The Successful Life

She had been asleep.

A deep, dreamless nothing, and now – thanks to the ring of a phone alarm – she was awake and didn’t know where she was.

The phone told her it was 6:30 a.m. A light switch beside the bed appeared, thanks to the glow of the screen. Switching it on, she could see she was in a hotel room. It was rather plush, in a bland and blue and corporate kind of way.

A tasteful semi-abstract sub-Cezanne painting of an apple – or maybe a pear – was framed on the wall.

There was a half-empty cylinder-shaped glass bottle of still mineral water beside the bed. And an unopened collection of shortbread biscuits. Some printed-out papers too, stapled together. A timetable of some sort.

She looked at it.

ITINERARY FOR NORA SEED OBE, GUEST SPEAKER, GULLIVER RESEARCH INSPIRING SUCCESS SPRING CONFERENCE

8.45 a.m. Meet Priya Navuluri (Gulliver Research) and Rory Longford (Celebrity Speakers) and J in lobby, InterContinental Hotel 9.00 a.m. Soundcheck.

9.05 a.m. Tech run-through.

9.30 a.m. Nora to wait in VIP area or watch first speaker in main hall (JP Blythe, inventor of MeTime app and author of Your Life, Your Terms) 10.15 a.m. Nora to deliver talk

10.45 a.m. Audience Q + A

11.00 a.m. Meet and greet

11.30 a.m. Finish

Nora Seed OBE.

Inspiring Success.

So, there was a life in which she was a success. Well, that was something.

She wondered who ‘J’ was, and the other people she was supposed to meet in the lobby, and then she put the sheet of paper down and got out of bed. She had a lot of time. Why was she getting up at 6:30 a.m.? Maybe she swam every morning. That would make sense. She pressed a button and the curtains slid open with a low whirr to reveal a view of water and skyscrapers and the white dome of the O2 arena. She had never seen this precise view from this precise angle before. London. Canary Wharf. About twenty storeys up.

She went to the bathroom – beige tiles, large shower cubicle, fluffy white towels – and realised she didn’t feel as bad as she usually did in the morning. There was a mirror filling half the opposing wall. She gasped at her appearance. And then she laughed. She looked so ridiculously healthy. And strong. And in this life had terrible taste in nightwear (pyjamas, mustard-and-green, plaid).

The bathroom was quite large. Large enough to get down on and do some push-ups. Ten full ones in a row – no knees – without even getting out of breath.

Then she held a plank. And tried it with one hand. Then the other hand, with hardly a tremor. Then she did some burpees.

No problem at all.

Wow.

She stood up and patted her rock-hard stomach. Remembered how wheezy she had been in her root life, walking up the high street, technically only yesterday.

She hadn’t felt this fit since she was a teenager. In fact, this might be the fittest she had ever felt. Stronger, certainly.

Searching Facebook for ‘Isabel Hirsh’, she found out that her former best friend was alive and still living in Australia and this made Nora happy. She didn’t even care that they weren’t social media friends, as it was highly probable that in this life Nora hadn’t gone to Bristol University. And even if she had, she wouldn’t have been doing the same course. It was a bit humbling to realise that, even though this Isabel Hirsh might never have met Nora Seed, she was still doing the same thing she was doing in Nora’s root life.

She also checked in on Dan. He was (seemingly) happily married to a spin-class instructor called Gina. ‘Gina Lord (née Sharpe)’. They’d had a wedding in Sicily.

Nora then googled ‘Nora Seed’.

Her Wikipedia page (she had a Wikipedia page!) informed her that she had indeed made it to the Olympics. Twice. And that she specialised in freestyle. She had won a gold medal for 800m freestyle, with a ridiculous time of eight minutes and five seconds, and had a silver for 400m.

This had been when she was twenty-two years old. She had won another silver medal when she was twenty-six, for her participation in a 4 x 100m relay. It got even more ridiculous when she read that she had briefly been the world record-holder for women’s 400m freestyle at the World Aquatic Championships. She had then retired from international competition.

She had retired at twenty-eight.

She apparently now worked for the BBC during their coverage of swimming events, had appeared on the TV show A Question of Sport, had written an autobiography called Sink or Swim, was an occasional assistant coach at British Swimming GB, and still swam for two hours every day.

She gave a lot of money to charitable causes – namely to Marie Curie Cancer Care – and she had organised a fundraising charity swimathon around Brighton Pier for the Marine Conservation Society. Since retiring from professional sport, she had swum the Channel twice.

There was a link to a TED talk she had given about the value of stamina in sport, and training, and life. It had over a million views. As she began to watch it, Nora felt as though she was watching someone else. This woman was confident, commanded the stage, had great posture, smiled naturally as she spoke, and managed to make the crowd smile and laugh and clap and nod their heads at all the right moments.

She had never imagined she could be like this, and tried to memorise what this other Nora was doing, but realised there was no way she would be able to.

‘People with stamina aren’t made any differently to anyone else,’ she was saying. ‘The only difference is they have a clear goal in mind, and a determination to get there. Stamina is essential to stay focused in a life filled with distraction. It is the ability to stick to a task when your body and mind are at their limit, the ability to keep your head down, swimming in your lane, without looking around, worrying who might overtake you . . .’

Who the hell was this person?

She skipped a little further into the video, and this other Nora was still talking with the confidence of a self-help Joan of Arc.

‘If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise. Keep your head down. Keep your stamina. Keep swimming . . .’

‘Keep swimming,’ Nora mumbled, echoing this other self and wondering if the hotel had a pool.

The video disappeared and a second later her phone started to buzz.

A name appeared. ‘Nadia’.

She didn’t know any Nadias in her original life. She had no idea if seeing the name would have inspired this version of her with happy anticipation or sinking dread.

There was only one way to find out.

‘Hello?’

‘Sweetheart,’ came a voice she didn’t recognise. A voice that was close but not entirely warm. She had an accent. Maybe Russian. ‘I hope you are okay.’

‘Hi Nadia. Thanks. I’m fine. I’m just here in the hotel. Getting ready for a conference.’ She tried to sound jolly.

‘Oh yeah, the conference. Fifteen thousand pounds for a talk. Sounds good.’

It sounded ridiculous. But she also wondered how Nadia – whoever Nadia was – knew this.

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Joe told us.’

‘Joe?’

‘Yeah. Well, listen, I need to talk to you at some point about your father’s birthday.’

‘What?’

‘I know he’d love it if you could come up and see us.’

Her whole body went cold and weak, as if she had seen a ghost.

She remembered her father’s funeral, hugging her brother as they cried on each other’s shoulders.

‘My dad?’

My dad. My dead dad.

‘He’s just come in from the garden. Do you want a word with him?’

This was so remarkable, so world-shattering, it was totally out of synch with her tone of voice. She said it casually, almost as if it was nothing at all.

‘What?’

‘Do you want a word with Dad?’

It took her a moment. She felt suddenly off-balance.

‘I—’

She could hardly speak. Or breathe. She didn’t know what to say. Everything felt unreal. It was like time travel. As though she had fallen through two decades.

It was too late to respond because the next thing she heard was Nadia saying: ‘Here he is . . .’

Nora nearly hung up the phone. Maybe she should have. But she didn’t. Now she knew it was a possibility, she needed to hear his voice again.

His breath first.

Then: ‘Hi Nora, how are you?’

Just that. Casual, non-specific, everyday. It was him. His voice. His strong voice that had always been so clipped. But a little thinner, maybe, a little weaker. A voice fifteen years older than it was meant to be.

‘Dad,’ she said. Her voice was a stunned whisper. ‘It’s you.’