by Andy Conway
A voice she knew. Male. Older. Kind. She blinked through the blinding blaze of light. A man with a pointed moustache.
Mitch. It was Mitch.
He wrenched her up and she tried to say his name but it was drowned out by the barking of a dog.
He dragged her to her feet and her legs buckled under her. She felt him try to hold her upright. The dog was still barking at them.
“Come on, Rachel. Let’s get you out of here.”
Mitch. He was so kind, so nice. He’d pulled her out of the water.
She realized it wasn’t a dog barking. It was coming from her throat. She was coughing like a dog.
Her chest burned like someone was holding her against an open fire, and she was surprised that she wasn’t all wet.
She caught a glance of the room as they left. Danny’s room. That was it. She hadn’t been in the sea at all. She was in Danny’s room. He’d tried to kill her.
“Where’s Danny?” she spluttered.
“Don’t worry. He can’t hurt you.”
Mitch walked her along the landing and down the stairs, one step at a time. Her legs weren’t made of jelly anymore; her strength was returning, and with it pain. A lot of pain. Danny hadn’t kicked her around his room, but it felt like it.
“What the hell’s going on?”
It was Jessica. Rachel spied her through the slit of her eyes, standing at the foot of the stairs.
“Who the hell are you?”
“My dad,” Rachel croaked. “I phoned him.”
“She’s ill,” said Mitch. “I’m taking her home.”
“It’s okay,” said Rachel.
Mitch didn’t wait for Jessica to agree. He pushed past her and led Rachel down the hall to the front door.
“How did you get in?”
“Door was open!”
Fresh air assaulted her and she buckled again, dizzy.
“Come on, Rachel. Get it together. Not far to walk.”
She sipped at the cold air and pin-headed alongside him, focussing on her feet through one eye.
They turned at St. Columba’s church hall on the corner and inched under the row of bare trees, down the slope to the village.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he said.
She groaned and swayed, too tired to walk. “He tried to kill me,” she said.
“And you walked right into his arms.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
She opened her other eye. The village was deserted. Just the odd taxi sailing through.
“Yes you did,” he said. “You’ve been so bloody silly. For weeks now.”
She shrugged him off, suddenly angry. What right did he have to talk to her like that?
“Stop it!” he barked, pulling her back and yanking her along.
That voice. It was Mitch. It was Mitch who’d been haunting her. Not a ghost at all.
“You’ve been watching me,” she said.
“Of course I have.”
“I thought it was a ghost. I thought it was Charlie.”
They reached the crossroads and he marched her over to the green and across to the gate that barred off the ginnel between two shops.
“Where are your keys?”
She fumbled at the collar of her dress and pulled at a necklace. Three keys. One for the gate, one for Charlie’s flat, her home; the third for a home where the lock had been changed and no one recognized her anymore.
Mitch unlocked the gate and led her down the dark ginnel, to the back yard, through the door to the upstairs flat, up the carpeted staircase.
She fell on the sofa, swamped in her fur coat, and listened to Mitch putting on the kettle, making tea, switching on the lamp. She opened her eyes when he shoved a hot mug of tea under her nose.
“Come on. Drink. You need this.”
She slouched upright and took the mug, sipping at it, coughing some more. It took a few mouthfuls before she felt like a human being.
Mitch had slumped in the armchair opposite. He looked pale, exhausted. He’d poured himself a whisky. The bottle of Lagavulin that Charlie had left there. She’d tried it once but had been repelled by its peaty onslaught.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You look awful.”
“I need a holiday.”
“You were spying on me. How much do you see?”
He shook his head. “It’s... an emotional thing. Not visual. I tune into someone’s emotional state. It’s like radio, not television.”
“I felt like I could see you. If I turned round quickly enough.”
“I suppose it feels like that. I’m not really there, though. It would be a lot less tiring if I was.”
She clutched her throat. “Danny tried to kill me.”
“That’s not the scary thing, Rachel. The scary thing is, you didn’t mind. The scary thing is you deliberately put yourself in that situation.”
Outrage surged inside her but came out in a coughing fit. She struggled for breath and fell back, wheezing, trying to calm herself so the coughing would stop.
He was right. She had been suicidal. Even if she hadn’t known Danny might kill her, she’d engineered a situation where she’d brought herself face to face with him: the person she knew hated her more than anyone in the world. She had sleepwalked onto the motorway.
“What did you do to him?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mitch. “I sent him out of this time. Where he’s gone is anyone’s guess.”
He sipped at the whisky. She could smell it across the room.
She had almost died. Oh God. She had been at the point of death, and Mitch had pulled her back.
“Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”
He shrugged. “You need to make sure it’s worth saving.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can either hang around here, wasting your life, or you can get to 1980 and get your real life back. It’s up to you.”
She felt tears of shame prick her eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Can you help me?”
He nodded. “Tomorrow, though. Go to bed now.”
“Okay.”
“Can I sleep on that sofa?”
“There’s a spare bed.”
“I really can’t move.”
“I’ll get you a blanket.”
She pushed herself up and found new life coursing through her. She probably wouldn’t sleep. Adrenalin. It happened after a near death experience.
“Oh, Rachel. Do you have any incense sticks you could burn?”
“Incense?”
“Birch branches would be ideal.”
“Er... No.”
“Never mind,” he croaked.
She fished a blanket from the green Lloyd Loom ottoman at the foot of her bed — Charlie’s old bed — and brought it back for him.
He was already asleep in the armchair so she draped it over him and took the whisky from his fingers, sniffed its briny bouquet. Like the depths of the ocean.
She knocked back the tiny sliver that was left and felt it bloom inside her.
Tomorrow she’d go to 1980. There was no way she would sleep tonight.
— 8 —
SHE WAS JAMMING A HANDFUL of 1980s clothes into a suitcase when Kath Bright poured through the keyhole.
She hadn’t slept, adrenalin coursing through her veins, turning her depression to a giggling euphoria at having survived death. So she crawled out of bed as morning light tapped at the latticed windows and the birds twittered their dawn concertos.
She realized some of her 1940s clothes would do, as most eighties styles aped the forties, and was trying to lock the case shut when the corner of the bedroom rippled and a woman with red hair appeared.
She wondered which Kath it would be. Past Kath, who’d helped her, even saved her, or Future Kath, who’d attacked her in 1934. It was clear from the haggard, haunted look of her face that if this Kath hadn’t yet visited Rachel in 1934 to attack her, she would do so very soon.
; “Hello, Kath. I expected you,” said Rachel. “Are you just back from 1934?”
“Hi, Rachel. As a matter of fact, no.”
“I know what you did there. Lying to Danny about Amy Parker. Trying to split them up.”
“Just like you,” said Kath.
“But I’m not in love with him.”
Rachel locked the case shut and turned to face her, gulping down the knot of fear that was lodged in her throat.
“Going somewhere?”
“Nowhere you need to know about.”
“You ruined it all for me,” said Kath. She had a faraway look in her eyes, but a manic grin that refused to leave her face.
“I don’t really know how. But if I did, I’m sorry.”
“You will be.”
“I’m sorry for you, Kath. He’s in love with Amy Parker. You don’t know how much. You don’t know what a horrible mess he’s made of it.”
“I know what a mess I’m going to make of you.”
Rachel recoiled, expecting Kath’s attack. But Kath didn’t move. She just smiled and nodded to herself, her head angled, as if she was listening to some music only she could hear.
Rachel felt it infect her. The adrenalin left her and gave way to a sense of hopelessness. She knew it would happen. It was what always followed in the wake of that adrenalin rush. It was like a creeping black ink of depression staining her bloodstream.
She felt a tremendous desire to go to the roof garden and greet the new day.
She walked into the corridor and glanced through the open door to the lounge, where Mitch dozed in the armchair, sparked out, and glided silently up the stairs, pushing the door open and emerging to the roof garden, Kath floating behind her like a friendly ghost. Just like Mitch had for weeks now, watching her, protecting her.
Her sad plants all killed by winter. It was the most depressing thing. What was the point of it all, to grow all year in brilliant sunlight, bear fruit and flower, only to die in the bitter cold and frost?
There was no point to any of it.
She walked to the edge, her castle walls that overlooked the village crossroads, the green below, the church across there, her castle where she was trapped, an imprisoned princess.
She climbed up onto the wall that circled the roof garden and felt the icy wind on her face and longed to fly. Only flight could bring her happiness.
But wouldn’t she die? Wouldn’t she splatter her head open like a melon on the pavement below?
Kath’s soothing presence was behind her, holding her steady, even though she wasn’t touching her, whispering encouragement even though she said nothing.
It was the only thing that could bring her happiness. It was the only thing that made sense. Because, yes, it was like when Kath had told her to jump in front of the train, at Kings Heath station, the nuclear train hurtling towards her through the fog. Jump down onto the tracks, let it take away all your pain. It was just like that.
She had jumped then and it had freed her.
She teetered on the edge. She could fly. Fly now. Fly away from all of this.
“Do it, Rachel.”
Something inside her screamed against it. A voice from the cellar, calling up, drowned out by howling music. It was her own voice. It was like on that morning, when all of this had begun: rushing breathless in her Edwardian suit, trying to outrun the tram that bore down on Amy Parker, the startled girl in the middle of the street. It was a scream of
Don’t!
She leapt from the edge, floating in the air.
Not down to the street below but at Kath’s startled face. She was not Rachel anymore but a bird of prey made of fire, swooping in flames. The roof garden exploded with white light, a nuclear flash — bang shot blind blank — and she fell on the gravel.
There was a shower of sparks and the smell of singed hair, whipped away quickly by the icy wind. She thought she saw a ribbon of smoke hang in the air for a moment before it was gone.
Just like Kath was gone.
Had she killed her? No. This was what she’d done to Danny in the Kingsway cinema in 1934. And he’d come back. She’d sent Kath somewhere else.
But she knew, just like Danny, she’d be back.
— 9 —
SHE SAID NOTHING TO Mitch. He was still curled up in the armchair with the blanket over him when she returned to the lounge. He looked so worn out, and she knew she was to blame.
He needed a good breakfast. She looked in the kitchen for something to make, staring forlornly into the sad shelves of the fridge. There were a few drops of milk left, which smelled funny, and a single egg. The bread bin revealed a husk of crust that was more like a rock, sitting on a mound of breadcrumbs.
She hadn’t been living well.
Mitch shuddered awake, blinking like a mole, wondering where he was.
“You look like you need a good breakfast,” she said.
He nodded and reached for his glasses.
“The caff across the road,” she said. “My treat.”
He stood and shook himself down, picking blanket fluff from his pin-striped trousers, skimming it off his waistcoat, straightening his tie.
She rushed to the bedroom and got her suitcase and leopardskin coat, shivering with fear and running back out, scared of ghosts and timeslip crazies who might try to kill her.
Mitch was standing at the mirror, licking his fingers and smoothing down his hair when she returned.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“1980,” she said.
“Oh.”
“I don’t really want to stay here,” she said.
“After breakfast we’ll call on Mrs Hudson,” he said.
She nodded and let him squeeze past her down the corridor, his feet clumping down the stairs. She took a last look at the place: Charlie’s apartment. She’d never see it again. Once she’d finished in 1980, she would hopefully return to a time where Charlie had never left it to her, because it would be a time in which she’d actually been born and had her old life back.
Mitch was shivering on the street when she locked the door behind her, slotting the keys on her necklace back inside her dress, cold against her skin. The morning traffic was gridlocked and they walked across to the green with ease.
The café was situated in the last brick cottage before the church grounds began. She’d read about them somewhere but couldn’t remember now what they’d been, but they were some of the oldest buildings in the village.
They climbed the steps and took a table in the cramped interior with its stainless steel chairs and glass topped tables.
Two All Day Breakfasts came and they attacked them with relish, barely talking, washing it down with mugs of tea. She could actually see the colour returning to Mitch’s face.
“Do you think it’s selfish?” she asked.
“What?”
“I mean, we have this gift, to go back in time, and all we do with it is make little changes that help us, instead of using it to help others.”
Mitch wiped his face with a napkin. “We’re not making changes to help us, Rachel. We’re correcting mistakes. We’re stopping other people making changes.”
“But what if I could do some good?” she said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Stop a bomb being planted. Stop John Lennon being shot. Stop the Yorkshire Ripper.”
“You’ve been reading up on 1980,” he sighed.
“On the night my parents are supposed to have their first kiss, nearly forty people die in fires at nightclubs in London. Could I stop that? Could I go and find Peter Sutcliffe and kill him before he murders any of those poor women?”
“You shouldn’t think about what you can change. It’s not our job to do that.”
“Why not?”
“We can’t meddle in history. We don’t know what we’re doing. Leave all of that alone.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” she said.
“Danny saved a poor girl from being killed by a mad man,
and look what it did to you.”
She nodded at her empty plate but still wondered how she could do that: let all that death and misery happen, when she could so easily prevent it. But what would happen to her life if she saved just one of those women? Amy Parker had been saved and it had wiped out Rachel’s entire existence.
Mitch offered to pay but she refused. “An All Day Breakfast is a poor reward for saving my life,” she said.
“We haven’t yet,” he said.
They walked across the green and crossed the road to Mrs Hudson’s shop. It said CLOSED, but Mitch rapped at the glass and she came, surprised to see Rachel standing there in her eighties get up and suitcase.
“Oh, you are a sight for sore eyes,” she said, pulling her inside and hugging her tightly. “I’m so, so glad you’ve come.”
Mrs Hudson led them through the shop and out the back door, emerging in the rear courtyard under the wrought-iron stairs to the upstairs flat. They climbed them and squeezed into the flat.
She gazed over it, remembering what it looked like when Charlie had lived here in 1934, but there was nothing left of him.
Mrs Hudson sat them down. “We thought we’d lost you,” she said. “You and Kath together.”
Rachel blushed and tried to hide it. “Kath?”
“I’m afraid Kath didn’t seem too happy after our mission to 1934. We haven’t seen her since. My own stupid fault. All the signs were there.”
She seemed so sad that Rachel said, “It’s Danny. She’s in love with him.”
“Ah. I rather feared that might be the case. Oh well.”
Rachel wanted to blurt out about the Kath who’d tried to kill her this morning, and about Future Kath who’d attacked her in 1934.
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Just... is there a possibility that she has developed some kind of... special powers?”
Mrs Hudson and Mitch shared a glance.
“Because, well... some very strange things are happening. To me too. And I don’t know what it is.”
“I don’t think we need concern ourselves about that,” said Mrs Hudson. “Let’s just get you back to 1980 like we said and you can work on getting your life back.”
“We need to tell her,” said Mitch.
Annoyance flashed across Mrs Hudson’s face, but then she slumped and nodded and sighed.