Who Stole My Life?

by C. P. IRVINE, IAN

  Just in case I miss anyone I pay for the list through three different sites, and print off all the results.

  Then I settle down with a fresh cup of coffee and start to go through the addresses, line by line.

  After thirty minutes I have narrowed the choice down to the only three names that live in London.

  Unfortunately, when I look at the date of births I find that one is an eighteen year old girl, and the other two are both over fifty.

  Shit.

  I make another fresh cup of coffee and start again, this time widening my search through the results to anywhere within a sixty mile commuting radius of London. This provides me with another four names, none of whom are Sarah's age and born in 1971.

  The phone rings and I pick it up.

  "James, are you still at work?"

  It's Jane.

  "Yes…Sorry, I had to work late…"

  "When will you be home?" she asks. I can hear the plea in her voice, and I don't know how to fight it.

  "Soon. I'm just finishing up here, I'm not really getting anywhere now. I'll probably be home in an hour."

  When I hang up, the guilt returns.

  As I turn off the PC, and flick the light switch on the wall on the way out, I realize the paradox. Before I was with Sarah and felt guilty about chasing after Jane. Now I am with Jane and I feel guilty for chasing after Sarah.

  --------------------

  The train ride back to Surbiton is quiet, I've missed the rush hour home, but am too early for those coming home from a night out on the town.

  A lot has happened today. I am exhausted, both physically, mentally and emotionally and am not looking forward to an evening of intense conversation with Jane. I just want something to eat, a bath, and to go to bed.

  I need time to think.

  Although the teacher training college has her down as a former pupil, according to the Electoral Register, Sarah Turnstone does not exist.

  It's only as the train pulls into Surbiton train station I remember the words of her father ringing in my ears.

  "Married?" he had muttered from the other side of the closed door. "Not any more she isn't. Not any more…"

  Two steps forward and one step back. In this case, a big step back.

  The explanation for her not being on the electoral register is simple.

  She was married, and she is probably still using her married name. And without knowing what that is, the chances of tracking her down are even less now than they were before.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Thursday

  .

  Jane and I are sitting in the kitchen, two cups of coffee cooling on the worktop between us. We sit opposite each other on either sides of the island in the middle of the kitchen. The coffee is untouched. The house is silent.

  Margareta has taken the children to play school and we are alone.

  We are having a serious chat.

  "Jane" I continue. "I know you are unhappy. It's not something you can hide any more. And there's no point. Why do you want to continue living a lie from day to day. We have to admit that there are some serious problems with our relationship that need to be sorted out…"

  There is silence.

  "Come on, we need to talk about this. I know that you were really upset about me getting banged on the head and getting amnesia, but I know that you were also hoping that this would give us both a fresh start?"

  I pause, looking for a reaction. There is none. "Maybe you were hoping that I would have forgotten all about the problems we were having before, and that I would wake up a new man, and that we would be able to start afresh, and maybe fall in love again?"

  She looks up at me, reaching out and cupping her hands around the coffee, as if she was seeking some sort of solace from its warmth. She looks away and out into the garden, into the distance.

  "I know about you and Margareta," she says simply.

  A tear runs down her eye, and I want so much to reach out and wipe it away, but I don't.

  "You've changed." Her eyes are mournful, and dull. There is none of the usual sparkle, no spark of attraction from her to me. "I don't know who you are anymore."

  More silence.

  "Jane. I can't explain it, but I'm a very different person now. You're right. I'm not the same person that you knew a few weeks ago." I get up from my stool and walk around to her side, sitting on the stool beside her. "I know you know about Margareta. And it's not something I am proud of. It's almost as if I woke up in the hospital and found out that I am a different person to the one I thought that I was. When we got back from the hospital, I couldn't remember anything about Margareta. I didn't know who she was, let alone that I had slept with her. Every day to me is like a new voyage of discovery. I'm finding out things about my past that I don't like, things about me that I can't believe that I have done. Things about me that I know I have to change, because I don't want to live like that. I don't know who I am anymore."

  "And I know about Claire too." She turns and looks at me, her blank face, empty and soulless.

  How can I have done this to her?

  "How many others are there James? How many other women have you been screwing behind my back? How many?"

  She says it very calmly. A simple question. As if she was asking me what time I was coming home from work tonight, or what I wanted to do at the weekend.

  "I don't know. Hopefully none." I reach out to her, resting my hand on hers. "But at the same time I don't know exactly why I would want to have an affair with them in the first place. There must be something seriously wrong with our relationship for me to want to do that." Her eyes squint and narrow and I can see a flash of pain shooting through her. "Jane, I'm sorry. I'm not implying that you are doing anything wrong, or that it's your fault. It may be all my fault. But the point is that there is something wrong, and we both have to address it. Together. We can't just keep going around pretending as if there is nothing wrong. And you have to realize that it doesn’t matter how clean and tidy the house is, it's me, …us…that needs to be cleaned up, not the house. Stop wasting your time trying to sweep everything under the carpet and imagining that it’s all going to be all right. It won't…"

  "What do you mean it won't?" she says, looking up at me. I can see a sudden anxiousness in her eyes.

  "Wrong word. I mean. It won't get better unless we do something about it…" I stroke a hair away from one of her eyes, and follow the contour of her face with my index finger. She lifts her hand from her lap and grasps mine, holding on tightly. "We need to work on our relationship Jane, but I think we both know that it’s not guaranteed that we can get things back to the way they were. I don't know what went wrong, or how we got to where we are today…and there is always the possibility that we…can't…fix things…But there's no point in living a lie. We have to do something. And we have to start now…"

  "How?"

  "The first thing we have to do is to ask Margareta to leave. She can't live here anymore. I was hoping that maybe you could talk to her today or tomorrow, the sooner the better. Tell her that we are going to try and look after the children ourselves, and that we won't need her here anymore."

  "Why me? Why do I have to tell her?"

  "Because if I do, she'll just think it's about me rejecting her, and I don't want to hurt her."

  "Oh, so that’s great. You don't want to hurt Margareta, but you don't care about how much you've hurt me!"

  "Jane, that's not true. That’s why we're having this conversation now. I do care that I've been hurting you, and I'm fed up with it. I'm fed up with living a lie, with hurting people all around me. I just want it all to stop. For us all to face up to where we are, and how we got here, and to put an end to all the deliberate lies and hurting."

  Jane lets go of my hands, and gets up, going over to the kettle and flicking the switch to boil the water again.

  "Okay, okay. I'll do it."

  "Maybe you could talk to the Au Pair agency. If we give her a good reference
perhaps we can help arrange for her to get another family…"

  "I know what to do James. Just leave it with me." A moment’s silence. "And us? How do we fix us?"

  "Step by step, Jane. Step by step. One day at a time." I get up and walk over to her, wrapping her into my arms and hugging her close.

  We stand like that for a long time, holding each other tight, and worrying about the future and what it holds.

  --------------------

  When I eventually make it into the office, it's late. 1pm. Just enough time to eat a few sandwiches and prepare for the afternoon ahead.

  The first thing on the agenda is a meeting with the Dome Committee. Things are progressing. I've put together a small team of creatives to start to develop the proposition, and it’s important to start going over some of the basics with the Dome team. To make sure we both understand where we are coming from and where we are going to.

  I've appointed a manager to oversee the project and he has already drawn up a schedule of contact meetings between ourselves and the client. The good news is that to a certain extent I can sit back and let them get on with it. From now on I plan only to spend an hour or two a day checking what is happening, making sure I agree with the work flow being developed, and ensuring that it is on track.

  Likewise with the Scotia Telecom deal. Which means that both projects should start to run pretty much without me, enabling me to concentrate on finding Sarah and my children.

  The meeting with the Dome Committee takes place in their offices at 2.30 pm and it only lasts an hour. Outside on the street afterwards I make my excuses to Claire and the rest of the team, and catch a taxi by myself down to Covent Garden.

  Since my experience on the tube yesterday afternoon a question has been working its way around my brain, popping up periodically, and demanding an answer. And the place most likely able to provide me the answer is situated in the corner of Covent Garden. The London Transport Museum.

  After forking out the five euro entry fee, I spend fifteen minutes wandering around the exhibits, an interesting collection of old buses and trains, some of which I may have been on myself when I was a kid. But nothing which helps me find the answer that I'm looking for.

  Eventually, I approach one of the guides who has just managed to free himself from a group of Japanese tourists all wanting photographs to be taken with their own cameras standing together beside an old horse-drawn bus. As the guide hands back the last of the cameras to its owner, I ask him.

  "Excuse me. I was wondering if you could maybe help me with an enquiry about the design of the tube network. I'm interested in trying to find out more about the Jubilee Line, when it was built, who designed it, that sort of thing?"

  "The Jubilee Line? No problem. I'm sure I can help you, but if you don't mind, could you come with me over to my office? I'm just going on my tea-break, and besides, I can help you better there…"

  I follow him over to an office in the corner, which is actually the inside of a very old red Routemaster London bus. We step inside, and the guard takes off his bus-conductor-style cap, and puts it on his desk beside a computer.

  "Draw up a pew," he invites me. "And take a look at this," he says, handing me down a large, blue book from one of the shelves running along one side of the bus, and flicking it open to where a small piece of protruding blue plastic marked 'Jubilee' is stuck to the corner of one of the pages.

  '"The London Tube Network" by Adrian Richards,' he says. "The best book there is on the London Tube network. You'll probably find most of what you want to know in that section. Anyway, since I'm making one, do you fancy a cup of tea while you read it?"

  While the friendly assistant makes us both a cup of tea, I start to quickly skim through the chapter on the Jubilee Line. I only get to half way down the first page and my heart almost stops.

  "….The Jubilee Line was inaugurated on the 1st May 1979, operating between Stanmore and Charing Cross. Since then it has been expanded several times, and the line now serves 21 stations, some of which were originally opened over 100 years ago. In fact, the northern end of the line between Wembley Park and Stanmore was originally opened in 1932 as a branch of the then Metropolitan Railway. Later, the local services from Finchley Road to Wembley Park and the Stanmore branch became part of the Bakerloo Line in 1939, when the London Passenger Transport Board opened a new section of twin tube tunnels between Baker Street and Finchley Road with stations at St John's Wood and Swiss Cottage.

  The first decision to build new extensions to the above and create a whole new underground line was made in 1969, when the requirement to build a new line to relieve the over-pressed Bakerloo line in the West End was finally recognised. The first stage of the plan came in the form of a new Line to link up the four km (2½ miles) of twin tunnels between Baker Street and Charing Cross - with the former Bakerloo Line branch between Baker Street and Stanmore.

  Originally called the Fleet Line, following the successful opening of the new line, further plans were made to extend it along the line of Fleet Street (hence its original name) through the City of London and then south-east to Lewisham. However, although the extension was finally authorized in 1972, political developments in 1990 prevented commencement of the planned development.

  During the early nineties, talk of development of the Canary Wharf region of East London, coupled with a proposed plan to build a large "Great Exhibition" style centre to promote British achievement and to celebrate the new millennium, led to revised plans being drawn up. Objections to the location of the proposed "Millennium Dome" being situated in Greenwich, led eventually to two alternate plans being drawn up. Although both new routes now took the newly named Jubilee Line extension south of the Thames via Waterloo, one now ended up back north of the river at Stratford, whereas the other one took it south down to East Dulwich, via South Lewisham.

  The first of these projected routes passed through Waterloo, and then onwards to new stations at Southwark, London Bridge, Bermondsey, Canada Water, Canary Wharf, North Greenwich (proposed site of the Millennium Dome), Canning Town, West Ham and Stratford.

  When the transport committee's report into the proposals highlighted the fact that the proposed sight for the construction of the Millennium Dome in Greenwich was an area of reclaimed land, which contained buried poisonous industrial waste, effectively making the site unsuitable for construction of a public project, the first plan lost popularity and was later completely abandoned when it was subsequently agreed to build the Millennium Dome at the north end of Hyde Park.

  The plan that was finally adopted in 1993 was to add a new section from Green Park, starting with a new station at Westminster, before diving beneath the Thames to Waterloo, and then running on to stations at Lambeth East, Alworth Street, New Cross Gate North, Lewisham North, Lewisham South, Patton Street, and then finally on to the last station at East Dulwich.

  Unfortunately, as soon as work started at Waterloo to extend the line northwards towards Westminster, the project ran into trouble. It quickly became apparent that sinking a new deep level underground station and tunneling so close to Westminster and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament could pose unexpected risks to the structure of these world heritage buildings. After a much publicized and heated debate, in which the decision to redirect the line was decided by only one vote (22-20) of the committee set-up to oversee the line's construction, this part of the plan was abandoned. Consequently, it was decided to continue to run the northern section of the line through the existing Charing Cross station, and then onwards and northward to Green Park.

  After several more delays, and a greatly increased budget, the extended Jubilee Line was finally joined to the existing line on 28th December 1999…."

  I look up from the book, the museum guide standing in front of me, offering a steaming mug of tea towards me.

  "You look like you've just seen a ghost. Are you alright?" he asks, handing me the cup.

  "Ghost?" I reply, absentmindedly, my mind not quite with him y
et. "Almost…"

  --------------------

  I leave the museum desperate for some fresh air. I walk around the square, listening to the buskers singing songs and watching the jugglers trying to impress the crowds and con as much money out of their pockets as possible.

  In my mind’s eye, the edges of a jigsaw puzzle are slowly beginning to come together.

  A large, complex, jigsaw puzzle that has many pieces and forms a picture I simply do not understand. Yet...

  Tiny strands connect the existing world to my previous world. Little strands of continuity that point to the two worlds being interconnected after all.

  From what I have just read, including the world I grew up in, it would seem that Charing Cross has always been a station on the Jubilee Line. In my world, in the 1990's when the Jubilee Line was extended, the station was mothballed and Westminster was built. But in this 'current' world, the Charing Cross Jubilee Line branch was never abandoned, and is still being used. It seems that back in the early nineteen-nineties there were two plans to extend the Jubilee Line. The first of these plans was the one that was adopted and built in my previous world, and the other plan was the one that was built in my current world. Two different worlds, with two different Jubilee Lines. But both coming from a common past. My past.