‘I’m not sure, three or four minutes. Couldn’t have been more than five.’
‘Any history of epilepsy or Grand Mal?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was involved in an accident a few months back, a plane crash. He had a head injury and was in a coma.’
At last Sam found the business card Inspector Hinds had given him. He held it triumphantly in the air.
‘Young man, I really think you need to come and sit down in the back of the ambulance,’ the woman said. ‘We need to do some tests.’
‘No! I have to make a phone call!’ Sam tried keying in the number, but the phone was locked. ‘Lewis, what’s your security code?’
Lewis gawped at Sam and snatched his phone back. ‘Mate, what’s wrong with you? You’re acting like a loony. You do realise you just collapsed in front of a church full of people, don’t you? You need medical attention.’
‘Please, it’s important,’ Sam said, his desperation growing. ‘Just one phone call, Lewis. It’ll only take a minute and then they can do whatever they want.’
‘You promise?’
‘Yes, just one call.’
Lewis shook his head, punched in the code and handed the phone back.
10
As a boy, George Steele had wanted nothing more than to make it as a professional footballer. Growing up, he spent countless hours, day after day, kicking a ball against the garage door until his mother called him in for tea. Football was all he thought about during the day and all he dreamed about at night. And it wasn’t just some farfetched fantasy; George had been good. In fact, he’d been better than good. He’d captained the school team at every level and, as a midfielder, broke every scoring record at his boys’ club. Even George’s father, one of a long line of military men who expected George to follow in the family tradition, had finally come around to the idea that his son might make something of his obsession when a scout from Newcastle United had spotted twelve-year-old George playing in a local tournament and signed him up.
In the youth development system, where so many promising players ultimately failed, George had thrived. He represented the Under-16s team at the age of fourteen and a year later was drafted into the Under-18s. By the time he signed his first (and only) professional contract, George was an England youth international. People had begun to stop him in the street for his autograph.
It appeared nothing could derail George’s rise to sporting stardom. Except, it turned out, for a metallic grey Ford Transit van. It happened while George was walking home from training on a chilly autumn evening. The road had been quiet, but as always he pressed the button and waited for the green man before stepping onto the crossing. He didn’t see the van until it was almost too late. It had swerved and George managed to twist and fling his body out of the way. Although that split-second reaction had probably saved his life, the back tyre caught George’s trailing foot, his favoured right foot.
The driver didn’t even stop.
Every bone beneath the ankle was shattered, and his big toe had become severed and needed to be surgically reattached. And like that, George’s football career, his life’s dream that had seemed so close he could almost bask in the warmth of its glow, was snatched away before it had even begun.
After being discharged from hospital George didn’t leave his bedroom for three weeks, and when he did emerge he was a changed person. From that day forth he never spoke of football again and, in all the years since, had never so much as watched a game on television.
Instead George channelled his energies into his studies. He went from an average student to the top of every class, and when he left school two years later it was with a scholarship to study Law at Oxford University and a well-concealed limp.
George found student life a disappointment. His peers were, on the whole, pompous and juvenile, plus the halls of residence that he was forced to inhabit felt like abject squalor compared to the immaculate cleanliness of his parental home, forcing George to devote so much of his time to cleaning that it became a distraction from his work. Upon gaining a first class honours degree, he immediately enrolled on a Criminology and Criminal Justice postgraduate course. His dissertation, The Analysis of Paint Fragments in the Successful Prosecution of Hit and Run Drivers, received widespread acclaim amongst his tutors and earned him a distinction. There was a general consensus that George had all the makings of a fine barrister. His career appeared mapped out, however he was not destined for the Law. On the same day as he received the letter inviting him to interview for the Bar, he also saw an advert for careers at MI5, and a week later was on the train to London. It was by far and away the most impulsive thing he had ever done.
George spent his first two years at the Security Service on the Intelligence Officer Development Programme, and was able to afford the rent on a studio flat which, while cramped, was clean enough and did not necessitate his taking on a roommate. His meticulous nature and unswerving obedience to rules and procedure meant that he had a natural aptitude for the work. He completed the development programme with flying colours and then signed up for a placement in Northern Ireland. It was here that he had met Esteban Haufner, the only person (aside from his mother) to live up to George’s exacting standards of cleanliness, and therefore the only person he had ever truly considered a friend.
Once his year in Northern Ireland was up, George returned to London to take up a new role in Operations and a larger flat in a more desirable part of town. Over the next five years promotions followed in quick succession, and soon George was supervising a small team.
Which is how, six weeks off his twenty-eighth birthday, he found himself sitting at his desk on a dreary Saturday afternoon, rubbing hand sanitizer between his fingers and staring at the facial reconstruction Clive Kalinsky had emailed him. The image gave him the chills, leaving him without a clear plan of action. After all, Esteban was dead.
The telephone rang on George’s desk, snapping his attention back to the present. He closed the file and, grateful for the distraction, picked up.
‘Agent Steele?’ It was a woman’s voice; one George thought he recognised.
‘Speaking,’ he said.
There was a slight hesitation, as sure a sign of weakness as there could be. ‘This is Frances Hinds, CT Command.’
‘Yes, Inspector. What can I do for you?’
‘Look, I know you must be terribly busy, and there’s probably nothing to it, but I’ve received a tip-off about a possible attack on your headquarters at Thames House.’
George straightened in his chair, inadvertently squirting hand sanitizer across the desk. ‘Your source?’ he asked, mopping the mess with a tissue.
She let out a nervous giggle. ‘Well, that’s the thing. It’s Sam Rayner.’
‘The boy?’
‘I’ve just got off the phone to him. It was rather hard to make head or tail of what he was saying, but he seems convinced there’s going to be another attack this evening, something about a bomb in the underground car park…’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he seemed to imply there was a connection to Flight 0368. He thinks the same man is involved, although how he came by this information he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me. Like I said, there’s probably nothing to it, but I thought I should—’
But George didn’t hear the end of the sentence; he had already hung up.
11
Chrissie was in the now familiar position of sitting on a bench in a hospital corridor, waiting for news on her brother. Lance sat to one side and Lewis on the other. Neither had said much since they’d arrived.
In spite of Chrissie’s hard work and planning, her dad’s funeral had been ruined. They’d finished the ceremony and put the coffin in the ground, but after Sam had collapsed the significance of the event was overshadowed. It was her own fault, she realised. There was no way that her brother was strong enough to give a eulogy. It had been reckless to even consider it, let alone allow it. But Chrissie was still ge
tting used to her responsibilities. The only person who’d ever depended on her before was herself. Now, as well as the baby growing inside of her, she had what remained of her family to worry about.
Chrissie, Lance and Lewis all looked up in unison as a wide-hipped woman in blue medical scrubs approached.
‘Miss Rayner?’
‘Yes, that’s me,’ Chrissie said. ‘Is my brother okay?’
‘My name is Dr Parker. Why don’t you come with me and we can discuss it somewhere a little more private?’
‘Can I come too?’ Lewis asked.
‘It’s probably best if you wait here for now,’ Dr Parker said. ‘We shouldn’t be long.’
Chrissie followed her down the corridor to an examination room full of mismatched furniture that looked like it had been salvaged from a skip. Sam was sitting on an orange plastic chair with his back to the door. He didn’t look up as they entered.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Dr Parker said, gesturing to an empty chair of a different size and colour to Sam’s. ‘I’m afraid the news isn’t good, Miss Rayner. I’ve spoken to Dr Saltano at St Benedict’s, and he concurs that the most likely cause of Sam’s seizure this afternoon is epilepsy.’
‘Epilepsy? I thought that was something you were born with,’ Chrissie said. ‘How comes nobody picked up on this before?’
Dr Parker folded her arms across her chest. ‘A person can develop epilepsy at any stage of life. With an injury such as Sam’s, post-traumatic epilepsy was always a possibility. Seizures sometimes occur in patients recovering from brain surgery, but epilepsy is classified by multiple seizures.’
‘Multiple seizures?’ Chrissie said. ‘You mean this is going to happen again?’
Dr Parker sighed. ‘I wish I could give you a straightforward yes or no, but there are few certainties with the condition. Your brother could have another seizure tomorrow, next week, next year, or never again. Until it happens – or doesn’t – there really is no way of knowing.’
Chrissie glanced at Sam. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
He shrugged and kicked the leg of his chair with his toe.
Dr Parker reached into her desk drawer and took out a prescription pad. ‘What I’m going to do, Sam, is refer you to a specialist.’ She scrawled across the top page, tore it off and handed it to Chrissie. ‘I’d also like to start him on a course of medication. It’s a form of anticonvulsant, a relatively new drug on the market. In many patients the frequency of seizures has been greatly reduced, in some cases ceasing altogether. Unfortunately there are some associated side effects, such as drowsiness or mood changes. If he experiences anything like that we may have to try him on a different medication, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
‘Thank you,’ Chrissie said and put the prescription in her bag. ‘Come on, Sam, let’s go home.’
He nodded, began to stand and then looked up for the first time since Chrissie had come into the room. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a question.’
Dr Parker spread her hands. ‘By all means.’
‘I was wondering, is it possible to have visions during a seizure?’
‘Why yes, as it happens. There are numerous recorded incidents of epileptic patients experiencing visions or hallucinations, often depending on which part of the brain the episode affects. Sometimes seizures can be accompanied or preceded by a sense of déjà vu. Sometimes people with sensory seizures can see, hear or smell things that aren’t really there. Did something like that happen today?’
Sam shook his head. ‘No, just wondering.’
‘I see,’ Dr Parker said. She stood and opened the door for them. ‘Well, we’re done for now. I’ve booked you an appointment with a specialist in two weeks’ time, so if you have any further questions you can discuss them then. In the meantime, Sam, you need to start taking your pills. And try to get some rest.’
‘Okay,’ he said and followed Chrissie into the corridor.
‘Mind telling me what that was about?’ she asked as they made their way back to Lance and Lewis.
‘Nothing,’ Sam said. ‘I’m allowed to be curious, aren’t I?’
12
They arrived home late from the hospital. Sam’s grandparents were already waiting, having come straight from the church. Grandma had made shepherd’s pie and invited Lewis to stay for dinner. They took their plates through to the living room and ate in front of the television. There was a documentary on about wildlife in Antarctica. Sam’s grandfather lit a fire and then retreated to the kitchen.
‘Mind if I put the news on?’ Sam asked after he’d finished eating.
Lewis nearly choked on a mouthful of shepherd’s pie. ‘The news? I never thought I’d hear you say that. Come on, Sam, I’m enjoying this.’
‘Just for a minute,’ Sam said, picking up the remote. ‘Anyway, this is a repeat. I’ve already seen it.’
The News at Ten had just started. They listened to the newsreader discuss the main stories of the day; the price of train tickets was going up at twice the rate of inflation, teachers were planning a strike and there was a scandal after a politician had charged the redecoration of his mistress’s house to his expenses account. The final story was a piece about a pensioner who’d opened a centre for stray cats and was set to receive an MBE. Obviously it had been a slow day on the news desk.
Sam felt like a punctured blow-up toy, slowly deflating. All afternoon, while doctors had prodded and poked him, he’d comforted himself with the thought that he might have helped stop another attack, only to discover that what he’d seen was a hallucination; sights, sounds and smells that were the products of his damaged mind. He’d made a complete idiot of himself by calling Inspector Hinds. Worse still, he’d ruined his father’s funeral for no reason at all.
Lewis swallowed the last piece of food from his plate and licked his fork. ‘Mind changing it back now?’
‘Whatever,’ Sam said, his finger on the button.
‘…and before we go, some breaking news just in,’ the newsreader announced. ‘Within the last hour an attempted attack on the Security Service headquarters in London has been foiled after a year-long investigation by anti-terror police. A lone bomber was apprehended attempting to bring a delivery truck laden with explosives into the building’s basement car park. When police tried to detain the suspect he returned fire and was shot dead by sniper…’
The remote control slipped from Sam’s hand and bounced across the carpet.
13
Lewis sat on a stool in Sam’s bedroom, staring at him with wide, owl-like eyes. ‘But it’s not possible,’ he said. It was the third time in a row he’d repeated those words.
‘I know,’ Sam said again and leaned back on his bed. ‘I don’t understand it myself.’
‘But I heard you make the phone call outside the church. I heard what you said. You said there was going to be a bombing, but how could you possibly know that?’
‘It’s hard to explain. It’s a bit like what I told you after I got out of hospital, about time going backwards, except today it went forwards instead.’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ Lewis flicked the ring pull on his drink, making a twanging sound. ‘But when you said that I thought…well, not that you were making it up exactly, just that your head was a mess.’
‘That’s what I thought too, but it all sort of makes sense now. Back at St Benedict’s I told my doctor about blacking out, so he said they were going to keep me in for more tests, which I didn’t want because it meant I’d miss Dad’s funeral. But when time got jumbled again, I went back to the same conversation and kept my mouth shut, so they discharged me.’
‘You don’t think it’s epilepsy then?’
‘Who knows?’ Sam said. ‘It’s hard to describe, but I got this feeling just before I collapsed like time wasn’t a continuous flow, one event after another, but was made up of millions of frozen moments, sort of like the pages of a book. Normally you move from page one to page two, then three and four and so on. In
the church it was like my brain skipped forwards a few pages to when we were watching the news in the living room just now. I saw it all when I was unconscious. Most things were the same. There was the wildlife documentary you were so interested in, we were all wearing our funeral clothes still and you were eating shepherd’s pie. It didn’t make sense the first time around, but now – after – it sort of does.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Lewis said. ‘You’re telling me that earlier today, while you were lying on the church floor shaking all over and foaming at the mouth, while I was standing right there watching you, you saw exactly what just happened fifteen minutes ago?’ He laughed and rubbed his face with both hands. ‘That’s the maddest thing I’ve ever heard!’
Sam laughed too. ‘I know how it sounds, Lewis, but I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s like the damage to my brain caused a glitch in the way I experience time, as if the pages got mixed up while I was having a fit. Not everything was the same, though. The first time Grandpa rushed in shouting about the radio, but just now he didn’t. Also there was the news. Last time the attack was centre story and this time it was hardly mentioned.’
Lewis stared at Sam for a moment, his face scrunched. ‘You think it’s because you warned them, don’t you?’
‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘They said there was an investigation by anti-terror police.’
‘What do you expect them to say, that they were tipped off by a brain-damaged teenager?’
‘Well no, not when you put it like that.’ Lewis rubbed his chin and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. ‘You realise what this means, don’t you? If you did manage to stop the bombing, then you changed what was going to happen. You created an alternate future.’
‘If that’s what you want to call it.’
‘Nobody will believe this,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t if I hadn’t been there.’
‘But you were.’
‘I know, and I still don’t know what to believe.’ Lewis stood up and yawned. ‘Listen, it’s getting late. It’s been a long day and talking to you is making my head hurt. Mate, whatever you do, please don’t go around telling people about this. They’ll think you’re off your trolley.’
The Pages of Time Page 11
