Parking the car, I replay the picture again in my mind, and the feeling of dread occurs on cue. Like the last time, the smile on my lips swiftly disappears as the initial warmth is replaced by a curious uncomfortable feeling. So much so that I cannot continue with it, and I mentally have to clear the picture from my mind's eye to make it go away.
What is it about the picture? Why do I react so emotionally towards it? I don't understand.
Sitting on the train into London the excitement eventually returns, and the curious incident in the car park is forgotten. I look forward to the rest of the day, which consists mainly of an early morning meeting with Scotia Telecom's creative team, allowing me to free up the afternoon to search for Sarah.
One of the new found joys of being a Partner, as opposed to an 'employee' is that I am completely in charge of my own time. No one tells me what to do. Even Richard. He can only 'suggest'. Which means that I'm free, in theory, to dedicate as much time as I want to finding my family.
In reality, - a term I am learning to use lightly-, it is not so simple. I have clients and responsibilities that I would be foolish to neglect, and which given that I actually enjoy my new career, is also something I do not want to do. Somehow I will have to shuffle the two. I have to find a balance and mix the search activities in between my work schedule.
The meeting in the morning goes well, and I introduce the Scotia marketing department to a few of the team from Cohen's that I have selected to work together to define messaging, imagery, and strategy, and to thrash out the branding. In the coming weeks there's a lot to do. Once we get these components right, we will start to plan media and advertising, putting the finer detail to a pan-European campaign for radio, television and cinema. In the coming weeks we'll be picking some famous name actors to sponsor the brand, and promote it on a two year contract; granted the small print gives us an out if we change our mind, or the fickle public change their mind about the popularity of the big name we sign.
There's a real temptation to work late, and avoid going home. The office offers me a secure environment where I can control what goes on around me. When I jump on the train and head back to Surbiton it becomes painfully clear that I am in control of nothing. At home I have a wife desperate for me to love her, two children who look up at me with tearful eyes, and for whom I still feel nothing, ...except guilt and sympathy, and a house that remains cleaner than an operating theatre, no matter how much of my mess I leave lying around.
The problem is that I just don’t feel 'at home' at home.
And I know that I have started to avoid it.
Perhaps, if Jane just stopped trying so hard to get me to love her, maybe I might start to feel something for her. I am attracted to her…it's hard not to be. But…now I've got to know her, I don't think it will ever go beyond the lust and desire stage. The more time I spend with her, the more I notice that she lacks qualities that Sarah had and the more I see little things that annoy me and make us incompatible. In fact, the more time we spend together, the more I realize that she is not Sarah.
Which focuses my attention even more on finding her.
--------------------
After the meeting with Scotia Telecom I leave Oxford Street and catch the Jubilee Line down to Waterloo. As I sit on the tube I think about what should I say to the Admissions Officer at the teacher training college in Mitcham where Sarah went, or where at least I think she may have gone. It is a long shot, and I know that even if she is a former student and they still have contact details for her, they are unlikely to give them to me. But I have to try. If you don't try, you don’t get. Simple as that.
As the tube pulls out of Green Park, I look out at the blackness of the walls as we shoot through the tunnel. In my mind’s eye I anticipate the moment we should pull out into the next station, and vividly remember what it used to be like arriving at Westminster Station. Sleek, modern, clean and by far the most amazing station on the underground network. Or at least it used to be. Instead, the train arrives at Charing Cross. The wall tiles are old, green, and dirty. The first time that I have ever been in this section of Charing Cross, or on this platform.
My heart skips a beat as I read the title on the wall…Charing Cross, and for a second I remember the confusion I felt the first time I rode the Jubilee Line, and ended up in this new world.
I am surprised to see that the station looks so old. From first appearances it would seem that this is one of the oldest stations in the network. Interesting. For some reason I would have thought that it would be new, like Westminster. Does this mean that in the other world, my world, somewhere beneath Charing Cross station there is a section of dormant line and platform that no one knows about any longer?
The doors on the tube open, and people get off and are replaced by another random selection of tourists, businesspeople, women and children.
The doors begin to close, my eyes casually jumping from the faces of my new fellow passengers back to the name of the station which silently calls out its identity from the old tiles of the curved tunnel walls.
Charing Cross. Charing Cross.
The doors are almost closed now. A woman passenger is moving just across my field of view, but stops in her tracks, poised motionless between me and the sign on the wall. I suddenly have the weirdest sensation that time is seeming to slow down, as if I was looking at the second hand of a clock and noticing that it seems to hesitate for a moment before it continues onwards towards the next second: 'Tick'…, a pause, and then the 'Tock'. An instant that stretches out into an age.
The lady in front of me remains clearly defined, but behind the woman's head the sign on the wall seems to shimmer oddly…the letters of the words Charing Cross shake and wobble, then fade away and for an instant are replaced by new letters, a new name…the color of the old green tiles changing to a modern blue. Looking from the sign to the platform around me, I notice that the whole station beyond the tube doors momentarily changes appearance…a wobble, a distortion in what I see that lasts for only the slightest moment of time…Westminster…It registers in my mind, but as I subconsciously blink to adjust to the visual aberration, it distorts and reforms again, solidifying back to the way it was. My eyelids complete the action of blinking and open, and all is as it was. The doors of the tube complete the action of closing, and the woman in front of me continues moving past my field of view. Outside, the station is once more the way it was.
Charing Cross
What?
Did I just see that?
I blink again, and look around me. No one else noticed anything.
Did that really just happen, or did I imagine it?
My heart starts to race again, faster and faster, and sweat breaks out on my forehead, a surge of energy coursing through my arms and legs. I close my eyes and try to replay the moment in my mind, trying to re-see what I just saw.
Over and over again I replay the moment. And each time, it is the same.
For a second, no, it can't have been anything like that…it could only have been a moment, a fraction of a second…half the time it takes for the electronic doors to close…whatever…the point is that for a microsecond, the sign on the wall changed and reformed to say Westminster…and the whole station followed suit. For a microsecond the station outside the doors was Westminster.
And then it was gone.
The train pulls into Waterloo, and I jump off, crossing the platform quickly, and jumping on the next tube to head back towards Charing Cross.
I am shaking. Not out of fear. But out of excitement.
A smile has begun to creep on to my lips. My heart is still racing, but this time from anticipation and hope.
'Did I just imagine that or was it real?' I ask myself for the hundredth time.
The tube pulls out of the dark tunnel, my pulse probably about 120 beats a minute.
Charing Cross.
I watch as the doors open and the people move in and out. I step up close to the doors, standing transfixed with my e
yes glued to the sign outside.
The doors begin to close.
Please God. Please….
Charing Cross…Charing Cross…Charing Cross…
The doors are almost closed now…
Charing Cross...
The doors close.
Charing Cross…
The walls outside become dark, and we are in the tunnel again.
I look around me. A woman sitting on one of the seats against the opposite side of the tube looks up at me, and quickly looks away. I turn around, and we arrive at the next station.
Green Park.
There is already a train on the opposite platform heading back to Waterloo and I jump through the doors and race the ten yards through the adjoining tunnel, squeezing through the doors of the other train just in time.
I must have imagined it…it can't have been real… I didn't see it after all…Shit…shit…SHIT.
The carriage jostles a little, and the train pulls forward and gathers momentum through the black tunnel ahead. Suddenly there is light again.
Charing Cross.
I'm back in Charing Cross…..
CHARIIIINGGGG FUCCCKKKKINGGG CRRROOOOSSSSSS!
The doors open and I jump off and walk back and forward along the platform looking all about me, examining the station, reassuring myself that it is Charing Cross, and there's no way that I could have seen something written on the walls that looked like the words 'Westminster'. A myriad of emotions race through me. I am not thinking clearly, but what should I be thinking?
The hope and the anticipation quickly mutates to anger, and then the most immense sense of disappointment. A wave of depression that surges towards me, towering above me in a wall that crashes all around me, leaving me close to tears.
Sitting down on one of the plastic bucket seats lining the wall I ride the rollercoaster of feelings, letting six trains go past. Slowly my heart begins to slow, calm returns and I begin to stabilize. Around me people get on and off the tube trains as they arrive and depart from the platform, oblivious to my predicament. No one pays me any attention. Perhaps I am invisible?
So what did I see? Either I imagined it or it was real, but whatever I saw, it's gone now. I'm back in Charing Cross, a very real station within a very real underground tube network.
But, if I didn’t imagine it,… if it was real… then the implications are staggering…
If I did see Westminster, even if only for the tiniest moment of time, then it means that I am not mad. That Westminster exists. That I never had concussion. And that somewhere, someplace, in my 'other' real world, wherever that is, Sarah, Keira and Nicole are waiting for me to come home.
Chapter Twenty Six
Wednesday
Teacher Training College
.
"So, Mr Quinn? How can I help you?" the bursar of the teacher training college in Mitcham asks me as she waves me to a chair in her office and invites me to sit down. "I hear you are trying to track down an old friend?"
"Yes, that's correct. Well not completely. You see, I am trying to track down a friend of my friend, who now lives in South Africa. He's coming back to the UK soon, and I'm trying to organize a get-together of his old friends. I know that one of his close female friends went to teacher training college in London and I have about a month to try and locate her so that we can invite her to the party. I was hoping that you may be able to help me find her." I lie through my teeth, before smiling at her as sweetly as I possibly can.
The bursar, a rather jolly and large lady in her mid-fifties adjusts herself in her seat, and leans forward on the desk, clasping both her hands together under her chin as if she is just about to pray.
"Well, you see, Mr Quinn. Unfortunately, that may be difficult for me to do, because, as I am sure you can understand, it is a policy of the college not to give out addresses or contact details of its alumni. It's not really something that we normally do…" She smiles, a broad smile that can't help but elicit the twinges of another smile on my lips in return.
"I know, but this is very important. You see, my friend is coming home,…I don’t know how to say this….you see, my friend is coming home to die…he has terminal cancer. We're trying to get everyone together for a last reunion…before…," I break off my eye contact, and looking distantly out of the window, blinking, as if to hold back an embarrassing tear. And all without an Equity card, or any previous acting experience.
There is a moment's silence. I swallow, cough a little, and then struggle to say.
"I'm sorry…"
Another silence.
"Mr Quinn, I don't know what to say…it's difficult…you see…"
"I understand." I reply. "Hopefully I may have luck elsewhere then, it’s just that I haven’t got much time…and neither has my friend."
The last part was a bit over the top, but lo and behold…it works.
"Okay, Okay, Mr Quinn. Let me see what I can do…" she says, sitting up straight and turning towards the computer. She moves the mouse on the pad, and the screen jumps into life.
"What did you say the name of your friend was?" she says, putting on a pair of glasses, and blinking a few times at the computer screen.
"Sarah Quinn…I mean Sarah Turnstone. Turnstone." Correcting myself quickly.
I sit quietly while the woman in front of me fights with the latest in modern technology. I watch her typing quickly on the keyboard, and clicking with her mouse on various icons on the screen. Eventually she speaks, excitement in her voice.
"Yes,..yes, here she is. Sarah Turnstone…"
My heart surges and I lean forward.
"Sarah Turnstone…and here…oh,…oh dear…" the woman suddenly exclaims, lifting the glasses from the bridge of her nose, blinking and leaning forward, staring at the screen ominously.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr Quinn, but Sarah hasn't filled out an alumni form or provided us with a forwarding address. I'm sorry. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't help you. It seems we ourselves are not able to communicate with her either," she apologizes, turning to face me.
"What about Mary? Do you have a Mary in that year? She was her best friend, and she might be able to help me."
"Mary who?" she asks, tilting her head to one side and smiling at me.
"I don't know her last name…"
"Then, unfortunately, there is nothing I can do. There are a hundred people in each year. That’s probably about four Marys and I can't give you any of their details, even if we knew exactly which one it was."
"Is there no way we can do anything to track Sarah down? It's really important…I have to see her…"
The look on the bursar's face changes and becomes a lot more serious. She lays her glasses on the table in front of her and sits back in her chair, scrutinizing me intensely.
"Mr Quinn…I sense that perhaps you are not being entirely honest with me? I feel that perhaps there is something you are not telling me…? Eh, what say you Mr Quinn?"
I suddenly feel like a little child being told off by the headmistress in school, caught out at doing something naughty. I struggle to find a way to respond, but am cut off before I can react.
"Mr Quinn, would I be correct in thinking that this 'friend' of yours, is in fact yourself? That it is you that need to see Miss Turnstone again, and not a colleague of yours…?"
I look down at my shoes, and bite my lip.
"I am sorry, Mr Quinn. I am sorry I cannot help you. But, if I may, can I offer you a suggestion?"
"Yes," I reply, looking up at her smiling brown eyes.
"Why don't you try the Electoral Register?" she replies.
--------------------
By five o'clock I am back sitting in my office, searching the internet for details of the electoral register. Why did I not think of that before?
Within seconds Google has returned a whole selection of online companies that provide a search and tracing service, for a price. It turns out that they are much the same as each other, and all offering almost identical packages,
which enable the user to locate the address of almost everyone currently registered as living in the UK.
The blurb promises that they contain the details of over 35 million people in the UK, at over 27 million addresses. But they warn that almost 20% of the population have opted out from the electoral register.
All I need to provide is a first name, surname, and a middle initial, and typically in return for €5 a go, the websites will give out blocks of addresses, fifty names at a time, including their dates of birth, and listed telephone numbers, along with the dates they were first registered at that address.
Thankfully, when I put in Sarah Turnstone, with D for Dinah as the middle name, there are only twenty-five respondents in the whole of the UK.
Who Stole My Life? Page 19