by Dani Atkins
I think Jimmy got Joe to the pub on false pretences. Telling him that if he joined us for a drink we would explain everything was stretching the truth by anyone’s definition. However, when I suggested that we get out of the biting wind and move our discussion to the King George pub, where most of the staff went each day for lunch, Joe reluctantly agreed to go with us.
It was a little disconcerting to see the way he kept darting sidelong glances at me as we walked the few hundred yards to the popular watering hole; as though I might be some sort of weird clairvoyant or worse.
The pub was crowded, as it usually was at that time of day, and we struggled to find a table for the three of us. All around us were small groups of my work colleagues and I had to bite my lip to stop greeting everyone I passed. Eventually I spotted a vacant table towards the back of the pub and hurried to claim it, with a clearly reluctant Joe following in my wake.
I smiled at him tentatively as we took our seats. There was no answering response, which was sad, because I had always liked this man, long before I realised we had so much in common. Eventually Jimmy returned with a round of drinks, informing us that he had ordered three ploughman’s lunches which they would bring over shortly. Somehow I doubted that anyone was going to have much of an appetite before this meeting was over.
‘So who told you about Muriel?’ was Joe’s first question, fired out at speed.
I shook my head, thinking I had better not answer that particular question first. Joe was clearly extremely defensive, which was apparent by his next comment.
‘I don’t know what your game is but I don’t want anyone making any trouble for me at work about any of this.’
He was clearly exceedingly rattled that his most private secret was known by someone he had never met before. I reached out to pat his hand comfortingly and stopped only when I saw the look of horror on his face.
‘We’re not trying to make any trouble for you, Joe,’ assured Jimmy in a very soothing tone.
‘I don’t have any money, you know,’ Joe advised.
‘Of course you don’t,’ I agreed without thinking. ‘Not after putting two kids through university and keeping your mother in that retirement home.’
Half of Joe’s pint of beer slopped over the table as his shaking hand almost dropped his glass.
‘That’s it! How do you know all this? Who are you people?’
There was no easy way to begin, but all I could do was tell the truth as I knew it.
‘I know you might find it a little hard to believe, but actually, Joe, I’m your friend.’
Joe fixed me with a long hard stare. He then turned a similar look upon Jimmy.
‘Ah no,’ Jimmy corrected, ‘I am a total stranger. Rachel’s the one who knows you.’
Once again Joe looked back at me, still so openly confused that I felt sorry we had dragged him into this. He had enough to cope with already.
‘If we are friends then how come I don’t know you? I’ve a good memory, you need it in my job. And I don’t forget a face and I would most definitely remember spilling the details of my private life to some stranger.’
I smiled to soften my words, hoping he wouldn’t mis-interpret the baring of teeth as an act of aggression.
‘I know this sounds crazy. But we are friends. Good ones. And the reason I know so much about you and your family, especially about Muriel’s illness, is because I have been going through something similar myself, with my dad.’
For the first time Joe’s expression softened, revealing the kindly man who had been such a support to me as we swapped concerns and worries over loved ones who were battling the same illness.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he mumbled, and at last realising that we meant no malice here, he continued, ‘But I still don’t know how you could possibly know the details that you know. I’ve had to be so careful about not letting anyone at work find out. There’ve been so many redundancies recently, I couldn’t risk giving them a reason to let me go.’
‘I know,’ I said softly. This worry had been a familiar theme to many of our conversations. As had the progress of our respective family members in their fight for life. We had bonded together and both gained strength from it. It was sad that in this new version of the world, Joe didn’t have anyone he could share his burden with.
‘But how do you know all this?’ Joe asked once again. ‘Who was it who told you?’
I couldn’t evade the question a second time.
‘You did.’
I don’t know if we ever managed to convince Joe that we were sincere. All I know is that when I recounted detail after detail of his wife’s battle, which had so closely matched my father’s, he could no longer refute that I was in possession of facts he thought no one else had been told. In the end he struggled to find a solution he could live with, one that wouldn’t keep him awake at night for years to come.
‘It must be the stress that has done this,’ he pronounced at last.
‘Done what?’ Jimmy queried.
‘Made it so I don’t remember. Yes, that’s it. All the worry has given me a sort of… amnesia.’
There was a long silence at his words. I looked at Jimmy meaningfully for a moment, before replying solemnly, ‘There’s a lot of that going around.’
We didn’t stay in the pub for long after our food had arrived. Jimmy seemed to be the only one with any sort of appetite, although I thought Joe might eat more comfortably after we had gone.
I did have one bizarre encounter in the Ladies, when I emerged from a cubicle to see Emily Frost standing at the mirrored sink unit.
‘Hi there,’ I greeted, smiling at her warmly, forgetting she knew nothing about our supposed lunch date or indeed who the hell I was. She looked back at me warily in the reflected glass. Suddenly I was tired of being an outsider among people I had known for so long. It was time to go.
Jimmy held out his hand to Joe.
‘It’s been very nice meeting you.’
No one was entirely surprised when Joe didn’t return the comment. His parting to me was slightly warmer after I offered, ‘I’m sorry if we’ve upset you today. I really do hope everything goes well with Muriel. I’ll be thinking of you both.’
We turned to go then, Jimmy’s hand securely guiding me away from the table.
‘Er… Rachel?’ called out Joe, startling us both.
As one we turned around to face the man we had so confounded that day.
‘Your dad, Rachel. How is he? How is he doing now?’
I smiled slowly at my old friend and his concern.
‘He got better, Joe.’
12
‘Joe seemed like a nice guy.’
I said nothing, keeping my eyes fixed out of the window at the disappearing London suburbs.
Jimmy tried again. ‘I think we eventually convinced him we weren’t total crackpots.’
Again I gave no reply.
‘You OK?’ asked Jimmy kindly, taking his hand briefly off the wheel to give mine a reassuring squeeze.
‘He didn’t know me.’ My voice was dull and toneless, but Jimmy’s ears still discerned the pain.
‘I know.’ There was compassion and understanding in his tone.
‘I don’t know why I’m surprised, I should have been expecting it. But he was the first person who I’ve met who I know well; who I really care about. He’s my friend, for God’s sake and he didn’t know who the hell I was!’ I thought of the pub full of familiar faces, none of whom had recognised me. ‘No one does.’
I couldn’t blame Jimmy for failing to come up with some soothing rejoinder. What on earth could he say that could offer any comfort?
‘It’s almost as though it’s not me with amnesia… it’s them! I’ve literally been erased from their memories.’
‘Hey, you’re not going all sci-fi on me here, are you?’ Clearly his mind was going back to the theory I had first put forward when we were last in London: the one about a parallel world, where everyone still existed, le
ading a similar but subtly different life than this one.
‘It is a theory…’ I offered tentatively.
‘A crazy one.’
‘But what if it were real: crazy or not? What if something happened to me when I hit my head during the mugging? What if I actually did somehow swap places with another version of me?’
Jimmy laughed. But when I didn’t join in, the amusement quickly died.
‘Rachel, you really cannot be serious about this,’ he began gently. ‘I know there are loads of unanswered questions here, but I really don’t believe that people can go zipping about in time and drop in on their other lives.’
‘I’m not talking about time travel. Maybe something happened on that night, and it created… I don’t know… some sort of anomaly in the space-time continuum?
‘Do you even know what a space-time continuum is?’
‘No. But maybe we could find an expert or a scientist in this field. Someone who would have some of the answers.’ Someone who wouldn’t think I was totally insane, I finished silently in my head.
‘Rachel, honey, that stuff only happens in books and movies. In real life you can’t find Weird Scientist Guy actually listed in Yellow Pages. Where would we even begin?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied mulishly. I knew what he was saying was right. I just didn’t want to hear it.
‘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 grey 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 on a long and considering tone, ‘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 backwards.’ 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.’
And those were the words that I kept replaying in my head for the rest of the journey back home.
My father’s eyes lit up with pleasure as I crossed the threshold with the large packing boxes and a suitcase full of my belongings.
‘You don’t mind if I wind up staying 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 unexpectedly at my request.
‘Are you feeling OK, Dad?’
He rubbed his hand roughly 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.’
I watched his retreating back as he climbed the stairs, suddenly overcome by a wave of love for the only parent I had ever known, mixed with an enormous gratitude that here and now 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 either. 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 continually calling both my mobile and the house phone, so I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. 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, perhaps, 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. From 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 in reality I hadn’t seen or heard anything at all of 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? Or 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 reorganised 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 scarcely baked anything before in my life. As I produced tray after tray of food in varying degrees of edibility I saw the question in my father’s eyes, even though it was never voiced. And he was right. 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 reoccurrence of the strange dreams and night-time 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 at speed.
‘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 or two if you weren’t careful. The tree was actually so big its topmost branches bowed over heavily against the ceiling, and it was roughly as wide as it was tall.
‘Couldn’t you find a bigger one?’ I teased.
‘It looked much smaller at the garden centre,’ Dad explained.
‘Leave your poor dad alone. You should have seen him struggling up the hill to carry it back.’
I swivelled around with enough speed to actually 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, his words directed to my father but his eyes never leaving my face.
There was a long moment of silence which was just this side of awkward.
‘Anyone fancy a cup of tea?’ asked my father, already half out the door 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 anything to go by.
‘Do you have any decorations for this tree then?’ Jimmy asked, after draining his cup.
