The Light Between Us

by Katie Khan

  ‘Okay,’ Thea says, still deep in thought. She carries her notebook with her, reading her notes. ‘How do we know where you’re going?’

  ‘Everything’s the same, isn’t it?’ Urvisha says. ‘I’m going to bring back our friend.’

  Thea chews her lip.

  ‘Keep all the recording devices running,’ Urvisha prompts. ‘Go.’ She raises her fist into the air from inside the glass box.

  ‘Isaac, all set?’

  He nods hesitantly.

  ‘Then we are cleared for launch. On three?’

  ‘It is a mirror, of sorts,’ Thea says, tracing the parallel train tracks with her two fingers, splaying her hand where they split into separate paths. ‘But I don’t think the timelines split where you guys think it did. Before Rosy jumped, when I— Well.’

  ‘Three,’ Urvisha says, irritably.

  But Thea’s train of thought can’t be derailed. ‘If we were running in parallel with an identical world, then feasibly, at the precise same moment we jumped from our world to theirs …’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Somebody would have to jump back the other way.’

  She emerges from her reverie with an adrenalin spike of shock. Urvisha firmly says: ‘One.’

  Something’s different. Since I came back from New York … and this bizarre adventure we’re on today …

  You have changed.

  It’s only now I can tell you that it did mean something, to me.

  This is all wrong.

  That’s why Thea doesn’t remember jumping from here: because she didn’t.

  ‘Wait!’ Thea calls out, but it’s too late: Ayo fires the laser, and once again the light is blinding. Their vision of the barn is violently drained of colour. Thea runs towards the laser, jabbing at the button to stop it. Nothing happens – Ayo must have tweaked the design. Thea shields her eyes, waving to Ayo.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouts, but she can’t be heard.

  As the light in the barn turns white, bleached in the moment, Thea follows the wire from the laser’s control panel to the fuse box, making the decision before she’s blinded and can no longer see. She yanks at the cord, flips all of the circuit breakers, then finally wrenches the fuse box’s master switch off.

  There’s a scream, and the barn is plunged into darkness. They stumble to reach for their head torches, which are lying discarded on the benches, and two beams illuminate the cavernous barn in streaks.

  ‘Is it a power cut?’ Isaac says, looking at the extinguished photographic lamps.

  ‘Urvisha!’ Ayo shouts. ‘Oh Lord, no – help!’

  A figure lies slumped inside the glass house, the weight pressing against the door until it swings open, and Urvisha tumbles out onto the floor.

  Nineteen

  Thea is so horrified she can’t speak, transfixed by the truth she has gleaned. In the aftermath of her literally pulling the plug, Ayo and Isaac run to where Urvisha lies unconscious on the floor. For a fraction of a moment, Thea suffers her epiphany alone.

  The word epiphany can be used too lightly, she finds herself thinking. But the moment you suddenly feel you understand, or become conscious of something very important to you – that’s a true epiphany.

  It can also mean a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being, which Thea doesn’t want to think about right now.

  Isaac rolls Urvisha into the recovery position while Ayo tries to wake her: ‘Urvisha! Visha! Can you hear me? Wake up, please!’

  Isaac feels for a pulse, fumbling in the dark of the barn. He begins mouth-to-mouth, pumping on Urvisha’s chest as Ayo holds her hand, moaning softly.

  Thea breaks free of her shock and moves to the fuse box, flicking the master switch back on so the lights blink back into life.

  Ayo looks up in surprise – they’d presumed it was another ill-fated power cut – but Isaac doesn’t falter as he beats a steady rhythm with his palms on Urvisha’s chest – one, two, three – then pinches her nose and breathes into her mouth for a further count of three.

  Thea drops down onto the cold floor next to Ayo and Isaac, taking Urvisha’s other hand.

  A wail goes up and Thea, Isaac and Ayo look at each other in confusion, until Ayo grabs the baby monitor from the workbench. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Go to the house and call an ambulance,’ Isaac says, still pumping.

  ‘We shouldn’t have rushed this. I can’t believe someone else has got hurt.’ Ayo gathers herself and jogs to the barn door, turning back to take in the horrific scene before fleeing towards the farmhouse.

  ‘Help me,’ Isaac says, and Thea realizes he means her.

  ‘What can I do?’ Thea says, snatching a look at him. He’d seen what nobody else could: You have changed.

  Urvisha suddenly coughs and splutters, coming around.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ Isaac says. ‘Visha? Can you hear me?’ Isaac doesn’t let go, though Urvisha opens her eyes and looks at him wildly. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The experiment failed.’ They help Urvisha sit up. ‘Careful – you weren’t breathing two minutes ago.’

  ‘That was, without doubt,’ Urvisha declares weakly, with 20 per cent of her usual verve, ‘the worst wake-up kiss I’ve ever had.’ She blinks a couple of times, then smiles at Isaac. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Sleeping Beauty,’ Isaac says softly.

  ‘Bleurgh. And what the hell did you do?’ Urvisha asks Thea.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘While Isaac saved my life, what were you doing?’

  ‘If you’re making jokes,’ Isaac says, with about 10 per cent of his usual wryness, ‘then it’s safe to say you’re back to your old self.’

  ‘Help me up,’ Urvisha says, standing slowly.

  ‘Rest a minute – Ayo’s calling an ambulance.’

  ‘What? No!’ Urvisha is horrified. ‘They’ll ask all sorts of questions. I’m fine – I’d just like to sit down. Somewhere other than a freezing barn floor.’

  ‘You need to see a doctor,’ Isaac says.

  ‘I can go tomorrow,’ she insists. ‘Isaac – go and stop Ayo, will you? Cancel the ambulance.’

  ‘You are so stubborn,’ he says, as he jogs ahead of Thea and Urvisha. Thea flicks off the barn lights as they shuffle out into the courtyard, Urvisha’s arm around her neck as they move slowly back towards the kitchen garden.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Thea asks gently.

  ‘Nothing more bruised than my ego,’ Urvisha replies as they hobble into the house.

  Thea needs to talk to Isaac about her epiphany, but the priority is Urvisha.

  They make her comfortable in one of the spare rooms, and Thea runs to get another duvet while Ayo fusses around making a hot drink, baby Bolu held against her in a makeshift sling.

  ‘Is that,’ Urvisha asks, looking at the white fabric Ayo’s used, ‘one of Thea’s Miss Havisham dustsheets?’

  ‘It’s all I could find.’ Ayo sits down next to Urvisha on the bed, cradling her son, but taking the other woman’s hand in hers. ‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

  ‘This is one hell of a comedown,’ Urvisha says, rubbing her temple with her other hand.

  ‘Idiots,’ Ayo says. ‘We can’t let this happen again. First Rosy –’ she pauses – ‘and now you. No more rushing.’

  ‘I just wanted to find our friend.’

  ‘Isaac?’ Thea calls from the top of the stairs. ‘Can you come up and help me for a sec?’

  In the farmhouse’s master bedroom, moonlight pours in through the draughty metal-framed window. He stands in the doorway as she lifts the duvet from the bed. ‘What an insane evening.’

  ‘What an insane day.’ The Portrait of an Unknown Woman feels almost a distant memory, in light of what she’s subsequently learnt. ‘In the barn,’ she starts, ‘I was thinking about the many-worlds interpretation, and what that might mean for me. What it might tell us about my jump.’

  ‘Right,’ he says, still by the door, a
little nonplussed.

  She puts down the duvet and pulls out her notebook, opening it to the page where she’d drawn the jump.

  ‘It’s important.’

  He walks further into the bedroom and traces her Y-shaped diagram with his hand, the moment when one timeline breaks left, and the other, right. ‘You were saying something about two worlds in parallel until a single decision causes the split.’

  ‘Exactly. One goes left, the other goes right.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘And so …?’

  She looks around at the room that had belonged to her parents, now hers by default. She picks up the duvet again, feeling the comfort of it against her skin. She has to tell him, as much as she doesn’t want to.

  ‘You were right, in a way, when you said the parallel world was like a mirror. I’m trying to work out when the timelines broke apart. And down in the barn, everybody kept talking about Rosy’s jump. But you and I – we know something they don’t.’

  He nods, putting his hand gently on her arm.

  ‘This is about my jump, Isaac. It’s why I don’t remember, and why I’ve been a bit … different, recently. Before the timelines split, until that very moment, the parallel worlds were identical. So if somebody from here jumped there, then somebody from there jumped here.’

  He looks at her blankly.

  ‘That must be why I don’t remember jumping,’ Thea says, her heart breaking. It hurts to tell him this, but he needs to know. ‘Because I didn’t. If the portal leads to a parallel world, then everything that happened here before the landing also happened in another world. Exactly the same. So at the same moment I jumped from this world …’

  ‘… Someone jumped back the other way.’ Isaac bites his lip.

  ‘Do you see?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he scoffs. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘Look at the science … we have all the proof we need.’

  Isaac falters. ‘Really?’ If Thea believes there’s enough proof, there probably is. ‘No way.’

  ‘You said yourself I’ve been different,’ she says, and as it did for Thea, this hits home for him.

  ‘Oh, hell.’

  ‘Now do you see?’

  ‘It can’t be. Do you think …? I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Everything that happened before the landing,’ she repeats, her voice a murmur, ‘also happened in another world.’

  He looks at her hard. ‘What are you saying, exactly? Spell it out for me.’

  ‘I didn’t jump from here. I jumped to here.’

  Isaac drops his hand from where it’s still resting on her arm. ‘You’re not you, you’re the other you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, God. You’re the Thea from the other place. You’ve ended up in the wrong world.’

  Thea sits down on the bed, the feather-filled duvet spilling out of her arms. ‘I don’t – I can’t—’

  ‘Breathe,’ he says, clearly concerned.

  She takes a breath, and regroups. ‘The physics is sound.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Isaac says. ‘You’re rarely wrong.’

  It’s nearly two in the morning, and Thea feels broken; this revelation is the latest in a long day of revelations.

  ‘You’re from the parallel world,’ Isaac repeats, his voice less disbelieving this time. The repetition is making it more solid. Whereas before they had the outline, now the truth is starting to be filled in.

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  ‘But how can that – how can that be?’ Isaac looks at her, really searches her face. ‘How can you be in a world where you don’t belong? Because the way I feel about you …’

  She looks at him sombrely. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about all the markers we found in history? The Portrait of an Unknown Woman, sold by Admiral Coleman, the money in your bank? Didn’t you go back in time?’

  She lifts her hands, bewildered. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps the truth really is one of the simple answers we were trying to discount today. A strong family gene,’ Isaac says, ‘or the app revealing your museum doppelganger.’ He pauses almost imperceptibly at the word doppelganger, sucking in the new resonance it carries for them.

  ‘Maybe my journey to another universe bent time as a dimension,’ she says. ‘Jumping to another world – we don’t know what happens to the past when you glance against the strands of time. Remember, if it’s happening in space, it’s happening in time …’

  Isaac waves his hands, as if he couldn’t even begin to understand what she is saying.

  ‘There will be a better explanation … I just can’t quite grasp it yet.’ She sags back on the bed, feeling the after-effects of the exhaustion of the day, and now this. In the other room they hear the murmur of Ayo and Urvisha talking, the snuffling of Ayo’s child. ‘I can’t believe I was wrong about the glass house. I was wrong about the whole thing.’

  ‘You weren’t. Look at what you’ve built,’ he says.

  ‘I was wrong. But you’re right about something.’ He straightens his shoulders and smiles. ‘I don’t belong here. This isn’t my world.’

  With those words everything crashes down around them.

  ‘This is a headfuck,’ Isaac says, taking the duvet from her and putting it onto the mattress behind them. ‘The Thea I knew at university is in your world, and you’re in ours.’

  ‘An impossible situation,’ she says, turning to face him on the bed. Behind him she can see the curtains she remembers from her childhood, a William Morris pattern she never had the heart to change. ‘Everything is messed up because she’s there, and I’m here.’

  ‘You’re here,’ he repeats. ‘And she’s there.’

  ‘This is impossible.’

  ‘Totally,’ Isaac says. His face looks as though it might crack. ‘Especially because of how I feel about you.’

  ‘And how’s that?’ she says, her voice faltering, but at last wanting to hear it.

  ‘Thea, you know – you must know.’

  She puts her hand to his cheek. ‘Is this what you were going to tell me tonight in Trafalgar Square?’

  ‘Was that only tonight? I was going to say—’ He breaks off. ‘I was going to say that I’ve spent the last year wanting you to be wrong about time travel, so I wouldn’t lose you.’

  She bites her lip.

  ‘And I was angry that you’d leave me if you succeeded.’

  ‘Why?’

  He inhales. ‘Why? Because I love you, Thea – I always have.’

  ‘Oh,’ Thea breathes, putting her head in her arms, and Isaac rests his hand against her back as they sit on the edge of the bed in a bedroom that, in a different world, belonged to her parents. ‘And that’s why this is impossible; because I feel the same,’ she says, sitting up. ‘I’m in love with you, Isaac.’

  She leans into him, brushing his unruly hair away from his face before she puts her lips lightly on his.

  The intimacy takes him by surprise and after a moment he pulls back slightly, resting his forehead against hers, their eyes fixed upon each other.

  He exhales.

  ‘This is fucked up, don’t you see?’ Thea’s voice is sorrowful. ‘I’m in the wrong place. I belong there, and the other Thea –’ she stands, not even wanting to think about what she’s saying – ‘she belongs here.’

  ‘And me?’ Isaac says. ‘Where do I belong?’

  ‘With me.’ But even as she says it, she feels the scientific untruth of the words. Because this is his world, and not hers. The idea that life would be this cruel wounds her. Just as she’s found a place where she truly belongs, it turns out she’s in the wrong place entirely.

  ∞

  Isaac’s not sure whether his heart has turned arrhythmic inside his chest or whether all of his internal organs have been startled into failure.

  She loves him back.

  It’s heartbreaking for him to realize he’s always been in love with Thea. But just when she appears to return his
feelings, for the first time in their long friendship, it’s a Thea from a different world.

  None of this makes sense.

  Though, really, everything is starting to make sense: the changes he’s seen in her across the past … how long?

  Does he love this Thea because she returns his feelings? Or does he love the Thea with their shared history, who never mistook their platonic friendship for unrequited love? Is it possible that he loves them both?

  She touches his hand and he’s startled anew by the confession she just made. She’s in love with me.

  ‘Thea wouldn’t have known it was a portal, when she jumped,’ Thea says, and he closes his eyes, unable to truly reconcile the thought of two Theas – one in love with him, one his old friend. ‘I’m worried she’s in another world and doesn’t even realize.’

  ‘But you’re in parallel, aren’t you?’ he says. ‘So if you’ve just realized, then surely she’s just realized, too?’

  ‘No.’ Thea rubs the baby hair on her temple, which has always been her tell that she’s thinking hard, in whatever world he’s known her. She points again at the Y-shaped drawing in her notebook. ‘We split apart at the landing. We’re no longer in parallel. Everything that’s happened here since I arrived is different from what is happening there, where I came from.’

  He feels the hopelessness rise up inside him. Everything that’s happened since she arrived … is everything.

  ‘I pulled the plug on Urvisha’s jump,’ she says, out of the blue. He looks at her without speaking, listening. ‘I couldn’t let someone else jump when I didn’t believe it would actually take Visha to Rosy.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ he says.

  ‘I figured out what had happened, and I knew I’d have to put it right.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says, nodding.

  ‘Isa.’ Thea takes a deep breath. ‘It’s up to me to get them back.’

  He pauses. ‘Them?’

  ‘Rosy. Thea. I have to return them to their rightful place,’ Thea says.

  Isaac looks down at their entwined hands. ‘You want to go back.’

  ‘No. But I must.’

  He deflates. Just when he thought that he and Thea could possibly be together …

  ‘Why?’ he asks. ‘Can’t you stay here, and the … other … Thea, there? The worlds are the same, aren’t they? Nobody would ever know.’