Page 54 of I Know How This Ends

The visions stop.

I wait, but nothing happens: I’ve cut the thread, and whatever was glistening and pulling me forward has gone. Without Henry,

that future doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve chosen a different path, and it’s the right thing to do—I know it, even if I don’t

feel it—but I’m also sadder and more lost than I have ever been before. I miss Henry, I miss Winter, and I miss my visions.

What seemed frightening at first, then an inconvenience, then—frankly—a bit of a burden, suddenly seems like an integral,

much-loved part of me.

I also miss Other Margot.

I’m not sure where she is or what she’s doing anymore, but I think about her a lot, and I hope she’s happy. That I haven’t

made a mistake she’s paying for.

But what to do with the present now I’m not staring into the future?

So I throw myself back into work. I research and make copious meteorological notes, I practice making child-friendly props out of papier maché and balloons, I visit the TV set as it’s developed—it’s even bigger, madder—and try to smile at everyone as if I’m not heartbroken, as if I don’t feel like there’s a bit of me missing, all of the time.

While filming the first season, I wake up at 6 a.m. and work straight through until 11 p.m., at which point I go home and pass out on my bed.

I have a quick twenty-minute sob at 3 a.m., when I realize Henry’s gone for good, automatically check my phone just to see if he’s messaged (he hasn’t), then it’s back to sleep again to finish the night off as best I can.

I worry about Winter all the time, hoping she’s OK, that she’s happy, that the puppy hasn’t peed on her bed again.

But I’m not saying there’s no joy , because there is.

My new job is truly exciting; Polly is amazing, as usual, and jubilantly getting ready to leave Peter in the next couple of

months. Jules buggers off to South America with Sim—“better than sanding, we’ll just buy a rug”—and is littering the group

chat with photos of her hang-gliding with two middle fingers jauntily held up to the camera, backward.

Lily and I have our promised coffee, which is just as awkward and stilted as we both knew it would be, but we plow on diligently:

another coffee, a quick lunch, a few texts, laborious small talk that slowly expands into something that feels like friendship

again, albeit a new, slightly altered one. Lil never mentions Aaron after our initial conversation, so I leave the topic alone

and pray that she’s OK, that she’s happy, that he’s treating her better than he treated me, that Jules can be there for the

intimate details she will never share with me. Although she does—just once—let it slip that Aaron broke his arm by falling

off a table, drunk, and I take the news like the gift it is.

Eventually, Lil rejoins the group chat (much to Eve’s delight).

And as weeks turn into months, I wait for my heart to heal too.

I wait patiently for time to work its magic, just as it lets my hair grow down to my shoulders, thus, I realize with more

sadness, erasing just a few more of my visions—my hair is no longer the right length to fit them.

The punching bag has been removed from the corner of my flat—I have no anger left—and I’ve still got Cheds, who is growing at an unprecedented speed and fast becoming both the bane of my existence and the love of my life.

He is my noisy, neon shadow, and has taken to sleeping in various positions usually reserved for accessories: on top of my head, like an orange hat, around my neck, wrapped around my middle.

And when I wake up sobbing most nights, he butts his little head against my face and purrs until I stop.

This cat is all I have left of that other life, the only reminder of what I gave up.

But he’s also a reminder of what I gained .

Because I’m not the same, and everyone around me has noticed. I’m warmer, kinder, less judgmental. I’m softer, more open.

Brighter, somehow. Henry went, but he cracked me apart and pulled out the pearl before going, and even without him I’m a better

person, more beautiful and more myself. I’m nicer and more patient with my mother, now that she has moved back to Bristol

with Dad and is ruling the roost all over again. I tell her things instead of shutting her out. Once, we even attempt a little

cuddle—it doesn’t go well—but we’ve decided we might try it again in the future.

I see my grandfather regularly, and we’re closer than ever.

And Christmas, somehow, comes and goes without anyone dying.

Which is a relief—obviously—but I’m not sure exactly how that works: whether by stopping the future with Henry, I accidentally

saved a life too. I can’t see how, it’s kind of illogical, but it’s the silver lining I need. Just casually stopping the people

around me from dying: that’s not such a small thing.

You’re welcome, whoever you were.

My only real fear is that by stopping the future I’ve seen, I’ll have impacted the people around me in a less positive way.

It’s Eve I worry about most.

I go with her to two more IVF appointments, but I’ve also cut the cord that tied her to Gus, and I’m terrified that somehow

I’ve stopped him from coming into existence at all. Which doesn’t make biological sense, but just by shifting that future, I suppose I’ve handed everyone around me a different one too. So when my doorbell

finally goes—three months after the break-up, two days after Boxing Day—and I open it to see Eve in floods of tears, I immediately

blame myself.

“Eve!” I clutch her fiercely to me, hating myself. “Darling, no! We’ll keep trying!”

“She won’t stop crying.” Jules appears in the doorway. “I’ve never seen this much salt water, and I’ve just come back from

Bolivia.”

I squeak and throw my arms around her. “You’re home!”

“Apparently so.” She turns slightly. “Hurry up, slowcoach.”

Lily ambles up the garden path, pink-cheeked and out of breath. The baby bump on her tiny frame is now so prominent she looks

like a cartoon snake who just swallowed a watermelon, and any attempt to hide the pregnancy out of “sensitivity to Eve” is

now totally out of the question. Luckily, Eve is such a sweetheart she insisted she didn’t mind and that it was “actually

very good juju to be around all these pregnancy hormones,” despite scientific skepticism and raised eyebrows from both me

and Jules.

“Go on without me.” Lil smiles briefly and presses her hands against the base of her spine with a wince. “I’ll get there in

three to five business days.”

I smile back at her, then usher a still-sobbing Eve inside.

For a few minutes all I can do is rub her back and cast wildly about for something to say to make it better. We’ve been here

before—eight times now—but I’ve never seen her cry this hard or for this long.

“Sssshhh.” I stroke her head slightly desperately. “Should I get the wine?”

I look up beseechingly at Jules and Lily, now standing like total lemons in the middle of my kitchen, watching me carefully.

“Jesus,” I sigh in frustration. “Sensitive as a bag of rocks, you are. I’ll get the alcohol, then. Got to do everything round

here.”

“Neerfami,” Eve wails into her hands.

“Sorry?”

“She said,” Jules grins, “Not. For. Me.”

I stare at Jules, then back at Eve, who continues to sob incoherently. One quick glance at Lily tells me everything I need

to know: she’s beaming all over, and bopping up and down slightly with her hands on her stomach.

“ No. ” I run back to Eve, fighting the urge to start crying too. “Tell me why you can’t drink alcohol. Stop crying and tell me

right fucking now , you numpty . ”

“BECAUSE I’M PREGNANT!” Eve yells at the ceiling.

“She’s pregnant!” Jules punches the air and then gives a little kick that narrowly misses a curious Cheddar. “She only went

and finally bloody did it! Two lines and everything! Did the test—how many times?”

“Seveeennnnnn,” Eve sobs, starting to giggle hysterically. “Seven, and they all said yes . They said yes, Maggie! THEY SAID YES.”

A bizarre celebration dance has commenced in the kitchen: Lil wiggling her bottom while Jules grinds wildly against my recently

painted yellow cabinets. Eve giggles and hops up to join them, clapping.

“Don’t just bloody sit there,” Jules calls. “Get in here.”

But I’m busy doing the math.

This is the right time. It’s exactly the right time.

I didn’t knock anything off course, not for Eve. This baby is the little boy I have seen. He’s coming, just as I knew he would.

A little bit of that future is still left over, still shining, still glimmering like a river. And I’m so incredibly happy

that it’s saved, even if the rest of it has gone. Like running into a burning building to save one precious thing. But my

God, how incredibly precious it is.

“Aaaaarrrghhh!” I bounce into the kitchen. “You did it!”

“ We did it!” Eve lobs her arms around me. “ We did. It’s our baby.”

“I don’t think that’s a genetic possibility, mate,” Jules says, pretending to slap her bottom repeatedly. “But sure. Thanks

for the acknowledgment.”

“Do you know what you’ll call him?” I clear my throat. Fuck. “Or her. Could be a girl. Could totally be a girl. I don’t know.”

I do know.

“Yes.” Eve nods, her cheeks bright pink. “Asparagus.”

Lily puts a hand over her mouth with a small, alarmed squeak.

Jules stops faux slapping.

“No.” She turns to stare at Eve, crossing her arms. “Evelyn Caitlin Williams, you are not calling a human child Asparagus . Over my dead body. I’ll call social services. I swear, I’ll do it, just watch me.”

I open my mouth in horror: it fits.

“It’s... cute,” Lily says loyally. “Very... organic.”

“Yes,” Jules snaps. “Like a bloody salad.”

“Of course I’m not calling a child Asparagus,” Eve giggles. “But oh my God, your faces . Ah, that was so worth it. No, it’s Augustus, after my great-grandfather. Or August, if it’s a girl.”

“Gus,” I say as my eyes fill: there we go. “It’s perfect.”

Eve grabs us in a hug, and I feel love wrap around the four of us. Lily makes eye contact with me and smiles tentatively.