by Jason Ayres
I recalled the happy, smiley faces the previous evening, dancing around the fire in what was then paradise on earth. How many of them were still alive now in what had become the complete opposite?
As the water retreated a second time, the true cost of the disaster was becoming apparent. One of my companions was recording everything on a handheld camcorder and it made for grim viewing. Everything was being dragged back down the street by the retreating flood water, not just all the jetsam and flotsam that had been generated by the wave, but people, too.
Some were still screaming for help, but others were motionless apart from the contortions the water was wreaking on their bodies as it twisted them to and fro like rag dolls.
When the lifeless body of a girl, no more than five or six years, old floated past, I had to turn away from the balcony and dash into the bathroom where I was physically and horribly sick.
This wasn’t just the throwing up of someone who’d had too much to drink the night before. I was sick with shock, panic and fear. I was only eighteen – I was too young to be coping with this alone, but there was no big sister beside me to lean on. The fear I felt for my own safety began to be replaced by fear for her. I prayed that she was still shacked up in bed with the Frenchman, safely out of harm’s way. I didn’t dare even contemplate the possibility that she might have been down on the beach.
I had my mobile phone with me and tried calling her number but I couldn’t get any sort of signal. It seemed all communications were out. As soon as the waters subsided again, I thanked the two men who had helped me, and dashed back out into the street, despite them warning me it might be too dangerous.
It was a scene of sheer carnage. Desperately I ran, calling her name, as I skirted around everything from upturned cars to fridge-freezers which were scattered everywhere. I wasn’t alone by any means. There were dozens out there in a similarly distressed state going through exactly what I was – locals and tourists alike.
Invariably I came across more bodies and forced myself to look at the faces of at least three girls who could have been Rachel. When I saw that they weren’t I felt a strange mix of emotions. There was relief at the discovery that they weren’t Rachel, tempered with an increasing desperation at not finding her.
I also felt a more than a tinge of guilt at feeling relief as the friends and relatives of these poor souls were ultimately going to suffer the grief of discovering their lifeless bodies.
It seemed like I had been stumbling around for hours when the first relief teams began to arrive. It took a long time for them to get there. This wasn’t just a case of ambulances and fire engines rolling up at an incident because the incident was widespread. They were needed everywhere.
This had all happened five days before I arrived back here on my latest trip through time. The relief effort had spent most of those five days recovering, removing and identifying bodies. Most surviving tourists had been evacuated. I had still been here because I had refused to leave with the other evacuees, I had spent those days scouring the shoreline for miles in both directions, desperately searching for any sign of Rachel.
I asked around the hotels, desperate to track down where the Frenchman had been staying, but it was no good. I had nothing to go on other than a vague stab at a first name. There was nothing else, not even a photo. Had this been a few years later when I and everyone else was snapping everything that moved and plastering it all over social media, I might have stood a chance, but people didn’t do that yet in 2004.
I knew now, arriving on 31st December, that continuing to search for Rachel would be pointless. I hadn’t found her before and I wouldn’t find her now. Her body had never been found, presumably swallowed up by the sea like so many others. There was only one thing I could do right now – the same thing that I had ultimately done before, several days later.
I abandoned my search for my sister and joined the relief effort. The other aid workers were only too grateful for my help. Joining in with them before had given me a sense of purpose, and it was this that had inspired me to begin working with the Red Cross in the years that followed.
As for Rachel, I had to stop her coming here. It was as simple as that. But would it be that easy? I remembered my attempts to stop my mother drinking. She had rubbished my claims of time-travelling from the future, and who wouldn’t? Rachel might well do the same.
It’s not as if I could even provide her with any proof that the tsunami was going to happen. If I could take a picture of this beach right here and take it back through time with me, I would. But that wasn’t possible.
I couldn’t prove the tsunami was going to happen, but I didn’t need to. When I next went back a year in time I would have only two days to convince Rachel. I had already done my homework and intended to pump her with so much irrefutable proof that I could tell the future that she would ensure she was nowhere near the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day.
I looked around me once more at the devastation.
No Rachel – there is no way you are dying here.
Chapter Sixteen
2003
The trouble with trying to remember things that took place over twenty years ago was that I could remember major events, such as the party to celebrate my coming of age stuck in my mind, but not the details around them. The human brain, mine anyway, had only so much storage capacity on the hard drive and selectively sent anything not considered important to the recycle bin.
This made planning ahead difficult, particularly when I had such an important task in front of me. Fortunately, the time I had previously spent on the laptop researching past years was about to come in very handy.
My bedroom had changed noticeably since the last time I had arrived in it. The rocky bands I had been into in the mid-noughties were no longer in evidence, and the walls were now decorated with posters of the Spice Girls.
Had I really still had those up approaching my eighteenth birthday? Even in 2003, which seems like a lifetime ago now, they were seriously old hat. The group had long disbanded by this time and most of the girls were enjoying solo careers.
I had been woken up by my digital clock radio alarm going off, which was tuned into Fox FM, the local radio station at the time. It was playing, appropriately enough, one of the Spice Girls’ solo songs, “Free Me” by Emma Bunton. She had always been my favourite Spice Girl and was having a string of hits around this time.
The song finished and was replaced by “Mad World”, which I recalled had been Christmas Number One that year. The list of festive chart-toppers had been one of the things I had memorised during my internet research.
I lay in bed for a while, wondering where all the years had gone. 2003 really didn’t seem like more than twenty years ago. It felt like a decade at the most. Had I wasted my life, letting the years fly the way they had?
It was the same for everyone, I guess. No one can fight against the inevitable passing of time. That’s what I used to think, anyway. Now my perspective was somewhat different.
My musing was interrupted by my mother calling me from downstairs.
“Are you coming down, Amy? You’re going to be late for work.”
I was temporarily flummoxed by this. Where was work? That was something I had neglected to check up on. I thought for a moment then remembered that, over that Christmas and New Year, I had been working in a café in town, waiting tables.
This was one of many different jobs I had held as a teenager, trying to save as much money as I could so I could emulate my sister and go travelling in the future. It was largely money earned during 2004 working everywhere from Burger King to B&Q that had enabled me to join Rachel in Thailand that ill-fated Christmas.
Was I going to work today? I had ducked out sick so many times from the hospital during my time travels that a shift serving coffee and sandwiches in the Covered Market wasn’t any big deal. However, I had really enjoyed that job, and saw no reason not to go. It would all be rather nostalgic, like much of my life.
My h
ome couldn’t have looked more different to how it had during my mother’s declining years. As I descended the stairs towards the kitchen I could see that everything looked spotless. There wasn’t a hint of fluff on the fawn-coloured carpet that covered the stairs, nor was there a speck of dust in the hallway.
The kitchen, likewise, was immaculate, surfaces sparkling clean, a vase of freshly cut flowers in the centre of the table and the smell of home-cooked bread filling the air. My mother was smart and carried the poise of a happy and confident woman as she turned at hearing my approach, handing me a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
“Here, you’d better get that down you,” she said.
Happy as I was to see my mother back to her old self, before the tsunami shattered her world, it wasn’t her I needed to see.
“Where’s Rachel?” I asked.
“Down in London,” replied Mum. “I thought you knew. She won’t be back until after New Year.”
This was a bad start.
“Where in London?” I asked.
“You’re not thinking of trying to go down to join her, by any chance, are you? We already discussed this, remember?”
Now she mentioned it, I did remember. I had wanted to go and see in the New Year in London with Rachel but my mother had insisted on me staying at home, saying I could go next year when I was eighteen. This was the problem with being the younger sibling. It always seemed that the older one got to have all the fun.
Saying I could go when I was eighteen felt rather harsh at the time, seeing as I was just one day short of that milestone but I had reluctantly agreed with my mother promising to arrange a party to celebrate my birthday.
My first thought now was that I could tell Rachel at the party. It could wait another day, but then I noticed a return slip from a party invite pinned to the fridge by a magnet from Tenby. It clearly stated the date of the party as Saturday 3rd January 2004.
Of course, I remembered now. It had been decided not to have the party on New Year’s Day for the same reason that I had been coming up against all my life. No one wanted to party on 1st January with their hangovers from the night before. Rachel had definitely been at the party: she had been back from London by then, but that was no good to me now as I would be gone by then.
This was frustrating. Why was nothing ever simple? There was nothing else for it: I was going to have to defy my mother and go to London. I wasn’t enjoying, as someone used to adult independence, that I could or couldn’t do something, and it was only going to get worse. What would it be like when I was six or seven and I was being told to eat my greens and to go to bed at half past seven?
Thankfully, at seventeen I still had enough power to make my own decisions. I just hoped I could get enough money together to get myself down to London.
Getting to London was only half the battle: I still had to find Rachel when I got there. Fortunately I still had a mobile phone, even if it was only a basic Nokia. I could text her.
I had no idea who she was with or what she was doing: those details were lost in the mists of time. Whoever it was, I can’t imagine she was going to be particularly enamoured with her little sister gatecrashing the party, but tough – her life depended on it. She would thank me one day, even if I wasn’t going to be around to hear it.
I went upstairs, pretending to get ready for work, and texted Rachel. If I was expecting an immediate response, I was to be disappointed. Wherever she was, she was probably still asleep. It was only just after 8am after all.
Opening my wardrobe, I found an impossibly small uniform from the café that I couldn’t believe I could possibly fit me, but it slid on easily with room to spare. I was getting smaller and slimmer by the year, and my slender frame was barely that of a woman now.
I may have had no intention of going to work, but I wanted my mother to think everything was normal. I really didn’t want to have to get into a round of explanations with her, not after my previous attempts.
Everything went smoothly until after I left the house and reached the cashpoint. Then I realised I had a problem. Thumbing through yet another new wallet, I discovered that my bank card had changed. No longer was I with HSBC. My card was now from Barclays. Worse still, when I tried to put my PIN number in, it wouldn’t accept it.
Once again, long-forgotten memories came flooding back. I had changed my bank account in my late-teens after running into some overdraft problems as a student and parting company with Barclays on acrimonious terms. Now I was back with them, I couldn’t for the life of me remember my PIN.
Frantically I searched through my wallet and purse in which I kept my loose coins. I had the grand total of £3.57 on me and that wasn’t going to get me to London, not even at 2003 prices. I was going to have to get some money from somewhere else.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. I didn’t feel good about what I was about to do, but I had done worse things. This was hardly on the same scale as causing Gary’s death, and besides, it was going to save a life, not end one. That was all the justification I needed.
I took the short walk back to the house. My mother was surprised to see me, but I explained I had forgotten my purse and pretended to go upstairs. While she busied herself in the kitchen, I helped myself to fifty quid out of her wallet which was in her handbag, conveniently hanging on the hatstand close to the front door.
“Sorry, Mum,” I murmured to myself, “but it’s all in a good cause.”
As long as I kept telling myself that, it would all be good. I had never stolen off my parents in my life – or anyone, come to that. This was most definitely a one-off.
Funding in place, I headed straight for the train station. Twice more I tried to ring Rachel on the way, and both times it went straight to voicemail. What was she doing? She had better have her phone on her as there was no way I was going to be able to track her down otherwise. I would just have to text her again.
Rachel, why aren’t you answering your phone? I need to speak to you urgently.
That ought to do it. It was sufficiently vague to hopefully worry her or at least pique her curiosity enough to contact me. That’s assuming she ever got around to looking at her phone.
At the train station, I popped into WHSmith and bought a notebook and a pen. I had left in such a hurry that I hadn’t had time to put into place a vital part of my plan.
Thankfully, the train was not too busy so I was able to find a place with a seat, even if it wasn’t the most appetising spot. Someone had left an apple core on the seat and there were crumbs all over the table but it would have to do. As soon as the train was in motion, I pulled my purchases out of my bag and began to write.
By the time the train pulled into Paddington, I had emptied every scrap of information I could remember about 2004 in to the notebook. That time spent at the laptop learning all this had been time well spent. But none of it was going to be any good unless Rachel rang.
I had left my mobile on the table in front of me for the whole journey, but still no joy. What was worse, my battery was down to 13% and I had no charger. From what I remembered, these old Nokias were pretty decent on battery life but even so, 13% was not going to last long.
I had filled about five pages of the notebook, and I cast my eye now over the first page, wondering if what I had written would be enough. It was heavily biased towards the start of the year, because I had concentrated on January for a reason. I had figured that if I ever needed to convince anybody of my knowledge of the future, the sooner the events took place, the better.
There’s going to be a plane crash near Egypt on 3rd January which will kill all 148 people aboard.
Harold Shipman is going to hang himself in prison on 13th January.
Janet Jackson is going to have a wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl on 1st February.
Manchester United are going to beat Millwall 3-0 in the FA Cup final.
And so it went on, for another four pages. It ended with a detailed description of the Boxing Day tsunami. If
this didn’t convince Rachel, nothing would, but I still had to get it to her.
Just as I was getting off the train, my phone rang. It was her. The timing wasn’t great, as it was very busy and noisy in the station, but I just about managed to make out what she was saying.
“What’s up, little sis?” she said.
I could barely answer as I had become quite choked with emotion at hearing her voice for the first time in over twenty years. My sister was alive! Now that I had actually heard her speak, suddenly it was all real.
“I’ll explain when I see you,” I replied, trying to sound as normal as possible. “I’m in London. Where are you?”
She was rather taken aback to hear where I was and didn’t sound too pleased. Rather than try and explain over the phone with the noise of engines and platform announcements all around me, I got her to agree to meet me in half an hour beneath Nelson’s Column.
She was alone when I met her and looking none too happy.
“What’s all this about, Amy?” she demanded. “I had to cut short lunch with friends to come and meet you.”
Her grumpy demeanour couldn’t dampen my mood. I was just overwhelmingly happy to see my long-dead sister in the flesh once more. I ran up to her and almost knocked her over as I flung myself at her slender frame, burying my head in her long, wavy, dark hair that was just tinted with a hint of red.
“Whoa! Steady on, sis,” she replied, pushing me away and seeing the tears in my eyes that had welled up the moment I had grabbed hold of her. I looked back into her piercing, green eyes, a mirror image of my own, and for a moment, couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked. “Mum rang me while I was waiting for you. She says some money’s gone missing from her purse.”