The Girl Who Lived Twice

by Tina Clough

  ISBN: 9781483505930

  SLIPPING THROUGH A CRACK IN THE FABRIC OF TIME

  She jerked awake, terrified, her heart pumping and every nerve jangling. She lay in complete darkness surrounded by a loud rumbling, grinding noise. Little blue sparks started flickering in the black void and it was getting hotter.

  Her whole body was vibrating and it was hard to breathe. Disorientated and frightened she felt as though she was being ground against a rough surface. Her skin felt scalded now, the air she laboured to pull into her lungs was like hot steam. Her mind snatched for explanations and found only confusion. Her hands reached for something to grab hold of, but there was nothing. Abruptly all noise and movement stopped, there was a moment of startling silence - and then one last violent jerk followed by stillness.

  Mia lay still, rigid and terrified. She was panting and trying to fight off panic. What on earth was that, some strange kind of earthquake? Her heart was still racing and her face was covered in cold sweat. The room was blurrily visible now in the usual indirect glow from the city lights. Cautiously she half sat up – half expecting something to give way or fall. She turned on the light, expecting cracks in the ceiling or a wall about to topple into empty space. But everything looked normal. There were no sirens, no screams. After a minute she got gingerly out of bed and stumbled to the window on legs that felt numb and disconnected.

  The view was perfectly normal and the fear of a big earthquake faded. She was surprised to see that the rain had completely stopped - the top of the Sky Tower, floodlit in icy blue, was outlined against a clear night sky. After a minute she went back to bed, her legs slightly steadier now. It must have been a nightmare. I must have dreamt that I was awake and heard those noises and felt that awful pressure. I’ll never go back to sleep now, my whole body is saturated with adrenaline.

  She left the bedside light on and lay down feeing weak with shock. She woke to the sound of the clock radio announcing the 7 o’clock news, bewildered and surprised that it was already morning, amazed that she had managed to sleep after all.

  “Phoenix Air has confirmed that four New Zealanders were among those killed in yesterday’s crash just outside Manchester. No names have been released, but it is believed they were all members of one family.”

  Mia sat straight up in bed, instantly awake, her mind swirling with confused questions. Were they playing a recording of an old news reading? Or had a second air crash happened, identical to the one that killed a New Zealander family shortly after Greg’s death last year?

  She switched to the local commercial station and caught the tail end of the same news item. Confused and frightened now she got up, pulled on track pants and a T-shirt and went to the study and turned on the computer. She clicked on the bookmark to the BBC news site and soon found the headline about the plane crash. Her eyes raced down the lines, her sense of disbelief was growing by the second – every single detail was as she remembered it. Had that not happened a year ago, was she experiencing a particularly detailed event of déjà-vu?

  And then she noticed the date under the BBC banner – ‘Updated Thursday 10 August 2006’. Goose bumps formed all over her body and her mind lurched around trying to make sense of things. Today was Friday 17 August and yesterday had been Thursday 16 August but 2007! Her hands were trembling and her heart was pounding. Trying to control her panic she opened the NZ Herald website and stared at the date – Friday 11 August 2006.

  She leant her head in her hands. She was sweating now and breathing fast, on the brink of panic again. Have I had a stroke? Or am I in some kind of realistic-seeming psychological state where my mind has snapped back to the past? Did I imagine a whole year? But this must be true, the websites agree. God, what’s happened to me?

  She was on the verge of crying, but a sense of self-preservation made her battle the tears. I can’t cry, I mustn’t cry! If I start I might not be able to stop. I must use my mind, check things, find out what’s happened and calm down. Who could help me?

  But her mind shied away from the idea of asking for help. Would anyone believe her? Would it be dangerous to expose her “whatever it was” – state of mind, delusion – to others? It was probably better to struggle through to some sort of calmness and try to work it out alone, at least for now. Mia checked her emails; nothing was dated later than Wednesday 9 August 2006.

  Half an hour later she was pacing round the living area frustrated and confused. She had reached no conclusion and had several times stood with her hand on the phone to call her sister Sarah, but had pulled back each time. She could not bear the thought of telling anyone at all. What if Sarah decided that she had had a complete breakdown and lost her mind? Perhaps she had had a breakdown, but she was not ready to consider it yet. She would rather struggle on alone.

  Her heart was still beating too fast and suddenly she knew she was going to be sick and ran to the bathroom. She came out gulping for breath, drank a glass of water and wiped her clammy forehead with a damp tissue. She must stay where she was and try to figure it out, without asking for help. Going to work was out of the question. At half past eight, showered and dressed and with a cup of coffee in her hand, she rang the office. She cleared her throat and rehearsed her words; the most important thing was to sound normal. Alice in reception listened to Mia’s excuse of a tummy bug.

  “You poor thing, as if you haven’t had enough to cope with already. We’re all thinking you should have taken a decent break, not just soldiered on like this – it can’t be good for you. It’s only been two months and you never took more than a few days off at the time. Look after yourself, Mia! I’ll tell Alan you’re home sick.”

  Mia mumbled a vague reply and said goodbye. Two months since the accident, that confirms it – I am back in August 2006! My God, I’m not mad, but somehow time’s rewound a whole year. No, I can’t believe it! That’s nonsense - but there’s no other explanation. Whatever this is, temporary or permanent, it’s real and not a delusion. Did it only happen to me? That awful graunching movement in the night must have had something to do with it, though goodness knows it seems insane. That sort of thing happens in sci-fi movies, not in real life – but it did!

  An hour later she felt calm enough to ring Sarah at work. She repeated the story of the tummy bug and Sarah was immediately concerned. “That’s not like you, Mia. Wonder if you ate something bad? Would you like me to pop over at lunchtime with something from the pharmacy?”

  “Goodness no, don’t worry! I’ve got cans of chicken soup and crackers. I’ll eat something harmless when I feel a bit better. It’s probably one of those 24 hour things.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll feel like coming over for dinner tonight, then? What a pity! But if you feel better later on and change your mind, do come! You don’t have to eat or drink anything. The others will be there about seven. Barb’s coming, though she only got back yesterday. And Lorna is bringing her wedding album; they just got it back from the photographer this week. Try to come if you can – I’m cooking something nice and I’ve hired The Kid Next-door to do the dishes.”

  Mia struggled for a natural reaction. “OK - if I improve during the day I’ll come along tonight. I’d like to see the wedding photos and it would be lovely to see Barb.” She put the phone down with a thoughtful frown on her face.

  CHAPTER 1

  The previous day she had arrived home late. It was August and darkness was already wrapping itself round the city. The bus had been full of people in damp coats with blank faces staring unfocussed into middle space.

  Back at the apartment she threw her bag on the floor and went to change out of her work clothes. She caught sight of herself in the dressing table mirror – brown hair, short and curly-wavy, pale face, little
make-up, wide mouth. She ran her fingers roughly through her hair and then shook her head; her curls simply returned to their places and she looked exactly the same. God, I look so boring. Was I always this mousy, or have I become more mouse-like?

  It was a year since Greg had died and since then things had gone from bad to worse.

  The tedium of having nothing productive to do outside of work constantly weighed on her. She had distanced herself from her former friends and had not found substitute activities or new friendships. She knew that her life now was aimless and dull, but she could not muster the energy to do anything about it. She often contemplated having another glass or two of wine to make it easier to go to sleep at night and then dismissed the idea. Drinking alone raised vague fears of a slippery slope towards solitary alcohol dependence. Her doctor had prescribed sleeping pills after Greg’s death, but after a fortnight she had stopped taking them for the same reason that she shied away from the second glass of wine. The idea of being dependent on anything, legal or illegal, frightened her.

  After more than a year Mia slept at the most five or six interrupted hours per night, and never felt rested. She would read for a couple of hours and when she turned the light off her mind would go into the customary replay mode.

  In her mind’s eye she pictured Greg and herself in February 2006 when they sold the little flat where they had lived since they married three years before. Greg had got a new sales position with a big brewery and was earning a lot more and she herself had finished her degree and had taken a job at Concept Marketing, where she worked as the assistant to a section head. Full of heady optimism they took a bigger mortgage and bought a brand new apartment in a tower block in an area “nearly in St Mary’s Bay”. The new apartment was an exciting adventure and they felt as if they had won the lottery. It was spacious and light with large windows nearly down to floor level to the north-east and a recessed balcony big enough for a table and chairs. They were high enough to catch a glimpse of water from the balcony and could see the top of the Sky Tower from the bedroom and living room windows.

  They made a pact not to buy anything major without discussing it first. Mia had money in a trust fund established by her parents but the capital could only be used if the trustees agreed and if there was a risk of serious hardship. They agreed that they would use the trust fund income to reduce the mortgage over the next few years and then plan the next step.

  And then Greg came home one evening in May with his eyes glowing and told her that he had bought his Dream Machine, a second-hand Ducati, offered for instant cash sale and not to be resisted. Mia was angry and disappointed; they had an agreement and Greg had broken it without even a phone call to discuss it with her. For the first time in their life together she wondered if he was complacent and counting on her trust fund to save them if things went wrong. Their overdraft was now at the very limit and left no room for emergencies for a while. When she pointed this out Greg confirmed her unspoken thought by accusing her of having no sense of fun. “Do we have to worry about emergencies? The trust is our safety net.”

  For the first time they went to bed on bad terms and not speaking. There was a subtle change in their relationship and Mia worried that their differing attitudes to money would always come between them. During the four weeks leading up to Greg’s accident she never once suspected that there could be another reason for the sense of estrangement she felt. On a wet evening a month after buying the Ducati Greg went for a ‘quick spin’ on his dream machine and ended his life under a truck on the Harbour Bridge.

  Greg was buried in Raglan, where he had grown up and where his parents, brothers and sister still lived. The funeral highlighted how few people there were in her own family: Her sister and brother-in-law, an aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins. The little church was filled to overflowing with Greg’s extended family and their friends; he had multiple aunts and uncles and hordes of cousins.

  She turned down her sister Sarah’s offer to come and stay for a while on the North Shore. Her financial situation was relieved by the mortgage protection insurance that the bank had insisted on. Without a mortgage and with the twice-yearly interest income from her trust, she could stay where she was and at least have no financial worries.

  But only a couple of months later her fragile comfort was shattered by another blow. Just thinking about it, even now after all this time, made her squirm with humiliation and she felt an overwhelming sense of betrayal. After Greg’s death his possessions had been returned to her, but it had been some weeks before she felt able to look through them. On an impulse she had turned on his mobile phone and found revealing messages from her best friend Barb – it was obvious that she and Greg had been having an affair.

  She had become obsessed with finding out who had known about it. Barb, who had been in England since a week or two before Greg’s accident, had only just returned and Mia tormented herself by mentally replaying her conversations with Barb, trying to recall every detail of what had been said. She became convinced that nearly everyone in her circle of friends must have known or suspected. One night Sarah let it slip that she and James had suspected the affair. They had seen Greg and Barb using a key-card to enter a lift to the hotel floors at the Sky City Casino one evening some weeks before Greg’s accident, when they themselves were on their way home from drinks with friends. Mia broke down in a storm of frantic emotion; the feeling of betrayal was so overwhelming that she lost all control and for the first time in her life she screamed at Sarah.

  “How could you know a thing like that and not tell me? You, and everyone else who knew, you’ve all betrayed me! How could carry you on as normal and not tell me?”

  “Mia, I thought it was for the best! I couldn’t bear to maybe destroy your marriage - it might have been a one-off thing. And with Barb going off to the UK I thought I’d have time to think it over.”

  Sarah’s voice was shaking with emotion. Having known and not told Mia was an act of passive betrayal. Now that it was out in the open she found that she could not explain it to her own satisfaction and she felt guilty and frightened for Mia’s mental state.

  Mia was beside herself; tears were pouring down her face and her fists were clenched. ”I don’t care, that’s a ridiculous reason – you’ve all made me feel like a fool! Everyone must have laughed behind my back when they were with Greg and me! And think of all the times I would have said something about our plans for the future and how happy we were – I must have seemed like a total idiot and they would all have been pitying me behind my back.” The words tumbled out muffled by tears.

  “Please, darling, calm down. Please don’t torture yourself, it wasn’t like that! I hated knowing, but I couldn’t bear to tell you in case it had already finished.” Sarah was close to tears herself.

  “Well, it hadn’t, had it? I can’t stand this, it was going on right up till he died, he was probably getting ready to leave me. He knew I didn’t like motorbikes, but Barb was always going on about how sexy they are and how she loves them! I bet he only bought it to impress her!”

  In the end they had cried together in frustrated hurt and regret and it was only a lifetime’s deep trust and affection that brought them together again.

  A year later she often re-lived those weeks in her mind and felt that first flush of disbelief and fury, followed by betrayal and humiliation. She could not talk to anyone about it. How would she know, if they just pretended that they hadn’t known? The only protection for her wounded pride was to not talk to anyone at all about how badly it still made her feel. She had gradually withdrawn from her circle of friends and isolated herself. When the actions of a work mate caused a humiliating setback to her career a short time later it was the last straw; Mia withdrew from all social interactions, apart from seeing Sarah and James, and descended into unrelieved depression.

  But now, in this fantastic situation of having been moved back in time, she was proud of her composure. She still felt that she wanted to scream and rant and demand
explanations, but the conversation with Sarah had given her the kind of reality check she needed. Now she knew exactly where she was in time and space. The dinner at Sarah and James’s place had been in August 2006. It fitted perfectly; about two months after Greg’s funeral and very shortly after the dinner party she had found out about Barb’s affair with Greg.

  She stood in her usual place in front of the large windows in the living area, looking out over the city and thinking back to that time a year ago, well it was really ‘now’, of course. Barb had only just come back from her stint in the UK and the party was the first time they had met since Greg died. And now here she was - rewound’ to a point in time when she had not yet discovered that Greg had betrayed her.

  And suddenly a blinding insight cut across other concerns with stunning clarity: Maybe I can change it all! I might be able to salvage my pride and be the one who makes the first move – if I expose Barb in public I can avoid being seen only as a victim. But will I stay in this time strand? Does it matter? I don’t care if I end up back in that other time. My life here in This Time is the actual present for now. It can’t matter what I do, even if it doesn’t last. Anything is better than nothing.

  Again fear flooded her mind and she tried desperately to be rational. Either I’m mad or dreaming or it really happened. I need something to use as a test to see if this rewind thing is consistent. Has everything reverted to how it was?

  She looked around, outwardly focussed for the first time since she woke. The sofa was back in its old position, at right angles to where she had re-positioned it a few months ago That Time. Last night’s shopping list was no longer on the fridge. A sudden rain shower swept over the city and large drops splattered against the window. Drops merged and gravity created runnels. Absentmindedly she traced the path of one drop after another while she thought of what to do next. A full-scale stocktake would probably be useful. She started in the hall and went round opening every cupboard and drawer, looking in the pantry and the fridge, mentally noting changes.