The television ads will run for several months, and initially we will make several versions which will be filmed in different cities throughout Europe, dubbing his voice into French, Italian and German to play in the other countries.
We hire the Dome, and lay on a big party, all watching the very first airing of the advert on national television on a massive screen suspended from the ceiling. Everyone is there, Richard, all the gang from Cohen's, and half of Scotia Telecom's management team. We invite the Mayor of London, a bunch of actors, one of whom Orlando Bloom invites along and turns out to be Ewan Mcgregor. A potentially exciting moment, except that it turns out that no else has ever heard of him. "He was in Star Wars," I remind him. "No…that was Brad Pitt who played the part, not him. Who is he anyway?" Richard argues with me, over a glass of champagne.
The master stroke of the evening, was to invite the British Olympic athletes to the event, and persuade Scotia Telecom to present the Olympic squad with a very large check for sponsorship. Along with a brand new Tangerine mobile phone for every member of the squad, and branded sportswear and clothing to be worn throughout the Olympics. Not cheap. But considering how many millions of people will be watching the Olympics when they come, worth every single penny, sorry, cent.
It's a good evening. An excellent evening. And a great evening for Cohen's. Before the first Tangerine advert airs live across the nation, I make a brief speech on the stage in front of the assembled crowd. Everyone cheers me, and I hand over to the Chairman of Scotia Telecom, and then in turn to Richard. A few minutes later, an expectant hush falls across the audience and the TV screen bursts into life.
And there he is, the man of the moment: Orlando Bloom.
Two minutes and twenty four seconds. Prime time TV. The advert runs, everyone cheers wildly, and the stock of Scotia Telecom begins its upward rise to staggering heights of wealth and market domination. The mobile telecommunications market is born.
I should be enjoying it all, and although I do a little, any pleasure or pride that I feel is heavily subdued by the feeling of betrayal that haunts me as I walk around the Dome, shaking hands, smiling, and again feeling like Judas.
All these people, many of them really, really nice people, some of whom have become good friends, have given me their trust, their faith, placed their careers in my hands. I have taken their money, promised them my time, my energy, my support.
Judas. Judas. Judas…
I am Judas. That is my name.
Judas, because as Stu Roberts, my new best friend, pats me on the back at the end of the evening, and tells what a wonderful job I am doing, and how pleased he is that he went with his gut instinct and gave me the campaign, I can think only of Sarah, and how much I want to walk through those tube doors, back from this world to my own.
Judas.
As Stu walks over to the bar to get us both another beer, I sneak out the back entrance. Enough is enough. It's time to leave.
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The rest of the week passes in a turbulent war of emotions bubbling away inside me. I find it difficult to concentrate at work, no matter how hard I try. I find my thoughts drifting from Sarah to Jane, to my children, combined with anxiety about what I will find when I do finally make it back to my 'other' life; tinged with a little worry that I may be about to make the wrong decision, and even fear that perhaps the Professor is not going to call me back; or that when he does, he will be telling me that his calculations were wrong and that, no, there are no more opportunities for me to go home. That I am stuck here for good. Forever.
And with these thoughts I realize that I want to go home more than ever. Back to Sarah. Back to Keira and Nicole. My two little girls. My own flesh and blood.
I want to go home.
I stare at the phones on my desk for hours on end, my mobile phone lying beside the red phone, waiting, willing, praying for one of them to ring.
"Come on, Sarah, Professor, Call me…" I chant to myself, over and over again.
On the Thursday afternoon, I look up from my desk, interrupting my now daily routine of phone staring, suddenly acutely aware of another person in the room, and find Alice standing in my doorway, watching me, concern written all over her face.
"James," she asks before I speak. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing," I reply, sheepishly.
"Come on, I deserve better than that. I know you. Something's the matter…"
"I'll be okay," I reply.
She hovers in the doorway for a few minutes longer, her soft blue eyes glowing with warmth and affection and concern, the silent exchange between us a remnant of something deeper, something dangerous. A memory that I do not share and a place I must not go.
I turn to look out of the window, a pathetic attempt to break the intensity of the moment, and when I look back, she is gone. The doorway is empty.
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Friday comes, and Friday goes. The weekend starts and still I hear nothing from the Professor. On Saturday morning I can wait no longer, and I call him at his home. No answer. So I try his office. It rings for a couple of minutes before the answer machine clicks in, and I leave a message: "Professor, it's James. Call me."
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The weekend is a lonely place. The house, still empty of Jane and the children, echoes with my thoughts, and makes me feel uncomfortable. I sit in the garden for hours, clutching my mobile phone. I carry it with me when I go to the bathroom, when I have a bath, and put it beside my pillow when I fall asleep at night.
When I wake up on Sunday morning, I can't stand being in the house any more, and I drive down to the Riverside, where I have one too many to drink in ‘Charlie's Corner’, hoping that somehow my dad will be able to help me one more time.
Finding no real solace in Charlie's Corner, I take my beer outside and walk over to the spot where Dad and I used to fish together, and where he first introduced me to Old Ralph. Who was then just 'Young Ralph.'
Sitting down on the soft grass I stare soullessly into the water, and cast my mind back. Soon I am with my dad again, him and me, side by side. Him a young man and me six, just a little boy. Him talking, me staring at him in awe, listening, absorbing, taking in every single word the man said.
Father and son.
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Since those halcyon days of special time spent with my dad, away from my mother, I have always dreamt of having my own son. Always.
A million times I have dreamt of how I would come with him here to the edge of the river, and sit with him, talking man to boy, teaching him about life, and telling him tales, ---some true, most just made up--- and helping him learn how to fish.
But it was never to be…
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The call came late in the afternoon. I was still at work at Kitte-Kat, finishing up a presentation and getting ready for an important meeting the next day: Sarah's waters had broken early, she was on her way to hospital.
The rest of the day was lost in a swirling cloud of dark, oppressive terror and grief, which, to this day, I have been unable to come to grips with. Better, far better, to bury it, to forget…That way, yes, that way, the pain is not so intense.
By the time I got to the hospital it was all over. The baby had been born. A boy. But as I rushed to be by Sarah's side, the doctors, their faces serious and tired, had restrained me and taken me to a private room, covered with green Venetian blinds, and sterile white walls. As they closed the door behind them and sat me down, a nurse standing on my right side with a hand on my shoulder, the words 'premature' and 'still-born' were whispered softly into the air before me.
And there were other words that floated in behind them: 'complications'…'hemorrhaging', 'damaged womb'…'infertile'…and then, oh yes, and then…"I'm so sorry…"
When I left the room, it was to go to Sarah's side. She was just waking up from a general anesthetic. She was in need of me, she needed my strength. She would be okay, but she would need r
est, and lots of rest…But first I had to break the news to her… she didn't know yet…our son was dead.
The post-natal depression nearly killed 'us'. For her, I know now, it was a way of blocking the reality, of building her own private little cocoon into which she could retreat and regroup, and once again find the will to live.
I helped her. In any way I could. I tried to understand how post-natal depression worked. I learned everything I could about it, I took advice from the doctors, and I fought hard to win her back. And she recovered.
At first she refused to talk about the baby. The boy. She would scream whenever I tried to discuss him: "We have to talk about him…we must…we have to mourn our loss!" But she never heard. Her screaming was louder.
Only I attended the funeral. Sarah was heavily sedated and at home, being cared for by Martha, her mother.
Only I whispered goodbye to our little son as they cremated his little, empty body.
And only I said aloud in the church the name that Sarah and I had chosen for him months before.
Peter.
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In hindsight, sitting here on the river bank now, so many years later, and in another world completely, I realize that while Sarah recovered and came to terms with her loss. I never did.
And for me, that one loss led to another, and then another.
First I lost Peter. Then I lost Sarah. And then I lost myself.
Not until these last few days have I managed to face facts and start the journey back to emotional health. To finding myself.
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A fish leaps clear of the water somewhere in the dark shadows underneath the trees on the other side of the river, and I stir from my thoughts. I blink and look up at the sky.
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Of course, I was blessed. I had, no, we had, two beautiful children. Keira and Nicole.
Two girls. Two beautiful girls. Whom I love and adore, and thank God for every single second of every single day.
But although I never ever mentioned it to Sarah again, I continued to long for a son. To yearn for a son.
A deep longing. A source of continued discontentment. A frustration with what life had given me, and what I had become.
And then, in a moment of enlightenment, I find the answer to the question I have been asking myself for the past year. In a single second of time, my subconscious delivers to me the answer to the question of why I started to look away from Sarah. And the answer shocks me in its simplicity: a basic, primeval instinct that controls all life. The need to procreate...
…Sarah could no longer have children. She could not give me the son I had always wanted and needed. So I started to look elsewhere…to find someone else who would continue my sad, pathetic, lineage…
…and deep down, in some subconscious corner of the most hidden recesses of the workings of a sad, grieving mind, I …I blamed Sarah for the death of my son.
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Although I feel no hand on my shoulder, nor hear my father speak to me from beyond the grave, nor experience anything weird or else somehow supernatural, when I leave the Riverside later that evening, I do feel comforted. Not by the whisky, or the beer.
But by the understanding that I have gained.
For now I know.
At last I understand.
It has never been about Sarah. She has always been the same, attractive, wonderful person. No, on the contrary, it has always been about me.
Me.
This past year, the whole journey from one world to another, all the months of searching…it has never really been about finding Sarah. All this time it has been about finding me. A long, drawn-out, desperate, search for myself.
And now I understand, at last, at long, long last, I am ready to go home.
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It's seven o'clock that Monday evening, when the phone finally does ring and I pick it up to hear the excited voice of the Professor booming down the line.
"James? Fantastic news. Fantastic news, my boy! Are you sitting down? Ready for this?" he asks, although so obviously going to tell me whether I am ready or not.
I am standing in the hallway of my house, at the bottom of the stairs, the summer evening light streaming through the stained glass panel in the front door and casting colored patterns on the floor of the entrance hall. I can smell smoke in the air, probably from a neighbor having a barbeque in the back garden. At the top of the stairs I can hear the clock ticking loudly and steadily, one second at a time, and as the Professor speaks, his voice anchors all the information my senses are picking up to that single moment in time. The moment I finally hear, when I will really be going home.
"The DAP array just coughed up the final answer to our calculations…we ran the program three times, just to be sure, and all the answers came back the same." The Professor carries on. "And it's good news. As soon as I put in your new weight, and took into account the fact that you've been putting on weight in the months since you arrived in this world, we were able to confirm the other events that have already happened. In fact, even more accurately than before, this time to within thirty minutes of each event."
"And?" I ask, impatiently.
"And, the model predicts that the final viable intersection between your world and this, will occur tomorrow evening. Tuesday night."
"Tomorrow night? So soon?"
"What did you expect? Next year? You've not put on that much weight!"
"Okay, so when will it happen? What time?"
"About twenty to eight. Give or take thirty minutes. Twenty to eight! And I'm going to be there with you. I'm coming down to watch it happen. I don't know why I didn't think of it last time…the most important scientific discovery of all time, and I almost missed it."
"You're coming to watch?"
"Why not? I'm going to film it. Imagine, one minute you're there, and the next you're gone. I'll record it. Proof, my boy. Get it all on film. Then show everyone else afterwards what they missed. I tell you my boy, tomorrow night will be the making of both of us. You get to go home, and I'll get the Nobel Prize!"
The Professor continues to speak, but as he waffles on incessantly at the other end of the phone, my mind is already lost in the significance of what he has just said. Tomorrow night? It's too soon!...I need to find Sarah, to meet with her one last time. To explain to her… To hold her in my arms and to make love to her again. And in the same thought I realize that tomorrow night is also the night I am meant to go with Jane to the marriage guidance counselor to fix our marriage.
"James, James…" I hear the Professor demanding attention.
"Yes?"
"So, is that okay then?"
"What? Is 'what' okay?"
"Are you listening to me? I said, I'll meet you tomorrow night at 6 pm at Waterloo station."
"Where?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"6 pm. Just outside the ‘Bonaparte Pub’, on the main concourse. Do you know where it is?"
"No. I don't, but don't worry. I'll find it…"
"Good…I'll see you there then…" I answer vaguely, not paying attention properly as the Professor winds up the conversation and hangs up. Not paying attention because an uneasy feeling is beginning to take over my mind. A feeling that leaves me confused and worried.
For the first time I seriously ask myself the question, "Do I want to go home?"
Do I?
I mean, really?
Then, just as before, I think of Keira and Nicole, and I know the answer is still yes.
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I am sitting in the dark in the 'music room', listening to the music from the film ‘City of Angels’, the CD of which I found in HMV last week.
I am relaxed, and my mind begins to race, thinking about tomorrow, and wondering where I will be tomorrow night. What house will I be sleeping in? And with whom?
Then I start to think of Jane, and Allison and poor little Elspeth. Innoc
ent bystanders, the true victims of this whole weird fiasco, who ask for nothing more than to be loved by their father. Something that I cannot do, no matter how much I try. Which is the point, really. Love is given freely. I shouldn't have to try.
Jane. What will happen to her? I think about this for a while.
Over the past few months, she has grown a lot stronger, a lot more independent. Whoever I used to be, whoever the person I was before the new me came along, that person, that bastard that I must have been, had a negative effect on Jane. Sucked her dry, made her scared and insecure. Took away her self-confidence and turned her into a mouse.
Who Stole My Life? Page 43