Then and Always

by Dani Atkins

  I hung up the remaining clothes in the small pine wardrobe and then picked up a warm sheepskin jacket and scarf. I hadn’t been out of the house for days, and I needed to test my stamina if I was going to get Dad to agree to my latest plan. However, all intentions of broaching the idea gently were blown out of the water when I descended the stairs at the very moment he was coming through the front door. He must have just been returning from his daily walk to get the morning paper. He was quick, but so was I, and I still had time to see the small red carton that he hastily tried to stuff into his jacket. Diving into his deep pocket like a missile, my fingers closed about the small container and thrust it out.

  “What in the hell are these?”

  My dad looked shamefaced and said nothing; I could see various explanations trolling through his mind: each one failing to pass muster.

  “What in God’s name are you smoking again for? Don’t you know these things will kill you? That they were killing you?”

  If either of us had stopped to consider the incongruity of the complete parent-child role reversal we were currently acting out, then we would probably have burst out laughing there and then. But I was too angry to see it and he was too embarrassed.

  I crushed the packet in my hand, rendering at least this one pack unsalvageable, and with the breaking of the cigarettes within, my anger too began to crumple.

  “Dad, I know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, but you have to promise me that you’ll stop.”

  He didn’t apologize but he did at least try to explain.

  “I’ve just been so worried about you, Rachel. You’ve been so lost and I feel so useless not being able to help you. It was just a little something to cope with the stress, that’s all.”

  “Don’t, Dad,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks at hearing my own father sound so broken down with concern. I brushed them away with the back of my hand—God, when had I become such a crybaby?

  I took both his hands in mine and tried to put into my words and eyes all that I had felt when he had first been diagnosed.

  “Dad, if you love me, if you really love me, please promise me you’ll never touch this poison again?” His eyes too began to mist. Now I’d made my own father cry, but if it stopped this happening all over again, then it was worth it. “You half killed yourself with these from worrying over me once before; I won’t let you do it again.”

  I WALKED AROUND for hours and although I had nowhere in particular to go, it still felt good to be back outside after the inactivity of the last week. I’d told Dad not to worry, and I phoned to check in with him after a couple of hours, just so he knew I was okay. It was midafternoon by then, and I realized that somehow along the way I had missed lunch. As I wasn’t far from the center of town, I headed toward its small row of shops, where there were a few restaurants and coffeehouses.

  I was hesitating on the pavement, trying to decide which one to choose, when a voice behind me spoke softly in my ear.

  “The one on the end does the best cheesecake.”

  I turned around, and my heartbeat increased. He must have really startled me. I automatically dipped my head, to cover my damaged cheek, and then realized that until this mystery was solved, that was one little habit I could happily dispense with. I met his eyes with a smile.

  “And what if I don’t like cheesecake anymore?”

  He stopped as though to consider this absurdity.

  “No. Never happen. Whatever else you’ve forgotten, it won’t be that. Some things just go too deep.”

  Somehow, by mutual agreement, we entered the small coffeehouse, where Jimmy placed an order for coffees and two slices of cake. There was a table set for two toward the back of the shop beside an open log fire, and we headed over to claim it, both unconsciously rejecting several vacant ones by the front windows.

  “So how come you’re not at work today, Constable Boyd? It’s no wonder that crime is rife in this town—none of the policemen are ever on duty.”

  “It’s actually Inspector Boyd, and I am now officially off duty for the day.”

  “Inspector, eh? That sounds important. Do you enjoy it? You never said anything about wanting to become a policeman when we were younger.”

  The waitress arrived with our order and he waited until she had placed the cups and plates before us and left before replying.

  “Yes. I love the job. Joining the force was the best decision I ever made. And as for never saying anything about it … Well, I kept a lot of things to myself back then, things that perhaps I should have said out loud.”

  My stomach gave a flip. I felt like he was about to tell me something, something big. But there was a part of me that resisted; that wasn’t ready to hear it. Not knowing how to proceed down that avenue, not even sure if I wanted to, I chose an abrupt change of topic.

  “Jimmy, I want to apologize to you for my behavior yesterday. My little outburst.”

  He brushed the apology away with a careless hand, but I continued.

  “No, really. I know it all seems extremely … oh, I don’t know … unlikely … unbalanced … unbelievable …”

  “Pretty much any word starting with ‘un’ then?”

  I laughed. He had always been able to make me laugh.

  “It’s just that what I know to be completely and unequivocally true keeps being proved to be false. It’s very unsettling.”

  He took a long sip of his coffee before replying. “I’m sure it must be. And frustrating too.”

  There was something in his voice, something I’d not heard from anyone else, and it made me drop the forkful of cake that was halfway to my mouth.

  “Do you believe me?” I realized that in all my protestations, I had never asked that precise question of anyone.

  His sky blue eyes held mine in a gaze that a person could drown in if they weren’t careful.

  “I believe that you believe it, wholeheartedly and completely. And I can see what trying to convince the rest of us is doing to you.” He was quiet for a moment and I almost spoke then—thank God I didn’t, or I would never have heard him finish in a whisper, “And it’s heartbreaking to see you like this.”

  I hadn’t realized his words had made me cry until he lifted my face gently with his finger and dabbed at my eyes with the folded napkin. His voice was still soft and low. “And I’ve certainly never seen you cry this much, not even when you kept falling off your bike when you were eight years old.”

  I gave a rather unladylike sniff, but his words had done the trick, he’d made me smile.

  “Oh, I’ve certainly cried plenty in the last five years, more than you’ll ever know.”

  “What about?”

  Here it was. The moment to either back right off or plunge in regardless.

  “About losing you. When you saved my life, and lost yours. You’ve no idea what that did to me. You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

  And this was his chance to jump in with the head-injury/amnesia/soon-all-will-be-fixed platitude. But he did none of that. This was Jimmy, the boy who had loved me when we were children and the man he had now become. I could trust him with anything. I could trust him with the truth.

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  And so, in the dwindling afternoon light and by the flickering flames of the fire, I started at the beginning, from the night of the accident, and didn’t stop until I had reached the end.

  7

  We were the last two customers to leave the coffee shop. We realized we had overstayed our welcome when the owner had stopped being subtle about it and had swept the floor, upended the chairs on the vacant tables, and switched off almost all the lights.

  I apologized for keeping them, while Jimmy lifted my coat from the rack and held it out for me to slip on. He settled the coat upon my shoulders, and somehow it just seemed natural for his arm to remain there as he guided me toward the door.

  “My car’s just around the corner, I’ll drop you back home before your father sends out a sea
rch party.”

  The cold December air bit sharply against us in a gust of wind as we walked along the quiet streets, but I didn’t seem to feel the cold, not with his body walking so closely beside mine. I knew I was in dangerous territory here. A door had opened sometime that afternoon and I’d walked blithely through it without a backward glance. But now I could see that before adding any further complications, I first needed to resolve the thousand or so unanswered questions that were standing in my way. Although, damn it, it felt so good, so right to be walking like this by Jimmy’s side. How could I not have seen this before?

  The drive back to my house took only five minutes, and when we pulled up to the curb, I noticed the twitch of the curtain in the front room.

  I gave a small laugh in disbelief.

  “Can you believe my dad is actually peeking out through the curtains to check up on me? This is just like being a teenager all over again.”

  He ducked his head and leaned across me to view the front of my house through the passenger window. I caught the light fragrance of his aftershave, and the clean smell of shampoo, before he straightened back up. I breathed in the tantalizing combination more deeply, as though to commit it to memory.

  What was I doing here? I had no right to be thinking these thoughts. Jimmy and I had never been romantically involved, not once, not ever, for we had only ever been best friends, and besides, there had always been Matt. And there still was Matt, I had to remind myself. I wasn’t free to be thinking this way.

  “I guess I should get inside.”

  “Before your dad comes out with a shotgun?”

  I gave a small giggle at the image.

  “Yes, that’s right. And also Matt will be calling soon from Germany, so …” My voice trailed away. It was the worst thing I could have said. The warm air between us immediately froze at my words, and the bristle that ran through Jimmy was almost palpable.

  “Of course.” And with those two words, the fledgling thing that had fluttered to life between us was shot down dead.

  I asked him to join us for dinner but wasn’t surprised when he declined. He did walk me to the front door, though, taking my arm as the path was even then beginning to ice over. But it was the guiding hand of a friend and nothing more. I couldn’t believe a mood could change so instantly, and it made me question my own perception of our afternoon together. Had there really been anything new there at all, or had I merely imagined I could feel something more than just an old and treasured friendship?

  He took the door key from my fingers and slid it into the lock, but before he rotated it, I placed my hand on his arm to stall him.

  “Are we still all right for tomorrow? Because I can go on my own, you know. No problem.”

  His eyes gave nothing away.

  “Of course it’s still okay. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Because I’d gone and ruined the moment by conjuring up between us the one obstacle that had always been in our way.

  “No reason. It’s just … Well, it doesn’t seem a great way for you to spend your day off: escorting your newly deranged friend around London.”

  He pulled me against him then and enveloped me in a brief hard hug; all friendship—nothing else.

  “Not newly deranged,” he contradicted, and then, clearly unable to resist, “You’ve pretty much been this way ever since I’ve known you!”

  He released me then, and turned the key in the lock all in one smooth movement. Giving me a gentle nudge, he propelled me into the warm hall.

  “And I told you before, I think it’s a really good idea. I’m sure it’s going to help. Now go inside in the warm and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  THE ARGUMENTS I thought I’d have to put forward to convince my dad it was a good idea for me to return to London the next day proved to be unnecessary once he knew that Jimmy would be accompanying me. It did make me wonder if he’d have held the same opinion if I had chosen a different traveling companion. Even so, as I waited for Jimmy to collect me the following morning, my father was still clucking around like the proverbial old mother hen.

  “You have got your medication with you?”

  I tapped the Gucci bag swung over my shoulder.

  “And you’ll call me if you feel sick or … anything? You have your phone, right, and money and …”

  “Relax, Dad. I’m only going for one night. I’ll be back tomorrow and hopefully I’ll have some answers.”

  He still looked doubtful, so I reached up to hug him. “Don’t worry about me so much.” I smelled his aftershave then, and it suddenly reminded me of something. “And stop checking up on me all night long. You must be exhausted by morning—I’ve lost count of the number of times you keep coming in.”

  Jimmy’s car pulled up outside, and I was bending to pick up the small soft bag I had at my feet, so I missed the initial look of confusion on my father’s face.

  “Rachel, I haven’t been in your room at night to check up on you. Not even once. You must have been dreaming.”

  THE JOURNEY TO London confirmed that Jimmy had also reached a decision in the intervening hours between last night and this morning. Back once more was the warmhearted, teasing, platonic friend I had known all my life—or at least the bit that had led up to my eighteenth year. The man who had held my hand in the coffee shop, while I stumbled through the story of what my life had become since that time, had completely disappeared.

  And if I was disappointed at having let that person slip through my fingers, at least I still had my old friend Jimmy back in my life, and compared to a week or so earlier, that was a vast improvement.

  “So where do you want us to head to first? Have you given it any thought?”

  I pulled a folded piece of paper from my bag.

  “I guess it makes sense to go here first. The other places are all across on the other side of town.”

  The paper fluttered in my hand from a light draft from the open car window.

  “I have the address, but I’ve no idea where it is exactly. Dad had to write it down for me.”

  Jimmy’s eyes flickered away from the road for an instant and glanced down at the scrap of lined paper.

  “And that would be …?”

  I sighed deeply and looked at the words on the sheet. They meant absolutely nothing to me.

  “It’s where I live”—I paused, as though in court—“allegedly.”

  I tried to relax, but as mile after mile passed by I began to get increasingly nervous. Going into London, to where I lived and worked, was my last hope of reclaiming my real life. But it was only now that I stopped to contemplate what exactly I might find when I got there. There were keys in my bag that I didn’t recognize. Presumably they would fit the door of the address my father had given me that morning. But what of my other home, the flat I lived in above the launderette? What would everyone say when that too proved to be mine? Filled with belongings and paraphernalia from another life entirely. Could they both exist side by side? How could that even be possible?

  A word formed like a whisper in my mind. A word much more scary and unknown than amnesia: schizophrenia. Couldn’t that take the form of multiple personalities? All at once I was convinced I had read an article quite recently about that very subject. Could that be what I was suffering from? Was I actually mentally ill?

  To quiet the voice, I grabbed on to any random thought to fill the silence.

  “Jimmy, I never thought to ask before now: are you married?”

  Our car swerved slightly in its lane, earning an angry beep from the lorry behind us.

  “Married? Er, no. Where did that come from? Don’t you think you would know by now if I was?”

  I shrugged. “Not necessarily. I didn’t know I was engaged.”

  “Point taken.”

  A further mile clicked onto the display on the dashboard before I pursued it again. “So, is there anyone on the scene?”

  He laughed softly under his breath but said nothing, which only piqued my curiosity m
ore.

  “Girlfriend? Lover? Boyfriend?”

  “No, no, and definitely no, thank you very much.”

  “Why not?”

  “What are you asking me? Why aren’t I gay?”

  I gave his arm a gentle nudge. “You know what I’m asking. Why is there no one? You’re a great guy. You’d make a terrific partner for someone. How come you’re alone?”

  For the first time he looked uncomfortable and it surprised me that I had ventured into forbidden territory. There had been a time when nowhere was out of bounds. But perhaps it was all different now.

  “The job, for one: long hours, weird shifts. It doesn’t help a relationship. Or maybe I just prefer it this way.”

  “So there’s never been anyone serious? Not ever?”

  He was silent for a long moment, seeming to give far more concentration than was necessary to passing a slow-moving vehicle in front of us. When at last he did speak, there was something guarded in his tone.

  “There was someone once, a long time ago. But … things didn’t work out.”

  I turned in my seat to study him. Whoever this woman had been, I already hated her for rejecting him. I longed to ask more, but I could tell I was probing somewhere he didn’t want me to go, so I negotiated my way around this conversational obstacle and asked him something else that had been bothering me even more.

  “You and I, we don’t see each other very much anymore, do we?”

  He gave a wry smile, and I guessed that “very much” was a euphemism. His answer confirmed it.

  “Try ‘at all’ and you’re a little closer to the mark.”

  “But why? I don’t understand it. We were always so close.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then paused and seemed to think better of it, and closed it again. More than anything, I really wanted to know what it was he’d been about to say. I suspected it might have been a whole lot more illuminating than just, “People change, grow up, grow apart. It happens all the time.”