Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  On my birthday, I chose to go out for a meal with Richard – I couldn’t hide away for two years on the trot. Because it had fallen on a Sunday, the city restaurant was virtually empty – as in us, and one other couple.

  The meal was going pretty well, until a famous England football manager and his team walked in; and opted for the table directly behind ours. Richard’s voice became louder and he tried to engage me in a conversation about football.

  I took another sip of my wine, wondering why he didn’t just pull up a chair at their table and leave me to sulk over the fact that Anthony hadn’t bothered to leave me a cryptic birthday message. It wasn’t like I was asking him to give me the world.

  The next morning, I sat watching William and Elyse play on the trampoline through the shutters; their moves always made me wince – every second felt like a potential A&E visit.

  While they were happy outside I decided to log onto Facebook; I wanted to delete Anthony because it was painfully obvious that he cared nothing for me.

  I clicked straight onto his Wall and called it my “one last look”, but I had not been entirely convinced that it would be.

  When his page opened up, I could see that he had been busy; it took me a few seconds to digest it all.

  1:52 Anthony’s magical moment…“a celebration of life”…I’m an Uncle ;)

  1:53 That’s getting older…innit…missed it ;)

  My first thought was how nice – his sister was now a mother – but why should I even care.

  But then I looked at his words.

  He’d incorporated my birthday message in with the arrival of his sister’s baby: a birthday is a “celebration of life”, and at each birthday, we get older – and he’d missed my birthday. The thought of deleting him evaporated. Instead, I ached for him to be real, rather than just words on my screen.

  It was a day later when I realised how I’d missed the obvious. I could hear Maddy talking; she was sitting on her work surface, saying something about having to dial different numbers at the prison, only to keep getting the same person with a different job title. I could hear her, but wasn’t really taking in what she was saying.

  ‘Okay, what’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Anthony. This morning on Facebook he commented on his sister’s photo album.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘His sister posted photos of her new baby on the 8th of August. Anthony, commenting on them, has pulled them through to my Newsfeed. But this is what the “X” raised to the power of two in the equation was: 8th of the 8th month.’

  ‘Actually that is weird…even I have to admit that.’

  ‘It gets even weirder…they’ve called the child Simon, the name of the character in the old novel that I stumbled on.’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s spooky.’

  ‘I know…that child hadn’t even been conceived when I drew the symbol, back in October, and I was lead to the quadratic equation before then too. It’s all there on my Facebook; locked in time. No one can dispute it. This isn’t like one of those “…an angel sat by my bed” things, that no one can prove either way,’ I said, whilst pulling one of her stools up to the island.

  ‘No…it’s certainly not that.’

  ‘So, I’ve worked it out…that child must have been conceived around the 15th of November, 2008 – just about the time I sent him my letter. I wonder whether this is why he was freaking out in German…this must have been what he was trying to tell me. He would have known when the baby was due. It was nothing to do with him leaving the band.’

  ‘Could be…who knows?’

  ‘This is why my words had power. It all makes sense now,’ I said, more to myself. ‘I still can’t believe they’ve called the baby, Simon. And…do you know what is even freakier?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘We are in the year 2009 now…’

  ‘No shit…are we?’

  ‘Very funny…the child was conceived in 2008, but born in 2009. And when you calculate two to the power of nine, it equals 512: the number sitting on the other side of the equation. I was right all along: the numbers were linked to the past and the future. This can’t possibly be a coincidence.’

  Maddy shook her head and shrugged. ‘Two to the power of nine?’

  ‘Yes – like 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 - until you get to 512. A two with a tiny 9 above it. That equals 512 and year 2009 is 2 to the power of 9.’

  ‘I get what you mean when you put it like that.’

  ‘Mmm…I don’t think it could mathematically happen this way again, certainly not for thousands of years.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what to make of it all,’ she said, reaching for her cigarettes. ‘Have I ever told you that some of my relatives are supposed to have psychic abilities; I sometimes get bad feelings about things. You should have seen me the week before we got dawn-raided. I sensed that something bad was going to happen. It was almost a relief when I found out what it was. You ask Steve.’

  ‘Ask Steve?’

  She laughed then said: ‘Well…on your next prison visit, then.’

  ‘I don’t know…the whole thing has given me a splitting headache.’

  ‘Well, unless you speak to Anthony properly, you’re never going to know what he’s thinking,’ she pulled open a drawer. ‘Here, have one of these,’ and she slid a packet of painkillers across the island.

  I swallowed the pills. I could feel them wedged in my oesophagus.

  ‘And do you know something else? The novel Simon Dale opened with Anthony Hope’s fictional character talking about his birth. The clues were there…I simply missed them.’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t read the book?’ she said, while pushing the kitchen window open.

  ‘I have only read the first and last couple of pages online. I still can’t face the actual book, because the character of Nell dies in it –I know that much.’

  ‘I’m going to buy you that bloody book,’ she said adamantly.

  I continued to malfunction for the rest of the day. It was like I was running on autopilot, while my head ran over and over the sequence of events.

  Later on, after having a horrid day at the country park, I walked into my lounge, removed several cereal bowls that William had slid under the sofa and then put on Elyse’s favourite DVD; she was taking her moment to have complete control over the television, while William wasn’t around. As she watched, she snuggled under her rabbit blanket and fixed her eyes on the screen. This was her idea of bliss.

  My laptop was left open on Facebook, I refreshed my screen, but a prompt came up asking me to re-type my password. I did what was asked and then I clicked on the photo of baby Simon. A tiny new life, full of “hope” sat on my screen.

  So much joy, so many good wishes from friends.

  I kept on clicking my way through the album, looking for a precise birth date and time, but found nothing.

  Then I wrote number 42 several times over on a scrap of paper with my right hand. Then I drew a circle around the last one; as I thought that time was irrelevant if it only takes forty-two minutes to fall through a hole from England to the other side of the Atlantic.

  What really mattered was what I could see on my computer screen, and on the paper hanging out of the printer.

  They both showed the album as being posted on the 8th of August 2009.

  Nicole Hollis

  11th August – Nicole is writing a book

  18th August – Nicole has posted a video clip…. Lady Gaga’s Love Game

  23rd August – Nicole is not entirely clear but the ‘X’ factors…. they want the money & fame!?! =)

  Anthony Hope

  25th August – Anthony Hope reckons Hasslehoff is a hero! He knows how to make a buck!!! That’s cool in my book…

  ‘So you are telling me that your permission to write this book is based on the thumbs up from David Hasslehoff, so to speak,’ said Maddy, and she put on a cheesy grin and gave the thumbs up with both hands. ‘I can see us all standing in court, trying to
defend this one…this could be the best trial we have ever had,’ and she leaned forward onto my kitchen island, cringing into her hands. I could feel myself cringing at the thought of it with her.

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me it’s plain crazy. But Anthony’s drawn a parallel with David Hasslehoff because Hasslehoff wrote himself into his own show, didn’t he? And I’m writing us into our own book. Just think about it.’

  ‘Even so…and not that I have anything against David Hasslehoff – but can’t you get Anthony’s proper permission to write a book rather than one based on drawing parallels with a complete stranger. Shit! This could be the first book that Steve ever reads.’

  ‘We could send it into prison for him, page by page. Anyway, I’m running with the Hoff – and I’ll deal with any legal angles later, if I really have to. I’ve got pages and pages of evidence printed off to back me up,’ I said, while thinking of the sideboard in the garden room that was chock full of Facebook printouts, stored in blue ring binders that said accountancy notes. Nevertheless, I resisted the urge to show Maddy and there was no way I was going to approach Anthony again for anything. If I confronted him head on, I was sure he would lie again.

  ‘So how does the book end?’

  ‘I don’t know, but my gut instinct tells me that the ending will find itself.’ I hardly wanted to say that I’d got to figure out how to start it first. ‘Anyway, this whole thing is your fault.’

  ‘My fault? Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Why? Not that I ever expect you to say that anything is your fault…but go on…I am intrigued…’

  ‘Because it was you who got me to sign up to Facebook. You also arranged for us to go to Magna at Halloween and if something hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder there I wouldn’t have discovered any of it.’

  She laughed.

  In reality, Anthony was only half my problem – if I was to write about him, it meant confessing everything to Richard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  On the 18th of September 2009 I typed the following Status into my Facebook: Nicole is glad that she bought the hamsters from the farm shop.

  In reality, it wasn’t the E-coli outbreak on my mind – it was Richard going bankrupt. But, nowhere on my Facebook was there even a tiny glimmer of this truth.

  Instead of a sad profile picture, I had a photo of David Hasslehoff wearing a leather jacket and skimpy underpants.

  I watched Richard gather up his things, ready for the meeting with the bankruptcy court. He’d tried to book it for 9/11, but couldn’t; too many people wanted to go down on that date.

  In all the years that I’d known Richard, I’d never seen him like this and as he walked past the kitchen doorway to the lounge, my eyes locked onto the black-and-white photo on the hall sideboard.

  Richard was a young boy on the photo, not much older than William was now, and he was pictured standing in front of the family car with his brother and sister. The car was an old, white Ford Consul with the number plate HK 7533. It had been taken in Hong Kong and you could see the mountains and the water in the background. His dad was working out there at the time as a code-breaker for the RAF, he had been exceptionally clever, like Richard, and had been educated by the Christian Brothers; the Catholic monks in Ireland.

  His dad would never have approved of me.

  As I looked at Richard, it was the boy within who looked back at me.

  ‘Have you got everything?’

  ‘Think so,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure that this is the best way?’

  I’d become immune to the demanding letters and phone calls but I could have lived with them, as long as we didn’t get our door broken down. It was the anonymous text that ate at me more than anything else that had happened to us.

  ‘It’s the best way. It wipes everything out. No more messing with lawyers. If they’d dropped that legal case, then maybe there would be an alternative,’ he shrugged.

  I wanted to hug him, but I couldn’t.

  He left by himself and did not say goodbye.

  Richard had been gone for several hours and I was starting to work myself into a frenzy. I selected the Send option on my third text message, asking him to call me. Then I paced for ages, finally finding myself back at the kitchen window, hoping that his car would come around the corner any second.

  I was scared that he’d done something stupid; I tried to shake off the image of him sitting in his car, trying to gas himself. I was worried that I’d underestimated his despair. As Mum always said, women pop pills and men kill themselves, when they can’t cope.

  I should have insisted on going with him.

  Then I heard the key turn in the front door and Richard walked in, still looking immaculate in his tailored suit. I exhaled a sigh of relief.

  ‘How did it go?’ I asked gently. I was expecting him to breakdown and didn’t know how I was going to deal with it.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I can’t even begin to tell you how much better I feel, Little N. This morning was the scariest I have ever had, but now a weight has been lifted – it is really hard to explain. I would like you to read these pamphlets…’

  I took them from him and thumbed through one of them.

  ‘Nicole, the equity of the house will transfer to you, like the solicitor said. Because there is a charge from the bank against it and redemption penalties on the mortgage, there is no point in them going after it, and I could be out of it in six months, if they manage to sort their paperwork out quickly.’

  ‘Good…that’s a relief,’ I said, as I spotted the title of one of the pages “Beating Bankruptcy”. I put in down.

  It felt like that whole cancer thing again, like when Ilex went down.

  ‘Thankfully notifications no longer appear in the evening paper, they stopped that last year because too many people are going bankrupt.’ he said.

  Great I thought. For once our failings wouldn’t find their way into print.

  ‘It’s not the money that’s got to me.’ he said shaking his head.

  ‘I know…it’s the feeling of failure,’ I said. ‘Ilex going down was…’

  ‘You can’t even imagine how it feels when your job is to give financial advice.’

  ‘You have never given anyone bad advice. You’ve made lots of people, lots of money. You just didn’t take your own advice all of the time.’

  ‘Like the cobbler and his shoes, the doctor and his health you mean.’

  ‘Exactly…you took risks…you’ve always taken risks…most have paid off…but this one didn’t. We have to look at it another way – we are better off now than when you left the house this morning. All of the debt has gone away, and your pension funds are still intact.’

  ‘I know.’ His brows were still knotted.

  ‘And it’s not like we have got to really suffer for the next year. Like you said, you could be out of it in six months. We’re still better off than some others right now. I actually think that boredom will be your biggest problem.’

  His face eased. ‘Six months, or a year at the worst, and it’ll all be over. Thank God I had the sense to put my money into pensions over the years. I’ve just remembered that I got you something while I was in town.’ He ran back to his car before returning with a book. ‘I got this to help with your writing.’

  I took it from his hand. His kindness and support suddenly made me feel like curling into a small ball and sobbing. Richard was helping me to write a book, which detailed my attraction to another man. Just thinking about it made me feel sick with betrayal. I thought back to the words I’d written about Anthony in my opening chapters.

  I would still want him even if I saw him today…

  ‘Thank you,’ I said quietly.

  ‘The other day you said that you were re-tracing events as they happened, well…I thought that book would help you,’ Richard said, as I stood clutching Alex Brummer’s –The Crunch: How greed and incompetence sparked the credit crisis.

  I was moving from a hole to an entire w
arren that I couldn’t see my way back out of. Why was getting to the truth so complicated?

  Richard nipped out again to get us some food; he’d already decided that he was taking over both the cooking and the afternoon school run for the next six months.

  I looked at the book he’d bought again. The very least I could do was read it.

  I saved my own incomplete book onto the heart-shaped memory stick Maddy had bought for my birthday, and moved over to the sofa. I lay on my back, holding the book in the air, and skimmed through it. After about half an hour I jumped up, paused, then ran to my laptop, logged on to Facebook and pulled up a photo I’d posted on my Facebook months ago.

  I was right – Alex Brummer had written about the same H.M. Treasury job that I had seen advertised! That was round about the time when everything started to become weird around me, I recalled.

  Brummer believed that the powerful new post had been created because the Treasury Select Committee considered Sir John Gieve to be incompetent in his role as Deputy in charge of monetary stability.

  On the 9th August 2007, Gieve wasn’t around, because someone in his family had died; an Act of God.

  Richard came back through the door, with his eco-friendly shopping bags laden with food. I excitedly followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this…guess which day the credit crunch officially started?’

  ‘I take it that you are reading the book I bought for you.’

  ‘It started on the 9th of August 2007. On my birthday! I turned 37 that day – and it’s as though the moment I turned 37 my life was on a numerical path that I had no control of: so Ilex Drapes was never going to survive as a company! Once that freak rain started in summer 2007, our company was only going to go one way. And I’m sorry for ever questioning why you never saw the credit crunch coming…no one saw it, according to this book.’

  ‘Well…that’s nice of you to say, after all this time,’ he said, sarcastically, as he put the salad in the fridge.

  ‘Neither the FSA, Bank of England or The Treasury, had any idea that there was a problem until the 9th of August 2007. Alistair Darling really had been in Wonderland,’ I said, as I thought back to him on the front page of the Daily Mail dressed as Alice on budget day. The article was still stuffed in one of the study drawers.