The Other You
Cover
THE
OTHER
YOU
ALSO BY J.S. MONROE
Find Me
Forget My Name
Title Page
THE
OTHER
YOU
J. S. MONROE
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © J.S. Monroe, 2020
The moral right of J.S. Monroe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781789541670
ISBN (XTPB): 9781789541687
ISBN (E): 9781789541663
Images: © Shutterstock
Cover design: Anna Green
Author photo: © Hilary Stock
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
Dedication
For Andrea
Epigraph
Double, double, toil and trouble...
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Contents
Also by J.S. Monroe
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
One week earlier
Chapter 1
Friday
Chapter 2
Saturday
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Sunday
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Monday
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Tuesday
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
One week later
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
One month later
Chapter 116
Acknowledgements
About the author
An Invitation from the Publisher
One week earlier
1
Kate
She used to be good at faces. So good they paid her. If you were living a lie, she would see it in your eyes. She could spot an impostor at a hundred yards. And she only had to pass you once in the street to remember your face forever.
‘Kate?’ Rob calls up the stairs. ‘You coming?’
Kate glances at herself in the bedroom mirror. Rob is taking her to a new place today, a secret beach somewhere on the south coast. It’s a change from their normal Saturday. Usually they begin with a swim in the bay, followed by coffee at their favourite café overlooking the harbour. Double espresso for him, flat white for her. Rob likes his routine.
‘Just a sec,’ she says.
He’s by the front door, ready to go, but she knows it will take him a few more seconds to switch on all the alarms. The house is like Fort Knox. She leans in closer to the mirror in their bedroom, searching for a clue in her face, a telltale sign that the thirty-three-year-old woman smiling back at her is not quite as blissed up as she seems. Nothing. Her eyes are dancing, happiness radiating from every pore of her sun-kissed skin.
‘Kate?’ Rob calls out again, above a cacophony of beeping alarms.
‘Coming,’ she says, skipping down the stairs to join him in the vast hall. Stretch, the smooth-haired dachshund puppy he’s bought her, trots in from the kitchen.
‘See you later, little legs,’ she says, scooping Stretch up to kiss him goodbye. He normally comes everywhere with her, but in another break with routine, Rob has asked that this morning he stay behind. ‘Sure he won’t set off the alarms? He’s not very good at staying on his bed.’
‘The system’s smarter than that,’ Rob says. ‘Knows a naughty dog when it sees one.’
An hour later, they are walking arm in arm across a small beach that can only be reached by descending a treacherous cliff path. Behind it, granite rocks rise up like a giant stage curtain. The tide is turning, leaving a pool of deep turquoise water trapped by a bar of rippled sand that bisects the mouth of the cove. On either flank, the steep rocks flatten out as they extend into the sea. They’ve got the beach to themselves and no one passed them on the coast path.
‘Why haven’t you brought me here before?’ she asks, stunned by the beautiful location.
‘I didn’t think you were strong enough – to climb down,’ he says, walking on ahead.
They’ve been together five months now and it’s true that she hasn’t been in a good place, recovering from a car accident that nearly killed her. But she’s feeling better by the day, physically and mentally.
Rob stops to pick up something from the tideline. It’s a small piece of glass, heart-shaped and smoothed by the ocean.
‘I think this may be yours,’ he says, watching as she takes it in her hands. His faint Southern Irish lilt is more inflected when he talks quietly, almost musical.
Hearts don’t usually do it for Kate, but for some reason this piece of sea glass, with its rough-hewn beauty, melts hers. Maybe it’s because Rob’s not a natural romantic, still learning.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she says, turning to kiss him. She closes her eyes, feeling the sun on her eyelids. They both know what’s coming next. They can never help themselves. Or she can’t, at least. Without saying anything, they strip off all their clothes and race down the beach, Kate slightly ahead of Rob.
‘I won,’ she says, running as far as she can into the water until it’s too deep and she has to dive beneath the glistening surface. She knows he let her win. He always does. But this time she feels strong as she swims out into the deep translucent pool. Sometimes she gets a twinge of cramp in her legs, a legacy of the accident, but not today.
‘I’ve been having some swimming lessons, up in London,’ Rob says a few moments later, treading water beside her.
Is he changing the subject, still embarrassed by her skinny-dipping habits? He can be a bit uptight like that.
‘Trying to improve my front crawl,’ he continues. ‘You know, the breathing. Will you tell me how I’m doing?’
He doesn’t wait for an answer and dives under, his white body shimmering below her.
‘Ready?’ he calls out, surfacing ten yards to her right like a seal.
Kate nods, trying to be enthusiastic. Rob has lessons for everything. Swimming, tennis, chess and recently beginner’s French – he needs to speak it for his work. All she wants to learn is how to paint people again. The accident put an end to that. Destroyed her ability to recognise faces too.
Rob starts to windmill through the water, all long arms and legs. She can’t say it’s an improvement on his previous style, but his firm bum is impressive. As he passes, she leans forward and tries to grab him where he likes to be grabbed when he’s not swimming. The result is spectacular, as if he’s swum headlong into a brick wall. He comes up for air, gasping and choking.
‘Was that you?’ he says, shock giving way to a smile.
‘I hope so,’ she says.
‘I thought I’d been bitten by a fish.’
‘Next time I will bite you.’
‘Is that a promise?’ he asks, coming over to kiss her.
She takes him in her hand again, gently this time, and pulls him towards her.
‘Do you dare me?’ she says, nodding at a rock at the back of the beach as they tread water. It’s overhanging the deep pool and just begging to be jumped.
Before he has time to answer, she swims off towards the shore.
‘It’s too high,’ Rob calls out, but she’s already out of the water and climbing up. ‘Kate, be careful.’
He’s always urging her to be careful, to lock the house, look out for strangers. It’s become a bit of a mantra. And she always ignores him.
‘Dive or jump?’ she says from the top of the rock, peering down at the dark water below.
‘Kate, please!’ Rob says, looking up at her.
‘You’re such a pussy,’ she says, raising her arms above her naked body. She feels good today. Better.
‘Kate!’ he calls out again, but it’s too late. She’s already diving through the air like a swallow and coming up from the cold depths beside him.
‘Your turn,’ she says.
‘No way.’ He kisses her with relief, glancing at her head as if checking for damage. ‘You alright?’
‘I’m fine.’ She’s never been afraid of heights, not since her mum encouraged her to leap off the harbour wall in Mousehole, a village further down the Cornish coast. They were on holiday, just the two of them, and she can’t have been older than six. The local boys were impressed – she’d pencil-jumped from the highest point. No wetsuit either. She was terrified, but she’s loved it ever since. The thrill of the jump.
Back on the beach, they warm themselves in the strengthening sun, drink coffee from a new ‘smart’ flask that Rob is testing – he works in tech, loves his gadgets – and talk. Their clothes are back on as a man with binoculars has appeared on the skyline behind them. Apparently, the beach will be busy with nudists later, and Rob doesn’t think this man is a birdwatcher.
‘You really are getting well, aren’t you?’ Rob says, pushing a comma of wet hair off his forehead. ‘I mean properly well.’
‘We’ll see,’ she says. ‘After all this excitement, I might need a lie down.’
‘But you’re feeling stronger?’ he continues.
‘Sure.’ She smiles. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘I’m not here enough to take any credit.’
Rob only comes down from London at weekends, and not every weekend, but he’s the best thing that could have happened to Kate. In five short months, he has turned her life around. He’s let her stay in his extraordinary house in Cornwall, spoilt her beyond her wildest dreams, and nurtured her damaged body and soul back to health.
‘I just wish I was able to paint again.’ She sighs.
‘It’ll come back,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
In recent days, she’s been trying to capture Stretch on canvas, but painting portraits of people, her first love, is still beyond her.
‘The thought of never asking anyone to sit for me again…’ she says, her words tailing off. ‘It scares the pants off me.’
He glances up, perhaps wondering if that’s a cue for another race down to the sea, but she hasn’t got the energy. Maybe she’s not as well as she thinks.
‘Does anything else scare you?’ he asks.
‘Hospitals,’ she says, shuddering at the memory. She has tried so hard to forget the tubes, the breathing apparatus, the sense of helplessness after the accident, when she was lying in intensive care.
‘Hey, it’s where we met.’ He smiles.
‘That was different. I was on a ward by then.’ And he was on a tour of the hospital, encouraging patients to visit an exhibition he’d organised in the main reception area.
‘And you? Are you scared by anything?’ she asks, doubting that he’s troubled by much in life. It’s her he worries about not himself. She used to think he was nervous when she first met him, but it’s just his energy. Rob’s protean brain never stops; it whirrs like a supercomputer. He’s an Irish geek. His phrase, not hers.
It’s a while before he answers.
‘When I was a teenager,’ he begins, ‘I was terrified of meeting my doppelgänger.’
She glances up at him, surprised. ‘It’s supposed to be a bad omen if you see one,’ he continues, looking out to sea. Rob’s never struck her as a superstitious person. Far from it. His life is ruled by modern technology, not by fanciful myths. She doodles a pattern in the soft sand, hoping that he will continue. They don’t often talk in this way, not about him, his fears. It’s always about her.
‘Are you still frightened?’ she prompts.
‘And now everyone’s into posting selfies on social media,’ he says, ignoring her question, ‘it’s well within the bounds of probability for all of us to be found by someone with an exact physical likeness.’
She feels a pang of disappointment. He’s reverted to work speak just when she thought he was opening up. Returned to safer ground.
‘There are several billion faces online, waiting to be matched. Believe me, I’ve done the maths, crunched the numbers.’
Of course he has. But she’s taken aback by what he says next.
‘We’ve all got a double out there somewhere, watching, waiting. Shadowless.’ He looks around the cove, up at the clifftop behind them. The man with the binoculars has gone. ‘And I’ve already met mine, a long time ago.’
‘When?’ she asks. He doesn’t answer.
‘They say it’s bad enough to see your double once, but it’s meant to be much worse if you meet them a second time.’ He pauses. ‘The day I see him again will be my last. He’ll take over my life, me, you, the house, my company, all that I’ve achieved, everything that’s precious to me.’
He pauses, eyes welling as the Cornish sun disappears behind a solitary cloud, casting the beach into sudden shade. ‘He’ll steal my soul.’
Friday
2
Kate
‘What to do with ourselves, eh?’ Kate says to Stretch, drumming her fingers on the Tesla’s steering wheel. She’s driven over to Newquay to meet Rob’s Friday evening flight from London Heathrow and she’s now waiting in the car park. It’s like being on a first date. She’s tried listening to the radio, but she can’t concentrate. She’s filed her nails, checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, scrolled through her Instagram feed. Stretch is beside himself with excitement too, unable to settle on the plush leather passenger seat.
A Tesla’s not her natural choice of car – a bit of a boy’s toy – but she likes the fact that it’s electric. Rapid too. Rob bought it for her personal use down in Cornwall. She still can’t quite believe the new life she has. Her old Morris Minor Traveller used to spend more time at the garage being repaired than on the road.
She watches as a steady stream of people leaves the terminal: a few commuters but mostly holidaymakers. Despite herself, she starts to clock each face, noticing individual features – sallow cheeks, Roman nose, spaniel eyes. Before the accident, she was employed by the police as a civilian ‘super recogniser’. Two per cent of the population can’t remember a face, a condition known as prosopagnosia, or facial blindness; at the other end of the spectrum, 1 per cent – dubbed the super recognisers – can never forget one. That was her. It wasn’t her first choice of career – she always saw herself as a portrait painter – but she discovered that she was good at it. Very good. She once identified a suspect from just his eyes. The rest of his face was covered.
She sits up. Rob has appeared, across the car park to their left. Her heart stops. Cotton hoodie, white T-shirt and jeans, courier bag slung over one shoulder. He lowers his head to run a restless hand through his hair and looks up, taking in the evening sun with a sideways squint at the sky. She waves across at him, scrambling out of the car as he walks over. They kiss and hold each other tightly.
‘What’s with Stretch?’ he says as he slides behind the Tesla’s steering wheel.
She hadn’t noticed, but Stretch is now curled up on the seat, head down. He was so happy a few minutes ago.
‘Just tired,’ she says, scooping him up as she sits in the passenger seat. His tiny legs are trembling on her lap. ‘Walked too far today, didn’t we, little one? We’re both tired.’
Rob glances across at her and smiles. The diffident smile that had so intrigued her as she lay in hospital, wondering if her life would ever be the same again. She knows what he’s thinking. Has she just let him know that she’s too tired for their usual Friday night routine? They’ll have to see. She hasn’t felt so well this week.
‘Nice hair, by the way,’ he says.
‘Thanks.’ She’s pleased that he’s noticed. She went for an undercut earlier today, in a bid to cheer herself up, make herself feel younger.
‘I got you a present,’ he says, legs bouncing like a schoolboy beneath the steering wheel.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she says, watching him use the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe away a smudge of dirt on the car’s large touchscreen between them. She’d meant to clean the car before he arrived. He likes things to be spotless. ‘I already have everything I need down here. Thanks to you.’
He reaches behind the seat, pulls out a small jewellery box from his bag and passes it to her. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, is the piece of frosted beach glass that they found last week. It’s now on a filigree silver chain. He knows she loves necklaces.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she says, suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘Thank you.’
‘I wasn’t totally sure about the sizing.’ He stares at her neck, a look of intense concentration on his face. ‘Whether it would be too loose. I wanted it to be snug – you know, like a choker.’
She lets him fasten it, her neck tingling at his touch, but then the clasp catches a pinch of her skin at the back and she flinches. ‘Ouch,’ she says, playfully. It might be her imagination but he seems to hesitate a moment too long before apologising.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s a little tight.’
*
Kate glances across at Rob’s smooth, sleeping body and slips quietly out of bed, wrapping a cotton dressing gown around her as she steps out onto the terrace. It’s a warm August evening and no one can see her here. The isolated house, all glass and oak and concrete, is cut deep into the Cornish hillside and faces out to sea, which is empty tonight, apart from the winking lights of tankers moored in the distance off Falmouth.
‘You OK?’ Rob calls out.
She swings around. It’s too dark in the bedroom to see him properly.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she says, turning back towards the bay, where a ribbon of moonlight has been laid across the water.
A moment later, his arms are wrapped around her from behind. ‘Come back to bed,’ he whispers in her ear.
She can feel him against her, a familiar swelling. She rests her hand on his smooth forearm and thinks again about the necklace he gave her earlier, his insensitive response to her squeal of pain. It still niggles.
‘Thank you for the present,’ she says. He must have just been tired. Hardly surprising after a long week at work and then the flight down.
‘Not too tight?’ he asks.
‘It’s perfect.’
Back inside the bedroom, they snuggle up in the darkness. In all other respects, he’s played it well this evening. He ran her a bath with Moroccan rose oil and brought in two glasses of chilled champagne. Her exhaustion of earlier slipped away. Afterwards, he was the one who fell asleep almost instantly, like a laptop closing.
‘Talk to me,’ she says now, quietly. ‘Tell me about your week.’
She still doesn’t understand exactly what Rob does in London. One of the articles she read about his meteoric career described him as a serial ‘techpreneur’, the youngest ever founder of a British ‘unicorn’ company and a pioneering champion of something called ‘direct neural interface’ technology – the interaction between brain and machine. She likes the sound of unicorns. The ‘disruptive’ tag is less appealing. He also runs a charity on the side that puts on art shows in hospitals, which is how they met.
‘That’s so interesting,’ she offers, filling the silence. ‘You’ve developed an app, you say, that makes women wake up in the middle of the night begging to give their man a blowjob? That’s incredible. What a smart, selfless piece of coding.’
He nudges her playfully. And then all she can hear is the faint in and out of his breathing, and the sound of the waves below.
Sleep soon starts to lap at her own consciousness, but something’s preventing her from dropping off. What Rob said about doubles last weekend has been on her mind all week. She hasn’t been able to forget it, his words chasing her through her days of painting and nights of restless dreams. And I’ve already met mine, a long time ago. What must it be like to actually meet your double? And when did Rob encounter his? Where? We’ve all got a double out there somewhere, watching, waiting. Shadowless. It’s revealed an unexpected side of him. A new insight.
She turns over, her interest piqued all over again. She remembers being fascinated by identical twins in primary school. The teacher used to tell her off for staring at them in class. Maybe it was an early challenge to her powers of recognition. Spot the difference. And there was the French-exchange girl at secondary school who apparently looked just like her. That had freaked her out.
She lies there, sleepless, her thoughts running loose and wild. What if the French girl were to suddenly come back into her life, discover her on Instagram, decide she’d like a piece of Rob… What was it he said? It’s well within the bounds of probability for all of us to be found by someone with an exact physical likeness. Would Rob be attracted to her? The woman would have a fight on her hands if she tried it on with him. Kate smiles at the ceiling. It’s a preposterous thought. But then she recalls Rob’s tone of voice, how serious he’d been, and her stomach tightens. He’ll take over my life, me, you, the house, my company, all that I’ve achieved, everything’s that’s precious to me. Imagine living with that sort of fear. And what if it became reality? She shoves the idea to the back of mind.
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