Page 35 of I Know How This Ends

I open my eyes.

I’m lying under a thick mustard blanket and I pull it to the side: I’m too hot, too sticky, too scratchy. Cautiously, I look

around. It’s still dark, but I appear to be in Henry’s flat. The fireplace is covered in lit candles, and there’s a bowl of

something green on the coffee table in front of me. Surprised, I prod it slightly: it’s soup. A stale piece of cold toast

is perched next to it with a faint air of disappointment.

I cough hard, still feeling unbearably hot.

Reaching up, I run my hands through sticky hair and realize with shock that it’s short. When I look down, I’m wearing a pair

of yellow pajamas with stars on them. I’m covered in sweat and the large indoor tree is in the right corner by the window

and the television is a ship and am I having the same vision again? Have I somehow slipped into the exact same part of the

future? Then I cough hard and oh my God, it’s not a vision, I’m here, it’s happening.

I have finally become Other Margot.

Nauseous panic rushes through me: what if it isn’t the same? What if everything I’ve seen isn’t true? What if I say the wrong

thing, do the wrong thing, somehow send my destiny spiraling in a different direction? What if—somehow, with one stupid move—I

lose Henry?

“ Henry ,” I croak, my throat raw. “ Henry. ”

No answer.

What if he’s not here? What if he’s gone out, doesn’t hear me, doesn’t respond, what if everything I want falls apart, and what the hell has happened to my hair ?

“ Henry ,” I say again, trying to stand up. “Are you here?”

Maybe he’s outside, maybe he’s coming back. I need to reach him, need to make sure he’s still here. I don’t want to lose him

this way, don’t want to change anything, don’t want to go back to my life the way it was, I don’t want to be alone again,

I need to see him, need to get to him, need to—

Wobbling, I reach the front door and start rummaging at the lock. I need to find Henry.

A voice behind me: “Meg?”

He’s here, just like last time , and I promptly start crying.

“Oh shit .” I feel Henry’s hand rest briefly on the back of my neck and it’s the same, it’s the same, I don’t know how, but I’m both

Margots, I’m two of us, I remember this, and I feel her and I feel me too, and we’re both here and we’re the same.

Still crying incoherently, I turn round.

“I thought you’d gone,” I say, sobbing. “I thought you weren’t going to be here. I thought I was on my own.”

There’s an intense, almost physical wave of déjà vu, and even as I hear the words, I realize I’ve said them before. Or heard myself say them before, except this time they mean

something different: for Other Margot, for this version of me. It’s the same, but also not the same, and it’s happening whether

I try to control it or not.

“I was just checking on Winter.” Henry laughs, wrapping his arms around me. He smells of pepper and lemon, and I suddenly

realize this is the first time he’s smelled like this in the present. “I haven’t gone anywhere, I promise.”

Disorientated and confused, I tuck into Henry’s neck and feel myself grow calm.

This is it: this is how it feels now, the calmness, the safety, the sensation of being suddenly home. Past Margot felt it,

and now I feel it too.

“Is Winter OK?” I murmur. “She’s not too sick?”

Because I now remember the last couple of days: me, incoherent on the sofa, Henry bringing glasses of water, soups, smoothies, and gently coaxing me to eat.

I remember crying randomly because I couldn’t swallow properly or make the ache go away.

I remember Winter being poorly too, and I remember why: it’s the flu that was going round at Henry’s work.

He must have passed it on while remaining completely fine himself—the world’s healthiest hypochondriac.

But suddenly all I care about is that little girl, and whether she feels as horrible and as frightened as I do.

“It’s just the flu,” Henry confirms, brushing my fringe out of my sweaty face and studying me carefully. He looks tired. I

remember now: he’s been up for days, looking after both of us. “And she’s fine, Meg. You’ve got it far worse, I’m afraid.

It’ll be gone in a few days.”

I nod, staring at his face. His stubble has grown and so seems slightly more silvery, just as it did in the vision—it wasn’t

as far in the future as I thought—and I feel a sudden sense of overwhelming relief and gratitude.

I don’t want a future that doesn’t have him in it.

“Henry,” I say. “I think this is...”

Proof.

It’s proof that my visions are real, that somehow me and Other Margot will continue being the same person, blending together

in a weird state of now and then. We are not two distinct people, as it seemed at the beginning. We’re just one person. And

much like Macbeth, I can’t change anything. What I have seen will happen, and any effort to avoid it or bring it about is

useless because it will just lead me there anyway.

“...where I need to be,” I finish in an emotional voice.

Because the déjà vu is over and Past Margot has gone: it’s just me left now, and I silently say goodbye to her. See you next

time, Other Margot.

“I know,” Henry grins, kissing my hot cheek softly. “When Winnie started getting sick, I realized you were probably super sick too, and you weren’t answering your phone, so I freaked out, as I tend to do.”

I stare at him, suddenly needing answers to questions I’ve had for a while.

“Where the hell is my hair?” I frown. “Where has it gone?”

Wait—no. I don’t need an answer to that. I suddenly remember. Somewhere, in the foggy mists of really bad flu, I chopped it

off in the bathroom so I could feel air on my neck. But I didn’t do it on purpose: that’s what’s so weird. I didn’t remember

the vision at the time; I was too ill. I just... did it.

“You went full Britney,” Henry smiles. “Something about ‘letting go of the past,’ and more very long speeches that didn’t

make a lot of sense but were quite impassioned. It was dramatic and I did try to stop you, for the record, but it was too

late, you’d already done the back. So I did the front, to try and even it out.”

I nod in amazement, running my hand over my hatcheted hair.

“Does it look OK?” God, I’m so vain. I’ve now confirmed I can actually see the future, but hell to that: am I pretty? “Do

I look horrible?”

“It doesn’t look great ,” Henry admits. “You look quite a lot like a Barbie that Winter got tired of. But I’m sure it’ll look amazing once we’ve

taken you to a hairdresser. You could be bald and still look gorgeous, Margot.”

I roll my eyes: I don’t have time for these compliments, I have stuff to ask.

“Whose pajamas are these?” I point at the yellow pajamas with stars all over them. “They’re not mine.”

“I couldn’t let you sweat your life out in satin, could I? So I ordered them online and they turned up yesterday. You weren’t

happy. You started crying and saying you wished they were pink. I had no idea you were so passionate about the color pink.”

“Nice.” Neither did I. That’s embarrassing. What else? “Wait—how did you know where I live? You’ve never been to my house

before, have you?”

“Ah.” Henry rubs his face. “You know how weird I am about sickness, and when I couldn’t reach you for two days, I panicked and messaged Margot the Meteorologist on Instagram.

I had to pass quite a rigorous security check, along with sending screenshots of our last conversation to prove I was who I said I was, but luckily you’d told Polly about me and she eventually told me where to find you. ”

My eyes open wide. “How very stalkerish of you.”

“I know .” He looks mortified. “But, Margot, you were really sick. I don’t know if you remember this, but you vomited in my car on the way home. All over the dashboard. And it was my

fault you had the flu in the first place. I couldn’t just leave you there to deal with it alone.”

My eyes sting. Last time I was this sick was about seven years ago, and Aaron did leave me there to deal with it alone. He

certainly wasn’t applying cold flannels to my forehead every ten minutes and apologizing for buying me pajamas in the wrong

color.

“Thank you,” I say, leaning up to kiss him and sneezing instead.

“You’re very welcome.” He wipes my snot off his cheek without twitching. “Look. I know this is all... moving pretty fast.

What with all the unexpected babysitting and the sweating and the coughing and the sneezing and the vomiting.”

“And the crying,” I add. “About nothing.”

“And the crying about literally nothing,” he agrees with a warm smile. “So if you’re feeling like you need to pull back, slow

things down, I totally understand. I was mostly stepping in from... a medical perspective. You know, as a wannabe doctor with a lot of guilt about

making you ill. Just say the word and I’ll leave you alone for a while so we can go back to normal dating.”

“You mean sitting in random restaurants, politely asking each other if we have brothers and sisters.”

“Exactly. I don’t, by the way.”

“Me neither. Only child.”

“Same. I don’t love it.”

“Me neither. That’s why I adopted Jules and Eve.”

“Who rang multiple times, incidentally. They were getting frantic, so I eventually picked up and told them you were super

ill and that you’d call them as soon as you surfaced. Then Jules asked me a lot of interrogatory questions and Eve told me I sound hot, which was nice of her.”

I laugh: that sounds about right, for both of them.

“Well.” I pretend to think about it, even though I know exactly what I’m about to say. “Now I know you have no siblings, where

you work and how adept you are at hunting people down on the internet, and you know how I feel about yellow pajamas, what

my puke looks like and how invasive my friends are, I think we can probably fast-forward to the next bit of this.”

Henry grins. “And which bit is that?”

“The bit where you call me your girlfriend.”

“Too late,” Henry smiles, kissing my nose. “I already told Polly.”

It takes me a full week to get any kind of strength back.