Page 1 of Someone Like You

PROLOGUE

He didn’t know them — the happy couple laughing side by side by the stove.

The space was dimly lit, the orange glow of a crackling fireplace casting long shadows across the room, outlining the silhouettes of the man and the woman with a wobbly golden halo.

Their laughter filled the cinnamon-scented air — a deep rumble and a bubbly giggle mingled into an oddly heartwarming sound. The postcard-like perfection of the scene was both surreal and mesmerising —irresistible. He was disappointed that he couldn’t see it more clearly. He never could. The dream was always blurry and, despite standing in the middle of it, he always felt like it was out of reach, in another reality.

Outside, glimpses of brown and grey poked out of the endless expanse of snow as the sky at the horizon faded into shades of purple and pink.

There was something peaceful about such surreal scenery, something that enhanced the warmth and the cosiness within the room and between the couple.

He wanted to belong here.

To this place.

To these people and what they had.

But he wasn’t allowed to get to them.

Every time he thought he was finally close enough to grasp a shred of their joy, he was jolted from the vision and back into his bed, as unfamiliar as the room around it.

Tired.

Sad.

Empty.

He hardly ever dreamed nowadays, but when he did, it was always them — the laughing couple out of his reach who made happiness look so easy and attainable.

And every time, when his eyes cracked open, any memory of them was gone, leaving behind a sense of incompletion he’d never been able to make sense of.

chapter 1

PHIL

Philip Jonathan Hanson hadn’t felt like a human being or anything remotely close to it in months, maybe years, and, in retrospect, he’d been quite a fool to believe he could somehow prevent this from interfering with his life.

Despite the highs and lows, however, he prided himself on being a rather convincing impersonator of a functional adult: every day he rolled out of bed, trudged to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on his tired face and tried to ignore the purple circles under his eyes and the greying brown stubble lining his jaw, then washed down his daily dose of Seroxat, and finally proceeded to school his best smile into place before going downstairs to wish his fiancée a good morning.

Abby loved being here. She had been thrilled to move back to her hometown after a whole decade away. She’d made herself perfectly at home in Chicago, in Phil’s demure bachelor pad in West Town, but she had never stopped waxing about the wonders of herScotland, her homeland, while making a name for herself at one of the largest banks in Britain.

Phil had always listened, indulging Abby’s enthusiasm, because he loved his girlfriend and was only happy to do whatever made her happy. Deep down, however, he’d never felt attracted to Scotland — or anywhere else, for that matter — probably because he was too fond of his consolidated routine in the Windy City: every day a different café, just himself and his laptop, a manuscript to work on, a huge cup of coffee and a bag of M&M’s at hand.

Simple.

But nothing was every truly simple with a firecracker of a woman as a partner, and Abby had revolutionised Phil’s lifestyle so smoothly and effortlessly that he hadn’t even realised he’d somehow evolved into an unrecognisable social butterfly until one Saturday night, during a party in his own honour, he’d found himself at the top of the Willis Tower, looking down at the city with the funniest of thoughts casually passing through his head.

I could jump.

Being only a bit of an idiot, Phil had realised that such a consideration wasn’t normal to make while celebrating your new, bestselling novel surrounded by friends and family, journalists, and renowned colleagues. Not everyone had a book hitting the New York Times best seller’s list on release day, so obviously jumping off a 110-storey building wasn’t exactly the first instinct one would be expected to have in the middle of a toast to his own success.

It wasn’t even the idea per se that had unsettled him — everyone had intrusive thoughts from time to time —, but rather how appealing it had sounded. That was when Phil had come to the conclusion that something must not be quite right with him. He’d told his fianceé, of course — he and Abby told each other everything — and she’d taken it surprisingly calmly, but definitely not well. After a lot of coaxing and cajoling, Phil had been persuaded to see a therapist, who, only five sessions in, had diagnosed him with chronic depression with a side of severe burnout, and instantly put him on Seroxat. Phil had also beenstrongly advised to take a prompt break from every source of stress, which he’d soon realised encompassed the entirety of life as he knew it.

Abby, who was nothing but pragmatic, hadn’t even blinked at the doctor’s suggestion for a drastic change of scenery, and before Phil knew it she’d presented him a fully fledged plan for their new life in Glasgow — not Glasgow, the small village in Scott County, Bumfuck Nowhere, Illinois, like Phil had initially assumed, but Glasgow as in Glasgow,Scotland. Europe.

As ina whole different continent.

So here he was, six months after the diagnosis that had turned him into brittle glass in the eyes of everyone he knew, dragging himself down the stairs towards the inviting smell of fresh coffee wafting out of the kitchen, ready to kiss his beautiful girlfriend and tell her how good he felt today.

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