by Tom Ellen
What is the point of seeing her again and then having her torn away from me a second time? What is the point of seeing how right for each other Daphne and I once seemed, only to end up drunk in our attic again thinking about Alice?
What is the point of any of this? It just feels like the universe rubbing my face in the mistakes to come, and I can’t for the life of me work out why.
Mum opens the oven to check on the sizzling beef, and then – just as I could have told you she would – she remembers that we don’t have any mustard, and orders me out to the shops to get some.
I shrug my coat on in the hallway and open the front door, feeling the crisp winter air hit me full in the face. Digging my hands into my pockets, I start trudging up towards the high road, confusion and anger still doing battle in my brain.
I’m not even halfway to the shops when I spot a little wooden barrow stall parked on the corner of the street, with a man standing behind it. The stall is decorated with tinsel and twinkling lights, and there’s a sloppily painted sign above it that reads: HOT ROASTED CHESTNUTS! Why its owner thinks that a suburban street corner in Acton is the best place to flog his wares is beyond me. But one thing’s for sure: he was not here on this day originally.
I’m almost at the cart now, but I still can’t see the man’s face – it’s hidden beneath the tinsel-strewn awning. His tie, though …
‘Ah, there you are!’ he cries, and as soon as I hear his gravelly voice, my stomach back-flips.
He pops his head out, and sure enough, two bright blue eyes are twinkling at me through a tangle of rusty grey hair.
‘Can I interest you in a bag of chestnuts?’
Chapter Sixteen
This at least I didn’t see coming.
I stand rooted to the spot for a moment, gawping at the watch-seller. I can’t believe he’s actually here! My brain is a blizzard of questions, but for some reason the first thing that tumbles out of my mouth is:
‘You’re … still wearing the same tie?’
The old man frowns down at the cartoon reindeer. ‘Don’t you like it? I know novelty neckwear isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I think it’s rather jolly.’
I have a go at formulating a more sensible question. ‘Who are you?’ I splutter.
The old man takes out a metal spoon and starts prodding chestnuts around the grill. ‘Oh, let’s just say I’m a concerned bystander. I only wanted to check in and see how you were doing. I imagine all this must be rather disconcerting.’
I stare at him. ‘Rather disconcerting? I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours wondering if I’ve lost my mind!’
He chuckles. ‘Let me reassure you that you very much haven’t. I was going to pop over and say hello back in the bar at York, but you looked rather busy talking to that young lady.’
‘That was you in the bar? I thought I’d imagined it.’
‘It was indeed.’ He wrinkles his nose slightly. ‘I was glad to get out of there, truth be told. The smell of sambuca was overpowering.’
‘I can’t believe this,’ I murmur.
There’s something so familiar about him. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
‘So … you remember meeting me in that pub on Christmas Eve?’ I ask.
‘Oh yes. Christmas Eve 2020.’
‘But that hasn’t happened yet,’ I hiss. ‘That’s fourteen years from now!’
‘Mmm. It is indeed.’ He pops a chestnut in his mouth and chews thoughtfully. ‘Needs more salt.’
I take a deep breath and try to compose myself. ‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but would you mind please just telling me what is happening?’
The old man purses his lips as he sprinkles salt over the chestnuts. ‘I noticed you were at something of a crossroads that night in the pub. You were feeling lost and confused. And I wanted to help.’
‘Right. And your method of helping was to give me a time-travelling watch?’
‘That’s about the long and short of it.’ He grins and taps the grill with his spoon. ‘Did you want a chestnut?’
I exhale and squeeze the bridge of my nose. ‘What happens if I eat one? Do I get whisked back to the Renaissance or something?’
He bursts out laughing. ‘The Renaissance! Very good. No, these are just your average common-or-garden chestnuts. Well, above average, actually. Extremely tasty, in fact.’ He holds one up to me, but I shake my head. ‘Suit yourself,’ he shrugs. ‘I’m sure you’re full of questions and we haven’t got long. So, fire away.’
That ‘haven’t got long’ remark makes me think of the time frozen on my watch. I hold it up to him. ‘Why is it stuck at one minute to twelve?’
A crumpled smile cuts through his scruffy beard, and his blue eyes sparkle at me. ‘I think you’ve already worked that out, haven’t you?’
‘Because one minute to midnight is when my time here is up?’ I say, slowly. ‘It’s when I … jump again?’
The old man beams and nods, like a teacher who’s just coaxed the correct answer out of a particularly dim student.
‘So, I will jump again, then?’ I ask him.
‘It’s highly likely.’
‘Where to?’
The old man sighs. ‘That, I can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you already know the answer.’
‘Trust me, I don’t.’
He jabs at the chestnuts with his spoon. ‘I’m confident it will come to you.’
I lean my head back in frustration. ‘Look … I get that being vague and mysterious is sort of your thing. But I could really do with some proper, concrete answers right now.’
He laughs through his nose. ‘The most important thing to ask yourself is why you might be revisiting these particular moments. Perhaps after experiencing them a second time you might feel differently about them. Or perhaps you won’t.’
‘But … will I get back to the present at some point?’
He opens his mouth to answer this, but a voice rings out behind us.
‘Excuse me?’
I turn around to see three old ladies smiling at us. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ one of them says. ‘We were after a few chestnuts.’
The watch-seller claps his hands and grins at them. ‘Finally! Some paying customers.’ He looks back at me. ‘You’d better be on your way.’
‘But … hang on,’ I stammer. ‘I need to know—’
He cuts me off by raising his hand and checking his own watch. His eyebrows leap up into his scruffy hair. ‘It’s getting on a bit. Time to head back to your mother’s.’
‘What?’ I ask, confused.
He looks me straight in the eyes, suddenly deadly serious. ‘Trust me. Time to go. I know you have more questions, but don’t worry, you’ll see me again. I guarantee it.’ He turns back to the women, smiling again. ‘Now, ladies. Will it be three bags of chestnuts, then?’
‘I do like your tie,’ one of them says, and the watch-seller gives me a what-did-I-tell-you smirk.
I turn and start walking, feeling possibly more confused than I did before. I am still no clearer as to what is happening, or why. But something about the firmness in the old man’s voice when he said ‘Time to go’ keeps me moving forward. I glance back over my shoulder, half expecting him to have disappeared, but he’s still there, nattering away cheerfully with the old ladies.
It’s only when I get back into the house that I remember why I left in the first place: mustard. I take my coat off and hang it on the banister. It’s only me who likes the stuff anyway; I’ll just tell Mum that I’m fine with gravy.
I walk back towards the kitchen, still feeling so dazed that it’s like I’m on autopilot. The door is half open, and I can hear Mum and Daphne chatting away over the rattle of pans and the thwack of the knife on the chopping board.
‘My sister is the worst,’ Daphne is saying. ‘All the Christmas presents she buys us are just presents for herself. Last year, she got into Wicca …’
‘What, as in basket weav
ing?’ Mum asks.
Daphne giggles. ‘No, I wish. A basket would’ve been quite nice. I mean Wicca with two c’s. As in witchcraft.’
‘Gosh. Right. How interesting,’ Mum says, giggling now too.
‘She’s a massive hippie,’ Daff says. ‘I unwrapped her present to me last year, and it was two tiny bells to be used, in her words, “to mark the differences between ritual ceremonies”. I said to her: “Kat, seriously, do you think I’ll be doing enough ritual ceremonies to need special bells to distinguish between them?”’ I hear the potato pan clattering as Mum shakes with laughter. ‘And then when she left on Boxing Day, she just picked them up and took them with her, saying, “Well, if you’re not going to use them …”’
I’m about to push the door open and walk in when Mum stops laughing and says: ‘You know, I’ll never forget the present Ben got me the Christmas after his dad left.’
The chopping noises die out suddenly, and I wonder if Daphne has broken off to give Mum her full attention. My heart starts thumping. I hardly ever heard her talk about Dad. As a kid, it was always me that seemed to bring him up. It feels odd hearing her even mention him.
‘He must have been … what was it? Ten?’ Mum continues. ‘And everything was a bit up in the air at that time. Things were quite tough, really, on both of us. Anyway. In the run-up to Christmas, I started to notice things going missing around the house. Only little things – like my stapler, or the Sellotape, or the pad of Post-its I kept by the phone; stuff like that. But I didn’t think anything of it, because there was so much else to think about. And then, come Christmas morning, there were three presents for me under the tree from Ben. I unwrapped them, and there they were: my stapler, my Sellotape, and the pad of Post-its.’
There’s silence for a second, and then both of them burst out laughing.
‘Oh my God,’ Daphne says. ‘OK, I think you’ve trumped me there. That’s worse than the bells.’
‘I know.’ Mum snorts. ‘But you know, the funny thing was, I was genuinely really pleased to see them. I told him, “I’ve been looking for these everywhere!” and he was so delighted with himself. I hadn’t been expecting him to get me anything – he was only ten years old. I suppose he was just trying to cheer me up, and that was the only way he could think to do it. It’s silly, really. But it made me laugh and feel genuinely happy at a time when I honestly didn’t think I was capable of either.’
There’s another silence, and then I hear Daphne say, very quietly, ‘That’s really sweet.’
‘And this is probably reading far too much into it,’ Mum adds, ‘but years later, I started to wonder if those presents were Ben’s way of telling me that we could get along fine without his father. Almost as if he was saying: “We’ve already got everything we need here. We just have to remind each other of that from time to time.”’ The pans begin clattering again. ‘Anyway. Gosh. Sorry, Daphne, listen to me: one glass of cava and I start boring you with all this old nonsense.’
‘No, it’s not nonsense at all,’ Daff says softly. ‘And I take it back now, by the way. My bells were a much, much worse present.’
They both start laughing again. And as I step away from the door, I realise I need another spell under the cold tap before I can go back in and join them.
Chapter Seventeen
The rest of the afternoon passes in a warm, pleasant, vaguely unreal blur.
Mum is delighted to learn that Daphne is not in the least bit vegetarian, and once we’ve all made a serious dent in the beef, and the bottle of cava, and then a bottle of red wine, we stumble woozily through to the living room and slump onto the sofas in front of the fire.
For the first time in a long time, I actually feel good about myself, even if it’s for something I did when I was in primary school, and which – let’s face it – essentially amounted to stealing some stationery and then giving it back again.
Daphne nuzzles into my shoulder on the sofa, and at this moment, everything between us feels so good – so right – that it’s hard to believe it will ever go wrong.
The watch-seller’s comment about questioning why I’ve come back to these particular moments keeps swirling around my brain. I missed that conversation between Mum and Daphne originally. Daff never even told me about it. Is that why the old man was so adamant that I went straight back home; so that I’d overhear them, and remember that I wasn’t always a screw-up of a son? Mum shoots me an affectionate glance from her armchair, and I decide that now is not the time to analyse it. I’d rather just bask in the way it made me feel.
Unfortunately, though, I don’t get long: within a few minutes of us sitting down, the doorbells rings.
Daff stirs and sits up. ‘That’ll be my dad.’
My stomach clenches tightly, because I suddenly can’t bear the thought of her leaving. I want to stay like this, just for a little longer. I want to pause everything and remain in this weird, perfect bubble, before the future happens and everything between us warps and fractures and turns rotten.
But of course, I can’t.
Mum leaps up to answer the door, and we follow her, and there’s lots more wild flapping of jazz hands as she pulls Daphne’s bewildered-but-pleased-looking father in for a hug.
While the two of them swap animated pleasantries across the doormat, Daff sneaks a kiss onto my lips and smiles. ‘Today was great,’ she whispers. ‘Really great.’
‘Yeah, it was brilliant.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘Merry Christmas.’
She kisses me again, and then she’s gone – down the path and into the car. And I’ve got no choice but to watch her go, not knowing where – or when – I’ll be the next time I see her.
Mum shuts the door, and turns to me with a grin. ‘Right then, young man,’ she says. ‘I think it’s high time I thrashed you at Monopoly.’
The ultra-competitive Christmas Eve Monopoly marathon was always a tradition in this house. I can’t even remember when it started, but it dated back a long way – to when Dad was still around. I was always the dog, Mum was always the ship and he was always the top hat. Those were the unwritten rules. No idea why, but we stuck to them rigidly. And as a result, the top hat in our Monopoly set hasn’t left the box since Christmas 1995.
Mum fetches another bottle of wine and stokes the fire while I get the game out of the cupboard behind the sofa. And as I do, I spot something else nestled there – something I’d completely forgotten about.
‘Oh my God,’ I laugh. ‘Is this the full collection?’
I pull out a little wooden rack stacked with cassettes, each one wrapped in its own carefully hand-written track list.
‘Of course,’ Mum says proudly. ‘Now That’s What I Call Long-Distance Car Trips. I’ve still got every one we ever made.’
I stare down at them, feeling a lump start to work its way into my throat. These tapes were another family tradition, although this one began after Dad left, when I was about twelve. Before every long car journey – whether it was a summer holiday or a weekend visit to see Nan in Sheffield – Mum and I would compile a tape for the trip. The track list would alternate back and forth: one song for her, one song for me. As a result, they are perhaps the only compilation albums on earth in which gentle folk rock weaves consistently in and out of hardcore gangsta rap.
We’d spend hours making these tapes, sitting cross-legged in front of the hi-fi together, scribbling the lists, doodling designs on the covers, taking the mick out of each other’s song choices. It’s weird: sometimes I almost enjoyed those afternoons more than the holidays themselves.
I spot the one from August 2000 – the trip to Whitley Bay where that photo in the hall was taken. The lump in my throat doubles in size, but I manage to swallow it. ‘Can I put this on?’ I ask.
Mum’s sitting on the carpet, dealing out Monopoly money like a Vegas card shark. ‘Well, we’re not technically on a long-distance car trip,’ she says. ‘But it is Christmas. So go on.’
I slide the tape into the stereo and the opening strains of her first selection – ‘California’ by Joni Mitchell – begin to rise softly out of it.
‘Right, come on then, let’s have you,’ Mum says, patting the carpet. I sit down across from her, and she rolls the dice onto the board.
She taps her ship onto Pentonville Road and starts peeling off banknotes. ‘So …’ she says. ‘Daphne seems utterly fantastic.’
I pick up the dice and roll. ‘Yeah. She is.’
‘I was a bit worried, you know,’ Mum says. ‘I mean, you do realise she’s the first girl you’ve brought home since The Ghastly Tish?’
That really makes me laugh. Leticia Middleton – aka The Ghastly Tish – was the closest thing I’d had to a proper girlfriend before Daphne. She went to the incredibly posh girls’ school near my sixth-form college, although she did everything she could to disguise her immense poshness by swearing like a trooper and dressing like Gwen Stefani from No Doubt. We went out for about three months when I was seventeen, and towards the end of it, I got so sick of Mum nagging me to invite her over that I finally caved.
‘I don’t think The Ghastly Tish even made eye contact with me once,’ Mum chuckles.
‘Mum, she was probably shy!’
‘Shy! The girl dropped the F-bomb about ten times during dinner!’ She rolls the dice, and then starts laughing again. ‘Oh God, d’you remember when she got that bit of pasta stuck in her lip ring? Poor girl, mustn’t laugh …’
But neither of us can help it. The memory is just way too absurd: Mum bombarding Tish with jolly politeness while Tish swore at the clump of spaghetti trapped in her piercing.
Suffice it to say, she didn’t come back again.
When we’ve both stopped laughing, Mum says, ‘So. I’d say today was a little more successful than that.’ She taps her counter round the board again. ‘You and Daphne are wonderful together.’