The Accidental Time Traveller

by Sharon Griffiths

  ‘If nothing else, if I’d married Will, that would have left you and Jamie. And I’ve bagged Jamie, thank you, so let’s leave things the way we are!’ She put the grape stalks in the bin and took one of my tissues to wipe her hands.

  ‘One more thing …’ I had to ask. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but are you sure you don’t want children?’

  ‘Not that again!’ Caz laughed. ‘As sure as sure as sure,’ she said. ‘Honestly Rosie, Jamie and I have talked about it a lot, so it’s not a whim. We are both adamant. Jamie has enough of kids in school, and me, well, I don’t think I have a maternal bone in my body. Much too selfish! We’ve got too many things we want to do, places to go. Children don’t fit into that. We’ve both got nephews and nieces and if the day ever comes, I shall happily be an indulgent godmother to your sprogs. If you want me to be, of course. But any of my own? Perlease … No thanks.’

  I thought of Carol and the way she looked after her children, the way they were pretty much her whole life, the way her eyes beamed with pride and delight when she was with them.

  Caz settled down to tell me all the juicy gossip I had missed while I had been ill.

  But as I smiled and listened, all I could think of was Libby, the little girl with the shy smile and the bright inquisitive eyes who was the image of her mother. Who in this age would never be born.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Right then, where’s my darling girl?’ The voice drifted down the garden where I sat on the bench, relishing the early summer sunshine.

  ‘Grandad! Granny!’

  I hadn’t heard them arrive, but now here they were, coming down the garden path, their arms wide open for hugs and kisses. They looked terrific. Life in Spain suited them. They were trim, tanned and toned, their tans set off by their bright clothes and white hair. My brother Dan had just collected them from the airport and was in the house, no doubt grazing around the kitchen picking at bits of food.

  ‘We had to be sure you were all right.’ Granny looked worried and, for a moment, old.

  ‘I am, I really am. A bit wobbly still, but getting better all the time.’

  ‘And where’s this wonderful young man of yours?’ asked Granny, looking around as if expecting to see Will pop up from behind a bush.

  ‘He’ll be down later, Gran. He’s got to work.’

  ‘We’ve been hearing all sorts of good things about him.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Dan, coming out into the garden, a chunk of cheese in one hand and an apple in the other, ‘the man’s a hero, a regular Florence Nightingale. Actually, sis, he must think something of you because let’s face it, when you were ill, you looked really crap. I thought sick people were meant to look all frail and beautiful. You looked really minging. Bit better now, though,’ he added hastily, as I tried to throw my book at him. ‘Almost human,’ and he dodged back up the path.

  Everyone was laughing, but Gran was holding my hand. ‘People die from meningitis, pet,’ she said.

  ‘I know, Gran, but I didn’t. Thanks to the woman I went to interview. What a quick thinker. I shall go and see her as soon as I’m back to normal,’ I said. ‘She saved my life, the least I can do is say thank you.’

  And then, of course, I had to go through the whole history of the illness with them, all the gory details. What is it with old people and illness? Why are they so fascinated by it?

  Anyway, then Mum was calling that lunch was ready. Grandad had to rummage through all the bags to find some wine they’d brought over from Spain, and he insisted that I sit next to him. It was wonderful to be back with my family, safe and loved, listening to their chat.

  ‘We have plenty to celebrate,’ said Granny, glass in hand. ‘And it’s our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary this year, so we thought we’d celebrate that too. Live for today is our motto these days. So would you all like to come out to Spain? We’ll rent another villa near ours and you can all come out for a week, longer if you can. All of us together. It would be a real family gathering. What do you think?’

  ‘Brilliant!’ said my mum. ‘Absolutely brilliant!’

  ‘Yes, and if we’re still fit, we can do it all again for our sixtieth,’ said Gran laughing.

  Dad poured Grandad whisky, ‘for the jetlag,’ he said, and Grandad winked at him, and I thought how good he looked for someone well into his seventies. The sunshine and life in Spain suited him. Apart from his white hair, he could pass for someone ten years younger. Gran too, in yellow trousers and matching gilet, a heavy silver bracelet showing off her tan.

  Grandad cradled his whisky glass and smiled.

  ‘Who would have thought it, eh?’ he said. ‘Here we are still together after fifty-five years, and planning a party in Spain as easy as if it was at the end of the street.’ He looked at Gran fondly.

  Castles in Spain, he went on. That’s what we used to say when we wanted to describe a dream, something we never thought we’d have. “Castles in Spain”, and now that’s just what we’ve got. Well, a villa anyway.’

  Gran was beaming too, leaning back in her chair. ‘Every morning in Spain when I get up and go for a swim in the pool, I just think how wonderful it is. Time was I’d have been happy to have warm water in the tap, never mind a whole pool full of it. Ooh it’s grand, really grand.’

  Gran poured herself another glass of wine. She was getting quite tiddly now, and she hadn’t finished …

  ‘Times change, but I don’t care what anyone says. If you’ve found yourself a good young man, you stick with him.’ She wagged her finger at me, and then knocked back her wine. ‘You listen to your old granny.’

  ‘I will, Granny, I will.’

  And with that, right on cue, Will arrived, clutching a bunch of flowers for my mum and a scruffy carrier bag for me. He shook hands with Grandad, had a kiss from Mum, a beer from Dad, a cheerful shout from Dan, and a huge hug from Granny, who made him come and sit next to her while she alternately cross-examined him and flirted with him outrageously. He knew when he was beaten. He grinned back at her and answered all her questions like a lamb.

  Within two minutes she’d got all the information she needed from him – where he was from, where he’d been to university, what his parents did, what his hobbies were, whether he was a vegetarian, preferred football or rugby, and did he want to be an editor. And she kept her arm through his all the time, so he couldn’t get away. She could teach Jeremy Paxman a few tricks, could Gran.

  But they were both laughing when she turned to me and said, ‘I think he’ll do for now, Rosie. He’s passed the first interview.’ Then she said in a fake whisper, ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he? If you don’t want him, I’ll have him myself, but don’t tell your grandad.’

  Finally she only let him go when Mum insisted on feeding him and brought him through a plate of meat and salad.

  Soon it was time for Mum and Dad to take Granny and Grandad back to the small flat that was their base in England. Granny stood on tiptoes to kiss Will goodbye. ‘And mind you look after Rosie,’ she said in mock severity, ‘she’s very precious to us all.’

  ‘And to me too, don’t worry,’ he said, walking down the drive arm in arm with her.

  They finally drove off, with much waving and blowing of kisses. Dan went off to see his girlfriend, and at last Will and I were alone together. Which is when I remembered the carrier bag. I found it behind my chair, opened it up carefully and peered in. Inside was an ice-cream tub full of soil, in which was a small plant with a couple of tiny green things growing on it.

  ‘Um, lovely. What is it?’

  ‘Chillies!’ said Will proudly. ‘I grew them from seed. Bloke I interviewed gave them to me. He makes all sorts of chilli sauces. Really hot stuff. And I planted them – went down with a serving spoon and got some soil out from the base of one of the cherry trees outside the flat. Then I watered them and put them on the kitchen windowsill and they’ve flourished. See. I’m a gardener, a horny-handed son of the soil. There’s a couple more back in the flat, a regular
production line. I just brought this one down to show you.’

  ‘Well I’m impressed. Eat your heart out Alan Titch-marsh.’

  ‘Definitely On the other hand, it’s a sort of magic, isn’t it? You put a little seed in some soil and then eventually it turns into something you can eat. Pretty cool when you think about it. I might do some more.’

  ‘More chillies?’

  ‘Well, more anything, well, anything you can grow on the kitchen windowsill. I will also have you know that I had to eat an awful lot of ice cream for my chilli crop. Honestly, the sacrifices we gardeners make.’

  I remembered a garden stretching up a hillside, a garden planted and tended so carefully. Neat rows, little paths, tall wigwam frames for runner beans. And a man like Will leaning on his spade, watching his sons helping …

  ‘Rosie, you’ve got that faraway look again. Still in your dream?’

  I shook my head to shake the memory away and smiled. ‘Yes a bit. It still seems so real. Much more than a dream really.’

  I had tried to explain it all to Will, but you know what it’s like when you try and tell people your dreams? They never make sense, and you feel an idiot, and you can see their eyes glazing over as they lose the will to live.

  ‘Why don’t you write it all out, everything that happened? If nothing else it would make a great piece for the Health page – “Me and My Meningitis”. It would be a neat way of getting back into the way of work.’

  ‘Well, that was something else I was going to tell you. I’m ready to go back to work.’

  ‘Rosie, you mustn’t rush it.’

  ‘I’m not, but the doctor’s said it’s up to me now. I’ve just spoken to the Vixen and I’m going to go back a week Monday. She says I can do as much or as little as I like until I’m back in the swing of things. It’s been lovely being at home. Mum and Dad have been absolutely fantastic, but I want my own space, our own space back again.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’ Will was looking worried. ‘But it would be wonderful to have you back, to be back to normal.’ He lay down on the sofa beside me, pushing his great long legs under mine and wrapping an arm around me.

  ‘I’ve missed you horribly, you know,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it on my own. I hate going back to the flat. I miss having you there, miss talking to you, miss your opinions, miss just having you around. Good God, I even miss your singing – that’s how bad it is! I know, Rosie, all this has made me realise that, well, basically, I just don’t want to live life without you.’

  I lay there in his arms, not looking at him, but gazing out of the windows where I could see the high branches of the apple trees in the garden. I could feel the bones of his chest, the warmth of his skin through his shirt. I could smell his citrussy aftershave, I could hear his heart beating. He was so alive and so close to me that I felt almost part of him. I remembered watching Billy go home to another woman and her children. It might have been a dream, but the pain was real and hadn’t faded. I knew I didn’t want to live without this closeness to Will for ever.

  ‘The day before I was ill, and we had a row …’

  ‘Well, yes.’ I could feel Will’s muscles tensing slightly at the memory of it.

  ‘You said you wanted to go away to Dubai or Barbados or somewhere.’

  ‘I was angry.’

  ‘I know, but why? Please, Will, I really want to understand.’

  ‘Do you really want to talk about this now? Are you ready for it?’

  ‘Yes, I want things to be clear.’ I settled myself into the curve of his shoulder.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Well, it’s partly because I don’t know what you want. I’m not sure sometimes how I fit in. It’s like you think of me – of men in general really – as an optional extra.’

  ‘No! That’s not ri—’

  ‘Shh, shh, let me try and say what I want to say. It’s as if you have your life planned out and if I can fit in around the edges, then, well, that’s fine. But if you’ve got more important things to do and I don’t fit into your plans, then well, forget it.

  ‘I mean, I don’t want a wife who’s a little woman, waiting at home for me all the time. God forbid. But I don’t want someone who’s just going to skip off and do what she wants, just as if I’m not around. That’s why I thought then I might as well do my thing too. Travel a bit, the sort of things I’d planned to do before I met you. I was getting too used to being with you. Working with you, going to the pub with you, cooking, even just goofing out in front of the TV. And of course, bed …’

  He picked up a strand of my hair and wrapped it gently around his fingers, then stroked my cheek. I could feel my insides tingling.

  ‘It all mattered to me more and more,’ he had twisted himself around now, so that he was looking at me, ‘and I found myself hoping that we would always be together. The problem was I wasn’t sure about you. Every now and then you’d just announce that there was something you wanted to do, just as though it was absolutely nothing to do with me. And I was like, I’m not saying anything to her, because let’s see how it pans out.

  ‘Then when I saw you in that hospital bed, when I knew there was a very real chance that you could die, I felt as though my whole world was knocked sideways. Without you, there just didn’t seem any point in anything. Without you, I’m lost. Sad isn’t it? But there you go,’ he shrugged.

  ‘So there, that’s me, Rosie. I love you and I’m pretty sure I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Those are my cards on the table. If that’s not what you want, then just say so.’

  I curled around even closer to him. And took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t think you wanted any commitment. I thought if I let on how much I wanted to be with you, that it would scare you, that you would run a mile.

  ‘I wanted my own life, because I thought I would need it when you left me. I thought you didn’t want to grow up. No commitment, no responsibility, no putting down roots. I didn’t want to let you hurt me, so it was easier to pretend that it didn’t matter.’

  Suddenly an image of Billy in the garden showing Peter how to build the cold frame flashed into my head. The grown-upness, the gentleness of it.

  ‘Then we had that row and I thought I’d lost you. I realised that more than anything else I wanted to be with you. And I also realised that you could be all those things if you needed to, if you had to. It’s just that so far you hadn’t needed to. I mean, I’d never needed to scrape burnt porridge off a pan with no washing-up liquid, or face a gunman, or walk miles, but I know I could if I had to. Like Caz could live without electricity or hot water and Mr J’s wizard concealer.’

  I could feel Will looking puzzled.

  ‘Rosie, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Tricky to explain.’ And how. ‘But I guess it’s just that I’ve realised we don’t know what we can do until we have to. Sometimes we’ve just got to trust people and take the leap.’

  And I knew I could trust Will. He was absolutely rock solid.

  He was also baffled. ‘But what’s that got to do with porridge pots and gunmen?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. Everything. I can’t explain. All I know is that, well, I just know I don’t want to live without you. I knew it before really. Being ill just made me certain.’

  Will was still playing with my hair. I could feel his breath, warm and gentle, on the side of my face. All the time he’d been coming down to my parents’ house since I’d left hospital he’d been sleeping in the spare room. Not because of any prudery on my parents’ part, just that I’d still felt so ropy and could hardly bear to be touched. As Will started kissing me, as our legs wrapped around each other on the sofa, as I took him in my arms and pressed his head close to mine, I knew that had changed.

  ‘So, Rosie, is it you and me against the world? A couple? Are we going to stick together and see how it works out?’

  I nodded. ‘Somebody told me that you and I were a great team, that things happened when we were together. I think that’s right. Together we c
an conquer the world!’

  Will’s laugh came from somewhere around his fourth shirt button. As I lay with my head on his chest I could feel the laugh bubbling up before I heard it. I felt part of the bones of him, which was just what I wanted. I untangled myself quickly, took hold of his hand and led him upstairs to my bedroom.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sure. I’m sure about everything.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Oh you lovely, lovely computer!’ And can you believe I patted its sleek black casing, as if it were a favourite pet.

  There was a snort of familiar laughter behind me. I turned around and the Vixen was standing there smiling. ‘Welcome back, Rosie. It’s very good to have you back and looking well. But I didn’t think you’d have missed your computer that much!’

  ‘I was just thinking …’ How could I explain? ‘… just thinking of what it was like in the old days when they used typewriters and you had to put in paper and carbon paper …’

  The Vixen smiled. ‘… and two blacks each time, and correcting mistakes was a bugger. We must have spent so much time on it. Yes, that’s what it was like when I was starting out. Then you’d send your copy to the subs, and then it would go to the typesetters and then the printers. Seems positively medieval now. Well, the basic printing press was pretty much the same as in the middle ages I suppose.’

  ‘Were the subs all men when you started out?’

  The Vixen perched elegantly on the edge of my desk. ‘Always until around the 1970s I think. They’d sit around their table in a fug of smoke – they all smoked pipes – and I used to hate going in there.’

  ‘Oh so did I! I mean, well, aren’t we lucky things have changed.’