by Andy Conway
— 4 —
THE CAR SNAKED ALONG Kings Heath High Street, the sun in their eyes, and she remembered the slow ride to Amy Parker’s funeral, and later that same day after watching England win the World Cup, driving out to the Lickey Hills with the top down.
The day Charlie proposed to her. Sort of proposed. Asked her to stay there in 1966 with him.
All a dream.
Martyn pulled up in the queue for the lights by the church and Rachel undid her seat belt and picked up her bag.
“Have a nice day with your posh University friends,” he joked.
“They’re not my friends,” she said. “They’re all rich kids. I hate them.”
He frowned. “Oh. You said you liked them the other day.”
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m just joking.”
Had she said that? She couldn’t remember. All she could remember was the dream, where she’d hated them.
“Do you need any money?”
“No. I’m fine! You’re worse than Nan!”
She kissed him on his sandpaper cheek and jumped out, waving to him as he drove on through the lights.
All Saints church looked different. They’d made a giant public square in front of it and cleaned it all up. When had that happened? She waited for the lights to turn red so the traffic would stop and she could cross the road. She could see the crowd of students already gathered.
The lights changed, the traffic stopped and she took a deep breath and crossed over, clutching her bag strap tightly to hide her nervousness. The memories would come. It was just some weird temporary amnesia caused by the shock of her nightmare. Everything would fall into place any minute now. She just had to go with it. Pretend she knew what was happening.
Her fellow students were waiting in clusters here and there and she stood on her own, knowing she didn’t belong to any of them.
Her heart flipped over at the sight of Danny. The boy who’d become her friend and then just as quickly, her enemy. He was with snotty Jessica and the others: Stacy, Tyrone and Tim.
She stood alone and wondered if the laughter that had just crackled between them was about her. She shrunk in on herself and scowled.
“Rachel!”
She looked up. It was Jessica. She was laughing and waving her over. Was this some kind of tease? Would she walk over only for Jessica to tell her she smelled like a gypo?
They were smiling at her, and there was an honesty to their faces. Rachel could see no hidden malice. She paced towards them, dying inside.
Jessica ran to her side, linked arms and snuggled against her. “Did you not see us?”
“Er... No. I was... I don’t know.”
“Rachel, are you okay?” This was snotty Jessica, who hated her guts.
“I’ve... I don’t know. I had a nightmare. Really bad. I still feel a bit wiped out.”
Jessica frowned and examined her with genuine concern. “You look tired. I should send you right back home.”
The others called out hellos as she joined them. Danny nodded and blushed a little. They were totally acting like there were her friends.
Mr Fenwick arrived and the students gravitated towards him. He must have parked his car nearby. He looked stupidly cheerful and everyone gathered round, smiling and calling out good mornings.
“Good morning, historians. Welcome to our first field trip in the neighbourhood of Kings Heath. In particular, All Saints church. It’s been here since 1860. So... what’s happening at about the same time?”
His eager eyes scanned them, testing, teasing.
“It’s a year before Prince Albert dies,” said Jessica. “So, it’s the high water mark of the Victorian age.”
“Correct,” said Fenwick.
“Dickens starts serialising Great Expectations,” said Tyrone.
“Very good,” said Fenwick.
“Second Opium War with China?” said Stacy.
“Britain’s first street trams?” said Tim.
Rachel’s mouth fell open. Everyone had turned into a conscientious student. They were actually keen.
“What about you, Rachel?”
She floundered. “I... well... I’m not sure... Isn’t it the American Civil War? Lincoln is around then.”
“Hmmm, close. It starts the following year. But I was thinking more British history.”
She shrugged and looked at her shoes. When she looked up again she could see Danny, Jessica and the others exchanging concern looks.
Jessica linked arms again and squeezed her. “You shouldn’t be here. You should go home.”
Fenwick carried on. “Now, All Saints church allowed burials until 1948. After that some of the older gravestones were used as paving slabs.”
They all looked down at the newly-laid square with tombstones dotted here and there. Under Rachel’s feet was a marble stone for a Joseph Thomas Rees, devoted husband and father who died July 5th 1949. It was difficult to read the inscription with the morning light reflecting on the marble. Was it Rees or Reed?
She shivered. That awful feeling of déjà vu again. Was it Rees or Reed? Where had she heard that before?
“So what I want you to do,” called out Mr Fenwick, “is find a name from a gravestone. That person is going to be the subject of your local history research. Before that, I want you to choose a project partner...”
They all started pairing off noisily and Rachel glanced around in panic.
Danny smiled at her and raised an eyebrow and she stared at him, dumbfounded. “Come on,” he said, walking across the lawn, hands in pockets.
She glanced around, uncertain.
Jessica winked at her and urged her on, so Rachel followed Danny, just like she had in her dream.
— 5 —
DANNY RACKED UP THE reds and Rachel cued off with the white, sending them flying all over the table. Two reds went down and she lined up the blue. Missed.
The student bar was a riot of noise, a rock’n’roll tune buzzing from a radio somewhere.
“You had a dream about me?” he said. “Are you sure you want to tell me this?”
“It was so weird, though! And it was like a premonition of this morning’s field trip. We were paired off exactly like that to go and find a gravestone. Except it wasn’t All Saints church yard, it was St Mary’s in Moseley.”
Danny sank a red and eased in her blue. She placed it back on its spot and he notched up his score.
“But then it turned into this weird time travel thing. If you touched a certain spot on the gravestone it sent you back in time. 1912 in this case. You met a girl there and we researched her background and discovered she was about to be murdered by her father. You stopped it happening.”
“Cool,” he said, missing a shot. “So I was the hero.”
“At first.” She potted his missed red and wagged a finger at him. “But then you turned into the villain and we became enemies.”
“I’m not sure I like the way this dream is going.”
The brown cannoned in and she sent a red after it. “You became obsessed with this woman, even though she was old enough to be your mother in 1940 and your grandmother in 1966.”
“I’m really not sure I like the way this dream is going. You’re sick.”
“You were the one pursuing her.”
“In your imagination.”
He took the table and went on a run, sinking a red, then a pink.
“In 1966,” Rachel said, “you were arranging some kind of World Cup betting sting on all the bookies so you could give the money to Amy’s daughter.”
“This is a really complicated dream, Rachel.”
“I know,” she said glumly. “That’s why it felt so real.”
He wiped the table of most of the reds and then snookered her.
“We got abducted by a gangster, Bernie Powell, and nearly became the foundations for the Castle Vale housing estate. Charlie wanted to shoot you to stop you causing more trouble.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
Her white bounced off three cushions and rolled to a halt without hitting a single ball.
“He was a man in the past. He was always there for me. I sort of fell in love with him.”
“I’m jealous.”
She blushed and avoided his shining blue eyes. This Danny was more like the Danny she’d first liked, before he’d turned into a crazy obsessive. But it was only in her dream, she reminded herself.
Jessica and Stacy came over and watched Danny clear the table confidently. Jessica leaned in close to Rachel, nudged her and whispered. “You’re keen on Danny Pearce, aren’t you, Rachel Hines. I can tell.”
“What do you mean?”
Jessica’s eyes were glowing with shiny mischief. “You can’t hide it from me. For what it’s worth, Rachel, I think he’s dead keen on you too.”
Jessica and Stacy giggled and Danny looked up with surprise, rolled his blue eyes and shook his head.
Rachel felt a thrill flutter inside her. It was just like the thrill she’d felt when Charlie had kissed her in the dream, and when he’d taken her in his arms and danced to Wayne Shorter’s mellow jazz tones as the sun sank over the Lickey Hills.
Except Charlie had been a dream and Danny was real.
— 6 —
WHEN COLLEGE WAS OVER, Rachel said a shy goodbye to Danny at the bus stop.
Jessica and Stacy giggled again, sharing a girlish whisper, and Danny’s face turned poppy red. They waved goodbye with a cheery, “See you tomorrow, Rachel!” and she stepped onto the bus platform and paid the conductor with coins she found in her purse. Her Nan had offered her money in the morning and she’d refused. How lucky that she actually had some.
The sun was streaming through the windows and she felt serene, trying not to laugh out loud at the thought of what a perfect day it had been. Jessica had been so lovely to her, not at all the snotty girl in her dream: she was a diligent student, intelligent and sort of innocent all at the same time, and there was something old-fashioned and slightly ‘proper’ about her that Rachel decided she liked. The way she nudged her and told her Danny was ‘keen’ on her. It was kind of sweet.
She stepped off the bus outside her house and sauntered in. Olive rushed over to hug her and sat her down at the table with a glass of milk and a plate of toast that was just perfect.
Martyn arrived home later and Olive cooked steak and onions and mash for dinner and they ate it at the table and talked about their day. Then she helped her Nan do the washing up and they joined Martyn in the living room and listened to the radio for a while until Olive got out the pack of Happy Families cards and they played at the table for what felt like hours.
She collected Mr Snoot, the First Class Passenger’s family first of all, then Mr Test, the Teacher’s. She almost had Mr Bet, the Bookmaker’s family but only needed Mrs Bet, the Bookmaker’s Wife when Olive won the game by completing Mr Snuffet, the Undertaker’s family.
Rachel went to bed exhausted and Olive tucked her in and sat on her bed for a while.
“Nan. This has just about been the happiest day of my life,” she said.
Olive stroked her hair. “I’m so happy, Rachel. You worried us so much this morning with your nightmare.”
“It’s good to be back.”
“You silly girl. You’ve never been away.”
A cloud passed over her heart, blocking out the sun. She looked into her Nan’s vacantly grinning face and thought what if this isn’t real? She decided she didn’t care. She was back where she wanted to be.
“It’s Charlie I feel sad for,” she said. “At the very last moment of my dream I was lying on his sofa in 1966, the day of the World Cup Final. He’d sort of just proposed to me, asked me to stay with him and not go back to the present, and I’d agreed. And I dozed off on the sofa and woke up in the same place but in 2012, with no idea how I’d got back there. I didn’t know if I’d sleepwalked to the church and touched the touchstone or not. And I’d run back to the churchyard and tried to go back to Charlie but it hadn’t worked. I was trapped in a false present without any way of getting back to Charlie or correcting things in the past so I could get back here. I wanted to be back with you and I wanted to be with him too. And I couldn’t have either.”
The raw emotion of the dream swelled inside her throat again and she wanted to cry. How could a dream be so physically devastating?
“Poor Charlie,” she said.
“Poor you,” said Olive, laughing gently. “Charlie doesn’t even exist, remember.”
“No, I guess he doesn’t. He feels real, though.”
Olive kissed her forehead and walked to the door, reaching for the light switch.
“Leave the light on,” said Rachel.
“Right-oh,” said Olive.
Rachel listened to her Nan’s footsteps descending and the murmur of concerned voices down there. Worried for her. Hoping she was through it and there would be no more repeats of delusional nightmares.
She hoped so too, but within minutes she fell into slumber and found herself back on the platform at Kings Heath station.
— 7 —
COLD AGAIN. FREEZING cold. Icy fingers clutched her ankles and crept up her skirt. She shuddered and walked through fog, not knowing which direction she was heading.
A whistling. Clear and shrill, haunting, carried on the wind. A man somewhere ahead, whistling in the dark. Something about it scared her. She was alone on a platform in 1959 and there was a man somewhere close by, hidden by mist and fog.
An outline crept through the fog towards her. A black shadow with a bowler hat and a cane. A black shadow whistling.
She turned, looking for escape. The whistling stopped.
She ran back down the platform, heels click-clacking on icy stone. Was he following? She thought she heard him grunt right behind her, his hand brushing her hair as he snatched at her.
Dim squares of window light loomed through the mist. It must be the café.
She hurtled towards the light and plunged through the door.
Renee looked up from polishing a cup as Rachel collapsed back against the door, praying the shadow outside would not push against it.
“Are you all right, dear?”
Rachel nodded and walked towards the counter, cringing inside, trying to appear normal.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, bab.”
She held onto the marble counter top to stop herself fainting. “That’s strange. You said that to me last time.”
Renee frowned. “Last time?”
Rachel read the confusion in her face and knew that Renee had never seen her before. Because it’s a dream, she told herself. It’s only a dream. You can wake up from it any time you want. But the cold and the fear. No dream had ever felt this real. Her lips were so stiff with cold she could barely get her words out.
“You said I was here when it happened.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, bab. What will you have?”
Rachel stared back at the door and saw the brass handle turn slowly. He was coming in. He was coming to get her. The door creaked open and a young woman walked through. Rachel breathed again.
The woman had a glow in her eyes and a half smile on her lips like she was trying to stop herself laughing out loud at a fond memory. She was wrapped up warm in a bright orange check peacoat, but still shivered as she walked to the counter.
Rachel recognized her.
From old photographs her Nan kept in a giant chocolate box in the sideboard. The photos she would take out some nights and go through them, telling her stories of times past. She’d seen a photo of this same woman in that same coat, grey on the photos, never knowing that it was bright orange.
It was her mother’s mother: Deirdre Foster.
She watched as Deirdre approached the counter. That strange glow in her eyes, like Deirdre had seen an angel rather than a ghost.
“Could I have a brandy, please?”
Renee looked at Rachel. “I’m afraid this woman was first.”<
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“Oh,” said Deirdre, “I thought you’d already been served. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Rachel blurted out. “I hadn’t decided yet. Actually, could I have one too?”
Renee checked the clock on the wall above the Ease the Strain — Go by Train poster, even though she knew it was within licensing hours, but as if she felt there was just something wrong about women ordering alcohol alone. She reached for the bottle of Coronet and poured two measures.
“Let me pay for both of those,” said Rachel.
“Oh no, I couldn’t let you do that,” said Deirdre.
“Please. It’s my treat.”
“But I don’t—”
“You can buy me the next one.”
Deirdre glanced at the clock. “But I—” She looked at the floor.
“Well I do hope one of you is paying,” said Renee.
Rachel panicked. Did she have money? She opened her handbag and pulled out a purse. It was full of notes. This is a dream. Of course I have money. She handed one across the mahogany counter to Renee and held out a gloved hand for her change then quickly picked up both glasses and ushered Deirdre to a table.
She seemed surprised and slightly flustered, as if Rachel had spoiled her plans. This is the moment she does it, thought Rachel. This is when she throws herself under a train and I am here to stop her doing that.
She tried to shut down the voice screaming at her inside. But it’s only a dream.
“This is very kind of you,” said Deirdre.
“Just the thing for a night this cold.” She sipped at the glass and felt its crimson gold warmth blush through her body.
“I can’t possibly repay you, though.”
“Don’t be silly. You can do the same for me another time.”
“But I won’t be here again.” Deirdre glanced at the clock again.
“I’m sure you will.”
Deirdre called out to Renee. “The next train is at twenty-past, yes?”
“That’s right, bab.”
“But there’s one at twelve minutes past too?”