Excerpt from The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'And many advantages,' I replied. 'Including the possibility of starting over and correcting some of our mistakes.'

'Think hard about this, sir. Are you sure you want to do it? Coming back from there won't be so easy.'

Cockily, I accepted, not listening to her warnings.

This time the price was ten times as high. I paid with a bank transfer, expecting a proportional improvement in my life. It was the last time I saw my bank balance in good health. Devil-may-care, I swallowed the sweet down then and there and, when I stood up from the sofa, I felt coursing through my body a vigour I had not expected.

That evening Lili and I were twenty years old and newly married. Like the other times, the date remained the same, as did the house, except now the furnishings were considerably shabbier. In the distance I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner. In our little fridge I found a carton of eggs and a dozen beers. I opened one right away and sat down in the chair by the front door, my legs splayed open wide, in a posture I felt in keeping with the age I was now. I stayed like that for a few minutes, appreciating how good my eyesight was now. In the sky there wasn't a single cloud, and the sun flooded everything with a promising light. Soon after, Lili arrived, dressed in shorts and a top that exposed her back.

The urgent swelling between my legs was so intense it was hard to control.

'If you've finished sweeping the garage, do you think you could do the kitchen, too?' she said.

'If I've got to do something, I'd rather do you,' I replied, crassly.

My wife frowned.

'Have you taken some kind of drug without telling me? You're acting really strange.'

'I haven't taken anything, sugar. Except a sweet they gave me in the shop on Calle Mariposa,' I replied, and began to laugh, surprised at my own brazenness.

'I asked you never to go near that place! Which part did you not understand?'

It was fascinating seeing how some of the things we had said or done in the future (I don't know how else to refer to the other times), were still applicable in this new time period.

'Don't be mad, babe! Those girls aren't like you imagine. They're wicked in a different way.'

Lili blew her fringe out of her eyes to signal her annoyance and picked up the hoover again.

'If you hurry up and finish your chores then maybe we'll have time to go and get something to eat in the market afterwards.'

I was moved by her suggestion. Forty-year-old Lili would never have agreed to have lunch in a place like that, so scruffy and modest yet so delicious. I told myself I'd made the right decision in going back to our origins as a couple, when there was still so much to salvage. I soon discovered, however, that it wasn't going to be easy.

In this new version, Lili was even more overbearing than in all the previous ones. As if this weren't enough, she had an especially strict approach to cleaning. In order to approach her with erotic intent, I had first to shower and shave. Sex was a prize she bestowed on me when I obeyed her orders, or her constant demands, without arguing or putting up any kind of fight. And I needed her body just as before I had needed my anti-inflammatory medication and my sleeping pills. Now that we were newlyweds, her aim, apparently, was to instil a series of very clear, inviolable rules into our shared living situation: mine, meanwhile, was to correct all the stupid mistakes I had committed over the course of my previous lives. Once more we were stuck in a constant tug-of-war. I can't deny that on more than one occasion it went through my mind to return to the establishment to request another sweet, but I barely had enough money to cover half our rent. And even if I had been able to stretch to it, I'm not certain I would have opted to: anything that changes too quickly—a discovery that place afforded me—can also cause annoyance, a weariness one cannot live with.

Excerpted from The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel. Copyright © 2025 by Guadalupe Nettel. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.