All About Us: Escape with the bestselling, most gorgeously romantic debut love story of 2020!

by Tom Ellen

  ‘Ben, come on,’ Harv says quietly.

  ‘What?’

  He nods at the armrest. ‘Stop looking at your phone. She’s not going to text you now.’

  ‘No. Yeah. I know.’

  I lay it back down and we watch the Walking Dead guy doing his heart-warming stalker act in silence for a bit. And then, still looking at the TV, Harv suddenly says: ‘You will be OK, man. Honestly. You and Daff, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I breathe out shakily. ‘I hope so, but I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s your natural pessimism talking,’ he says. ‘You need to tap into your inner optimist.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got one.’

  ‘Well, fucking get one.’ Harv mutes Love Actually and turns to look at me. ‘Look, man, this situation is going to require some serious effort if you want to fix it. You screwed up big time.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks, Harv. You don’t need to remind me.’

  ‘Well clearly I do, because you’re not going to get Daphne back by wallowing in your own misery, are you? You have to believe in yourself a bit more, otherwise why the hell should she believe in you?’

  I shrug. ‘Self-belief doesn’t exactly come naturally to me.’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘Self-pity, on the other hand, you’ve got coming out of your ears.’

  The accuracy of this statement sends a shiver down my spine. I think of the funeral, of my dad’s cloying self-pity in the car. I can’t give in to that side of myself. I have to be better. Not just for Daff, but for me.

  Harv shuffles back against the cushions and continues. ‘It’s not going to be easy to win her trust back. It might be the hardest thing you ever do in your life. But isn’t it worth the effort?’

  ‘Of course it is. She …’ My voice catches in my throat. ‘She’s everything to me.’

  Harv nods firmly. ‘There you go then. Pep talk over.’ He unmutes the TV. ‘Now can we please get back to arguably the greatest cinematic achievement of the twenty-first century?’

  Without thinking, I glance at my phone again: 11.52.

  ‘Stop bloody doing that!’ Harv snaps. ‘Seriously – don’t make me confiscate it.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry.’

  He sighs. ‘Tomorrow, Ben. You can sort all this out tomorrow.’

  All I can do is pray that he’s right. In eight minutes’ time, maybe I’ll get another chance. Maybe I’ll wake up next to Daphne again, all ready to lay everything out there and try desperately to rebuild what I’ve nearly destroyed.

  My heart soars at the thought as I count down the seconds in my head.

  Chapter Forty

  There’s a high-pitched ringing sound, like a phone going off. Or an alarm.

  I scramble upright, trying to calm my gasping breath, as the tinny noise continues to drill deep into my eardrums.

  I’m in bed. At least, I think I am. Although it’s a noticeably comfier one than Harv’s sofa bed. My eyes are wide open, but it’s pitch dark and I can’t see a thing. The alarm is still going off, its cries for attention getting louder and more aggressive with every second.

  I fumble blindly around me, trying to locate where it’s coming from. My hand grasps something cold on the bedside table – an iPhone I don’t recognise – and I shut the alarm off before dropping the phone back down. According to the flash of screen I caught a glimpse of, it’s just after 9 a.m. And the date underneath said …

  No, hang on. That can’t be right.

  I go to pick up the phone again, but before I can, I feel movement beside me. The bed covers shifting as somebody turns over.

  ‘Mmm. Morning, you,’ a female voice mumbles. ‘Merry Christmas.’ An arm stretches out across my bare chest and a messy head of hair nuzzles underneath my chin.

  I freeze. I know it’s not Daphne. It’s pitch dark, but somehow, I just know.

  My heart is stampeding in my chest. I try to hack my sandpaper-dry throat clear, but I can’t get any words out.

  ‘Ben? Are you OK? You’re shivering.’

  The voice is harder now. It has an edge to it. I recognise it this time, and the shock hits me like a punch in the gut.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I still can’t quite get my mouth to emit any actual human words. I feel her sit up and reach across to the other side of the bed. A light comes on, and the sudden brightness forces my eyes shut.

  ‘Oh my God, you look awful! You’re white as a sheet!’

  I try a few painful blinks, but as my surroundings swim gradually into focus, I find there is simply too much worrying information here to process. The first piece of worrying information is that I definitely do not recognise the bed or, indeed, bedroom I am currently in. The second, more worrying piece of information is that I definitely do recognise the half-naked woman sitting next to me.

  All I can manage to say is: ‘Alice …’

  She wrinkles her forehead, and clambers out of bed. ‘I’ll go and get you some Nurofen. You can’t be ill today, Ben. You seriously can’t. It’ll be so embarrassing.’

  She wriggles into a dressing gown and clomps out of the room.

  I lie in the unfamiliar bed, in the unfamiliar room, paralysed with panic. Alice was right: I really am shivering – trembling all over – and I can’t seem to stop. I thought that by now I’d be used to it – the abrupt madness of finding myself suddenly transported to a different time and place. But this is something else. This is somewhere completely new, somewhere I’ve never been before.

  I’ve only woken up next to Alice once in my entire life, and that was in her Paris flat.

  This is not her Paris flat.

  Which means …

  I look down at my wrist to check the watch is still there. It very much is, the hands stuck in the exact same place. I reach slowly for the unfamiliar iPhone on the bedside table. I can hardly bring myself to touch the screen.

  I must have imagined it. Surely.

  I tap the phone tentatively with my thumb, and as the screen lights up, my stomach drops out from under me like I’ve just plunged into the first loop of a roller coaster.

  The date reads: 25 December 2023.

  I click the phone off and then on again. The date still reads 25 December 2023.

  My heart is now beating so fast I think I might actually pass out. ‘After Christmas past comes Christmas present,’ the watch-seller told me outside the pub. But I never stopped to think about what comes after that …

  On the chest of drawers opposite me, there’s another phone charging – it must be Alice’s. I run over to check the screen. The date reads: 25 December 2023.

  There’s no doubt about it: I am standing in a bedroom I don’t recognise at just after 9 a.m. on Christmas morning three whole years into the future.

  I drop back down onto the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. The shock is so severe that I can’t really feel anything – my whole body is numb, and my thought process currently resembles a fish on dry land, unable to do much more than just flap pointlessly from side to side.

  Is this it? Is this where I’ve finally washed up? Have I just sleepwalked through three whole years of my life and ended up here, with Alice?

  I can hear her footsteps pounding back down the hallway. The bedroom door opens and she sweeps in, holding a glass of water and two small white pills.

  ‘God, you really don’t look good. How do you feel?’ She doesn’t bother to wait for an answer, which is probably for the best since I’m unable to give one. Instead, she presses the glass and the pills into my hands, and says, ‘Just take them, OK? I’m going to get breakfast started. They’re going to be here at half eleven.’ She snaps her fingers irritably in front of my face. ‘Ben? OK?’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I croak.

  And with that, she sweeps back out of the room.

  It’s still not fully light in the room, but even with the drawn curtains, I could tell how different she looks. Most obviously, her hair is much longer – the French Amélie bob she was st
ill sporting at Marek’s wedding is long gone, and her dark blonde locks now hang down past her shoulders.

  I stare at the glass of water and the pills. My head is throbbing, and I do now genuinely feel a bit sick, so I decide it’s probably a good idea to take them. As I chase them down with the lukewarm water, all that’s going through my mind is: where is Daphne? What the hell happened to land me here?

  I stand up unsteadily and pull some clothes on, before venturing out into the corridor, and the not-too-distant future.

  Chapter Forty-One

  At first sight, 2023 doesn’t seem hugely different to 2020.

  A quick glance through the upstairs window at the street below reveals a disappointing lack of hover cars, and there’s not a single jetpack to be seen either. Closer inspection of the unfamiliar phone by my bed has revealed it to be an iPhone 13 – which would be quite exciting if it wasn’t exactly the same as my old iPhone 8, albeit with a slightly shinier back.

  Cars still can’t hover, people still can’t fly and Apple continues to massively rip us all off: clearly, three years is not sufficient time for the planet to undergo any genuinely seismic changes.

  I creep down the stairs, which are lined with photos of Alice and people who are presumably members of Alice’s family, and as I catch another glimpse of the street outside, I realise I have absolutely no idea where I am. Am I even still in London?

  I check Google Maps on my trusty iPhone 13 to find that I’m currently in Hammersmith. Only a few miles from Daff’s and my flat in Kensal Rise.

  Which, surely, is no longer Daff’s and my flat …

  Panic ripples through me again. Is she there now? What is she doing?

  I get the sudden urge to call her, but I’m instantly distracted from this idea by the sight of my reflection in the hallway mirror. I actually have to stop myself letting out an audible gasp as I see it. If the outside world appears unchanged, the same can definitely not be said for my face.

  My hair has shuffled a good quarter-inch backwards on my forehead, and I’m sporting new wrinkles in places I didn’t even know you could get them: the side of my nose, for instance. The patches of grey at my temples have extended their territory significantly, and most disturbingly, my eyebrow hair has taken on a vaguely owlish quality. A couple of strands are so long that they could almost be stretched out to meet my retreating hairline.

  I am thirty-seven years old, and I very much look it.

  I run a hand over my face. The world feels less real than it’s ever felt, but it doesn’t change the fact that this could be it: I could very well be back in reality right now. The thought makes my stomach flip. And then, from down the hall, I hear:

  ‘Ben, come on! Breakfast!’

  I tear myself away from my thirty-seven-year-old reflection and follow the sound of clinking plates down the corridor. As I push open the kitchen door, I see Alice at the counter, her back turned to me, pouring almond milk into a bowl of something that looks like it should be lining the floor of a hamster cage.

  ‘Hey, you,’ she says, without turning round. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m—’

  ‘Don’t be ill, Ben, seriously,’ she says, cutting me off. ‘Not on Christmas Day. I want you on good form today, charming the pants off everyone.’

  She spins around, holding the bowl of moist sawdust out to me, and prods me three times in the stomach: ‘Don’t. Be. Ill!’ She’s smiling, but her teeth are clenched, and those stomach prods were definitely straddling the border between playful and aggressive. Is she pretending to be annoyed, or is she actually annoyed? It’s very hard to tell.

  ‘OK?’ she adds.

  I nod. ‘Yep. OK … No, I feel better already, actually.’

  ‘Great. Good.’ She sweeps back to the counter, and as she starts pulling spoons out of the cutlery drawer, I get the chance to take in her face properly. Like me, she’s gained a couple more wrinkles, but she still looks great. Beautiful, even. Long hair really suits her.

  None of which makes this situation feel any less terrifying or wrong.

  ‘Back in a sec. I’m just going to wrap the last few presents.’ She leaves the room, and I put the bowl down on the table and take the opportunity to have a look around my new home.

  The first thing that catches my eye is a large black-and-white framed photograph of Alice and me. It’s at the back of the room, hanging in pride of place behind the head of the table.

  It must have been taken by a professional photographer, because the two of us are perfectly positioned – and possibly even artificially lit – in the middle of an outlandishly picturesque garden. Alice is sitting on a wicker chair wearing a long, flowing dress, and I’m standing next to her in a suit I don’t recognise, my hand draped awkwardly on her shoulder. We are both smiling at the camera, but while Alice is managing to exude happiness and sophistication, I look like I am in genuine physical pain.

  The whole thing is so ridiculous it almost makes me snort with laughter. I flash back suddenly to the attic on Christmas Eve 2020, when I saw that picture of myself in the university play programme. I didn’t recognise the grinning, carefree nineteen-year-old in that photo, and I don’t recognise the ludicrous, gurning thirty-seven-year-old in this one, either. There is no way I would ever pose for a photo like this – even if Daphne suggested it.

  But the truth is, Daphne would never, ever suggest it.

  The only photo of us on public display in our flat is frayed at the edges and dangling from a magnet on the fridge. It shows the two of us drunk and bent double with laughter at Bestival 2017 – her dressed as the Ultimate Warrior and me as Hulk Hogan. I love that photo.

  As I stare at this gold-framed monstrosity on the wall, I can’t help imagining Daff’s reaction to it. I’m fairly sure it would involve a significant amount of giggling.

  Who the hell have I become?

  Next to the preposterous photo there is a calendar hanging on a little hook above the Wi-Fi box. I squint at it to see that it reaffirms the day and year, and that under today’s date, someone – Alice – has written: XMAS DRINKS DO! and under tomorrow – Boxing Day – LUNCH AT M&D’s.

  Scanning down the calendar, I spot another entry, four days from today, on December 29th. There are only two words, with a flurry of red pen strokes surrounding them, as if they’ve just caught fire: WEDDING PLANNER!

  My blood turns to ice.

  I glance down at my left hand to see that my wedding ring has disappeared.

  I am getting married to Alice. I am no longer married to Daphne and I am getting married to Alice.

  The kitchen door swings opens and she comes back in, humming under her breath. ‘OK, presents are done … I need to ice the cake, and get the wine out. What are you going to wear, by the way, babe? Why don’t you wear that shirt I like …’

  She tails off as she finally looks over at me.

  ‘Ben, what are you doing?’ she says sharply. ‘Why are you looking at the calendar?’

  ‘I just … I was … The wedding planner?’

  I’ve been in the future for half an hour now, and I’m still yet to form a coherent sentence.

  Alice’s face falls and she puts a hand to her forehead. ‘Ben, you are kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding. I told you about that appointment three days ago.’ She shakes her head irritably. ‘You probably just zoned out as usual, didn’t you? God, you’ve been so out of it lately. I feel like I’m doing everything myself. Which is fine, obviously, as I don’t think you’d be much use anyway.’ She laughs to herself at this, and then whirs back into activity, pulling tin foil out of the cupboard and a large cake out of the fridge.

  I get the sense that I am not really needed in this conversation – that Alice probably spends a lot of time talking at me, rather than to me.

  ‘The wedding’s only four months away, Ben,’ she’s saying. ‘I really need you to engage a bit more, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ I mumble.

  Four months. In
four months, I am marrying Alice.

  She carries on. ‘So, like I told you, this appointment is to talk about the flowers and the readings. And also the string quartet.’

  I stare at her. ‘The … string quartet?’

  ‘Yes, the string quartet. I did tell you about that, too.’ Her mouth curls up slightly at the side. ‘It’s funny, actually, Becks is going to be so pissed off that we’ve managed to book them. She wanted them for their wedding, but they couldn’t do that date. She’ll be fuming.’ There’s a gleeful snarkiness creeping into her voice: the same tone she used in Paris when she was slagging off her colleagues.

  She glances at my bowl of cereal and sighs. ‘Ben, you haven’t even touched your breakfast. I know that stuff’s not very nice, but we did say we’d do this wedding diet thing together.’ She pushes the bowl across the table towards me. ‘I also think we should go easy on the alcohol today,’ she adds. ‘Just a glass or two of wine. I know it’s Christmas and everything, but if we’re going to start trying straight after the wedding, then we both need to be on it as early as possible, health wise. Becky was saying she and Phil went fully teetotal six months before they even started trying. And they got pregnant after, like, two weeks.’

  ‘Yeah … OK … Start trying?’ In four months, Alice and I are going to start trying for a baby. I press my fingers gently against my eyelids.

  ‘Babe, seriously, are you OK?’ she says.

  Babe. I don’t remember Alice ever calling me that before. Daff and I used to cringe in unison whenever we heard couples call each other ‘babe’.

  Where is she? What the hell happened?

  ‘Did you actually take those Nurofen?’ Alice says. ‘Because I really want you to be OK today.’ She leans across the table, frowning. ‘Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, maybe don’t say anything today about what you told me last week, OK?’

  I shake my head. ‘What did I tell you last week?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘The thing about teaching. About wanting to quit Wyndham’s and retrain as a teacher.’

  ‘Retrain as a teacher?’ I try to process this statement, but my head is suddenly full of Mum. She always told me I’d make a good teacher. ‘You don’t fancy following in your mother’s footsteps?’ she used to joke. But I was too busy trying to follow in my father’s.