What am I going to tell her?
A couple on one of the other tables looks across at me and whispers to each other. I must look pretty crap. Disheveled, unkempt, a right tramp. I stir the coffee, and notice how the white of the milk forms thin white lines that swirl round and around, before disappearing into the vortex in the middle of the cup.
After my first coffee, I order another, and sit staring out through the window, watching the rain run down the glass, and looking after the people as they hurry past in the street outside.
The minutes pass, the coffee kicks in, and I start to feel a lot better. For a moment I consider taking another paracetamol, but think better of it. I've had enough for today.
I return to people watching. I'm in no hurry. I've missed my last train, and I've got no particular reason to hurry home now. I'm in the doghouse anyway.
A woman hurries around the corner on the opposite side of the road, and runs past down towards Trafalgar Square.
Sarah?
It's Sarah!
I jump up, and dive around the edge of the table, knocking over the cup of coffee on the table, spilling it everywhere, the cup rolling over the edge and smashing on the floor.
The manager looks up from behind the counter at the front of the shop, sees me rushing for the door, and heads me off.
"Oi…Mister! Have you paid yet?" he shouts, raising his hand to stop me.
"Here…" I say coming to a temporary halt and plunging my hand into my pocket, pulling out a 10 euro note. "Keep the change."
I'm out the door, and around the corner as fast as I can, frantically scanning the street ahead, searching for Sarah. A big hand lands on my shoulder, pulling me brusquely around.
"Mister, It's sixteen euros. You only gave me ten."
"What?" I ask, looking briefly at the spotty teenager in his white overall, and then quickly back down the road to where Sarah must now be getting away.
"You owe me six euros…"
"Sorry, listen…take this?" I find a twenty in my pocket and thrust it at him, breaking free and running down the road. The rain is falling hard now, and its freezing. It's difficult to see properly, trying to run and keep the water out of my eyes at the same time.
I run faster, a surge of adrenaline coursing through my much abused body.
There! There she is… She's just crossing the road in front of South Africa House, dodging around a taxi coming up from Charing Cross. I put on a quick spurt, and catch her just as she turns the corner towards the train station.
"Sarah! Sarah!" I shout wildly through the downpour, reaching out and grabbing her elbow roughly as I draw up beside her.
She spins around, takes a look at me and screams, shaking my hand free and hitting out at me.
"What do you want? Leave me alone!" she shouts.
It's not Sarah.
She's got the same blonde hair, and the same haircut. She's the same height, and build, even wears the same coat as Sarah has. But it's not Sarah.
"I'm sorry. The wrong person…" I try to blurt out, but the woman is already running away, shouting loudly for help as she runs across the road, ducking in and out of the traffic.
I look around and realize that a few people are staring at me. I ignore them, and for a few minutes I remain standing where I am, the cold rain running down my face and dripping off my nose, and drenching my clothes from head to toe.
It’s a few minutes before I catch my breath, and realize that I am shaking. The sense of disappointment I have is overpowering. I cannot believe it. In an incredible rush of emotion that leaves me feeling very, very lonely, it dawns on me then, just how much I have really missed Sarah.
For a few moments, Sarah had been there. She was real, and I had seen her with my own eyes. The reaction I felt when I saw her was not something out of any dream. It was a gut reaction, a real reaction that came from my very core, spontaneous and automatic… When I first saw the woman through the café window, my reaction was immediate, instant...no thinking was involved. No dream, whether dreamt whilst unconscious or in a coma, or high on drugs, could ever grab you like that.
Which means just one thing. One thing that I have known for a while now, a conclusion that I cannot fight anymore or pretend that I can explain away by some bullshit about having a concussion or amnesia, or a split personality or anything else like that.
The fact is, Sarah must be a real person. A real person that I have known, whom I have loved, whom I married and lived with, and who is the mother of our two very beautiful children.
Shit, …I miss them all so much. So much…
I want my babies! I want my wife! I want my life back!!!
The rain is coming down in torrents now, a river of water streaming over the pavement around me, flooding the gutters and rushing down the road. Everyone else has dived for cover in the doorways, and the streets around me are strangely empty.
As I come face-to-face with my emotions, I sink to my knees, look up at the sky and start to cry.
My tears are lost in this world of water.
And in this moment, I am more alone that I have ever been before in all my life.
This life, and the one before.
Chapter Twenty One
Home Truths
.
Sneaking back into your own home after an evening out without being discovered is one of those skills that I have always lacked. Not for me, the quiet opening of the door, and the tip-toeing into the kitchen, hoping that 'her upstairs' hasn't heard me.
No.
As I fumble with my key in the lock, I remember a joke I once heard being told in a comedy club.
"…A man comes home from the pub, very drunk. Wife, well, she's been waiting up all night, lying in bed, just waiting for the sound of the door clicking open downstairs, frying pan underneath the pillow. She's just waiting to give him an earful, to give him hell, and to ruin the end of the evening for him.
Of course, we all know that this is obviously the wrong approach for any man to adopt.
No, the best thing to do is to open the door as loudly as possible. Make no pretence of the fact that he is drunk. Then go to the bottom of the staircase and shout up the stairs, "I'm home petal, just going to the bathroom, then I'll be straight up for a kiss and a cuddle, and a bit of you-know-what, and how's-yer-father. Best warn you, darrrlllllinnnnggg,… I'm feeling quite frisky!"
And if he does this, when the guy then goes up the stairs, taking each stair as loudly as he can, by the time he gets to the bedroom, the wife will be pretending to be sound asleep, and he won’t be able to wake her up for love nor money."
I always think of that whenever I get home late, but apart from having a little laugh to myself as I open the door, things are never really that bad for me to have to follow such wise words of wisdom.
Except maybe this time.
Probably best if I just sleep downstairs on the sofa.
The other difference between myself and the man in the joke is that by now I'm completely sober.
As I walk into the house, my clothes are wet through and I am shivering with the cold. So I head straight to the shower room attached to the kitchen and the laundry room, where thankfully I can also get some fresh clothes without having to go upstairs.
The water is warm, and incredibly refreshing. I stand in the jet for ages, savoring the warmth, and letting it penetrate through to my bones until the water begins to turn cold. I emerge from the water invigorated and alive. And very much awake.
I find the kettle and heat myself some water, this time managing to navigate around the kitchen enough to find a tea bag and the milk.
At the bottom of the stairs I listen for a while, but hear no sounds from upstairs. The automatic timed lighting in the front room has gone off, so I switch on the light on the wall, and sit down, relaxing into the soft leather of the sofa.
There is but one thought in my mind.
Sarah and the children.
I have thought of nothing else since the moment I
saw the woman through the window of the café. Nothing else. It's like a curtain has been raised from my mind, and for the first time in a week I can think again. The answers to the riddle still lie tantalizingly beyond my mental grasp, but there is one thing that I do know now. Beyond doubt.
Sarah and the children are real.
They are not a figment of my imagination, or a product of any dream. They are not something that my mind created while I was in a coma, or because of the concussion.
The concussion? What the fuck was that all about? How on earth can I have been wandering around for the past week, believing that I am suffering from amnesia, thinking that the reason I cannot remember anything about this world is because I have forgotten about it all. Shit. All this bullshit about me getting concussion was the excuse I dreamt up to explain to everyone else why I didn't know who they were or why I had seemingly forgotten everything.
Then, wallop, I fall over and bang my head for real, and suddenly my own explanation is being thrust down my throat by the quacks in the hospital, the same reason that I knew was rubbish, but which by this time, my subconscious was desperate to accept because it was the only thing that made sense.
And I would probably have accepted it, except for one thing.
The power of human emotion.
I love Sarah. I love my kids. I miss them. Terribly. After deluding myself for the past seven days that they were not real, the veil has been lifted from my eyes, and I can suddenly see.
I can see everything.
My so-called imagined past is real.
Which, in itself, presents me with a bigger and larger problem.
Where am I now?
And where are Sarah and my children?
--------------------
The phone rings four times at the other end before it is picked up. A croaky voice, full of sleep, and struggling to wake up.
"Hello?"
""Hi Dad, it's me, James."
Instantly alert, "James, are you okay? What's the matter son? Is Jane okay? The girls?" concern immediately showing in his voice.
"Don't worry. Everything's fine. I just need to talk to you?"
"James, what time is it? It's still the middle of the night…", then to my mother, whose voice I can hear in the background. "It's James…I don't know. Go back to sleep dear, I'll wake you up if there's anything wrong…James, what time is it?"
"It's five past four. Can I come round?"
"Sure son, why not? It's not like I've got to go to work tomorrow or anything. Come round now and we can talk. But drive carefully, James."
--------------------
The door opens before I even knock, and I step inside to be greeted by a smile, and a pat on the shoulder. My dad is already dressed, wearing one of his typical tartan shirts and brazes, Mark n' Sparks blue slippers, and his empty pipe in his mouth. It's only been a week but already he has become the typical grandfather figure in retirement.
"I've made us both some hot chocolate, son. Let's sit in the front room and have a chat, shall we? Your mother wanted to get up and come down and join us, but I told her to let the two boys have a talk alone. She's upstairs, but she told me to say she's there too, if you need her."
We sit in the front room, a fake-wood gas fire burning in the hearth, its golden glow relaxing and calming, photos of me, Jane, and our children sitting in frames on the sideboards, and covering the wall. Including one of myself and Jane on our wedding day. Pushing myself up and out of the chair, I walk across and pick it up, staring at the image of me with a woman in a white dress, who I know that I never married.
My father says nothing. He sits there, playing with the pipe in his mouth, looking at me patiently. He is waiting for me to speak. Wise enough to let it come from me in my own time.
"Dad, you told me that if I wanted to talk to you about anything, no matter how weird it was, that I could?"
"Sure son. And I meant it. No matter how weird."
I put the photograph back where I got it from, and sit back down opposite my dad, picking up the hot chocolate and sipping it.
"Hmm. The chocolate's good." I say to kill time. What am I going to tell him? How can I tell it to him, without him thinking I'm mad. How can I tell him that he's meant to be dead?
"Dad,…I don't know where to begin. The thing is, I'm very confused just now. I don't know what's going on any more, and I need to speak to someone else apart from myself. I need a second opinion. Some advice. And you're the only one that I can think of who might be able to help."
"Does Jane know that you are here?"
"No." I shake my head. "No she doesn't."
He accepts that. He doesn't ask any more questions.
"I know this may sound like a daft question, and it's the sort of thing that I should know, at least you'd expect me to know. I mean, I do know, but, what I think is the answer, it's just not what you might think the answer should be…"
"So, what's this question then?" he asks.
"Dad, …am I in love with Jane?"
I watch his face, waiting for a reaction. I expect surprise, shock, something. But instead there is just understanding, and patience, and love and concern.
"You want me to tell you honestly, son?"
"Please…"
"Then I think the answer is no. We actually talked about this just three months ago. You and I. Down by the river. But before you got that bump on your head…The thing is son, it's difficult for me to tell you everything, because I was hoping that this memory loss might give you a second chance. For you and for Jane. So I didn't want to tell you what you told me before, because in a way, I'm hoping that if you've forgotten the things you were unhappy about before, then maybe you won't rediscover them. Maybe you can both fall in love again, get over the things that were upsetting you? Forget…."
"Forget what?"
"That's for you to tell me son."
Quiet.
The clock ticks on the sideboard, and the fire crackles.
"Dad, am I having an affair with someone?"
Silence.
"Dad… please?"
"Yes, son. You are. "
"Who with?"
"I don't know them all. Just one."
"Them all? How many are there?"
"I don’t know son, but your mother and I know about Margareta. We guessed long before you told me about it yourself."
"Does Jane know?"
A pause.
"I think so."
"And what happened when she found out?"
"I don’t know. But I don't think she's confronted you yet. But yes, I think she knows."
I am silent for a while.
"Dad, that’s not really what I want to talk about. It's connected, I suppose, but …" My voice trails off and we sit in silence for a few moments more. I sip my hot chocolate again. The fire flickers and jumps. Almost as if it were real.
"Son, just start at the beginning. That's almost always the best place."
And so I begin. I tell the story of a man who wakes up one day in one world, who is married to a woman he loves but doesn't appreciate enough, a patient, kind woman, mother of two children he adores, in a house he loves. The story of a man who looks up from his book on the tube on the way to work, and realizes that he doesn't recognise the station the tube is stopping at, or even any of the other stations on the tube-map. How he steps off the train and onto the platform, and finds himself in a new world, a world different to the one he lives in.
A world where he has a new job, a new wife, new children he has never seen before, and a house he needs a map to find his way around. A new life. But with no memories of this new life, and only memories of the old one. Incredible, detailed memories of the old life. Not because they are made up, but because they are real.
Yet, with no explanation for it, the man knows that the new world is very real too. In every sense. The people are real, his surroundings are real, everything he can see, touch or feel is real.
My father listens patiently. M
y father, who created me and gave me life. Who helped me grow up, who told me about the facts of life and shared with me at every possibility the wisdom of his years, yet always, always, first giving me the chance to learn and experience things for myself. Never lecturing, never preaching, only advising. My friend, as much as a father. My father, who died five years ago.
"And your friend, this man,…he still loves his wife, and his children?"
"Yes. Very much…"
"So, what does he feel for his new wife?"
"I don't know. Something. Maybe a little. But nothing in comparison…She's a stranger… No, he fancies her. He's attracted to her physically, but he doesn't love her."
My father is silent for a while. I can see that he is thinking, taking seriously what I have said, and carefully considering his reply.
Who Stole My Life? Page 16