No mistaking it, no sir; this was the service station to end all service stations - the garage at the end of the world. My world, at least, though perhaps the beginning of another.
Another bout of aching dizziness washed over me, hard enough of a wave to make me grab my temple and squint my eyes shut. What was tiredness, and what was my mind trying to make sense of it all? My brain felt like a strip of taffy pulled out across an infinite bed of nails, ready to spit and pop in endless places. I didn’t need to be thinking of everything, everywhere, thinking the thoughts of a thousand identical minds. I just wanted my thoughts in one, easy location. This one.
The dizziness started to fade; my swirling vision started to clear.
Behind me the bathroom door came to a close, quietly. A little blue man stood on its face, balanced inside a painted circle of the same bright colour, looking more cheerful than his crude, flaking self deserved. The door’s counterpart stood just to its left, this one decorated with an equally jovial woman (you could tell, because like all women her lower half was triangular and her hair stood up in pigtails). A sign had been bolted into the wall above them, spelling out the oddly formal Lavatories. I recalled all this like something seen in the corner of one’s eye; registered yet not really remembered.
An obligatory Caution, Wet Floor sign sat a little further up the aisle, though its warning likely applied to the whole shop rather than any specific patch. It was in front of a row of refrigerators, the type fitted with clear, plastic doors and filled with ice creams, slabs of breadcrumbed chicken breasts and oven pizzas, perhaps some beers. The shelves across from them were stacked high with bags of crisps, anorexic tuna and cucumber sandwiches, and gristly, grey microwavable sausage rolls and steak bakes. Equally bland and unappetising pop music drifted over from the other end of the store, where behind the counter a barely-memorable pimple-riddled shop assistant flicked through a magazine lifted from its rack near the entrance.
The front door opened with a friendly chime; the assistant looked up with a tired smile. I ducked behind a display stand selling chicken-flavoured Pot Noodles at a discount.
That’s me, I thought - knew, even. Sweat rolled down from my armpits and into the waistband of my trousers. That’s me coming in to pay for the pump. How long do I have, a minute? Two?
Did I dare look up and see myself, almost exactly three years younger? See where the worry-lines weren’t, see the sureness of my step? I had to, didn’t I? Not as far as look myself in the eye - we all struggle with that at the best of times - but perhaps just to see what I looked like before, to see when George Webber last looked happy.
I peeked around the potted noodles but an aisle of confectionary blocked my line of sight. I edged to the end of another line of shelves, this one closer to the counter, terrified that either the assistant or my other self would catch a glimpse of me.
You can’t be seen, I reminded myself, feeling so daft crouched down beside the hanging bags of marshmallows. Not by the other George, at least. The kid behind the counter - he doesn’t matter so much. Not if he doesn’t see anything weird.
Where am I now? Think, George, think.
What had I done upon entering the shop all those years ago?
Even though my memory of the night had always seemed as clear as a summer sky, I found it falling into fragments like leaves in the autumn, piecing together into a tapestry upon the floor. My instinct had been to pay for the petrol and get back out; I remembered that much. So why hadn’t I?
To my right was a wall of windows, looking out at that same black sky. Or rather, what was left of the black sky beyond the concrete yawn of the forecourt’s roof, and the two fat pillars that held it in place.
Chloe. Sam. My heart threatened to choke me. They’re just out there, a short jog away. The motor’s not running, but it might as well be. My loves, alive and waiting. Will I see them smile when they see me?
But I couldn’t see them - not then, at least. The windows only went down to a couple of feet above the floor, and I was crouched below that line. I couldn’t risk standing up for a better look, no matter how badly every inch of my body wanted to.
In the corner was a mirror, one of those weird circular ones you find only in supermarkets and narrow country lanes. I felt sick. All the shop assistant - or anyone, for that matter - would need to do was look up, and they’d see me squatting there like some inept robber waiting to make his move.
Lucky then, that the college drop-out behind the counter was too engrossed in his sports car magazine - or the women straddling the vehicles, at any rate - to give even the most minuscule damn about what happened in his store.
I caught myself in the mirror - my other self, that is - and almost coughed in my attempt to hold back laughter. I looked so goddamn dopey. Big grin on my face, and for what? The honour of visiting the convenience store of a Scottish petrol station in the middle of nowhere?
He’s happy, George. Like you used to be. Don’t you remember?
Wouldn’t you be happy, if you had your Chloe and Sam?
He was looking at the shelves with all the intensity of an elderly librarian searching for a dusty tome. What had I been sent in for? I started to get worried, second-guess myself. My past self was wearing thick gloves and a stupid deerstalker hat. He looked like a pillock, but that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that I had neither. Would my family notice?
Nicotine patches. That was it! It had been so many years since I’d last had a smoke - even after their deaths I’d kept clean, if not from the bottle - but Chloe always had trouble kicking the habit. I’d nagged her that the big C would kill her eventually. Tell me, could I have been any further from the truth? Anyway, I remembered that she’d given me strict orders to grab some patches while I was in there. And water - three bottles, one for each of us.
And don’t forget the chocolate buttons for Sam. Now that would be calamitous, wouldn’t it?
My past self seemed satisfied by something on the shelf, plucking up a box as a farmer’s wife might a feather from a hen. He turned it over in his hand. Looking for its strength? I don’t know. But he seemed convinced enough to give it a content little toss, nod his head, and walk back down the other end of the aisle.
Where did I - would I - go after? The water, or the chocolates? I prayed it wasn’t the latter; I could see the little blue bag I’d picked once upon a time, bulging with its buttons of brown, hanging with its half-dozen brethren on their hook. If I was close enough to grab them, then I was close enough to be discovered by the other George.
I risked peeking out around the gelatine-heavy stand of fruit-chews, gummy bears and strawberry laces. Nobody was there.
Footsteps echoed from further into the store, so I stood up a little - just enough to see an awful deerstalker bobbing its way above the shelves towards the refrigerators and the rows of bottled drinks beside them.
The water. I got the water next, because I remember struggling to balance them in my arms as I pried the chocolates from their peg. I remember them toppling like bowling pins onto the cold and dirty floor.
This is it. You can’t wait any longer, else you’ll lose them forever. Again.
I reached out and snatched a packet of chocolate buttons from off its hook before crouch-walking down the aisle that ran parallel to it. The shop assistant still flicked through his pages, oblivious, digging an adventurous finger into his ear. He didn’t see me pocket the chocolates.
What’s that? Adding a splash of shoplifting to your rap sheet, to go alongside manslaughter and identity theft? Well, I should think that’s the least of your concerns tonight, isn’t it?
There was a security camera above the front door, its eye static and unblinking. What fun they’ll have watching this back tomorrow, I thought with a resigned chuckle. They’ll think their old VCR has gone and packed it in.
The sound of footsteps was getting louder, drawing closer. My past self was coming back, at that very moment struggling to carry three bo
ttles of overpriced water and a strangely cumbersome cardboard cube of nicotine patches. Every step was like that of a delicate tightrope act. I knew that I - he - would drop the bottles. When he bent down out of sight - that was when I’d make my move.
Closer and closer to the counter I crept.
I wonder if there had been another George in my own service station, three years ago. Watching and waiting, but never making his move, never making himself known. Slinking back through another door once I’d gone.
Suddenly there came the bouncy sound of wobbly plastic rebounding off a hard, tiled floor. Then another, and then a third. The kid behind the counter barely cast a glance towards the commotion. There was an audible tutting as the George Webber of three years ago consigned himself to picking up his mess.
As he did I stood up in the aisle opposite, expecting a whole palaver of chaos to ensue. It didn’t. Younger George was squatting down, tidying his soon-to-be purchases. The boy kept his head between his pages. I realised I was, quite literally, holding my breath. I tried to relax and then, radiating a faux confidence as if nothing in the world was in the least bit unusual, I strode towards the shop’s entrance.
- I’m going to look up and see myself, I’m going to look up and see myself, the pimply kid is going to notice something’s wrong - my gloves, my hat, my shirt - he’s going to look up and his eyes will grow larger and larger and he’ll scream and everything will fall apart like bad glue -
I reached the counter while my other self was still gathering up his bottles, yet to even pick out Sam’s chocolates. The guy behind the till looked up from his magazine - God, he looks even younger than I remember, surely he can’t be out of school yet - and I could see a confused glint in his eye, a questioning quiver of his eyebrow. He went to stand up.
I patted my pocket, pretending to have left my wallet in my car, and rolled my eyes at my own stupidity.
- there’s no way he’s going to fall for something so dumb, this is absurd -
The boy uttered a light, humourless laugh and relaxed further into his chair. The magazine opened once again. The door rang out an abrasive jingle of victory as I stepped into the cold, unseasonal air.
I wanted to let out a sigh of relief, to lie down in the untainted snow and cool off, to become an enormous George-shaped colander and let all the anxiety and panic drain out from my many holes. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet - literally or figuratively.
Any second now the real George - real George? am I really not considering myself the original, the authentic, the real McCoy anymore? - would stand up and make his way over to the checkout. I knew this, because it’s what I had done. Or had something changed, something ever so slight it was otherwise incomprehensible? Was I the change? I guess this whole world’s path had been altered the very moment I’d stepped through the door of the bathroom stall - this world and every other that branched out from it like an ever-growing, ever-diverging tree.
Would the cashier be surprised I was ‘back’ so soon? Maybe, maybe not. Would he be confused by my obvious change in clothes? Probably, but I had my doubts as to whether he had the balls to call a paying customer out on it. His brain might even gloss over such inconsistent details to spare him from madness.
Maybe you’ve got a minute, George. Probably you have less. Stop your thinking and start your doing.
Some of the snow was drifting in under the forecourt’s roof. The only light came from above the neon pumps, casting surreal spotlights in the dark. The only sound came from their bored hum, droning and dull. Signs stretching across the shop’s windows read: Sandwiches, Snacks, Cigarettes. Beers & Wines.
There was only one car in the forecourt. My car. Parked just where I’d left it, all those years ago. Under the ghostly glare of the pump lights I could see dark shapes moving inside, and my heart fluttered.
I crossed the grey and oily concrete, the single full stop on a page of pure white, each step echoing in the snowing silence.
- oh my God this is it, this is them -
I was a couple of metres away now, and the shapes turned into people.
- my God, it’s Chloe, it’s really her -
She’s going through her handbag. I know she’s looking for tissues, because after only two hours of entering the North she’s developed a cold. And that’s when it happens, and I feel my heart, lost under three years of rubble and ruin, explode in a magnificent supernova.
She smiles at me.
I could have cried. I very almost did. Sure, the prospect of her nicotine patches may have played a small part in her excitement. But what were her cravings compared to the joy I felt in our reunion?
And Sam - what about Sam?
He’s in the back seat, straining to read his Spider-Man comic book. There isn’t enough light, but there’s a hell of a lot more of it on the forecourt than there was on any of those bleak country lanes. He looks up and waves as if I’m returning from a stint in the army, and although it’s been minutes for him it really has been years for me. I do start to cry, then, and Sam looks confused as I wipe away the lone tear that gets the better of me. Then I remember the beaming grin he gave me when I showed him the chocolate buttons, and retrieve them from my jacket pocket. There it is - that goofy, greedy grin - and the supernova goes off once more.
I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes I still can’t.
But the spell was broken when I saw my other self stand back up in the store, a bag of chocolate buttons balanced precariously atop three bottles of water and that irritating cardboard cube. Soon he’d have paid for his petrol, and then the jig would be up.
I hurried around to the driver’s door of the car, unable to contain my excitement, and climbed in.
Oh how I’d missed my old wheels, though aside from its familiar smell I paid it little attention. I was too mesmerised by how close my loved ones were; I felt like a prisoner, his sentence finally overturned.
‘So?’ asked Chloe, her smile faltering.
‘So what?’ I replied. I was barely listening. I could smell her familiar scent - how could I have ever forgotten it? I guess it’s the first to fall through the cracks, just before the feel of their skin and the sound of their laughter. If she hadn’t been strapped into her car seat I would have whirled her around and around like we were ballroom dancers.
‘Did they have my patches?’
Think fast.
‘No, beautiful, I’m sorry. They didn’t seem to stock them. They didn’t even have any water, would you believe it? Just beers and some Pepsi. But guess what they did have…’
I turned in my seat and tossed the bag of chocolate buttons onto Sam’s lap. That beautiful smile emerged once more as he tore through the plastic. I ruffled my hand through his hair, and nothing - not before, not after - would ever come close to that moment.
‘Goddamn it.’ Chloe’s voice was even softer than I remembered, though of course memory has a habit of distorting and airbrushing itself. She wasn’t doing a great job of hiding her disappointment. ‘Are you okay, George?’
‘Sure I am,’ I said, pulling my seatbelt across my chest. I noticed the keys were hanging in the ignition - thank God. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘I don’t know.’ She played with the straps of her handbag, the way she always did when she got nervous. I’d forgotten that fact, until I saw her do it. ‘You seem… jumpy, that’s all. Where’s your hat?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Your hat. You were wearing it when you got out the car, I’m sure of it. You didn’t leave it in the shop, did you?’
‘Oh, no. No. I popped it in the boot before I went in, didn’t you see?’
‘Ah, okay. Shall we make a move, then?’
That’s when I kissed her, long and passionately, the way I would have never before kissed my wife if my son was watching. He let out an exaggerated groan but I didn’t hear it. I was too intoxicated by the softness of her lips, the sensation of her hair in my hand, her smell as my nose pressed hard against her own. I didn’t wan
t to let go.
‘What was that for?’ she asked as we pulled away from one another.
‘No reason, other than I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ she smirked, still taken aback. ‘Now come on. At this rate we won’t get there before midnight.’
I turned the keys and the car roared into life.
This is real. This is really happening.
I pulled away from the garage forecourt, only as quickly as I dared. I still expected the other George to appear at my door… to pull it open and throw me to the kerb. Beat the crap out of me. Add some more bruises to my jaw.
The car jerked a little, the way it sometimes did when I didn’t put my foot down hard enough. As much as I’d loved it, I’d forgotten all about that car’s stupid quirks. Chloe shot me a look.
‘Sorry,’ I said, feeling red rush into my cheeks.
The twin beams of my car’s headlights illuminated the two lanes of the winding country road to which the service station belonged, and the dense wall of trees that lined it like a garden fence. There were tracks in the snow left by other plucky drivers, but they were beginning to fade under the relentless barrage of white from above.
Nothing was coming from either direction, so I pulled out into the road. I looked into my rear-view mirror just in time to see a very distraught George Webber rush out the door of the shop, a plastic bag of supplies swinging from one panicking hand and the other holding on to his hat. He looked like his whole world had come crashing down on top of him.
I felt bad for the guy, I really did. I knew exactly how he was feeling - worse, even. And of all people to take his family away from him… Jesus. It wasn’t fair. Part of me knew I should turn the car around and bring his wife and child back. Explain everything, or try to. Leave their brains frazzled, but at least they’d be frazzled together. But the other part… The other part knew that they weren’t his. They were mine. And the universe owed me; I could feel it. I’d felt it for three goddamn years, and feeling it made me sick.
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