Given Time

by Anthony Burn

  I tested the weight of the device in my hand, and then stretching back to get as much momentum as possible, I hurled it into the river. I lost track of the dark object against the night sky and the inky black river, but when I heard the unmistakable splash of it entering the water, a strange sensation overwhelmed me. I’d expected to feel a pang of regret at no longer being able to use the power of time travel to my advantage, but in its place was a potent mixture of relief and release.

  The impression was so strong that I needed to sit down in order to think it through. I hardly remembered making my way back inside as I contemplated the unexpected change in me. I sat on the sofa staring blankly into space while I tried to work out what was happening within my mind. I felt completely different, but in a way that was comfortingly familiar; it was an emotional state I’d experienced before, but not for a long time. A warm glow spread through me as I welcomed back the reassuring condition and I began to understand.

  This was how I used to feel before I found the time device. The change in me had been so gradual over the past two years that I hadn’t noticed it at all. I had progressively become self-centred and uncaring, and at such a measured pace that I wouldn’t have seen the difference in me, even under a microscope. Before my adventures in time I had been placid, contented and empathetic towards others; I could never have imagined hitting another person, let alone what I’d been doing to them recently. The very thought of my actions, which over the past few months had become increasingly matter of fact, filled me once again with the revulsion I’d experienced in the beginning, and I was appalled to think I could have carried out such brutal attacks. The guilt I felt in my newly reawakened emotional condition threatened to engulf me, but I took a few deep breaths and began to speculate as to whether the time turner had, in fact, had some kind of evil control over me.

  The idea both terrified and appealed to me. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would care to be in the power of someone or something else, but at the same time it gave me an excuse for my actions. I couldn’t be to blame if I had been under the influence of a malevolent entity.

  Much as the idea offered a sense of relief for my culpability, I knew deep down that it wasn’t true. All the device had done was turn back time, nothing more. It was a gadget; it had no mind of its own, no evil agenda, no method of controlling its user. It had one function, and one function only. Everything else was down to me. I had taken the power it had given to me and been carried away with it. I had fulfilled my own selfish needs with no thought to what I was doing, and now I was paying the price.

  I felt deeply ashamed and genuinely sorry for all of my victims, unable to believe now that I had been capable of inflicting such suffering, no matter how briefly. I knew I couldn’t even contemplate committing those sorts of atrocities now, nor indeed ever again. My only solace was that I hadn’t left anyone permanently hurt, that none of them knew the offences I’d committed against them.

  Except one.

  The one person I’d hurt the most was the very person I wanted to hurt the least, and now I had no means of letting her know how truly disgusted I was by my actions and the pain I’d caused her. I no longer wanted her forgiveness; it would be enough to show her I was sincerely repentant. I imagined Lauren lost and alone in the city, crying in the darkness, and the guilt I’d held back returned to smother me.

  I curled into a ball and wept for her.

  Days turned into weeks and my life drifted along without purpose. I’d tried going back into work, but although my interest in art hadn’t waned, without Lauren the gallery was rapidly losing its charm. Christa had been sympathetic at first, but she soon became frustrated at my indifference, while I in turn became increasingly annoyed with her seeming inability to make her own decisions. For all of her talk of autonomy when we’d interviewed her, it seemed she had been deferring to Lauren more than I’d imagined, and now she was transferring her need for guidance onto me. We discussed hiring someone else to make up the numbers in Lauren’s absence, and when she told me she knew of a woman with management experience who might be available at short notice, I jumped at the chance.

  I didn’t even bother to interview Ellen. I just gave her the salary she asked for, without adding to it, and she started within a couple of weeks. A week after that another guy, Mark, joined the team. With the four of them managing well together, I began to spend less time at my job and more time skulking around the apartment, often without bothering to wash or dress, while I wondered what to do with myself.

  I’d called Lauren’s parents in the early days after she had left, and when I’d spoken to her father he’d been polite but unforthcoming, leaving me with the distinct impression she had been in touch with them, but she or he had decided I should not be given any information. Knowing how protective he was of his daughter, as any good father would be, I hadn’t seen any point in contacting them again.

  I’d recently spoken to Drew once more, in the vain hope that Amy might have heard from Lauren after all this time, but he reported that there had been no word from her, and because of that his fiancée’s concern for her friend was growing at the same rate as her enmity towards me for having caused the breakdown in their relationship.

  ‘Please tell her how sorry I am,’ I asked him.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I’m not even going to tell her you called. I don’t want any more grief.’

  I disconnected with unbridled despondency. Despite her feelings towards me I still loved Amy, and the thought of not speaking to her again caused me no small amount of sorrow, even if it was a droplet compared to the ocean of heartache I felt for Lauren.

  I’d taken to social media in spite of my dislike of it. Lauren had blocked me from her pages, but I clung to the possibility that she might be curious to see if I’d written anything about her on mine. I filled Facebook with cryptic messages that she would understand about the monster being locked away for good, and the key being irretrievable at the bottom of the Thames. At the same time, I concentrated my tweets on pleas for her to come home, or at least talk to me. The only responses I received were stupid and vile comments from the idiots and trolls, which I just ignored until they went away.

  As the weeks dragged by the weather worsened and by mid-November it had been cold and dreary for well over a week, reflecting my emotional state. I’d come to the depressing conclusion that I was never going to see my wonderful girl again, and I’d tried in vain to work out what I wanted to do with my life without Lauren. I knew what I didn’t want: I didn’t want to run the gallery without Lauren; I didn’t want to look at art without Lauren; I didn’t even want to stay in the apartment without Lauren.

  Without Lauren.

  It had become apparent that more and more of my thoughts were ending with those two words, and it finally dawned on me that there was one thought that succinctly summed up the rest of them: I didn’t want to live without Lauren.

  I dragged myself out into the biting wind that whistled around the building and across the roof terrace, uncaring of the bitter chill that pierced my clothing, numbing me to the bones. I leaned over the railing and stared at the muddy grey river, ten storeys below me. It seemed like a long way down, but I guessed it would take a fall of little over a second to reach its uninviting surface. I leaned further, wondering if the water would break my fall and leave me floundering, or if I would hit the river bed and be stuck in the sludge, fighting as my last gasps filled my lungs with filthy liquid. The river was shallow below the building, often exposing its muddy, rock-strewn bank at low tide, so getting sucked into the fetid slime was a distinct possibility. Or at least it would have been if the river was directly below me, but it wasn’t; there was a wide path between the building and the water’s edge, and I could see that even from this height it would take a long run up to clear the paving stones.

  The concrete would do the job far more efficiently than the river, but even as I pivoted further out across the railing, testing for the tipping point, I knew the argume
nt was academic. I could no more commit suicide than I could walk through walls.

  I shivered, and hurried back inside with a renewed sense of purpose; the act of contemplating my death had been cathartic, and now I knew I had to make some positive decisions.

  The first was to clean myself up. I showered for a long time, and shaved several days’ growth of beard from my face. I trimmed my finger and toenails, and doused myself with deodorant and aftershave before dressing in clean clothes. My hair was in need of cutting, but after some careful grooming it was tidy enough, and I was satisfied that a visit to the barber could wait for a day or two. I left the bedroom feeling more human than I had in weeks, and after making fresh coffee I settled down on the sofa to develop some constructive plans.

  I had two options about the gallery. With its accumulation of painful memories I had no desire to keep an interest in the business, so the easiest plan would be to close it down. It would be harsh on the staff members, particularly the two who had only just joined, but I would give them all an over-generous redundancy package to soften the blow and allow them plenty of time to find alternative employment. The other option would be to put Christa and Ellen in joint charge, and allow them to run the business while I stayed well out of the way. In due course, I would have to make a choice one way or another, but I had the luxury of not needing to do so straight away; I could allow the gallery to stay open, to see how it went before making a conclusive decision.

  With at least an interim resolution in place about the business, I turned my mind to the apartment. For the same reasons, I knew I couldn’t stay here. I loved my home, but with all of its reminders it was constantly bringing me down. I needed to move away and make a fresh start, but the thought of traipsing around looking at other properties, especially on dank November days, was uninviting. I looked out at the fading light over the city skyline and realised with a start that I should probably get right out of London. I certainly no longer had anything to stay for, but the concept had come as such a surprise that it brought about a new sense of loss and I wondered where I could possibly go.

  Somewhere warm and sunny was the obvious choice, I concluded, as I watched the remains of another drab day disappear into the darkness. My thoughts turned back to my time in New Zealand, and the idea of escaping another winter became attractive. Their summer was just starting, and I could be enjoying it within a day or two. I didn’t need to stay around to sell the apartment; I could have all the belongings moved into storage, and place the property with an agent to sell in my absence. It wouldn’t matter how long that took because I didn’t need the money to fund the trip or to buy somewhere else.

  Maybe this time I would stay down there permanently. There would be no problem with the immigration criteria; I had more than enough money to invest to satisfy the requirements for a residency visa. I could buy a place in the North Island, perhaps close to Ninety Mile Beach, where it was always warm, and spend my time on outdoor activities and leisure pursuits. I could catch up with the friends I had made on my last trip, and no doubt I would soon make more. Then maybe, just maybe, in the long run I would be able to look back at this time with fond memories, having forgotten the anguish and the pain I’d caused. My eyes began to smart at the ridiculous assumption, which I knew would always exist in hope rather than expectation.

  Night had fallen completely and I switched on the lights, seeing their reflections in the windows mingle with the bright scatterings from the opposite side of the river. A mirrored version of the first piece of art I’d bought appeared to hang in the sky, its copper sheen floating ethereally in the darkness. I wondered what I should do with the work. It was still my favourite possession, but it was the one that would always give me the most heartbreaking recollection of all.

  As I considered the problem, I noticed another reflection that was both unexpected and unusual. At first I thought it must be something outside, but as I focused harder I realised it was a grey-clad figure standing behind me. I spun around to find a diminutive young man, in ill-fitting baggy jeans and an equally voluminous iron-grey hoodie, facing me from the open front door. I looked at him with mild unease, not only because I didn’t know how he’d got in, but also because, although slight, his appearance and his stance were quite menacing.

  His hood was pulled right over his head, obscuring the top half of his face and creating a shadow that hid the rest of his features in its darkness. From where I was sitting, his cowl gave the impression of being empty, and if he’d been taller and carrying a scythe, it wouldn’t have seemed out of keeping. But it was the way he was standing silently, staring at me with unseen eyes, that I found most disquieting.

  Thirty-four

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, and immediately thought it was a stupid thing to say to someone who was being intimidating. I should have been more assertive to show I wasn’t going to stand for any aggression, but the moment had passed.

  ‘I’ve come to ask if I can have my job back.’

  The voice was instantly familiar, and joy overwhelmed me as I leapt from my seat to go to her. ‘Lauren! Where have you—’

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ she said, her tone urgent, as she took a step back towards the open door.

  I stopped immediately, having not even taken a step towards her, and held up my hands in a gesture of submission.

  ‘I’m not coming back to you,’ she said quietly. ‘I just need to get back to my work.’

  I gazed at her forlornly while her words sank in, and the elation I’d felt at hearing her voice submerged almost as quickly as it had surfaced. I tried to read more into what she’d said, but I couldn’t see her eyes to gauge her expression.

  ‘Lauren, I can’t talk to you with that hood over your face,’ I told her.

  She pulled it back and I gasped in anguish as my heart broke into countless pieces. Her lustrous long red hair was gone. In its place were uneven tufts of auburn stubble, giving the impression she’d hacked off her beautiful locks with a kitchen knife. Worse, her face was emaciated to the point of anorexia, her hollow cheeks and sunken, almost lifeless eyes accentuating the appearance of a skull covered in nothing more than skin.

  I wanted to rush to her and wrap her in my arms, but afraid of frightening her away, I reluctantly stood my ground. ‘What’s happened? What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘I’ve loved two men in my life,’ she said, her voice breaking with emotion. ‘The first turned out to be gay, and the second is a murderer. I can’t risk loving anyone else. I never want to be attractive again.’

  My guilt reached levels it had never known and I felt her excruciating pain, but when I spoke my voice was pitiful. ‘I’m not a murderer.’

  A flash of anger streaked across her eyes, and her frail voice regained its former strength. She yelled at me. ‘No? What would you call someone who cuts women to pieces while he rapes them? Who fucks them until they’re dead?’

  I’d already said the wrong thing and I’d regretted it in an instant, but when I opened my mouth, I put my foot in it again. ‘Nobody’s dead—’

  ‘No. Just totally violated,’ she retorted, her anger unabated.

  ‘No, they’re not,’ I tried to explain. ‘What I did never happened after I’d turned back the time. They don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘But you know. You remember exactly what you did to them. That’s why they’re still violated.’

  ‘How can they be if it hasn’t happened to them?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh my God, you’re so sick that you don’t even know it’s wrong,’ she said.

  ‘I do know what I did was wrong, Lauren, and I promise you I’m deeply ashamed, but I don’t understand what you’re saying. Please, can’t you explain it to me?’

  She looked me deep in the eyes, and I tried to convey my sincerity to her. At length she said, ‘You really don’t know. Okay, I’ll put it into simple terms for you. Those women may not know anything about it, but you know what they look like naked; what it feels like t
o be inside them; what they sound like when they’re screaming. Without their permission, you’re not allowed to know those things. That’s how they’re violated. And they will continue to be violated for as long as you remember their intimate details, the stuff you shouldn’t even know.’

  I screwed up my eyes and my self-reproach overwhelmed me. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’m so sorry.’

  Lauren’s voice had risen steadily during her explanation and now she was yelling at me once more. ‘Did they plead with you for their lives, Kee? Did you ignore them and carry on?’

  I shook my head in remorse, unable to answer her as I remembered the number of them who had done just that, and how excited I’d been by it at the time.

  ‘Did you rape Amy?’

  The abrupt change of tack left me confused, and I could only manage a single word in response. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me,’ she shouted. ‘Did you rape Amy?’

  ‘How can you even think that?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not? You’ve always fancied her.’

  There was no point in denying it was once the case. ‘Only until I met you. I’ve never fancied anyone else since we met.’

  ‘Didn’t stop you raping loads of other women though, did it?’

  ‘Please, Lauren,’ I begged her, ‘I know I’ve done wrong, and I’m truly sorry. Can we not fight about this?’

  She ignored my plea. ‘You still haven’t answered the question. Did you rape Amy?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said emphatically, glad it was the truth. It was natural for her to feel protective of her best friend. If she’d thought I’d raped her, on top of everything else I’d done, she would never have forgiven me. ‘I love Amy like a sister. I could never do what I did to anyone I cared about.’