by Andy Conway
That wasn’t why she was walking across campus. She’d known that was where she was going to go the next morning, because as soon as Martyn had told her Esther’s name she’d had the crazy idea that she should talk to Mr Fenwick about it. Nick, her history tutor.
It made no sense. No one else in this new reality recognized her, so why would he? She didn’t know. She just felt he might. And she’d lain in her bed all night thinking of how that first morning it was almost as if he’d led them to the touchstone.
He knew something, she was sure of it.
Students zig-zagged across the lawns avoiding the downpour and some of them clustered around benches, hunched under umbrellas, bravely smoking. She had been a student just like them but now she felt remote, adult, alien.
A particular group caught her eye and she veered towards them to take a closer look. They were huddled in a doorway in a cloud of cigarette smoke, all in expensive and ludicrously garish clothes with ridiculous hipster haircuts.
Jessica, Stacy, Tyrone... no Danny. His gang of friends. Jessica in particular had taken great delight in humiliating her at every opportunity.
They chattered on in their fake ghetto accents, laughing loudly so that everyone around would hear how witty they were. Then their laughter stopped and one by one, they looked at the woman who was staring at them.
It was Jessica who spoke. “And?” she said.
The others tittered.
Rachel had waited for this moment for so long and now she’d frozen, but she knew this unnerved them even more.
Jessica’s smug grin faded and anger gathered in her eyes.
“Sorry,” said Rachel, throwing them a fake smile. “I thought you were someone important.”
She turned and strode across the wet lawn, expecting their anger to chase her, but there was nothing. A cutting remark was so much more devastating from a total stranger than from one of your victims.
She found the History department and strolled along the familiar corridor. There were students who’d talked with her in seminars, sat with her in lectures, borrowed her notes, but none of them noticed her.
She found his door; his nameplate. Prof. Nicholas Fenwick MA, PhD. She knocked.
“Come!”
She pushed through. He was at his desk, back to her. He turned and she saw it in his face: surprise, confusion, but most of all a fraction of a second of something else: recognition.
“Hello. Can I help you?” he said.
He was acting like he didn’t know her, had never seen her before, but she was skilled at it now: she knew exactly how people looked at her when they didn’t recognize her. He was acting.
“You know me,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
Pretending that she might be one of his students now, one that he’d forgotten.
“Rachel Hines. You took me to the touchstone. You practically led me there.”
He shook his head, opened his arms out in surrender.
“I’m really sorry, Rachel,” he said, saying her name as if for the first time. “But I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about and I’ve never seen you before.”
“It’s all gone wrong. Danny did something. It wiped out my existence. No one knows me anymore.”
Fenwick picked up the phone on his desk and punched in a couple of digits.
“But you do,” she said. “You remember.”
“Yes,” he said. “Come right away, please.”
“I thought it was only Danny, because he was there with me, in 1912...”
She saw a flicker of interest in his eyes this time. He wanted to ask her about it.
“... But it’s not that; it’s something else. The old woman at the fancy dress shop. She recognized me too. Just like you.”
He gazed blankly. She knew Security were running over to rescue him.
“I just need you to tell me what it is; what happened; how I can change it. It’s killing me. I’m going mad.”
The door opened. Two burly security guards squeezed in and stood between her and Nick.
“You need to escort this person off campus,” he said. “I don’t believe she’s a student here at all.”
One of them took her elbow and gently, firmly ushered her to the door. “Come on now. Step outside, please, madam.”
She tried to see through them to Fenwick, but he was staring at his lap now.
“I want my old life back, Nick!” she shouted. “Why won’t you help me?”
“This way, madam. Let’s go.”
They were marching her down the corridor, swiftly now.
“What have you done to me?” she yelled, her voice echoing off the cool walls.
Students stared, faces she’d known in her lost life; they stared and saw her craziness.
“Please! Help me!”
They bustled her through the door and the grey rain blinded her.
— 9 —
CHARLIE ECKERSLEY TAPPED a foot to Wayne Shorter and hummed contentedly. The Dansette in the corner of the room supplied a steady stream of jazz to help him through the day’s accounting in the back room of the shop, which helped him to forget that he’d never had an interest in numbers.
He had the latest jazz albums shipped from America and most of them lived here, at work, where he could have them playing all day in the background and let them slowly ease their way into his favour. It was taking longer and longer, he noticed, with the new kind of jazz, not like the dance bands he’d listened to as a teenager before the war. The new jazz was abstract, deep, difficult, and you definitely couldn’t dance to it. He sometimes thought he was only listening to the new jazz because he thought he ought to, not because he actually liked it, but then he’d find himself humming a tune and realizing it was from one of these new albums and that they had a terrible knack of catching his mood totally. Catching his sense of loneliness.
A long sigh distracted him and he looked up.
Maddy was going through yesterday’s takings at her desk across the room.
“I know that sound,” he said.
He walked over to the Dansette and took the arm off the spinning vinyl.
“No, no, no, it’s fine,” said Maddy.
Charlie grinned and turned the radio on: something rocky and raucous by The Who was playing. He slid the album into its paper sleeve.
“Well, if you don’t mind...”
Her feet were already tapping under the desk.
Maddy smiled as she pored over the figures. She looked like her mother more and more — her mother as she’d been back before the war, when he’d first befriended her purely to aid Rachel in retrieving her lost life. Her blonde hair was all done up in a beehive, which Amy would never have worn, but she had the same face, the same lips, the same eyes.
Working at such close quarters with her over the last ten years, he had wondered if she would make a suitable wife. It was impossible not to consider it. She was beautiful. But he’d always told himself she was too young for him, even though it wasn’t particularly scandalous for a man of his age, now fifty but looking young on it and still reasonably handsome if not a little dapper, to marry a woman who was in her thirties.
There were still some people in Moseley who regarded her as having a hint of scandal about her: the constant rumours that she was the bastard child of the famous crooner who’d played a concert at the Moseley and Balsall Heath Institute in 1934. Silly rumours that had dogged her mother, Amy Parker, her whole tragic life.
He had always known the rumours were nonsense and defended Amy and her daughter’s honour whenever anyone slandered them in his hearing. But no matter how attractive Maddy looked now as a woman, he could never quite get out of his head the image of her as a girl, during the war, never talking, always carrying around her rag doll.
And he could never quite forget that he was in love with Rachel.
“All done,” she said. “Do you want to run over them?”
He leaned over her, taking in the harsh tang of
hairspray and perfume, and glanced over the columns.
“Looks fine,” he said.
He closed the ledger and took it to the safe, turning the dial to mark the date he’d first met Rachel Hines, and placed it inside on top of a book that didn’t belong there: Total World Sport: The Greatest Sporting Moments of the Last 100 Years.
The book reminded him that she was due back. He’d counted down the days all year and, like a child on Christmas Eve, could barely contain the buzz of excitement that it was almost here.
None of his staff had access to the safe. Maddy had never known the combination and had never asked for it. No one had ever seen the book. He’d wondered if he should keep it in a safe at home rather than here in the shop, but had always found it easier to consult it in his office whenever something turned up.
When the treasure had been placed in his hands, back in 1934, Charlie had used it to fleece several illegal bookies, but he’d found that a magic bullet like this could rarely be fired twice. Once he’d made a significant amount of money, they’d refused his bets. He had begun to travel further and further to make money, touring the country, hitting one town after the next betting at legal racecourses and with illegal bookies in pubs and public toilets and never going back, so that by the time the war had started, he was a reasonably wealthy man.
He’d also invested some of his money in whatever he surmised might be profitable. It hadn’t been easy. Rachel had been unable to tell him about what might be successful, but the mere knowledge of a war on the horizon had been useful information.
His share portfolio ticked over reasonably well without being spectacular, and with no one taking his bets, he’d realized the best way to use the book would be to become a bookmaker himself. As soon as it had been made legal in 1961, he’d applied for a licence and opened what was still the only betting shop in Moseley, much to the disgust of the local community.
The almanac meant that his bookmakers’ did as well as most others but he never lost out on the freak results, the 100-1 outsiders, like some of his competitors. Over the years, those bookies who’d at first suspected him of having swindled them had grown to grudgingly admire him as some sort of genius odds compiler. A couple of them had even tried to headhunt him but he’d politely refused. His little betting shop in Moseley made him a steady income and he never got greedy.
“Excuse me, Mr Eckersley, sir?”
He shut the safe and turned round. Jonathan, the teenager he’d taken on to run the counter, leaning into his office, one hand on the door.
“What is it, Jonathan?”
“I’ve got a gentleman who wants to make a funny bet,” he said.
“Really?” He turned back to the safe and twirled the combination lock.
“He wants to predict every Group 2 game.”
“That’s not so unusual.”
Jonathan pulled a face, frowning. “Not the results, sir; the scores. He’s got the score of every game.”
Charlie felt a familiar thrill shoot through him, beginning in his gut and dancing all the way up his spine. He knew who it would be even before walking over to the wall and looking through the peephole to the counter outside where a bundle of men studied the racing forms in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Danny Pearce.
He closed the peephole and took a breath before looking at Jonathan. He shook his head.
“Tell him we can’t take that kind of bet. He should try elsewhere.”
“What if he asks to make them as individual bets?”
“Just refuse him.”
Jonathan hesitated in the doorway. This had never happened before. Charlie Eckersley always took every bet. He had an uncanny knack of offering very bad odds on freak results that sometimes happened so that he didn’t lose much money when other bookies got stung, but he’d never refused a bet before.
“All right, sir.”
Charlie looked through the peephole again and watched him go back out and say a few words to Danny, shaking his head. Danny did nothing but wince and throw that cocky smile he’d seen him smile before, in a police station cell during the war, then he took his slip of paper and walked out.
Charlie turned and faced Maddy’s puzzled eyes that pleaded to him for an explanation. He shook his head and went back to his desk with uncertain legs.
He’d been so excited waiting for Rachel’s imminent arrival that he’d forgotten that it would also bring Danny Pearce, and trouble.
— 10 —
RACHEL WALKED UP THE road and came to the house she knew so well. The house that had been her home. The light blue sports car was in the drive instead of the clapped out old banger that her dad had driven when she was his daughter.
She hesitated before ringing the bell. Martyn hadn’t recognized her as the mad girl who’d tried to get in a while ago, but might this trigger his memory? And would her Nan, Olive, remember her as that girl who’d scared her?
She thought about walking back and had already turned when the door opened.
“It’s this one,” said Martyn. “Come on in.”
He held the door open and she blushed as she entered. It only occurred to her for the first time that he might think this was a date.
She walked into the front room and was surprised to find it very different. It wasn’t the comfortably shabby look it had been when she was his daughter. It was minimal, modern, tasteful. She knew instantly that her not being born had been a good thing for her father. His life without her had been much better.
“Would you like a drink?” he said.
She sat down on the edge of the Habitat sofa and shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“I’ll be ready in a minute,” he said.
He walked off to the back of the house, through the kitchen and called out to someone. She listened to hear a reply from her Nan but couldn’t hear anything. He came back through and trotted up the stairs and she heard the bathroom door go.
She stared at the expensive rug and wanted to run. A hint of music floated through from the kitchen. She stood up and followed it like a hungry child follows the scent of home cooking.
The kitchen was better, almost space-age. The music was coming from beyond it. She frowned. He must have built an extension. She walked through and pushed at the door at the end which used to be where their old back door had been.
The music grew louder; the Walker Brothers singing The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore. She was standing in a spacious room that was much more traditionally decorated and furnished. Here was the furniture she recognized: her Nan’s things from the big house.
Olive was sitting hunched over in an armchair, dozing. Martyn had built an extension to the house. A granny flat.
She inched across the room and put her hand out to touch her Nan’s.
A cough behind her.
Martyn stood in the door. She backed away and walked to him. He said nothing.
She looked back one last time at Olive dozing in her chair and knew that here was one person her absence hadn’t been good for: Rachel’s youth had kept Olive young.
She cringed past Martyn, holding the door open for her, and walked through to the front door and out to the sports car waiting in the drive.
— 11 —
THE REFEREE BLEW THE whistle and the Villa Park crowd roared. The large contingent of Argentinean fans cheered the loudest, having chanted Argentina! Argentina! Argentina! through most of the game.
It wasn’t all as quaint as Danny had expected. The football was of a decent standard, reasonably fast, and it felt like some of the pre-season summer tournaments he’d seen: the buzz of excitement around the ground as much for the sun sinking slowly over the stadium on a beautiful summer evening as for the football. Only the bobbies in greatcoats walking up and down the touchlines looked old fashioned, and the mechanical scoreboard that heralded Argentina 2–1 Spain.
“Come on, then,” said Lashford. “Let’s have a jar in the Players’ Lounge.”
He followed him up the co
ncrete steps, filing out slowly with the crowd, and past old security guards in military regalia through to the lounge where the dignitaries gathered.
Lashford had insisted that Danny accompany him to the first Group 2 game at Villa Park, securing him a ticket with ease, winking and tapping his nose when he said he could get any amount of tickets. Lashford’s wife Olive wasn’t invited, nor the mother, Winnie, and they didn’t seem to care at all. His comment about betting had raised a dust cloud of disapproval at the dinner table and Winnie had tutted about the presence of a betting shop in Moseley and how inappropriate it was, dragging down the tone of the place, even if it was run by an old friend of the family.
“Now now, Mum,” Olive had said. “Uncle Charlie’s been good to us and he’s a perfectly respectable man.”
Winnie had tutted again and shuddered. “Well, he ought not to have done it, that’s all.”
As Danny entered the Players’ Lounge behind Lashford, a model in a white mini skirt dress approached them with a tray of champagne flutes. To Danny she looked like the epitome of the Swinging Sixties.
“Hey Carol,” said Lashford. “Are you going to take special care of us tonight?”
She smiled and fluttered her moo-cow lashes for him. “Only the best for Councillor Piplatch.”
Lashford patted her behind and she let out a practised “Ooh!” and wandered off, throwing back a coy look.
Danny stared aghast.
“Lovely girl, Carol. What wouldn’t you do for ten minutes alone with that, eh?”
He was apparently hypnotized by her buttocks and had to snap himself out of his trance.
Danny smiled and realized that Lashford was a bit of a lad.
“So now you see what I mean about proper football. Not like that bore draw England turned out yesterday.”
“I still say we’re going to win it,” said Danny.
“Not a chance,” laughed Lashford.