by Andy Conway
“Sorry,” he said.
She said Bad or something, then, “Martyn.”
It was Lorna’s friend.
“Oh. Hiya,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”
“We keep bumping into each other,” she said. “It keeps happening.”
“Oh. Yeah,” he said. She’d fainted the other night. That was what she meant. Except she seemed to mean something else. Women always seemed to mean something else when they said something to you. It was confusing. It meant you never really knew what they were saying.
“See you,” he said.
“Maybe,” she called after him.
He would go back to Esther, which was like pogoing through a minefield, and later tonight he’d have to have it out with Glen, who’d taken his money. They were actually supposed to be playing a gig together.
This night was turning out to be a total disaster.
— 34 —
RACHEL FOUND LORNA waiting in the same spot. The DJ was playing Warszawa off the Low album, and it seemed to match the mood of absolute despair.
“You all right?” Lorna asked.
“Tried to get us drinks. The bar was too crowded.”
“Never mind.” She smiled, simply.
She was a sweet girl. And she was never going to be her mother. Rachel knew now what was going to happen. She was going to stay here in 1980 and be Lorna’s friend and never be born.
The lights dimmed and the crowd pushed forward. They were jammed in it, unable to move. She could see Martyn and Esther standing together ten yards across from them.
Warszawa played on a little more, sullen chords heavy in the air, and a ticking chime began. She recognized it. It was Astradyne, the opening instrumental off the album. Warszawa faded out and the ticking chime grew louder. Some people cheered and screamed.
The band took the stage in the darkness. She could see they were all dressed in white. The crowd roared. Someone at the back shouted for Young Savage. Piano notes so loud, so full, so enormous, they hammered against her chest.
And it exploded as the beat kicked off and floodlights blazed, lighting the entire space, blinding everyone for a moment. It faded and blood spots swam in her vision.
The sound was enormous.
She’d thought it was going to be delicate, plinky plonky synth pop. But it was like a rock concert. Loud, fat, brash, a wall of sound blazing the air over their heads. She’d never heard synthesizers played so loud.
When Billie Currie came from behind his keyboard and stood at the front with his violin, a static wave of applause crackled through the music.
She found herself watching it, becoming lost in the performance, forgetting that her three year mission to recover her life had just died, forgetting that she’d failed and this was the end of it all.
After a while she even forgot to look over at Martyn and Esther.
They blasted out the songs from the new album, cheers going up when they did one of the old songs like Mr X or Quiet Men. There was puzzlement all around her over Vienna, through which she smiled, knowing it was soon going to be major hit single and the song that defined the entire era.
It was so hot that one of the synths went out of tune through a solo. She began to feel the sweat trickling down her back inside her dress. And it dripped off the low ceiling onto her face.
She watched Warren Cann most of all, fascinated by how he would sometimes stop drumming at his drum kit and turn to a rack of machines at his side and tap at them with his fingers.
And then Slow Motion faded out and a rapid beating bass drum rose, accompanied by a throbbing bass guitar. It seemed like a fast song she didn’t recognize, until she heard the clicking drum machine come in and recognized it.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour.
This was the moment. This was the song her parents had first kissed to. Martyn had told her, that time it had played up on the radio and he’d stood transfixed, remembering, almost crying, and told her with a sheepish smile That was the song I first kissed your mum to. At a concert it was.
And it wasn’t going to happen.
Lorna squeezed her arm, recognising her favourite song. They watched through the first verse and she couldn’t help stealing a glance across at Martyn.
Esther was standing in front of him now and he had his arms around her.
Lorna shouted in her ear. “Midge Ure doesn’t sing it as well as John Foxx.”
She nodded agreement. The version she knew, the one her dad had nearly cried to on the radio, sounded more romantic, like a beautiful poem.
Billie Currie stepped to the front again for a violin solo. This time he tapped and whipped the strings and insane wailings echoed out. It became atonal and abstract, dark, foreboding. It became a nightmare.
She glanced across and saw that Esther had turned her back on the stage. Turned to face Martyn. His arms around her. Their faces locked together.
They were kissing.
“They’ve ruined it,” Lorna shouted. “It’s awful! It’s all wrong!”
She pushed away and was fighting her way through the mob of people all staring at the stage.
Rachel wasn’t sure she meant the song or Martyn and Esther. But she was right. It was all wrong.
She glanced across one more time at the kissing couple, and saw for the first time the woman standing just behind them, a smile on her face, her red hair lit by a sudden burst of stage light.
Kath.
SOMETHING ABOUT THIS reminded Martyn of something.
Esther pressed close against him and the lush taste of her lips on his.
It was pure delight and he melted into her and didn’t care about the crowd around them. It was almost a perfect moment. His favourite song of the band’s, but a part of him wasn’t there in the moment, as if he was experiencing someone else’s memory. Wearing someone else’s clothes.
As lush as it was, it didn’t feel quite right.
It reminded him of being a boy, and that definitely didn’t feel right. But he remembered being a boy, standing in an alley... Esther was there... England had won the World Cup... there was a lady, who was young and beautiful and old at the same time... and she talked to him like he was a man, not a boy... and something about her reminded him of a book he read in school. It had three witches on the cover, surrounding a cauldron, making their spell, all in black. And two of the witches were old and ugly. Crones. But one of them was young and beautiful and he fell in love with her, the young witch on the book cover. There was something about her that made him feel funny inside.
And there was something about this that reminded him of Rachel too. There was something dark and mysterious and dangerous about it all.
But he didn’t pull away from Esther and run, no matter how dangerous it was.
Something compelled him to stay, stay with his lips on hers. As if someone was pushing him towards her.
He was bewitched.
RACHEL FOUGHT HER WAY out of there. The heat was overwhelming and she knew if she attacked Kath she might burn the place down and everyone in it.
As she pushed through the narrow entrance and felt cold air hit her face, she realised it didn’t matter that Kath was making sure Martyn and Lorna would never be together.
She’d already decided that it would never happen herself. She’d already accepted that she had failed.
But as she emerged into the cold night air and looked up and down the damp street for Lorna, she knew there was another way.
It wasn’t over.
She was going to tell Lorna who she really was.
— 35 —
SHE COULDN’T SEE LORNA up ahead as she walked the concrete subway jungle to the city centre. She must have run. By the time she turned along the face of the giant Gaumont cinema, showing The Empire Strikes Back, she spied her far ahead up Colmore Row.
She called after her but Lorna didn’t turn, just kept on walking. It was fairly crowded. A Friday night in the city centre with almost an hour of drinking time left.
She qu
ickened her pace and tried to keep Lorna in sight, but didn’t catch her until she turned into Chamberlain Square and the concrete amphitheatre of the Central Library.
Her old haunting ground, where she used to sit by the bronze sculpture of Thomas Attwood that lounged across the steps. Her eyes automatically sought it, but it wasn’t there. Wouldn’t be there for another thirteen years.
“Lorna! Stop!” she called.
Lorna glanced back but carried on walking up the steps. Rachel dashed after her and finally fell into step beside her, breathless.
She didn’t speak for a minute, surprised to find there were no giant glass doors next to the library, just a big hole that they walked through into a cavernous empty space through which the wind howled.
Paradise Place. Not a heated mall with shops and restaurants, but a soulless concrete cathedral. And there was no bridge on the other side that took them to Centenary Square, just a descent to a dirty subway with a flickering light. The kind she would turn and run from, but Lorna strode on with no fear.
“Why did you leave?” she said, her voice echoing off the damp subway walls.
“I’m sorry. It just wasn’t turning into a great night for me.”
“But we need to go back there!”
“You’re mad,” she spat, and there was real bitterness in her voice, like it was something she’d been chewing on for too long and it tasted foul to her.
They emerged from the subway and up to the vast open space of Centenary Square. What was it called now, in 1980? There was no Hyatt Hotel guarding Broad Street up ahead, no International Convention Centre. It was a long bank of grass in front of Baskerville House and the Rep, with a row of stone columns that split the lawn halfway for no reason. Where the vast new library had been built was just a car park.
It silenced her as they walked and entered Broad Street. There was nothing there. No night life, no bars pumping out loud music, no canalside restaurants and night spots. It was just a shabby street at the end of town. A row of run down shops, an Army Surplus store, Musical Exchanges on the right. On the left, where the Hyatt Hotel should have been, were a couple of grubby all night cafés: the Appolonia and the Rendezvous.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Lorna paused. “Rum Runner.”
The club was up ahead, a queue of people clustered outside. Her dad had talked of it with wonder. Her dad who would never be her dad.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“Let’s get a cup of tea,” said Lorna.
She stepped into the road and crossed over to the Rendezvous without looking back. Rachel followed.
It was about as far from the Hyatt Hotel as it was possible to imagine, without it being a mud hut. A dingy, smelly caff populated by sad old men and hungry looking young men.
Lorna bought two teas and Rachel found a dirty Formica table, sticky with spilled tea and sugar. In the back, a group of young guys in black beanies and donkey jackets were playing snooker and chain smoking, all trying to look like they were in Dexys Midnight Runners: another youth cult, another tribe.
Lorna brought the teas to the table and slumped across from her and wouldn’t look her in the eye. She looked like she was trying hard to keep the tears back. “You said we should talk. You’re pretty quiet.”
Rachel ran her fingers through the sugar on the table, making shapes. “Lorna, I know this is going to sound crazy, but it’s obvious to me you really like Martyn. And him being with Esther upset you, but I think it’s not too late. You have to go and get him.”
“No, Rachel. I don’t have to.”
“You do. It’s so important. I wish I could tell you—”
“Who the bloody hell are you to tell me I have to?”
A few of the boys playing snooker looked over. Rachel realized they weren’t fans dressing up like their favourite band; they might actually be Dexys Midnight Runners.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“And what is it with you, anyway? Why are you so desperate for me to hook up with Martyn? What’s it to you?”
“You’re in love,” she said quietly. “You’re going to be great together.”
“How the hell do you know that? You talk like a freak!”
“I just know it. I can see it. Trust me.”
She was barely mumbling now, staring into her stained and chipped mug, hoping Lorna would lower her voice.
“And how do you know so much about me?”
“I don’t know. What do you—”
“I take you to my house and you walk to it like you know the place. You know that girl’s name. You know my mum’s name. How do you know all that?”
“We didn’t go to your place. You dreamed it, remember?”
“Did I? You appear out of nowhere and you’re my new best friend. How do you know so much about me? Who are you? Why are you so interested in me?”
She raised her eyes and looked Lorna in the face. She was ready to hear it. There was no other way out of this.
“I’m from the future.”
Lorna stared, open mouthed, her lips curling with disgust, head shaking slightly. “You’re a weirdo. You’re crazy. Why do I always get involved with crazy people?”
She got up to go.
Rachel knew she’d never see her again. She’d failed to get her parents together so she could get her life back, and she’d failed to befriend her mother and stay here with her. She had nothing left.
She ran after her, out of the door and onto Broad Street, chasing Lorna down the road.
“Your mother’s Deirdre Foster! She tried to jump in front of a train in 1959. I stopped her. So you could be born. So I could be born!”
Lorna stopped outside the old Register Office. “You’re a loony! Leave me alone!”
“Your grandfather’s Fred Foster. He used to be a postman. He met your grandma, Vivian Hunter, at a concert in 1934 at the Moseley Dance Centre.”
Lorna gasped. “How do you know that?”
“I’m... I’m your daughter. If you don’t end up with Martyn tonight, I will never be born. If he ends up with Esther Parker I’ll never get back to my old life.”
She reached into her handbag and pulled out the photos, shoving them into Lorna’s hand.
Lorna stared at the photo on top. Her and Martyn in Mark’s flat, the records on the bed beside them.
“How did you get this?”
“It was in our photo album for years.”
“Martyn said he hadn’t given it to Boots to develop. How did you do this?”
“I took it from our photo album.”
“You stole his film. You got it developed express or something.”
Lorna flipped to the next photo and tried to work it out. It was Martyn, and it was a girl who looked like Lorna. But she had no memory of this. “Who’s she?”
“It’s you, Lorna.”
She shook her head, but couldn’t take her eyes off the picture.
“It’s you and dad on a CND rally in 1981. Next year.”
“This isn’t right.”
She flipped to the next photo. “Oh God.”
Martyn smiling stupidly in a cheap suit, with a carnation in his lapel. Lorna in a white 1920s flapper dress. Standing on this same spot, outside the Register Office. A crowd of friends and family behind them.
“That’s... there’s my mum... how did you?”
“You know how, Lorna.”
“These are fake.”
“You know they’re real.”
“This is a trick.”
“You know it’s true.”
“I’m on bloody Candid Camera or something.”
“I’m your daughter.”
Lorna shook her head, to and fro, her mouth open but no sound emerging.
Rachel raised her hand, palm upward.
Lorna thought she wanted the photos back and moved to give them to her.
A flame sputtered into life, sitting on Rachel’s palm. It guttered in the wind, but grew and grew, u
ntil it became a ball of fire, a glowing sphere that hovered between them.
It hypnotized them both, Rachel also captivated by its beauty. It floated between them, the size of a football, slowly rotating, till Rachel snapped her fingers and it died.
Lorna took a step back, still shaking her head, but the truth was sinking in. Rachel could see it, infecting her like a virus, taking her over, no matter how hard she resisted.
“No.”
“Yes, Lorna.”
“It can’t be.”
“It is.”
“This is some kind of dream.”
“You know it’s real.”
“You’re some kind of magician, or something.” She was looking around her, wildly, as if she could see the strings that Rachel might be pulling, as if the TV camera crew might suddenly emerge from the shadows, as if there was an explanation for it all somewhere else, anywhere but in the presence of Rachel.
“We don’t have much time.”
“I’m going to wake up.”
Logic was no use. You couldn’t persuade someone into believing this. You couldn’t reason with them and change their mind, or even dazzle them with magic tricks. No one believed anything without their emotions.
They had to feel it.
“Oh, sod it,” said Rachel, and dived for her. It was a sort of rugby tackle, which made her think of her dad for the instant they were airborne. She heard Lorna cry out and grunt as she hit her. But they didn’t hit the ground. Not in 1980.
They hit the ground in 1996.
— 36 —
LORNA ROSE, SCRAMBLING, brushing herself down and realized that black night had turned to blue dawn light. She shoved Rachel away from her and jumped to her feet.
She was in the back garden. The canal cottage. Winson Green.
Rachel was rubbing her bleeding elbow.
She backed away from her. Crazy. Dangerous. She was home. How had that happened? Sleepwalking again. This was all like a bad dream.
Rachel brushed herself down, wincing with pain and stumbled on the frosted lawn.
She had produced a ball of flame from her hand, and now this.