by Mark Morris
He snorted. ‘Try me. I’ve already been forced to believe a lot of fucked-up shit these last few weeks, and it’s all been because of him.’ He pointed at me. ‘Those fucking freaks in the crypt. That… thing that attacked my house.’ He rubbed his temple above his right eye as if he had a knot of pain there. ‘There were times I thought I was losing it. Going seriously doolally. Times I thought…’ He shook his head, as if deliberately derailing that train of thought. ‘But I’m an adaptable man. I’ve had to be. And seeing is believing. However fucking crazy it might look.’
Clover nodded almost affectionately. ‘Yeah. Sorry, Benny. For dragging you into all this.’
‘It’s not you I blame, Monroe. It’s him.’ He jabbed a finger at me again.
‘All the same,’ said Clover. She finished pouring the tea, then stood up and carried one of the cups over to him. ‘Drink this. I think you’re going to need it. And promise me two things.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’
‘When Alex tells you what he’s going to tell you, try not to have a meltdown. And try not to shoot anybody.’
‘It’s that bad, is it?’
She nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s a bit… out there.’
He sighed, but to my relief he slipped his right hand out of his jacket pocket to take the cup she was offering him. As Clover walked back to the table to sit down, he took a swig of tea and fixed me with his ice-blue eyes.
‘Go on then,’ he said almost wearily. ‘Let’s hear it.’
I looked at Paula and Adam Sherwood, who looked back at me expectantly, and then I looked at Clover, who gave me a single encouraging nod, as if to say: It’s time.
And so I began. When I’d entered this cottage I thought I’d be the one listening to a story – or rather, an explanation of how and why Kate happened to have ended up here with the Sherwoods – but as it turned out, I was the one telling it, the one with all the answers, even though I hadn’t realised I had them until today.
As my story unfolded – Candice’s boyfriend’s debt; contacting Benny; meeting Clover; Kate’s abduction; stealing the heart and finding out what it could do – something fundamental occurred to me. Something which had resulted in too many convolutions, had been too bound up in cause and effect, to occur to me until now.
I realised that the reason I had been drawn into this whole tangled mess in the first place was not because of outside forces, but because I had been caught in my own trap. The Dark Man aside, I had stolen the heart to try to get Kate back – but because it was me (or would be me) who had had Kate abducted in the first place, that meant I had been forced back into a life of crime purely as a result of my own actions!
But, of course, I had only arranged for Kate to be abducted (or would only, because it hadn’t happened yet) in order to prevent the Dark Man from taking her. Because what my future self had been trying to tell me was that with the heart I could create my past, rather than being a victim of it; in other words, I could be the manipulator rather than the manipulated.
The problem, of course, was that by creating my past, I was also wrapping heavier and more numerous chains around myself. Because now, to maintain the timeline that would lead to this moment, I presumably would have to set up the rest of it, starting with the message I’d have to send to Clover, claiming to be Kate’s kidnapper and giving myself instructions as to what to do next. Which in effect meant I would have to move my past self around as though he (I) was nothing but a piece on a chess board; a pawn in an elaborate, inescapable game.
All of this was whizzing round my head as I told my story, and had the paradoxical effect not only of freeing my mind, of furnishing me with possibilities, but also of making me realise how irrevocably tied into the web of my own past I was, and of how my actions might unwittingly have had a devastating effect on those around me.
Was it because of my future involvement in my own past, for instance, that Lyn had endured five debilitating, draining years of mental illness? Because if I hadn’t become enmeshed in this web I’d created, if I’d somehow found a way to avoid becoming the owner and guardian of the heart, wouldn’t the Dark Man have left us alone – or rather, left Lyn alone? Hadn’t it been entirely because of my involvement that he’d used the heart to go back in time and plant the seeds of madness in her mind? But why had he done that? Out of spite? Or were there still questions to which I didn’t yet know the answers? Or perhaps answers to which I didn’t yet know the questions?
‘Time travel?’ Benny said. ‘Do you honestly expect me to swallow this shit?’
Even as my story had been spilling out of me I’d become so preoccupied with my inner voice that I’d almost forgotten I had an audience. Benny’s contemptuous interruption snapped me back to the here and now. Before I could gather my wits enough to answer him, Clover jumped in.
‘I told you it was a bit out there.’
‘There’s out there and there’s fucking taking the piss,’ Benny retorted. He put his cup and saucer down with a clatter on the draining board behind him and swiped a hand through the air as though crossing all our names off some invisible list. ‘I don’t know what you’re on – and that includes you, Monroe – but I don’t have to listen to any more of this bollocks. I’ve done my bit, and I expect to be paid accordingly.’ His eyes, fixed on mine, were like daggers of ice.
‘You will be,’ I said.
‘Oh, I know I will. I have no doubt about it. And now I’ll leave you to your fairy stories.’
Abruptly he turned from the sink, stomped across to the door and yanked it open. He stepped out into a squall of rain, then reached back and pulled the door shut behind him. After he’d gone the four of us looked at each other, a little taken aback by the suddenness of his departure. It was Clover who broke the silence.
‘Well,’ she said chirpily, ‘at least he didn’t shoot us.’
I could hardly blame Benny for his reaction. He had only responded with such venom because, underneath it all, he was scared. There was a time when I’d thought nothing could scare someone like him, but the fact is he was an inflexible man who’d believed that what he took to be reality was as inflexible as he was. Finding out that he was wrong had pulled the rug from under him. And although it had pulled the rug from under me too, unlike Benny I’d been able, after a period of adjustment, to alter my thinking, to adapt.
I realised that with Benny’s departure there was no more reason to delay.
‘I’d like to see my daughter now, please,’ I said.
Paula nodded and stood up. Clover’s left hand snaked across to my right one, grabbed it and squeezed.
‘Big moment,’ she murmured. ‘You ready?’
Now that the time had finally arrived the knot in my belly had untied itself and was now thrashing about inside me like an angry octopus.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I might throw up.’
‘Have some tea and cake. It’ll settle your stomach.’
I grimaced. ‘I think it’d make me want to throw up more.’
I watched Paula move across the room, pausing only to switch on a couple of lamps. It was late afternoon now – early evening, in fact – and getting dark. Rain was still throwing itself against the cottage outside, though the walls were so thick, designed to withstand fierce winters, that we could only hear it against the windows. As Paula opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and started up, the wooden steps creaking beneath her, I shuddered and muttered, ‘Please don’t let this be another trick.’
‘It’s not a trick,’ said Adam. ‘You know it’s not.’
I heard a creak above me. Then another. Then footsteps descending, softly at first.
My mouth was suddenly very dry. My eyes burned. It was stuffy in the kitchen, the fire giving out plenty of heat, but I was shivering. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I stared at the wooden door at the bottom of the stairs. It had swung to behind Paula, leaving only the thinnest of black lines around the frame. The stairs were creaking under the
weight of… how many bodies? The door started to open. Paula stepped through it, smiling.
‘There’s someone here who wants to say hello,’ she said.
The little girl was holding Paula’s hand and concentrating on negotiating the last few steep wooden steps, the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth. Her curly brown hair had grown since the last time I’d seen her, and had she got taller too?
I felt waves of heat, or perhaps euphoria, rushing through me; felt my arms and legs tingling; felt my head swimming, as though I was about to faint. As if she knew exactly how I was feeling, Clover squeezed my hand, anchoring me. She slid out of the wooden pew, tugging me behind her.
Stepping off the bottom step, the little girl looked up, wrinkling her nose as though that might help adjust the pink-framed spectacles perched there. Her blue eyes fastened on me and widened. Her cute little bud of a mouth became an ‘O’ of surprise, then stretched into a huge smile.
‘Dadeee!’ she squealed. She yanked herself free of Paula’s grip. At the same moment Clover let go of my hand, allowing me to drop to my knees as my daughter raced across the kitchen towards me. Kate threw herself into my arms and I hugged her tight, feeling the wonderful, wriggling warmth of her, breathing in her familiar smell – fresh, uncategorisable, unique.
If I had any doubts that this was really Kate, they were dispelled in that instant. Even so, after all I’d been through, all the heartache, it was hard to believe we were back together, and that she was safe, and all was well. It was the moment I had yearned for, the moment I’d feared might never come.
‘Daddy!’ she cried. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
She was an eel in my grip. She wriggled free and looked into my face, as if to check it was definitely me.
‘Kate,’ I said, laughing even as my vision blurred with tears. ‘It’s so lovely to see you, scamp.’
She frowned and touched my face, then examined her wet palm.
‘Why are you crying?’ she said. ‘You should be happy, not sad.’ She shook her head, tutting in weary exasperation. ‘You really are a very, very silly man, Daddy.’
THIRTEEN
NIGHTCAP
‘Still awake?’
I jerked upright from my seat by the fire, which provided the only light in the room. I hadn’t been asleep, but I’d been far away, my thoughts roaming. Blue-green images of the flames I’d been staring into were still dancing in my vision as I turned to look at Clover, framed in the darkness of the staircase doorway. She was wearing clothes that Paula had lent her to sleep in – a white T-shirt with a Hollister logo on it and pink shorts, under a white towelling dressing gown that was hanging open as if she’d thrown it on in sleepy haste.
‘Too much adrenaline,’ I said. ‘My head’s buzzing – and not because of this.’
With my foot I nudged the half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort perched by the leg of my chair like a faithful pet. After the girls had gone to bed, Adam and I had shared a nightcap and chatted a while. Then Adam had gone to bed too, leaving me by the kitchen fire with the bottle.
How long ago had that been? An hour? Two?
‘What time is it?’ I asked.
Clover squinted at the digital display on the cooker across the room. ‘If that clock’s right, three eleven. You’re going to be knackered in the morning.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.’ Then it came over me once more – that warm rush of euphoria; happiness in its purest, most complete form. ‘We’ve done it, Clover,’ I said, grinning. ‘We’ve got Kate back.’
She matched her grin to mine. ‘I know.’ She tiptoed across the stone floor on bare feet, wincing at the cold even though the fire was breathing out heat, and squeezed my forearm. Then she dragged a chair out from under the dining table in the corner and set it down opposite mine. She perched on it, bringing up her legs until her heels were resting on the edge of the seat, feet curled together like puppies seeking warmth from one another’s bodies, bony knees sticking up in the air. She reached out, stretching her hands into star shapes, holding them up to the fire. Orange warmth lapped at her long shin bones and her face perched above her knees; fire flickered in her wide-set eyes.
‘Join you?’ she said, abruptly uncurling herself so she could bend down and grab the bottle of Southern Comfort.
‘Be my guest.’
She unscrewed the cap, held out the bottle and jiggled it. ‘Top up?’
I looked down at the glass I’d all but forgotten I was holding. There was no more than a sip of liquor left in the bottom. I tilted it to my mouth, savouring the sweetness of it on my tongue, then held out my glass so that Clover could pour me another. The liquid looked beautiful in the firelight; it was the deep, smooth brown of freshly shelled chestnuts, shot through with flashes of red and gold. I was struck by the beauty of it. But then this was a night for beauty. For perfection even. I couldn’t remember ever being more content than I was at that moment. I wanted it to stretch on for ever and ever. I wanted it never to end.
As Clover tilted the bottle to her lips and took a slug that made her eyes water, I laughed. ‘Peasant.’
She exhaled a sharp breath from the O of her mouth as if trying to create a smoke ring out of alcohol fumes. ‘Well, I don’t have a glass, and the floor’s too cold to go get one.’
‘Allow me.’ Smiling, I rose from my chair and went into the kitchen area and opened cupboards until I found one that was full of glasses. Selecting a whisky tumbler I returned to my seat by the fire. ‘Here you go.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ she said in a sparky American accent. She poured herself a generous measure, then put the bottle down on the hearth with a soft clunk. She held up her glass; firelight trapped in amber. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’
‘To happy families.’
‘Happy families.’
We chinked glasses and drank.
For perhaps thirty seconds we sat in companionable silence, sipping our drinks and gazing at the sinuous, ever-changing patterns in the fire. Clover stretched out her legs and wriggled her toes, warming them. Eventually, as though she’d been building up to it, she said, ‘So… where do we go from here?’
I glanced at her, not sure how to interpret the question. She wasn’t coming on to me, was she? Not after all this time?
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
She looked at me – then arched an eyebrow and laughed. ‘Not what you think I mean. Let’s not even begin to go there. Let’s keep that can of worms firmly closed.’
Ordinarily, no matter whether I felt the same way as the woman or not, my male ego might have been a little bruised at such a firm rebuff. With Clover, though, it was different. She was a mate. And mates don’t… well, they just don’t, do they?
‘Fine by me,’ I said – then immediately felt the need to qualify my statement. ‘Not that you aren’t… I mean…’
She held up her glass and mimed screwing a lid on it. ‘This is the can of worms. Well… jar, cause you don’t screw a lid on to a can. But the point is, it’s firmly closed. See? Can’t open it.’
‘Good.’ I took a sip of my drink. ‘So… what did you mean?’
‘I meant – where do we go from here? Literally. Now that you’ve got Kate back…’ She spread both hands, slopping Southern Comfort up the inside of her glass ‘…what’s the next move?’
I expelled a long breath. ‘To be honest, it’s something I haven’t wanted to think about. Something I’ve been deliberately avoiding thinking about. Because…’
I paused, wondering how to say it and how it would sound. But Clover got there ahead of me.
‘Because now that you’ve got Kate, now that your quest, as it were, is at an end, you’re wondering why you need to carry on, why you shouldn’t just let everything else slide.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘And are you really thinking that? Seriously, I mean?’
‘I’m seriously wondering what would happen if I did nothin
g. If I took Kate home and… just started living my life again.’
‘Do you want me to play Devil’s Advocate?’ Clover said softly.
‘Not really. But I’ve a feeling you’re going to.’
She held up her glass and peered into it as if staring into a crystal ball. ‘Remember the visions you had a while ago? Remember how awful they were?’
I nodded, grimacing.
‘Wasn’t that the heart’s way of showing you how, if you don’t play your part in the past, it’ll impact on the present?’
I sighed. ‘But this is the present.’ Though even as I said the words I knew I was being obstinate.
‘Is it?’ She took another sip and gazed into the fire. Her tone was lazy, casual, as if we were discussing something insignificant, something which had minimal impact on our lives – the performance of a favourite football team, or the latest season of a TV show.
‘Maybe this is only the present because of what you’ve still got to do to make it so,’ she said. ‘Maybe if you ignore what you’ve got to do…’ She left the comment hanging.
I frowned. She was only verbalising what had been lurking in the back of my mind, but I still felt cross with her for puncturing my balloon. Knowing it would be unfair of me to blame her for that, though, I stayed silent for a few seconds, gathering my thoughts.
At last I said, ‘It’s all changed, hasn’t it?’
‘What has?’
‘My… quest. My purpose. From today it’s no longer a search for Kate. Now it’s a mission to manipulate the past and the future, to shore it up, keep it from falling down around our ears.’ An image came to my mind of a vast edifice, a huge tumbledown mansion with cracked walls, encased in an exoskeleton of scaffolding and surrounded by signs warning of falling masonry. I gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘It’s a restoration project, that’s what it is. The past and the future are in danger of collapsing, and I’m the one who has to stop it. I’m a fucking… temporal builder.’
‘Or an architect,’ she said.
