“I loved you.”
“What?”
“I loved you. With all my heart. Utterly. I trusted you to finish your treatment and come to me. I waited for you, Sandra. I waited for you for bloody years. Christ help me, I think I was still waiting for you when Cara showed up.” For just a moment, the lid came off all the pain and anger and a little of it spurted out. “How could you do that to me? How could you not even tell me, give me a chance to see my daughter grow up?”
He hadn’t waited for an answer but had walked out of the room, leaving Sandra looking as if he’d just slapped her.
Now he found it hard to find anything to say to her.
“We’re leaving Norwich,” Sandra said. “We have to. Olivia and the university got the police involved and the police managed to leak it to the local press. Your people kept it quiet—thank you—and no-one in the States who knew anything about it is still alive. Even so, I don’t think it’s safe here anymore.”
Jay didn’t want to tell her she was being paranoid. He wasn’t sure that she was. He said, “Where will you go? I don’t want to lose track of you and Cara again.”
She shrugged. “I haven’t decided. I don’t have very marketable skills, but maybe I’ll go to another uni, in a non-time-related department. Maybe in industrial R&D somewhere. It would be nice to have some money for a change.”
“I could have been sending you money,” he said.
“I—I didn’t mean …”
She looked down at the carpet and, after a while, looked into his face. She wore an expression he remembered, at once brave and scared and determined. She said, “Jay, maybe what I do next depends on what you do. Maybe where I go depends on where you go.”
The lid blew off and his anger erupted. “You piss away sixteen years of my life because you don’t trust me to love my own daughter, you hide her away from me because you think I’d rather be chasing villains than being with you both, and now you think we can, what, make a go of it, put the past behind us, let bygones be fucking bygones?” He was on his feet and shouting and he really hadn’t meant to. That wasn’t the plan at all. He’d just wanted to establish some kind of normal relations, so he could visit Cara, get to know her.
He sat down again, cursing himself, and pressed a palm to his forehead. He hoped Cara had not heard him.
“Jay?” He looked up. “I’m sorry. I think maybe I made the biggest mistake of my life when I didn’t tell you about Cara, and you know I’ve made some really big ones. The thing is, I don’t want to make another one. There’s still time for you and Cara to be together—even if it’s just for a couple of years before she goes to uni. There’s even still time for you and me, if you could just not … hate me so much.”
The rush of anger had passed and weariness had replaced it. “I don’t hate you, Sandra. I couldn’t. However crazy you make me.” He hunted about for the words that would explain it while Sandra watched him, puzzled and anxious.
“You’re the love of my life, you see. I thought I’d got over it, but, seeing you again just brought it all back. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you.”
“So?” she said, hopefully.
“So that’s why it could never work. It just all hurts so much. It hurt when I thought you didn’t love me enough to be with me back then. But now I know the real reason you didn’t come to me was because you thought I was too weak, or stupid to …” He took a steadying breath. “Well, it hurts twice as much. And there’s a whole world of pain from having had my daughter stolen from me that I have barely scratched the surface of.”
He stood up. There was nothing more to say. Sandra must have understood because she didn’t try to stop him. He said, “You’ll keep in touch, though? So I can see Cara?”
“Of course,” she said and wouldn’t stop looking at him.
“Say goodbye to her for me. Tell her I love her and I’ll see her again soon.”
-oOo-
It was late when Jay got back to his hotel. He’d walked around the town. He’d dropped into a couple of pubs. He’d gone to the hotel bar. All of it to avoid this room, this anodyne, anonymous room. He’d been in far too many like it, all of them lonely rooms.
He synced his commplant to a big display on the wall, kicked off his shoes, and lay on the bed. His messages were few, and none of them were particularly interesting, except for one he’d seen several days ago and had not yet replied to. It was from the Office of the Head of Military Intelligence, European Defence Force, and concerned a conversation he’d had in Berlin last week. Ostensibly, the conversation had been a debrief about his recent experiences in the U.S. He’d spoken with an English woman called Crystal, early fifties—round face, bright eyes—he hadn’t asked if it was her first or second name. She told him she’d just established a new Section within EDF Military Intelligence. “A kind of counter-espionage unit,” she’d said. “Focusing on the use of temporal displacement technologies by foreign powers. The kind of thing you’ve been doing domestically for some time now, only this would be on a much bigger scale, with much bigger budgets.”
The follow-up message referred to their meeting as an “interview” and stated that she was pleased to offer him the post of Section Head, if he were willing to accept it.
Sitting on the stiff hotel mattress, he thought about it. Berlin wasn’t so far away from the UK. He could still see Cara every weekend if he liked. If she wanted that. And what else was he going to do now the TCU had closed down and he’d burned his bridges with Sandra? He needed a new challenge, something he could immerse himself in, lose himself in.
Post-Adjustment Berlin was a beautiful city. As the new de facto capital of Europe, it was one of the most vibrant and exciting cities on Earth. The center of European political, economic and military life, it was a city bursting with opportunity.
A good place for a fresh start, he told himself, his finger hovering over the reply button.
About Graham Storrs
Graham Storrs lives in rural Australia with his wife, Christine, and an Airedale terrier called Bertie. He has published three children's science books and scores of articles and academic papers (in the fields of psychology, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction). He recently turned his attention to science fiction and has since published over 20 short stories in magazines and anthologies.
About Timesplash
It started out as something underground, edgy and cool. Then Sniper took it all too far and timesplashing became the ultimate terrorist weapon.
Scarred by their experiences in the time travelling party scene, Jay and Sandra are thrown together in what becomes the biggest manhunt in history: the search for Sniper, Sandra's ex-boyfriend and a would-be mass murderer.
Set in the near future, Timesplash is a fast-paced action thriller. Filled with great characters, a sprinkling of romance, and a new and intriguing take on time travel, Timesplash is ultimately a very human tale about finding bravery through fear, and never giving up.
Timesplash is the first book in the Timesplash series. Highly recommended for science fiction and thriller enthusiasts alike.
Find out more at http://www.momentumbooks.com.au/books/timesplash/
First published by Momentum in 2013
This edition published in 2013 by Momentum
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
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Copyright © Graham Storrs 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia
True Path: Timesplash 2
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