stay with Anna until she was back on her feet. She would take out a business loan to set up her own PR company. She would visit Clive’s and offer to promote his restaurant and, somehow, she would find James. Though how she was going to do that, she had no idea. And what would she tell him?
“Hello, I’m Helen. You don’t know me, but we met on the train, fell in love and we’re engaged to be married as soon as your divorce is finalized.”
She’d be sent straight back here again and to the psychiatric ward.
‘Ta-ra, mum.’
Helen froze. She knew that voice. She turned and saw a dark-haired man in a suit walking away from her down the corridor. The name on the door of the room he had just emerged from read: Mary Hammerton.
Helen looked up in time to see the man vanish round the corner, heading for the lifts. She hurried after him.
Yes! His progress was impeded by a lift that was completely full with a large Indian family with a new mother with her baby in her arms. James gestured ‘Go ahead,’ and let the doors slide shut. The next lift arrived and the doors open. It was empty. Helen saw James step inside and press the button. She quickened her pace, weighed down by her bag, but –
The sliding doors closed in her face.
She had missed her chance – again.
Was there another Helen in another timeline who had caught the lift door and slipped inside? Will her destiny be forever behind two sliding doors?
Suddenly the doors slid open again. And there he was – James Hammerton. His finger on the open button. He had stopped the lift for her! That meant –
‘I just saw you. Going down?’
– he was just being a gentleman.
Helen tried to mask her disappointment. She nodded absent-mindedly with a faint smile and stepped into the lift, putting on her earrings. One slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor. James stooped and picked it up, handing it to Helen, just as he had done the first time they had met in a lift. Fate had a dry sense of humour.
‘Thank you,’ said Helen, her mind miles away.
‘Cheer up,’ said James, sounding upbeat as always. Helen supposed his mother was doing well to put him in such a good mood. ‘You know what the Monty Python Boys say.’
It came out of her mouth with no pause whatsoever, without conscious thought, as if she had no control of what she was saying, ‘Nobody expect the Spanish Inquisition.’
Helen and James looked at each other, surprised.
The sliding doors closed and the lift descended, taking them down.
‘You know, that’s not what most people say when I’ve asked that,’ said James, impressed and curious. ‘They normally go –’
‘Always look on the bright side of life?’
‘Exactly.’
James looked more closely at Helen. ‘Have we met before?’
Oh James, if you only knew.
‘I mean, I’m getting slow on faces in my dotage, but you seem… you seem familiar.’
‘Yes. We have. Sort of. You don’t remember, but I used to work at the PR company on Charing Cross Road you visited for a business deal. In the lift. I dropped my earring. You picked it up. Thank you.’
‘Pleasure. And that’s how I know you?’
Helen’s eyes watered. ‘No. That’s not how you know me.’
‘I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?’
Helen swallowed. ‘James?’
James looked taken aback that she knew his name.
‘Do you believe in other lives?’
‘Like past lives?’
‘Alternative timelines. Parallel lives. Like what your life would’ve been like if you turned right instead of left. If you had caught the train instead of missed it.’
‘And we met in this other life?’
‘Yes. You took me to Fat Boy’s Diner for milkshakes after I left my cheating boyfriend. You encouraged me to setup my own PR company, which help launched Clive’s Restaurant. I inspired you to win that boat race with the purple and white shirts; jumping up and down like a manwoman. You made me laugh. You came into my life when I needed to be cheered up and reassured, like it was your job. You made me so happy. The moderately attractive, sad-eyed, droopy-mouthed madwoman you see before you.’
James had been listening intently. Did he believe her? Or did he think she was his crazy stalker?
‘Moderately attractive?’ he asked with a hint of an amused smile.
‘You were listening,’ said Helen. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘Well, it sounds mad, but I don’t think you’re a liar.’
‘Oh. Right. Thank you?’
The lift doors opened and they stepped out into the lobby.
‘I should… I should go. Thank you for indulging me. And it’s… it’s Helen, by the way. Bye.’
Helen headed for the exit – another set of sliding doors.
‘Helen!’ James called after her.
She looked back.
‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’
‘I don’t want to impose.’
‘It’s me that’s imposing on you. Would you… like to come to dinner at Clive’s?’
‘Yes. I’d love to!’
They walked out together.
‘So, tell me more about the other me in the other place.’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I reckon I’ve got time to hear it. Sounds like you have quite a story to tell.’
Helen laughed. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Well, I can’t wait to find out where it leads.’
‘Me too.’
As they stepped out into the brilliant sunshine, a sign of a happy future, and an ever happier second chance, the sliding doors of the hospital slid shut behind them.