by Ross Welford
It was a long conversation with Mum, though, and I know it’s been hard for her. I think she’s OK with it all, but she doesn’t really want to know any of the details, any of the time travel stuff. “Eeh, honestly, it does my head in,” she says, and I can’t blame her really.
But I think she’s pretending about being confused. This morning she got a package from Amazon that contained a fridge magnet. The background was a starry sky, and the words were this:
‘Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.’
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Which, actually, is kind of what Dad was saying all along. (She tried to get me to read the rest of the poem but it’s, like, pages and pages long. I’ll probably read it when I’m older.)
I have tried to tell her about Steve and Carly and my life with them, and her, but she doesn’t want to know, at least not yet.
And now there is only one thing niggling at me, really, and it’s Carly. I keep thinking of the high-five we exchanged in the taxi on the way back from the Graham-and-Bella episode. It might not seem much, but compared with the open hostility that had preceded it, that high-five was like a peace treaty after a war. Then I think of the terror on her face when she found me in her room the other day. For that matter, I even start feeling sorry for kicking Jolyon Dancey in that way (but only a bit, if I’m honest).
I want to change all of this, and ignoring it won’t help. I remember Grandpa Byron’s words during our last-but-one (and one-of-only two) rows. “Escaping is not changing, Al.”
I have an idea.
Well, I say ‘idea’ like it’s something special, but all I do is send her a text. I thought about going to her Facebook page and getting all mystical but I figured that I’d exploited that ‘spiritual’ (ahem!) side of her before and I feel a bit different towards her now anyway.
Remember the picture of Carly that I took the night we did the ‘séance’, cross-legged behind the mirror-and-candle arrangement? She said she’d send it to me, and the first time I charged my phone, up it popped like a strange echo of another dimension. I can easily send it to her. I add the message: You won’t remember this. But I do! And then, because I don’t want her to think I’m all stalky or anything, I add, My name’s Al. I’m not a stalker. And I add then change it to which is bit friendlier than a wink.
It’s going to be quite interesting for Carly (or “frea-key!” as she’ll probably say) to receive a very recent photo of herself doing some kind of goth ritual that she can’t remember. I hit ‘send’ before I can think too much about it.
Then there’s the little matter of school, which starts again next week after the half-term break.
I know. It’s far too soon, and I feel sick with nerves about it, but there’s no getting out of it. It’s a different school for me, at least – I’m going to the secondary at Culvercot that I set fire to (in a parallel dimension) now called the Sir Henry Percy Academy. It’s a lot different now. Apparently there’s a new gym, and a science building, and Mrs Spetrow, who’s now the ‘senior administrator’ (and probably close to retirement), has got a big new computer, as have all the classrooms, and there’s dozens in the ICT department.
It’s going to be a bit weird at first because there’ll be kids there that I know from primary school, but I won’t know anything about the last four years. I’m not sure how to handle that, to be honest, but if I keep my head down for the first few weeks I should be OK.
I’m thinking of concocting some sort of story of a brain injury or something that has left my memory affected.
Massive memory loss would be believable, just about, and Grandpa Byron thinks it’s hilarious.
OK now, here’s a funny thing. Remember Grandpa Byron’s copy of The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpana, the one he gave to me, right? And I gave back to the other Grandpa Byron with the note left on Pye’s bed? Well Grandpa Byron – the real Grandpa Byron in this reality – still has his copy!
How does that work? How many copies are there? How many Grandpa Byrons are there?
And, come to think of it, how many me’s are there? It’s just been the one me all the way through this adventure, and I know that because I can remember it.
“Our memories make us who we are,” says Grandpa Byron, when he agrees to teach me his method for memorising every day of your life (and I tell you, he is so pleased to be asked!). “Choose one moment in every day that is worth cherishing. Welcome that moment into your Memory Palace, nurture it always, and it will never leave you.”
On warm spring afternoons like this one, I often go down to the promenade. It’s a proper promenade now, not just a level bit on the top of a seawall. There’s a railing that I can lean on and look out over the sea, and remember a boy called Pye and his new friend Al who had a hamster called Alan Shearer.
And then I pick up my pace and head home, because:
Mum has made lasagne
Dad’ll be back from Homebase with a new ‘Hamsterdam’
My phone has just pinged with an incoming text from Carly, and
Grandpa Byron will be waiting for me to watch MindGames.
I owe huge thanks, first to my agent Silvia Molteni for showing my story to Nick Lake at HarperCollins. Nick tactfully persuaded me to change bits to make it better. Thanks also to the hawk-eyed copy editors, Lily Morgan (UK) and Ellen Lind (US), who spotted some very embarrassing errors. But mainly thank you to you, the reader, because without you, it would all be a bit of a waste of time.
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