by Jason Ayres
Amy offered me some breakfast and I managed to eat a little cereal with milk and sugar, and drink some orange juice. Soon after, I felt lousy, so I lay back down and thought about things.
When Stacey came in, I’d talk to her and try to make some sense of my situation. I didn’t have long to wait as I soon drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke she was sitting by my side. She smiled at me, her face not quite so desperately sad as it had been the last time I had seen her. Maybe she was putting a brave face on things for my sake.
“Thank-you for coming to see me,” I said, hoping that didn’t sound too formal. I tried to remind myself that this was my daughter, whom presumably I loved more than anyone else in the world, but it was difficult to feel emotion for someone I barely knew.
I wondered where her mother was. Perhaps we were divorced.
“Dad, I’m going to be right here, every day, as long as you need me, like I promised,” she replied.
“Stacey,” I began, able to use her name at last, “I don’t know if it’s the illness, but I’m having a little trouble remembering things. Can I ask you a few questions? I know some of the answers may be a little obvious, but my mind seems to be playing tricks with me.”
“Of course, Dad, ask away.”
“Well, the first thing is that I seem to be losing track of the days. Can you remind me what day it is?”
“That’s quite understandable,” she replied. “I always lose track of the days over Christmas. It’s Monday.”
“So what does that make the date?” I asked. “Have we had New Year yet?”
“It’s December the 30th,” she replied. “Two more days to go. Remember, you promised you’d be here to see the New Year in with me – don’t let me down now.”
So the clock was right. How long had I been here? Could it have been a whole year? Was my memory of her wishing me a Happy New Year in this very room not a couple of days ago, but from the previous January?
Surely I couldn’t have been here that long, could I? My head swam with all the questions I wanted to ask her.
“So how long have I been here?” was the obvious next question for me to ask.
“I brought you in on Boxing Day, remember? You wanted to stay at home, but you were in so much pain, I didn’t think I had any choice.” Her face clouded over at what was clearly an unpleasant memory.
“I wasn’t here last New Year, then?” I replied.
“You didn’t even know you were ill this time last year. It’s all happened so quickly,” she sighed. “If only you had gone to the doctor sooner, but you were so stubborn about it.”
The whole New Year/not New Year conundrum continued to perplex me, but I put that aside for the time being as I continued to question her about what had happened to me.
It turned out I had been ill and coughing for weeks and weeks before Stacey finally frogmarched me to visit the doctor in November. From there, the diagnosis of advanced and incurable lung cancer was swift and brutal. I was given three months to live.
It seemed I hadn’t even managed two months. So much for putting up a “brave fight”, then: it seemed as if I’d gone down like a punch-drunk boxer.
I really needed to find out more about my life, so I decided to steer the conversation away from all the doom and gloom. “Let’s talk about happier times, shall we?” I said. “I’m a little tired. Tell me some nice stories about your childhood and what you remember about me from when you were growing up.”
This seemed the best way to ask without letting on that I remembered nothing about it whatsoever. By asking questions in the right places, nodding and agreeing when she asked “Do you remember when…?” I managed to piece together a very flimsy framework of my life.
Stacey was my only child, and she was 25 years old. Her mother, and my wife, had died seven years ago in a car crash, so that explained her absence from the bedside. I didn’t learn her name, but I did deduce that the photograph I had found earlier in my wallet must have been of her.
I had worked my whole life in the retail trade, starting in shops when I was younger and progressing to the head office of a major national chain of supermarkets. It seemed we had been pretty well off, judging by Stacey’s recollections of some of our holidays abroad, which included Florida and Dubai.
Stacey herself was living with a man in London who worked in the media, having left home sometime after she had finished university. She had returned home recently to care for me.
All the questions and the conversation had exhausted me, leaving my cancer-stricken body crying out for rest. I wanted to find out more but, later that afternoon, I found myself once again suffering agonising pain. In front of my daughter’s sorrowful gaze, I was once again placed under sedation.
Four more similar days passed, and then I awoke in unfamiliar surroundings. So this was it, then, I was back at home, as I had suspected I might be.
Over the past few days, I had watched the clock slip back a day each time, from the 29th to the 28th to the 27th. Each morning as I had awoken in the hospital I had spoken to the nurses and also to my daughter when she visited. Each time they had no recollection of what had occurred on the previous day, or at least not as I recalled it.
Unless this was some enormous and elaborate practical joke that someone was playing on me, there was no denying that time was running backwards.
Being laid up in the hospital had left me with plenty of time to think. It helped to take my mind off the never-ending pain inside me, which no amount of morphine could completely take away.
On the 27th I tried to get it all clear in my mind exactly what the situation was, and wrote it down on a notepad that I’d found in one of the drawers next to my hospital bed. The key points seemed to be as follows:
1) Time was running backwards for me on a day-by-day basis. If it was Friday today, then tomorrow it would be Saturday for everybody else, but Thursday for me.
2) Time ran as normal during the day itself. The exact point when I jumped back was some time during the night, but I wasn’t exactly sure when.
3) Each jump back must be exactly 48 hours, otherwise I’d be living the same day over and over again.
4) I had no memory of my past life but fully understood the world around me. Stacey had a clear memory of my past, which did not seem in any way unusual to her. Everything seemed to be running normally for everybody else.
5) Based on Stacey’s anecdotes about the past, I concluded that I must have already lived my life in full right up until the day I died. Now, for whatever reason, I was starting to live it over again, but backwards.
Those were the facts as far as I had managed to ascertain them, but they still left a huge number of unanswered questions.
Firstly, was the past fixed? If Stacey told me I had done certain things on a certain day, was I destined to do those things again, or could I change them? I had not had a chance to test this theory out yet, but now that I was back at home, surely I could. And if I made changes, what effect would they have?
The biggest question of all was “why?” To that I had no answer, but it seemed that I was being given a second shot at life, and one that intrigued me.
I needed to find out as much as I could about not only my own past life, but also everything that was happening in the wider world. As I’d already worked out, I had a basic working knowledge of how the world worked, but without the detail.
For example, I could point to a country on a map and say, “Yes, that’s the USA, and they have a President, whilst we have a Prime Minister,” but I wouldn’t be able to tell you the name of that President or any of his predecessors. These were all things that I was going to have to find out.
I vowed to read as much as I could in the newspapers and online, as well as devouring as many history books and television programmes as I could get my hands on. I had a lot to learn if I was going to make the most of this unique opportunity.
But now I had Boxing Day to get through. It was a relief to be out of
the hospital, but I was grimly aware that later in the day I was going to be suffering so badly that my daughter would be taking me in. It wasn’t a pleasant thought and I couldn’t see any way around it. Having spent most of the past few days in various degrees of excruciating agony, I steeled myself for the worst.
The only comforting thought I had was that if time continued to run backwards, then I should get progressively better as I moved back through December.
It was time to explore my home. I reflected for a moment on the peculiarity that, although this was my first day in my new home, in another way it was also my last. I sat up and looked around the room.
Although the details were unfamiliar to me – the pale cream décor, the dark blue curtains and the chest of drawers, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
I got up to go to the bathroom, which I instinctively knew was through the door opposite my bedroom. I paused to examine the chest of drawers as I passed. It contained various male grooming items, some family photos, a digital radio, and one or two ornaments. None of these things really told me anything new.
It was interesting that I knew my way around the house. There was a definite familiarity about my immediate surroundings. Just as with my wider knowledge of the world, I had the broad knowledge of the structure but not the detail.
It was as if I’d put together all four sides of a jigsaw puzzle, but none of the pieces in the middle. I knew where the bathroom, kitchen and living room were, but as far as my memory was concerned, they were empty rooms, devoid of memories.
I still felt as rough as anything as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, but nowhere near as bad as I had in the hospital mirror a few days ago. It looked like I had gone downhill pretty fast between Christmas and New Year.
At least my death had been mercifully swift. I really hoped that my travelling backwards through time was a permanent arrangement. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to face the misery of that last week over again. I shuddered at the thought – to say it had not been pleasant would have been an understatement.
I managed to go to the toilet, wash my face and brush my teeth, but as I rinsed, a horrible, hacking cough began, leaving me bent over almost double in pain. I felt as if I was coughing up what was left of my rotten lungs, and it brought my daughter running to the room in concern.
Fortunately, the attack soon passed, and with her help I was able to dress and go downstairs to enjoy what was left of the day before what seemed an unavoidable journey to the hospital. Whatever else I might have the power to change, at this stage of my life my fate was sealed.
When I awoke the next day it was a relief to wake up once again back in my own bed at home. As I had predicted, by Boxing Day evening I had found myself in the hospital, after an agonising afternoon of pain which even the ministrations of a visiting Macmillan nurse had been unable to relieve.
From the information I had gathered from Stacey, I was pretty sure that from now on things ought to get better. I had not had to stay in hospital before Christmas, and despite having been confined at home for the past month, the pain management given to me had enabled me to live a semi-normal life.
The time I had at home now would give me the opportunity to plan for my future, all of which seemed destined to take place in the past.
I spent Christmas Day in the company of Stacey and her boyfriend, David. It was clear from the start that she had gone out of her way to make this day as special for me as possible. There was no denying the elephant in the room, which was that we all knew this was to be my last Christmas, but the subject was tactfully avoided.
When I woke up on Christmas morning, Stacey was sitting on the end of the bed holding a large stocking.
“Surprise!” she said, “and Merry Christmas! I thought I’d do what you always used to do for me at Christmas when I was small.”
She handed me the stocking, which contained lots of little fun presents which gave a few more clues to my past life. Amongst the items were a small bottle of expensive-looking brandy, a pack of golf balls that we both knew I’d never get the chance to use, a Chocolate Orange, a satsuma, a packet of Barbecue Beef Flavour Hula Hoops, and a framed photograph of our family.
It was an old photo taken on a beach, showing myself and my wife with Stacey in-between us, aged about seven, a cheeky grin on her face showing gaps where she’d lost a couple of baby teeth.
“What’s with the Hula Hoops?” I asked.
“Oh, Dad, you remember, we always used to do this when I was little.” She opened the packet and began to place them on her fingers.
The door opened and a smart-looking young man in a green, short-sleeve polo shirt and short-cropped dark hair came in. I assumed he must be David. He was carrying a breakfast tray adorned with tea, toast, boiled eggs and orange juice. “Breakfast’s up,” he said. “How are you doing today, Dad?” he asked.
Blimey, I thought, he’s pretty familiar calling me “Dad.” Clearly he had been around a while. He seemed pleasant enough. It was comforting to think that my daughter seemed to be in good hands, bearing in mind she was about to become an orphan.
“As well as can be expected, David,” I replied.
“David’s going to help me cook the turkey,” said Stacey. “I’ve never cooked a Christmas dinner before. I know you always do it for me, Dad, but it’s high time I learnt to do it myself.”
“Well, OK,” I said, “but I think I should be on hand to advise,” wondering as I said it if my general knowledge of the world would extend to cooking a roast dinner. I hoped so: there were enough things I was going to have to learn again as it was. I wouldn’t know until we got started.
I began to feel quite excited about the day ahead, and come to that, my life in general. My whole past was stretching out in front of me, one giant adventure with the chapters ready to be rewritten. I couldn’t believe that, forewarned with the knowledge I would surely gain of my past life, I was destined to act out my days exactly as I had done before.
For now, I decided to put all these thoughts to one side and enjoy my Christmas Day, reasonably secure in the knowledge that it would not be my last, even if Stacey and David thought that it was. I was going to be as cheerful as I possibly could: I didn’t want it to be an unhappy day for them.
Stacey cooking the dinner gave me the perfect opportunity to test my level of knowledge. We had a large kitchen, big enough to accommodate a double oven and a large, rectangular wooden table in the centre. I sat at the table whilst David opened a bottle of wine “to help with the cooking”, as he put it.
As Stacey asked me questions, I found I was able to answer them with no problems:
“How long should I boil these potatoes for?” she asked.
“Roughly ten minutes,” I instinctively replied. “Until they are just starting to soften and go flaky on the outside, but before they start going mushy and falling apart.”
“What’s the best way to keep the turkey moist?” she asked. “I watched a video on YouTube where they put some bacon on top, but I need that for the pigs in blankets.”
“You don’t need to put bacon on the top, that’s a myth started by some celebrity chef years ago,” I said. “I find it doesn’t help at all. The bacon goes all dry and crispy and then you can’t baste the turkey properly. And that’s the secret – baste it regularly, every 20 minutes or so.”
As the words flowed from my mouth, I had no idea where the knowledge was coming from, but it was clear that I was in full possession of all the facts I’d learnt in my past life. I didn’t know who the celebrity chef was, though. I was relieved that I knew how to do things. It would have been extremely irksome if I’d had to learn everything again from scratch.
With my help, Stacey managed to produce a most agreeable roast dinner, though, in my weakened state I could not manage to eat very much of it. David didn’t make much of a contribution to the cooking, preferring to sit at the table munching his way through a tin of Quality Street and polishing off most o
f the bottle of wine.
I even managed a small tipple myself, joking with them that it wasn’t likely to kill me.
Despite the circumstances, the brave faces held up and we managed to have a fairly normal Christmas Day. Dinner was followed by watching an old Bond film on TV, and sitting around chatting and reminiscing, with Stacey doing most of the talking. As far as I was concerned, I hadn’t seen the Bond film before, or at least I thought I hadn’t, but had an uncanny knack of being able to predict what might be about to happen.
I was going to have to get used to déjà vu: it was clearly going to follow me around everywhere I went.
I found David to be quite an entertaining young man. He was full of amusing anecdotes about things that went on in his job which got me to thinking about my own career. This was one of many things that I would need to find out more about in due course.
But I was too tired to think about any of that today. By early evening I was exhausted. I’d done amazingly well, considering the advanced state of my illness.
A Macmillan nurse came in to help Stacey put me to bed, and with the help of the medication she gave me I was able to drift off to sleep a happy man for the first time in my week-long life.
Fire
November 2024
The day of the doctor’s appointment when I would find out what I already knew, that I had terminal cancer, had arrived.
Did I even need to go to the appointment? Over the past few weeks, as my health had improved, I had had the chance to consider my situation in great depth. Was there any point redoing things that had already been done, which were not going to make any difference?
However, when Stacey rang to remind me and told me she was coming round later, I decided I’d better go through the motions. If I didn’t go, she’d find out, and then she’d nag me about it for the rest of the day.
During the cold, dark November and December days, I had spent as much time as possible researching my own life history. I’d also taken the opportunity to experiment with various things to see what effects they would have.
