The Light Between Us

by Katie Khan

  ‘Goodbye,’ she whispers, resting her hand briefly on the outside of the glass, her palm over his. They both shut their eyes as the light in the barn turns painfully white, and their vision of each other is bleached in the moment, violently drained of colour.

  Twenty-six

  Oxford, June 2012

  The end of the Trinity College Commemoration Ball in the early hours of the morning was a curious sight: the streets of Oxford were suddenly strewn with students in white tie. Women in full-length gowns – some barefoot carrying their heels – were accompanied by men in tailcoats eating kebabs, as they made their way along golden streets, the honeyed stone of the city providing the perfect backdrop to their anachronistic hedonism.

  Isaac and Thea broke away from the crowd, making their way more soberly back to Christ Church. Isaac’s undone bowtie hung loose around his neck, his top button popped. ‘What do you want to watch?’ he said as they walked to his accommodation. ‘Do you want food? I have biscuits.’

  ‘A nice cup of tea,’ Thea said sleepily, ‘and a lie-down. I need to get out of this dress.’ She indicated her Hepburn-esque black dress, uncomfortable after twelve hours of wear, and Isaac lightly touched the necklace hanging down her back as she walked up the stairs in front of him.

  He opened the door to his cramped room, remembering at the last minute he’d told the bedmaker not to bother cleaning that week, nor had he washed up his dirty mugs. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘I’m used to it. Can I borrow a t-shirt? I really can’t breathe in this dress.’

  ‘Of course.’ He moved like lightning to his chest of drawers, throwing her a t-shirt from a Cuppers tournament he’d taken part in during the first year.

  She flopped down on his bed, unzipping the dress at the back. ‘Can you help? I can’t reach,’ she said, and he sat on the bed next to her, lowering the zip while looking to the sky in prayer.

  Isaac rarely used Yiddish phrases because they reminded him of his grandmother, but as he averted his gaze while undressing Thea, ‘Oy, vey’ was the only expression that came to mind. Woe is me. Help me through this.

  Thea looked up, trying to see what he was staring at on the ceiling, then made a face at his odd behaviour. He turned away as she stepped out of her dress and into the t-shirt.

  ‘Err, Isaac?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Thea arched an eyebrow. ‘It’s really short. The t-shirt, I mean.’

  ‘Oh.’ He pulled another from the drawer, an oversized American football top purchased during his time in the States, and threw it towards her, where it landed just short of her on the floor. She bent to retrieve it and he bit down on his own knuckle.

  She watched Isaac make tea for her, pulling the bowtie from his collar and throwing it aside. He didn’t have to ask how she took her tea: they’d spent a lot of time together this way, comfortable and relaxed, while other students went on nights out. The best thing that can happen to a homebody is meeting another.

  He unbuttoned his white pique shirt as Thea watched from the bed, eyeing him speculatively as he handed her the mug, feeling the tingle of attraction in the lower part of her belly. Hell, this was complicated.

  She scooted over as he sat down, setting up his laptop for them to watch a film. ‘Any preference?’ he asked, and she shook her head, still shaken by the kick of feeling she appeared to have for her closest friend.

  She tried to rationalize it away: an acknowledgement that someone was handsome, or beautiful, wasn’t necessarily attraction. But when he grinned at her as the title credits came up, she again felt the pull between them and couldn’t dismiss how much she wanted to bite the lip that was smiling broadly at her on his bed.

  ‘Stargate?’ she said, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Trust me, you’ll love it,’ he said, wiggling down so they were lying next to each other, Thea near the screen and Isaac behind her. He handed her the better pillow and she bunched it under her head, watching the opening credits.

  ‘What’s it about?’ she said.

  ‘James Spader discovers a portal that transports him to another world.’

  ‘Sounds far-fetched.’

  But as they lay there, watching the film, it became hard to concentrate on James Spader’s world-hopping as Isaac became aware of Thea’s bare legs lying against his front, and she aware of his bare torso behind her back. Eventually she turned, so they were face to face, and she looked at him plainly.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there—?’

  But she cut him off, kissing him before he could speak, before they could question what on earth they were thinking.

  They rolled over, so first she was on top, then he was, the splash of tea and the crash of the mug hitting Isaac’s floor the only distraction as an entire night of attraction was unleashed between them.

  ‘That dress,’ he whispered.

  She ran her hands across his chest, feeling every part of him. ‘You should smarten up more often – it suits you.’

  They scrambled out of their remaining clothes.

  While the light of the day strengthened outside, finding their rhythm and moving together in different ways, Isaac and Thea reached their climax – as a bell rang out across the college.

  ‘Is that—?’

  They sat up, looking towards Isaac’s stone window, peering out to see Tom Tower at the entrance to Christ Church. ‘Some drunken fool’s climbed up to Great Tom,’ Isaac said.

  ‘They’re going to be in so much trouble,’ Thea said, pulling the bed sheet around her and leaning forward to see, too. ‘Look – the bell’s swinging.’

  Isaac looked back at her, laughing, and they bit out a tangled kiss. But it was over so quickly – too quickly – and they were becoming hyper-aware of their situation, of what they’d just done.

  They lay back down together, but the spell was broken by the prank of the swinging bell: Isaac got up to go to the bathroom, and Thea reached down to clean up the spilled cup lying on the floor.

  Isaac’s phone lay next to the mug, splashes of Earl Grey on the screen. She picked it up to wipe the phone clean with the corner of her borrowed t-shirt. The screen lit up at her touch, a message preview clearly displayed. Sitting up, Thea read it with dismay.

  I’ll always love you, Isa. You were right, we should get back—

  The rest of the message was truncated by the preview, and without opening his phone there was no way to read the rest of Rosy’s message.

  But she’d seen enough.

  Guilt-stricken, Thea pulled her wrinkled black dress from the floor, forgoing shoes to make her escape unimpeded. As she crept out of the room Isaac reappeared from the bathroom, doing up his trousers, then realized with alarm that Thea was disappearing round the door.

  ‘Where are you—?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have come back here.’

  ‘Thea?’ he said. ‘Don’t leave. Let’s talk about this—’

  ‘We’ve made a terrible mistake.’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s happened – but I’ve wanted …’

  She shook her head. ‘Let’s forget it. It’s not like it meant anything.’

  ‘Please, stop—’

  ‘It didn’t mean anything to me.’ She ran from the door to the stairs, and he leaned out to watch her go, utterly confused.

  ‘Theodora, please.’

  But she was gone. He walked over to his phone to call her, to explain that it had meant something, that if she came back they could talk and figure things out together, like the friends they were and had always been. He lifted his phone and saw the message from Rosy.

  He swiped to unlock, frowning slightly.

  I’ll always love you, Isa. You were right, we should get back to how we used to be, as friends. We mistook platonic love for romantic love. xx Rosy

  He rang Thea again and again, but floundering in her own guilt she let his calls ring out for the rest of that week, until everyone went home for the summer, and the university was empt
y.

  ∞

  Isaac and Thea land back in their own world with little drama. Isaac had sat on the glass seat, heartbroken, and Thea had leant against the side of the chamber, face pressed against the glass, to enjoy the last spectral journey of her lifetime.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to him inside the glass house, and Isaac lifts his eyes from the floor to meet hers. ‘I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he says. He looks back through the glass at the night sky, the swelling lines of Earth’s atmosphere the colourful sign that their home is approaching.

  ‘Did you know it wasn’t me, then? From the start?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You fell in love with her. So you must have known she wasn’t – me.’

  Isaac puts his head in his hands. ‘Thea, this is really complicated, and I don’t think I can explain it right now.’

  She grimaces. ‘Because there’s never been anything like that between us, has there? Not even after that night.’

  He thinks about the impossible truth: that he built a love for a person upon his shared history with another person, though they’d both experienced the same with other versions of themselves. Paging Dr Freud, he says to himself, but instead he smiles at her. ‘I’ve always loved you, Thea. And I know you love me, too – as a friend. We’re friends, that’s all. After the ball – we mistook platonic love for romantic love.’

  He says what he thinks she’ll need to hear, and because she never read the full extent of Rosy’s message, she doesn’t recognize the words; she doesn’t realize that, had she read them, she might never have soaked herself in guilt under the impression she’d slept with her friend’s boyfriend.

  But Isaac knows. He knows this Thea doesn’t feel for him the way the other does, or did. He’s left standing in this world with his friend who doesn’t love him, has never loved him, while the Thea who returned his love is somewhere out there, separated by the universe.

  They step from the glass house into the dark barn, and Isaac immediately notices the setup looks wrong. ‘Huh?’ he says, and Thea walks round, looking at the laser.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ she says, moving to the control panel. ‘Look how far the laser is from the glass. It’s in the wrong position.’

  Isaac knows this isn’t Urvisha’s setup, but it’s not Thea’s last setup, either. He walks to the door, peering out as though he could conclude from a look whether they are in his world, or the other Thea’s. He remembers what they’d observed about reflective symmetry, and he searches for water on the ground to look at its vortex, but finds none.

  A huge crash brings him back. He turns, horrified, to see Thea taking the largest of the firewood logs and flinging it as hard as she can into the glass house.

  ‘Wait!’ he cries, but it’s too late: the log hits the glass and, in slow motion, the chamber teeters. She picks up another log, and another, throwing them at the glass house. Cracks and fractures run up and down the surface until the tension gets too much, and the prismatic glass shatters.

  The noise is deafening, and both Thea and Isaac cower, covering their ears. Each surface of the glass house disintegrates with a bang into a pile of glass shards, until all that’s left are fragments rolling across the barn floor.

  He shuts his eyes in disbelief. If that was the portal, it’s gone. All that remains are the two diamond rings with Thea in the other world, and the—

  He looks to the laser as Thea focuses her attention on it.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Isaac says, as she grabs a screwdriver from the workbench and slides out the laser’s vulnerable inner core. He turns away as she smashes the lens with her makeshift wooden bat, throwing up his arms to protect himself from flying debris.

  ‘This hurts me, too,’ she whispers, but she doesn’t hesitate in the wanton destruction of her life’s work. She pushes the laser over onto the ground and kicks it, tramples it, smashing it with the log until the casing is bent out of shape, the interior workings nothing more than detritus on a barn floor.

  Thea stops, panting, and sits down on the bench as she surveys the annihilation around her.

  Of course she’d be thorough – it’s in her nature – but it’s still agony to watch.

  Isaac doesn’t move from the doorway; he’s too shocked. ‘Are you done?’ he says finally, and she nods.

  ‘I had to. And if I didn’t do it now, I’d have chickened out.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he says, pulling himself together. ‘Shall we see when, exactly, we’ve arrived?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Let’s hope we’re at the right point, now you’ve destroyed our way back.’

  She grimaces, but they walk carefully past the dovecote, meeting each other’s eyes before they cross the three paving slabs. At the kitchen garden, Isaac stops, taking a breath before they walk to the kitchen door, and Thea pulls it open. They walk into the farmhouse—

  To find nobody there. The house is deserted; white sheets cover the furniture and hang from the light fittings, a layer of untouched dust sitting atop. Thea’s boxes of belongings, her bedding and books packed hastily after her exit from Oxford, sit at the bottom of the stairs, where she discarded them after arriving here the day she’d been sent down from her DPhil.

  She sighs, sitting down on the stairs. ‘Remember, they’re only ghosts,’ she echoes, and he tilts his head.

  Listening for the telltale tick-tock and not hearing it, Isaac gingerly opens the grandfather clock and pulls the pendulum to one side, settling it into a regular swing.

  ‘We’re back,’ Isaac says.

  ‘And I’ve been kicked out of Oxford this very morning, apparently.’ She indicates her box of belongings on the stairs. ‘Which doesn’t bode well for my career trajectory.’

  ‘What will you do?’ he says, but as he does, they hear the noise of a car outside, and they look at each other with surprise and suspicion.

  Thea opens the front door to see a very fancy car driving cautiously along the driveway, pulling up outside the house.

  ‘That’s a Rolls,’ Isaac says, pointlessly.

  Lady Rosalind de Glanville extracts herself elegantly from the vehicle like the Queen, holding an enormous bunch of flowers and an ancient lurcher on a well-worn lead. ‘Hello, Thea!’ Rosy waves with an excited shriek.

  Overawed, Thea runs out onto the turning circle, grabbing hold of Rosy and not letting go. ‘You’re really here?’ she breathes, and Rosy pulls back from the intense hug to look at her.

  ‘Of course. I thought you could do with a friend, or two – or three. Or four,’ she says, looking curiously at Isaac. ‘Hello, Isaac.’ Rosy leans over and kisses him on both cheeks. ‘How unexpected! Lovely to see you. How was your journey?’

  ‘Eventful,’ he says eventually.

  ‘Well, you did travel rather far,’ Rosy says, walking into the house.

  ‘If only you knew.’

  But no one’s listening.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ Thea says quietly to Rosy, arm in arm. ‘Hello, Cyril.’

  ‘Fancy you remembering his name! You have such a good memory,’ Rosy says, patting Cyril’s head as he pads into the house next to them, looking for a crotch to sniff.

  ‘Oh look,’ Urvisha says, climbing from the rear of the car and breezing past them into the hall, ‘our cheerleader is here. Hello, Isaac Mendelsohn.’

  ‘Visha.’ He salutes.

  ‘How did you …?’ Thea stops talking as Ayo rolls down the car window and makes a face.

  ‘Rosy, do you have the keys?’ Ayo gets out of the Rolls-Royce. ‘We wouldn’t want a car like this to be stolen – the insurance would be a nightmare. Wow, Thea, this is quite a place you’ve got here – very shabby chic.’

  ‘I like it!’ Rosy calls from the kitchen, where she’s broken the bouquet up into pint glasses of water. ‘Very Miss Havisham.’

  ‘Where exactly are we?’ Ayo asks, walking into the house.

  ‘Dunsop Bridge,’
Rosy answers. ‘We used to go hiking near here with Daddy.’

  Isaac takes a deep breath, refamiliarizing himself with the timeline. He reminds himself that the last time the others saw Thea, she was being kicked out of Oxford for a failed experiment. At the point at which he and Thea have arrived back, Ayo, Urvisha and Rosy don’t even know Thea recreated the Beecroft laboratory in her own barn. They can’t let them see the brutal remains of the laser, or the smashed remnants of the glass house. And they can never, ever tell the others what happened to Rosy, him, or Thea.

  Thea hesitates, clearly running through the same thoughts, and – he hopes – drawing the same conclusion. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Rosy says.

  Thea takes a deep breath. ‘You’re here because … I was wrong.’

  Isaac looks at her in astonishment. After all, she was actually right. But nobody, including her friends, will ever know.

  ‘We’re here to support you,’ Rosy says warmly, putting her hand over Thea’s. ‘Our experimental days may be over, but perhaps we can go for some nice walks, out on the moors.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ is all Thea says, surreptitiously picking a shard of prismatic glass from Isaac’s sleeve, before the five of them begin the routine of stepping into wellies, warm jackets and borrowed coats to make their way off into the great outdoors. ‘There are some amazing standing stones a few miles north, if you fancy.’

  Ayo shudders. ‘That sounds like quite the hike.’

  ‘And they’re really creepy,’ Isaac says quietly.

  They meander towards the farm’s border, the village of Dunsop Bridge just beyond. ‘Did you know this is technically the dead centre of Great Britain?’ Rosy pipes up.

  Isaac follows behind, silently wondering if grief has marked his features like a mask.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit misleading?’ Urvisha says, pulling her coat around her tightly. ‘Makes “the Midlands” a misnomer.’

  Isaac shivers against the cold. The first leaves are falling off the trees as autumn begins to take hold in Lancashire, and he tucks his fists into his pockets to keep warm. But as they ramble towards the village and the cosy warmth of Puddleducks tearoom, Isaac feels something in the base of his coat pocket nudge against his hand.