Who Stole My Life?

by C. P. IRVINE, IAN

  I wander round to the back, and find myself amongst a group of parents and teachers, spectating from the sidelines of a couple of rugby and hockey pitches. Feigning interest I join the nearest group and cheer when they do, showing disappointment at all the right moments.

  When I soon realize that I have been cheering for the wrong side, the visiting team, I move round to another group of parents and try again. After a while I start chatting to another man, a proud father whose son just scored a try, and ask him if he is familiar with the school teachers…has he ever heard of Mary Wright?

  "The Head Teacher? Of course I have. Damn fine teacher too. Done wonders for the school."

  Excellent. She's still teaching here. But, although that is great news, at the thought of seeing Mary again, a tingle of foreboding travels down my spine and I shiver. Clenching my teeth, I swallow and keep looking for her, scanning the rest of the crowd just in case she's here.

  After searching around the rest of the pitches, I eventually return to my car, and drive to the house where I last visited her.

  It's not fair to hang all this on Mary. It's not her that I’m scared of. It's just fear by association. Mary is a trigger point for the worst of my past, the same feelings that I strive to keep buried, but which threaten to bubble up and spill out, bringing it all back again.

  Mary has been Sarah's best friend for as long as I have known her. They went to school together, stayed friends through college, and have always been there for each other, through thick and thin.

  It was Mary that Sarah ran to when she left me, six years into our marriage, leaving me to look after Nicole and Keira, and forcing me to take leave of absence from work. A whole month of playing mum with two tiny toddlers, no sleep, worry, and fear. Fear that Sarah was not going to come home. Fear that our marriage was over. Fear that our family had died. And fear, above all, for Sarah's health.

  On top of the everything else, the pain and the grief,…post natal depression.

  Three words that completely understate the devastation this little understood condition can wreak upon families, and the women who are struck down by it.

  Sarah was always a doting mother, but after the pregnancy …, she became a shadow of her former self, crying all the time, unable to cope, withdrawn, and blaming me for all the confusion she felt. Even though the true cause of it all was no fault of either of us and she couldn't see I was confused and upset by it all too…

  Until one day, while I am giving Keira a bath, she slips out the front door and disappears. Gone into the night, the note she left behind on the table saying only three things.

  "Sorry. I'll call you. Do not try to find me."

  After three days of pure hell, Sarah eventually did call, and I found out she was with Mary, where she said she wanted to stay until we could resolve things. Resolve things? What had either of us done wrong? It was no one's fault, although God knows, how much I have blamed myself for it all. There is not a day that goes past where I still have to fight to keep a lid on my true feelings. To control the demon fear, and the sadness.

  The doctors were great. They helped me to understand as much as possible about Sarah's condition,…not mine, they did nothing for me.. except to explain to me that it was not my fault, and that is was equally not Sarah's. And that with luck, and with understanding, and treatment, it would pass.

  During the whole time my mum and dad were great, especially my mum, helping me, supporting me, encouraging me, and looking after the girls as much as they could.

  It wasn't easy, but I learned how to support and try and understand what was happening to Sarah, and eventually after a month, she did come home. A few months later, she was fine, and things were back to normal. Well almost. We never talked of it again. We buried the whole thing, both scared to talk about it, even though the doctors told us we should. Both wanting to forget the cause, and to live for the future with Keira and Nicole. To be grateful for the wonderful children God had given us.

  Sarah got better. But perhaps I never did.

  --------------------

  Looking back on it, the experience brought me closer to Nicole and Keira, giving me an opportunity to spend time with them both that I would never otherwise have got.

  But driving up to Mary's house now, the memories all come flashing back, and the irony of it strikes me. Once again I am coming to Mary's to find Sarah. The sense of déjà vu is overpowering.

  The house is a little cottage, perched high on the side of the valley on the edge of the Ironbridge Gorge. The front windows look out straight onto the valley below, and the picturesque view of the first bridge in the world to be built of iron, which still spans the fast flowing river beneath it.

  I have always been very jealous of Mary, living in such a fantastic spot. Rural. Idyllic. Stress-free. None of the London rat-race here, that's for sure.

  I knock, stepping back from the door, as I hear footsteps.

  The door opens, and Mary smiles at me.

  "Hello, can I help you?"

  It's actually her. I can hardly believe it. I feel an incredible urge to grab her and hug her to bits, and it takes all my willpower to resist it. It's hard to believe that she can't recognize me. She looks exactly like the last time I saw her, the same hairstyle, the same style of glasses, almost exactly the same clothes. Surely she must know me…

  The little speech I had practiced over and over in my mind, just in case she was here, immediately evaporates, and I'm left floundering like an idiot on her doorstep. It's hard not to be informal with her, after all I've known her for years…but instead I force myself to pretend that I don't know her.

  Which I don't. In this world, she has never met me before.

  "Hi. We haven't met. My name is James Quinn." I hand her my Cohen business card to make it look a bit more official, and to help reassure her that I am not a mad axe-wielding stranger, knocking on her door without any introduction. "I am trying to track down a long-lost friend from school. Sarah Turnstone? I think she might be a good friend of yours and I was hoping that you may be able to put me in contact with her?"

  She opens the door a little wider, and immediately a big golden Labrador comes up to her side, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, panting and drooling, while his nose twitches wildly as he sniffs the air around me. Mary's dog Sam. The same dog she has always had as long as I have known her. Just then Sam barks excitedly and starts towards me, pushing past Mary in the doorway. Mary immediately reaches down and calmly yanks him back by the collar.

  "Don't mind Sam. He's harmless." She says in passing as she looks at my business card, as if she's said the same thing a thousand times over the years to everyone who rings her doorbell. "Sarah? Yes, I know her…"

  My heart skips a beat. Literally. It's like something has just jumped inside my chest, and the feeling it leaves forces me to cough. My pulse starts to race.

  "You know Sarah?" I ask in disbelief.

  "Yes. She's a good friend. Does she know you?" She looks up from the card, questioningly.

  "I don't know, " I answer truthfully. Is there any chance that in this world she may know who I am? "... I doubt it…" I suddenly remember my practiced lines. "I was a very spotty insignificant kid at school. I don't think any of the pretty girls noticed me then." I laugh as I speak. It has the desired effect. Mary laughs too.

  "Well, you certainly turned out nice enough. They probably don't ignore you now," she blurts out quickly, her face turning a little red as she realizes that the compliment was perhaps just a little too forward. An embarrassed silence follows.

  "Can you tell me where she is living now,...if she's married, ...a little about her?" I ask.

  Mary hesitates.

  "She lives in London. Divorced now. She was married to a right bastard…" she stops in mid-sentence. "...And actually, maybe I shouldn't give you any more of her details until I have spoken to her?"

  "Could you give me her home number? And I could call her? If she doesn't want to meet or talk to me anymo
re, she doesn't have to give me her address or anything else?" I suggest.

  She thinks about it for a moment. Sam barks loudly again, straining to break free of Mary’s grip, his large brown eyes fixed on me, his tongue hanging out, panting heavily.

  "Sam, be quiet," Mary shouts, scowling at her dog momentarily before looking back at me. "I don't know…" she says to me now, shaking her head slightly.

  I reach inside my jacket pocket, and pull out a letter I wrote in the office yesterday afternoon.

  "No problem. I understand. Just in case you were a little uncomfortable in handing out her contact details to a relative stranger, I thought it might be wise if I wrote a letter of introduction. Here," I say, handing the white envelope to her. "You can read it if you want. I would really appreciate it if you gave it to her, along with my card. Then when she wants, she can either call me at work, or get me on my mobile. Both numbers are on the letter too…"

  She looks at the letter, taking it gently from my outstretched hand.

  Now free, Sam suddenly jumps forwards and up at me, his big paws scrambling against my chest, his large, sloppy tongue starting to lick my face.

  "Sam! Sam!" Mary shouts quickly, stepping forward and grabbing hold of his collar, and pulling him down.

  "I'm sorry about this. Don’t worry, he’s only being friendly. For some reason he's really excited to see you. He's normally really shy, but he obviously likes you… it's almost as if he knows you. He must have mistaken you for someone else."

  "Maybe not," I say. "But they say, dogs are good judges of character. If Sam likes me, then there's no reason for Sarah to be worried either."

  "True, maybe… Listen, if you leave this with me, I'll give her a call, and send her this when she gets back from holiday. She's away for another couple of weeks."

  "Somewhere nice?" I ask.

  "Cuba. One of those adventure singles holidays. Not that she's looking for anybody or anything. Just that it's nice to have company."

  "I understand, don't worry. Mary, if you could talk to her when she gets back that would be great."

  "Okay. By the way, how did you know that I know Sarah? And how do you know my name?" she asks, pulling hard on Sam's collar - he is fighting desperately to jump up and greet me again.

  "Another of Sarah's friends," I lie. Time to leave: best quit whilst I'm ahead. "Okay, thank you Mary. I'd better be going now. I've got to get back to London."

  "You drove all the way up from London?" she asks, almost surprised.

  "Yes."

  "Wow. You must want to get in contact with her pretty badly," she pauses. "Why?"

  "Because sometimes we lose contact with people and regret it, and then spend the rest of our lives, wondering what it would have been like to have known them better. I woke up one day, and realized that it was silly, always wondering…why not do something about it?"

  Mary smiles back. I turn to go.

  "Is that your car?" she asks.

  "Yes."

  "Fantastic. I haven't seen anything like it before," she says, coming down the path behind me, Sam by her side.

  "Believe me when I say that until a few weeks ago, neither had I." I open the door, and turn towards her, just before I bend down and climb in.

  "Thanks Mary. I appreciate it. Say 'Hi.' to her from me, and let her know that I hope she will call me."

  I wave, close the door and drive off.

  I've never been more nervous in my life.

  Please God, please get Sarah to call me.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Dad and Mum

  .

  On Saturday evening I am still in Jane’s good books. I am even beginning to become comfortable with living in the big house, which I have now dubbed Castle Quinn. On Saturday night, I ventured up into the massive attic space above the house, and looked around at some of the rubbish stored up there.

  When I came across some of my old school books, I sat down to read some of the school work and essays I did in English class in primary school, so many years before. I was eight years old. Young, annoyingly smart, and ambitious: I wanted to be the best train driver in the world, and to drive the fastest and biggest train between Scotland and England. It said so, right there in my tiny, eight-year old almost joined up hand-writing. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what my old school looked like, and laughed aloud when I recalled the day when a group of us playfully tied up the trainee teacher and locked her in the cupboard for an hour.

  We got in a lot of trouble, one hundred lines of "I must respect Miss Stewart and refrain from tying her up and leaving her in the school cupboard." My parents were called down to the school, and I can't help but smile again when I remember how my father laughed when the headmaster told him what we had done.

  As I sit in the quiet attic space above my house, holding work which I actually wrote with my own hand so many years before, I think back to the incident on the Jubilee Line when the sign on the wall changed from "Charing Cross" to "Westminster" and back. I think about the history of the Jubilee Line I read about at the transport museum, and about the paperweight from my grandmother that sits on my desk at work.

  Strands of continuity.

  I realize then, perhaps for the first time, that in this world, the life I am living now continues seamlessly right back to the day of my birth without a break. This world and my world, my real world, share a common past.

  Except there must be a single point of time when the two worlds diverged. Where one world took a future that headed in one direction, and the other diverged on a completely different path. In my world, someone decided to build the Jubilee Line through Westminster to Canary Wharf, and in this world, the decision went the other way, and the line was built through Charing Cross down to East Dulwich.

  When did my worlds diverge? What day? What minute? What second? And why?

  Perhaps I will never know.

  But for whatever reason, I somehow stepped from one world to the other. Both with the same past, but each with a very different future.

  I think of Sarah, and the letter I wrote her.

  Will she contact me? When she reads the letter will she be curious enough to wonder who the spotty little boy at school was that wants to meet her? Of course, I was never in her class, or her school, and she has never ever met me before, but if she reads the letter and is curious, hopefully she will call me to find out. Just one phone call, and I will take it from there.

  But what happens if she doesn't take the bait?

  I mull this question over in my mind, over and over again. I worry about it that Saturday evening, as I lie awake in bed with Jane by my side, and all the next day when we go over to my parents for Sunday lunch.

  After the roast chicken and trifle, Dad and I disappear to the shed at the bottom of his garden. Whenever he closes that shed door behind him, he enters his own little world. A real 'Shedder'. My mum would never dream of disturbing him here. This is where he comes to escape, to potter around, sometimes doing absolutely nothing, but at other times, making flies for fishing, or making something out of wood for his grandchildren. Or simply to sit and read, and drink a quiet beer.

  The shed is more like a mini-house. Wired for sound, TV and with its own fridge, a long, spacious wooden workbench, and a rack of tools and DIY gear that even B&Q would be jealous of.

  "So," Dad says, as he tosses me a beer from the fridge, and we both sit down in two old armchairs with broken springs, the smell of wood and sawdust heavy in the air. "Did you find anything out yesterday?"

  "Yes. I met her best friend, and gave her a letter of introduction to pass on. She's away on holiday at the moment, but she'll be back in a few weeks." I tell him, and then go on to update him on the rest of the search for Sarah.

  "Dad…what do think I should do if she doesn't call me when she gets the letter?"

  "Were you happy with what you said in the letter?" he asks.

  "Yes," I reply. "I read it about a thousand times before I finally decided that th
ere was nothing more I could add. It’s the best I could make it."

  "Then, if she reads it and decides not to call you, perhaps you should just leave it. By then you will have done your best. And there's nothing more you can do than that."

  I start to protest, but my Dad cuts me short.

  "Listen son," he says, blowing on the top of the can, and pulling back the ring-pull. "My dad always used to say to me, that if something is meant for you, then it won't pass you by. I've always believed in those words. Always. You've done your best to contact her, to let her know you want to meet her…if she decides not to contact you back, then let it be."

  "...But if I get to speak to her, I would be able to explain things better…"

  "That's as maybe, but I wouldn't chase that through your friend. If she doesn't reply to you, and you are meant to meet, then it will happen another way. Believe me. If it's meant to be, it will."