Page 17 of I Know How This Ends

“Margot?”

There’s yet another loud bang on my door.

“ Margot. We know you’re in there, so you’d better stop hiding and open this door before we go ahead and kick it in.”

A much quieter voice: one I can’t hear properly.

“Then I will kick it in,” Jules says even more belligerently. “I don’t need your help. Some things are more important than Georgian

trim, Evelyn. We’re not just leaving her in there.”

Blearily—they’re not going to go away, this is the fourth round of knocking in four days—I shuffle off the sofa toward the

front door, bringing my fluffy cream blanket with me. Then I wrap myself more tightly, swaddled like a caterpillar, and bend

down toward the letter box. A flash of memory: vinosauraptor. Except it’s not a memory, is it? Because it hasn’t happened. It’s the opposite of a memory, contained neatly inside just one

person.

“I’m fine,” I lie through the letter box.

“You’re not fine,” Eve says, bending down too, until we’re eyeball to eyeball.

“As I tell the kids, nobody is ever fine . You haven’t updated your Instagram page in four whole days, which is unheard of.

Both your phones are off. The lights are all out.

We’ve been conducting surveillance from outside on a daily basis, and that’s

the only reason we know you haven’t given up the ghost.”

“Unless your ghost is watching television,” adds Jules. “And getting up every few hours to hobble to the loo swaddled like

a mummy.”

I groan in frustration. If I wanted to talk to anyone about this, I wouldn’t have made myself uncontactable. This is the problem with having childhood best friends:

there are no boundaries, no normal rules that establish healthy, ordinary dynamics between completely unrelated humans. These

two helped me work out how to use my first tampon. There is no space they won’t barge straight into.

“Open the door,” Jules says again. “Now. I mean it, Margot.”

Slowly, I unlock the door and then start shuffling back to the sofa, where I lie down in a straight line, face turned toward

the cushions. I feel two dead weights sit on my legs, using me as some kind of extra upholstery.

“Jesus,” I hear Jules say, and I can tell she’s looking around my flat. “What happened ? Don’t tell me you finally unpacked, because it’s still emptier than a ship’s hull in here.”

“You know what happened, Julia.” There is a rare anger in Eve’s voice, mild but no less whipping for its quietness. “I know you know what happened, because you wrote ‘Congratulations!’ underneath. I saw it. Followed by two bloody love hearts. Two. You can be so insensitive sometimes.”

“Yeah. Well.” Jules coughs. “Margot wasn’t supposed to see it, was she.”

“Maggie.” Eve leans forward and awkwardly tries to cuddle me by attempting to get her arms around my neck. “We’re on your

side. We love you. Don’t let this throw you. It’s just another stage you have to get through, OK?”

Slowly, I roll around with them on top of me until I’m facing upward.

Both of their lovely faces are now about two centimeters from mine, staring at me intensely, as if they’re about to either

kiss me or ask me to smell their breath. They’re worried about me, as they probably should be. But they’re studying my face

for answers I don’t have.

“What are you talking about?” I say tiredly.

“The... you know.” Eve takes a deep breath. “The... betrothal . I can’t even imagine how that must have felt.”

“Who says betrothal ?” Jules says in frustration. “Are you a Tudor?”

“It seemed a little less brutal than engagement .”

“I told Maggie not to look. Did I not tell you not to look, Maggie? And yet again, you completely bogging ignored me and looked, and

here we are.”

Ohhhh. They’re talking about Lily’s engagement.

So much has happened since then, I’d completely forgotten she even exists. I’d been more focused on my new-found ability to

both see the future and then—somehow—prevent it from happening. There have been no new visions in the last four days, but

I’ve still spent all of them curled up in the dark, waiting. Unsure what the next one will be, or if there will even be a next one. What else am I going to see? My own death? I don’t want to see that. I like knowing what’s coming—I’ve built an

entire career on it—but this is taking prescience about nine hundred steps too far.

“I’m fine,” I say yet again, wriggling slightly. “It threw me a bit, but I’m OK now. Can you please stop pinning me to my

own sofa? I’m not going to leg it. I’m still in my pajamas.”

Slowly, my friends climb off me, then regard me for a few seconds, still mummified. Eve sniffs; she pulls a horrified face.

Then they fork off in two very determined directions: Jules toward my kitchen, and Eve toward the back door.

“Right,” Eve says, swinging the door open before I can say don’t . “Let’s get some fresh—”

With alarmed eyes, she turns to Jules, who—finding all my cabinets empty—immediately grabs the expensive bottle of red wine

I carried home at the start of the previous week (along with the glass, stolen) and quickly crosses the room to stare into

the garden.

“What,” she says, spinning toward me fiercely, “have you done?”

I swallow. “I may have... burned everything.”

In unison: “You burned everything ?”

“Yes. I just wanted to... start again.”

Saying it out loud makes me feel even more unhinged than I did as I stood over the illegal garden bonfire with a bottle of vodka. What the hell is wrong with me?

“You’re not a bloody phoenix ,” Jules points out sharply, opening the wine. “Right. Apparently, we’re all sharing one glass this evening because you incinerated

the rest, so you can go first.”

She pours and hands it to me with such violence, it spills on the floor.

“So you’re just going to buy all new stuff?” Eve is staring around her in amazement. “Replace everything from scratch?”

“I don’t see why not,” I say with a firmness I don’t feel. “People do it all the time.”

“Because they have to,” Jules mutters in a low voice. “Not out of choice , you nutter.”

“No, she has a point . ” I can see Eve rallying to find a way to support me, whatever mental gymnastics it takes, and I love her for it. “It’s a

great idea! It’s just a shame you didn’t burn all your clothes too.”

Jules and I both stare at her in synchronized surprise.

“Rude,” states Jules, presumably so I don’t have to.

“I don’t mean it like that!” Eve flaps her hands apologetically. “You’re very stylish, Mags. I just mean... it would be

so nice to see you in something other than navy. Just once. Something brighter. I’m sure even French people wear other colors sometimes.”

“Rude,” I say this time, because how dare she question my non-Frenchness.

“So if this isn’t all about the engagement,” Jules says, taking the shared wine glass off me and swigging, “what’s going on?

Is this about that video you posted? Because I’m going to be honest with you—if I was wearing a giant condom on the internet

for all eternity, I’d probably be hiding in here too.”

I grimace—I’d forgotten about the catsuit too—and wonder if I can tell them.

So... I’ve been having hallucinations about things I can’t possibly know the details of.

They may or may not be the future. They may or may not be warnings.

It may or may not be an Alternative Me: a split somewhere, a different universe.

There’s no way of figuring it out, and I’m incredibly confused.

And scared. If there is anyone in the world to whom I can tell the truth, it’s these two women.

Ladies, I have made the switch from forecaster to possible soothsayer.

Let’s call it an upgrade.

But the concern on their faces is already too naked, too painful. I’ll tell them what I can, and hope that it’s enough.

“I went on another date,” I say slowly. “I... didn’t see it ending well.”

More specifically: I didn’t see it ending at all.

“OK...” Eve looks even more confused. “But you never see it ending well, Maggie. That’s literally your entire dating strategy.”

“And that’s a good thing,” Jules says quickly. “You’re protecting yourself.”

I can feel myself limbering back into the truth now—a part of it, at least.

“Exactly. He just wasn’t right for me.” I shrug. “All wrong, in fact. Too short. A waiter. Doesn’t earn much. Very little

free time. Lives in Bath. Also, he has a kid. So...”

Eve and Jules glance at each other. “So?”

“So...” I take the wine—my turn—and speak into the glass. “I’m no good with children. You know that. I don’t have...

the maternal urge, or whatever. I’m just not... It’s not for me, that’s all. It’s at the top of my Criteria List for a

very good reason.”

I have a sudden flash of Winter’s little face as she stood in my living room with her suitcase: the grave, concerned way she

was staring at me. Looks like Other Margot is pretty terrible with children too. That’s comforting, I guess. No change there.

Then I notice that Eve has quietly taken the wine off me.

“Eve,” I say quietly. “No.”

“Yeah.” She sips, then looks up, smiles brightly. “Didn’t work again. But hey-ho! One more round. What’s a bit more debt and

a lot more hormones? So I’m having wine tonight . That’s all.”

Jules reaches forward and touches Eve’s arm gently.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Eve says with a hard, bright fierceness. “We’re here to talk about Maggie’s giant meltdown.”

I open my mouth to object, then realize I can’t.

“Nothing to say here either.” I grin too cheerfully. “No point in investing in something that won’t work, is there? I’ve saved

myself a whole bunch of time. Consider it a narrow escape.”

Plus, I don’t want to paint my flat purple . I don’t like purple .

Eve and Jules look at each other for a few seconds, eyebrows raised, then back at me.

“ What? ” I sigh. “Just say it.”

“You say it,” Jules says to Eve finally. “Go. You’ll do it more sensitively than me.”

“Right.” Eve clears her throat and thinks about it, searching for her most subtle and encouraging words. “Margot. You are