by Dani Atkins
“Do you want to hear what I think?”
I turned in my seat to see him more clearly.
“Go on.”
“What I think is that something did happen to you when you hit your head. Something very unusual and unique. Something that is allowing you to … I don’t know, maybe read minds, pick up some sort of psychic energy and interpret it into memories … I don’t know.”
“And why would none of this neurological damage have shown up on the multitude of tests they’ve run on me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, I think that it must be incredibly rare. Perhaps it is on the tests but the doctors don’t even know what they’re looking at. You might be the only person this has ever happened to.”
His suggestion did have a degree of rational credibility, I had to grant him that. But it didn’t seem to fit, not in the way my own idea did.
I could go two ways with this: keep on insisting there was something more supernatural—for want of a better word—going on here, and risk losing his support completely, or be the bigger person and let it go. I chose wisely.
“So I’m unique then, am I?” I said with the beginnings of a smile. “One of a kind?”
“I’ve never doubted that for a single minute of my life.”
I couldn’t help it: my smile just kept getting broader and broader, until I was in danger of resembling some demented version of the Cheshire Cat. I also couldn’t help noticing that he looked more than a little pleased by my response.
A few more miles down the gray ribbon of motorway, I brought up the topic again. “But what if we never get to the bottom of it? If we never find out the answers? What do we do then?”
Jimmy was quiet for a long moment. “Well,” he said finally, “you remember the first eighteen years of your life just fine, don’t you?”
“Yes. Right up to the night of the car accident.”
“So, in the grand scheme of things, we’re really only talking about having inexplicably … lost … a small piece of your past. I guess what you have to ask yourself is how much time and energy you want to spend on looking backward.” His voice changed then, the timbre becoming softer and lower. “But speaking personally, it’s not your past that interests me so much as your future.”
I kept replaying those words in my head for the rest of the journey home.
MY FATHER’S EYES lit up as I crossed the threshold with the large packing boxes and a suitcase full of my belongings.
“You don’t mind if I stay here with you for a little bit longer, do you?” I asked as I entered the house. An unnecessary question really, but even I was surprised to see his eyes glisten at my request.
“Are you feeling okay, Dad?”
He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Just getting a cold, I think,” he muttered brusquely, bending to pick up the boxes. “I’ll just take these upstairs for you. And of course I don’t mind. You stay here as long as you want.”
As I watched him climb the stairs, I was suddenly overcome by a wave of love for the only parent I had ever known, mixed with an enormous gratitude that in this reality he was so fit and well. Perhaps it had been talking to Joe once more about his wife’s illness that suddenly made me really appreciate that life here was in many ways a great deal better than the one I remembered. Well, aside from the unfortunate incident with Matt. But maybe that too would turn out to be not such a bad thing. Better to know now that he couldn’t remain faithful and get out while I could, before making the mistake of marrying him.
THE FOLLOWING DAY I finally got around to answering one of his numerous phone calls. I had to really; he’d been calling both my mobile and the house phone nonstop since I’d caught him with Cathy. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation, and I said some things that I’m not particularly proud of. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but I had hoped we might at least have been able to remain civil. But any phone conversation that ends with one of you yelling at the other “Have a nice life!” can’t exactly be deemed a success.
The next few days should have been pleasant enough; Christmas was almost upon us, and although I didn’t seem to have my normal enthusiasm for the holiday season, I tried to put on a good show for my father’s sake. Not that I think I fooled him much, not when my first question upon returning home from a walk or a visit to the shops was, “Did anyone drop by or phone while I was out?”
I guess he thought I might be waiting to hear from Matt again, and I didn’t bother correcting that assumption. But it wasn’t the absence of contact from my ex-fiancé that was troubling me, it was not hearing from Jimmy. Considering the things that had been said recently, I’d thought—well, hoped really—that he was going to be a more frequent visitor to our house, but I hadn’t seen or heard anything from him since he’d driven me back from London.
Of course he could just be busy at work, but really, how long does it take to pick up a phone? Could he already be regretting having spent so much of his spare time with me? Had I once again totally misinterpreted the words and actions of a close friend for something else entirely?
To fill the hours, I made a concerted effort to keep myself really busy each day, finding that physical exhaustion gave me far less thinking and brooding time. So I reorganized my old bedroom. Twice. And even cleaned the house to never-before-seen perfection. I also took up baking—which was a dubious pursuit, given the fact I had hardly baked anything before in my life. As I produced tray after tray of food in varying degrees of edibility, I saw the logical question in my father’s eyes, even though it was never voiced. What was I doing baking enough food to feed an army when it would just be the two of us on Christmas Day?
Each night I fell into bed totally shattered, hoping I would be so worn out that I could ignore both Jimmy’s silence as well as the recurrence of strange dreams and nighttime hallucinations that had returned to haunt me.
A FEW EVENINGS before Christmas Eve, my father came into the lounge, dragging behind him an overly large pine tree.
I looked up from my place at the fireside, where I had been making small but steady progress with my father’s aloof cat. At least she now tolerated me touching her for as long as five seconds at a time before bolting away.
“I thought we weren’t going to bother with a tree this year?”
“I know,” he said, struggling to drag the giant redwood wannabe across the carpet. “But I thought we could do with a little brightening up in here. Make it nice and festive.”
I hurried to clear a space in the corner, ducking out of the way of the approaching branches that looked sharp enough to take out an eye if you weren’t careful. The tree was so big its topmost branches bowed over against the ceiling
“Couldn’t you find a bigger one?” I teased.
“It looked much smaller at the garden center,” Dad explained.
“Leave your poor dad alone. You should have seen him struggling up the hill to carry it back.”
I swiveled around with enough speed to crick my neck. I’d been so busy examining the tree, I hadn’t seen Jimmy walk into the lounge.
“Thanks for the lift, lad,” said my father. “I knew I should have taken the car.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jimmy assured him, his words directed to my father but his eyes never leaving my face.
There was a long moment of silence that was just this side of awkward.
“Anyone fancy a cup of tea?” asked my father, already heading out of the room to make it.
I waited until we were alone before speaking. “Hello, stranger. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever see you again.”
He had the grace to look abashed. “I’m sorry I’ve not been in touch. I got your texts, I’ve been meaning to call but …” His voice trailed off.
“You’ve been busy. I get that.”
“No. It’s not that. It’s just …”
This was getting tiresome. Was he ever going to finish a sentence?
“Nice tree,” he commented instead, studying the
fir with unwarranted concentration.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was nervous. But I couldn’t for the life of me think why.
As my dad passed out the tea, I took the opportunity to study Jimmy unobserved. It looked as though I might not be the only one who hadn’t been sleeping well recently, not if the dark smudges beneath his eyes were any indication.
“Do you have any decorations for this tree then?” Jimmy asked, after draining his cup.
“Are you volunteering to help us?” I got to my feet. “I’ll get the box. It’s still in the attic, right?”
I had expected one or both of them to get up at that point and offer to get the box of decorations for me, but when my dad looked just about to do that, Jimmy stopped him with a meaningful look, one that I probably wasn’t meant to see.
“You can manage that by yourself, can’t you?” Jimmy asked confidently.
“Sure,” I replied, taking the very obvious hint and leaving the room.
I wasn’t aware I was muttering under my breath as I pulled down the loft ladder and began clicking the struts in place, until I observed Kizzy staring at me curiously from the top of the banisters.
“And you’re just as bad,” I said to the disdainful feline, who took off from her vantage point in a flurry of indignant fur.
Jimmy had obviously wanted to get rid of me so he could speak to my father alone. No doubt he was, even at that moment, recounting to him my slightly eccentric theory. Proving that Rachel was still far from well. This really was great. My dad had just started treating me normally again, now that he believed my “amnesia” might soon be cured, but if Jimmy told him everything I had said in the car the other day, I’d be right back to square one.
I felt angry and more than a little betrayed, and though I’d never actually told Jimmy I didn’t want my dad to know what I was thinking, I’d just assumed he knew me well enough to understand that information had been for his ears only.
Typically it took much longer than it should have done to find the blasted box of decorations in the attic, and by the time I had located them and packed away the ladder, whatever discussion Jimmy and my father had been engaged in was clearly finished.
And if I needed further proof that there was something funny going on, there it was when I walked back into the lounge and found both men deeply involved in some pseudo-conversation about football, a subject that didn’t particularly interest either of them.
Even as I began to rip the sealing tape from the box, Dad got to his feet and gave a huge exaggerated yawn.
“I think I might just turn in now. I’ve done my bit as far as the tree is concerned. You two can take over from here.”
I looked at the clock above the fireplace in amazement.
“It’s not even nine o’clock!”
Was that a blush on his cheeks, or was he just flushed from the heat of the fire?
“It isn’t? Oh well, never mind. It doesn’t hurt to get an early night every so often. G’night, Rachel. See you soon, Jimmy.”
I waited until I had safely heard the creak of the stairs as he climbed them, before rounding angrily on Jimmy.
“I know what you two were discussing when I was out of the room!”
And that’s when everything got weird, because instead of replying, Jimmy just looked strangely uncomfortable, and was that …? Yes, it was … the color in his cheeks was clearly heightened. I actually took my eyes from his face to glance over at the fire burning merrily in the grate. Either it was really hot in here, or something suspicious was going on.
“You told him. Didn’t you?” I continued, when it seemed unlikely Jimmy was going to say anything in his own defense. “You told him what I thought had happened to me?”
Relief flooded over his features. “Is that what you think? No, of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that.”
He was so earnest in his denial that I knew he was telling the truth.
“Then why did you send me out of the room?”
His eyes gave a flicker, which betrayed his discomfort, but his voice was smooth enough as he replied. “No one sent you out of the room. You went to get the decorations.”
I gave him a long narrowed-eyed stare, which I knew he would remember from our past. It was the look I had always given him when I was unhappy with something he had said. However, Jimmy wasn’t going to let me go any further with this one.
“Come on then. Let’s get started. It’s a big tree and we haven’t got all night.”
It’s impossible to stay in a bad mood when you’re decorating a Christmas tree. There’s something about the twinkling of fairy lights and the glint of fragile glass baubles reflected in the light from the fire that simply sucks all feelings of negativity from you, however hard you try to hold on to them.
At Jimmy’s request I had even found a CD of Christmas tunes in my dad’s collection and had them playing softly in the background as we worked together, mostly in silence, dressing the tree. It was comfortable and companionable; our heads bent low over the box of decorations, sometimes fingers colliding as we both reached for a particular ornament at exactly the same instant. Either we shared the same taste in gaudy baubles or it was another confirmation of just how in tune we were with each other.
The tree was starting to look really good. Nothing refined and understated here; this was a real Las Vegas–style tree! It just needed the tinsel to finish it off. Careful of the spiky pine needles, I wriggled halfway behind the main trunk and asked Jimmy to pass me the long strand of sparkling decoration so I could thread it through the branches. I held out my hand through the dense foliage, waiting to take the glittering streamer. But instead of passing me the tinsel, I felt Jimmy’s fingertips lightly graze mine.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
His voice sounded almost desperate, as though the words had been torn out of him against his will.
The tree branches obscured my view of him, so I directed my voice in his general direction.
“That’s all right. We’re almost done here. I can finish it off myself.”
“I’m not talking about the damned tree!” There was no mistaking his tone: there was genuine anguish there.
I struggled to get out from the imprisoning branches, but stopped as he went on to add, “I’m talking about us. You and me. Our friendship.”
I felt my heart freeze over. Every last fear I’d ever had in my life was crystallized in that one moment. It was as devastating to hear now as it would have been when I was five years old. Jimmy didn’t want to be my friend anymore. Suddenly I was in no hurry to emerge from the tree’s protective cover. I didn’t want him to see the effect his words had on me. I’d brought this on myself. I’d neglected something precious for far too long and then tried to lean on him more than I should have. I deserved whatever was coming.
“I understand,” I said in a voice that was beginning to tremble. “You have to step back from being my friend right now.”
He gave a sound that was almost a groan. “That’s not it. Well, maybe that’s partly it; I do want to step back from being your friend …” It was the worst thing I had ever heard, until he continued, “but only because I want to be so much more.”
My hand, still protruding through the branches, was suddenly gripped in his warm and steady clasp.
“And you had to wait until I was embedded in a Christmas tree to say this to me?” I asked in a voice too dazed to really take in his words.
The branches were suddenly swept back in one swift move, and I stared up in wonder at the man who had just changed my entire view of the future.
“I had to make sure you couldn’t run away,” he said, gently pulling me out of the tree and toward him.
“That is the last thing on my mind,” I assured him. “In fact—”
But I never got to finish that sentence, as his head lowered toward mine and he pulled me close. In a perfect blend, the soft contours of my body molded up against the firm hardness of his. Two
halves, complementing and blending, and it was as though nothing in the world had ever really been right until this single perfect moment. I felt the thundering of his heart echoing against mine as he held my trembling body against him. I looked into his eyes and found all I’d been searching for and an expression of love so open and naked it robbed me of what little breath I had left. And then his mouth was on mine, and his hands were arching me closer and he was holding me while I fell even more in love with the man I was always destined to be with.
THE FIRE DIMMED long before our passion did. We lay on the faded old settee, limbs entwined. Beneath my head I could hear the resounding and comforting beat of his heart, while his fingers traced small circles upon the nape of my neck. I had never known a moment of such complete contentment in my entire life.
I struggled to sit up but his strong arms wouldn’t release me.
“Don’t move,” he urged, covering my mouth with his own to ensure that for several more minutes moving away wasn’t even the remotest possibility.
I was a little breathless when we eventually separated.
“Jimmy, can we talk for a minute?”
His blue eyes darkened for a second.
“I’d much rather do this,” he suggested, pulling me from his side until I lay on top of the long length of his body. My new location did nothing at all for my concentration, and several more minutes were completely lost as I gave in to the racing passion that was coursing through my veins.
“Enough!” I said, sitting up so abruptly that I would have toppled from the settee if he hadn’t caught me.
He must have recognized my determination, for he reluctantly rose from the cushions and swung his legs to the floor, allowing me to slide onto the seat beside him. I could see the effort it had cost him, both physical and emotional, to separate from me, and I felt a flutter deep within me, to know he wanted me as much as I did him.
“You have five minutes,” he warned, “before I have to start kissing you again, so you’d better talk fast.”
His words and his proximity were doing funny things to the rate of my pulse. It could easily take me all of my allotted time just to get a single sentence out. But there were things I needed to ask.
