She grimaces when I tell her about Jane, perhaps a touch of jealousy, or maybe even a show of sympathy for me, that after all the lust and the longing for her, that she turned out not to be what I expected, or perhaps it was even a grimace of anger, that I had almost been unfaithful to Sarah, her other self, and that I had effectively gone from her to Jane.
She smiles when I tell her about my decision to find her in this world, at all costs, and how my father supported me on this. I see sadness in her eyes when I tell her how I visited her father in Norwich, and found him in such a sorry state. I sense regret there, and move quickly on.
When I tell her about visiting her college and school she laughs, recalling with me her memories of the battle-axes I encountered there.
When I tell her about the visit to the Transport Museum, she looks very serious, puzzled by the explanation I give her of what I found out and my discovery that the two worlds I know share a common past, which at some point diverged and went their own separate ways following different timelines.
When I come to tell her about the death of my father, she squeezes my hand in support and sympathy, but she smiles when I explain to her how through his funeral I finally found her.
I leave the story of my encounters with the Professor until the very end, telling her first about the few times when the portal back to my world opened up again, and how I couldn’t cross through even though I wanted to. Then I mention my visits to the Professor and his explanations for what was happening to me.
As I come to the end of my story, I glance at my watch, suddenly very conscious of the time. It's 5.30 pm. I have to leave soon…And then I realize I haven’t told her, perhaps the most important part, that the final opportunity to cross over to my other life is only hours away. Which means that I will soon have to leave her, perhaps for good.
My story finished, her silence begins to make me very uncomfortable. Her face is now expressionless. I don't speak, choosing rather to let the next move come from her. In her own time. Which it eventually does…
"It's a good story, James. But how does it relate to us?" she asks, quietly.
"It's not a story, Sarah. It's the truth. That's how I know so much about you. How I came to find you. How we ended up here today."
Slowly, I notice a red color beginning to fill her face, from the neck upwards, her features beginning to flush.
This doesn't look good…
"James, you can't seriously believe this happened to you?"
"Yes, Sarah, it did. It is true. Unbelievable as though it may seem…"
"Come on, you can't be serious…I mean,…you don't really expect me to believe this do you?"
"Sarah, I told you it was hard to swallow. But if you can't believe me, please just accept the reasons why I had to try so hard to find you, and why I know so much about you. I'm not some madman, or some crazed psychotic stalker. I'm your husband, Sarah. Your husband!"
She pulls her hand away from me, and gives a shallow laugh.
"That's a bit hard to swallow. My husband? Please, don't push this James. I can accept the fact that maybe you are still suffering from concussion, that you might need some help, or that…"
"Sarah," I say to stop her, reaching out across the table, encircling one of her hands with both of mine, "Sarah. It is true. I swear to you… And it's really important to me for you to realize that I have been completely honest with you. I haven't told Jane anything about this. Only you. Apart from my dad, and the Professor, you're the only other person I've mentioned this to. I needed you to know before I make the final crossing tonight. I had to tell you before I go back to my world…"
"WHAT!?" she shouts, standing up in front of me and causing a few people around us to look over. "Going home tonight? Leaving me? What the hell are you talking about James? I've come all the way here to see you and you tell me all this, which, incidentally, just sounds like some pathetic excuse to cover your ass so that you don’t have to see me anymore!"
"Sarah…it's true! God knows it's true. I promise you. And it's not an excuse. I'm meeting the Professor here in London in thirty minutes from now. According to his computer, tonight will be the last time for me to cross back to my real life. Which means that sometime tonight, down there on the Jubilee Line, time is going to slow down, the world is going to stop, and I'm going to step from this world back to mine. It's my last chance to be with you and the kids. To get back our life together. To be happy with you for the rest of my life… For the rest of our lives!"
"STOP IT JAMES! Just STOP IT!" she screams, pulling back from me, both hands flying to the top of her head and tugging at the roots of her hair. "You're talking rubbish! What about me? I'm here! Not there, somewhere else, or wherever the hell else I'm meant to be. I'm here James, in this world. Here with you. Your world, James. This is your world! Not in some dream or fantasy elsewhere… Why do you want to run away from me?" She starts to cry. "It's rubbish, all rubbish…"
I look up at her, studying her face and I realize that I have no choice now but to break a solemn promise I made to Sarah a long time ago. The promise not to ever repeat now, what I'm just about to say.
Still sitting, I speak calmly and quietly, so that the other people in the restaurant can't hear me.
"Sarah, it's not rubbish, and I'll prove it. In the other world, my world, you told me something that you have never told another human being in your life. Something that you never even told your parents. Something that you told me one night when we were lying in bed together, and just after you had told me that you were pregnant with Keira. You told me then, that when you were at university, you fell pregnant to your second boyfriend. That's why Mike really split up with you. He wasn't ready to become a father. Then after four weeks you had a miscarriage. Mike knew, but, apart from him, I'm the only other person…"
Her face has turned an ashen white, her eyes now lifeless and devoid of all emotion. Her lips begin to quiver, and for a second I think that perhaps she is going to speak.
Then, without warning, she turns, walks away, and leaves through the nearest door.
In the blink of an eye, she is gone.
--------------------
For a few moments I seem to lose all power of thought. I am dumb with confusion. I remain seated, just sitting there, unable to think or act. Just staring at the door she just walked through.
So what should I do? Chase after her?
What for? I have to leave now. In fact, I'm already late, and I have to be in Waterloo in five minutes time.
Or maybe I should go after her to explain.
But explain what?
And if I do manage to calm her down, what then?
Even if I do, I will have to leave her straight afterwards if I'm not going to miss the Professor, and then in less than thirty minutes, I will probably be riding around on the Jubilee Line, watching, and waiting, ready to leave this world for ever.
No. Now she knows the truth, perhaps it's better this way.
So I let her go.
--------------------
The Professor waves at me as I walk towards him, a large camera bag hanging from one shoulder, and a very large video camera clasped tightly in his other hand.
"Excited, my boy?" He asks me as he grabs my outstretched hand and shakes it wildly. "Must admit, I've not been this excited since old Higgs received his Nobel Prize! This is going to be incredible, my boy. Incredible!"
Except I don't feel excited. Instead, I feel strangely disappointed, a little lost, and quite sad. The thought of how much I have just upset Sarah, and the memory of her walking out on me, never for me to see her again, at least, never to see this version of her again, has brought me right down. I feel hollow…
As we turn to walk into Bonaparte’s for a quick drink, he pats me on the back and I feel like a schoolboy just about to run a race, with my coach urging me to go on and show the rest of them just what I'm really made of.
What he doesn't know though is that I'm actually a schoolboy who is
having doubts about whether or not he wants to run the race at all.
When the Professor asks me what I want to drink, and I reply "A London Pride please", I answer automatically, and my voice is distant and detached.
"Come, my boy. Let's sit down." The old man ushers me into the corner at the back of the pub.
"So what is it?" he asks. "What's the matter? Nervous? Worried? Are you scared?"
"What makes you think there's something wrong?" I ask, avoiding the answer.
"It's written all over your face. All over your face…Something is the matter, no?" he asks, his own enthusiasm beginning to subside a little.
"I've just seen Sarah. She came back to London to meet me."
"And?"
"And I told her everything."
"So, that is good, no?"
"No it is not. She's thinks that I'm a madman. She got really upset and stormed out. She walked out on me. Gone."
"So, I am sorry. But in a few hours you will be back with her, for good. Together again, with both of your little children. What are their names?"
"Keira and Nicole. I know, you're right, and don’t get me wrong, I am excited about going home, but…"
"But what, my boy. But what?"
I turn and look past the people in the bar, outside onto the busy concourse of Waterloo. So many busy people living their own little lives. Just like in my other world, so many people, running around like ants. Each with their own set of individual problems. Everyone with a different story. Each person different, but everyone the same.
"To tell you the truth, Professor, I don’t know. I just don’t know. For the past week I've actually begun to ask myself where my real life is now. Here or there? Where do I really belong? Where?"
"Listen, James. You miss Sarah. You want to be with her. You are confused because you just saw her, and she was upset, and being a little sad just now is understandable, because instead of running to hold her in your arms and telling her that everything is going to be just fine, you have just walked away from each other. But only because, you know that soon you will be back with her permanently. And don’t forget the children! They are waiting for you to come home, James. They need you. Your life is there, not here."
"I hope you are right. I mean, I know you are right, it's just that…"
"A few hours, James." He interrupts me. "A few hours and this will all be over. I promise you."
"I suppose you're right." I say. Not completely convinced. "So, what's the plan then?" I shake my head and smile, trying to sound a little more upbeat.
"Well," he replies. "It's six thirty now. According to Henry, the predicted time for intersect is seven-forty pm but the anomaly could really happen any time between seven fifteen and about ten past eight. So, to be sure I think we should finish up here, and then make our way down to the tube. We should find a place, probably on the last carriage, where it’s not busy, and then we should ride back and forward between here and Hyde Park, maybe even go south a little, as far as the station you originally stepped out onto, on your first day here?"
"Lewisham North."
"Yes, Lewisham North. I remember now. The important thing is we must ensure a clear exit path for you, with no one in our way at any time, so that you can get clear access to the doors when it happens, and so that I can film it all happening."
"But Professor, don't forget that when it starts, time starts to slow down and you will become immobile, like everyone else. You won’t be able to film me at all. I might not even get a chance to warn you when I see it begin to happen. Once it really starts, as far as you are concerned, one moment I'll be there, and the next I will be gone!"
"I know, my boy, I know. And I have thought of that. So long as I have the film running at each station and the camera pointed at the doors at all times, then everything will be okay. The camera I have here is a very special one. I borrowed it from the Biology department. It takes two hundred frames a second, and if anything happens, no matter how fast it is relative to myself, the camera will pick up something. So, whatever you do, just wave to the camera before you go, will you? I'll see it later, when I play it back in the lab."
Gathering our things together, we get up and leave the pub, making our way down to the Jubilee Line. We're just about to get on the escalator when my phone rings.
I reach inside my jacket, pulling it out quickly and automatically hitting the little green phone button. Please, god, please let it be Sarah!
"Hello?" I blurt out.
"James…? Oh, James, thank God I got you!! Please, it's Jane, I need to talk to you. I got your letter. Please come home, please? Don't just walk out this way. It won't solve anything…"
Shit.
I pull the phone away from my ear and look at it, as if it will somehow tell me the answer I need to know. And then, without saying another word, I switch the phone off, and put it back into my pocket.
The Professor looks at me, quizzically.
"That was Jane."
He grimaces, then looks away. He knows not to ask.
Wonderful. In the past hour I have managed to completely alienate and destroy two of the most important women in my life. How fantastic. I have truly excelled in my ability to become a complete and utter bastard. I am officially a git. A wonderful, selfish, git.
"Let's do this thing," I say, hurrying past the Professor on the escalator. "I've got nothing left in this world to stay for now anyway. I might as well go home."
Chapter Fifty Three
Time waits for no man.
.
The first train comes, and we climb aboard the last carriage. It's almost empty, and we sit down beside the last set of doors on the train, the Professor sitting opposite me.
The Professor gets out the camera, and attaches it to a portable tripod he pulls out of his bag, adjusting its position and training it on me and the doorway. He tightens up the legs, and tests it for rigidity. It's good.
By the time we get to Marble Arch, we are all ready. I get up out of my seat and stand beside the door.
"So," the Professor says, his voice now serious and all scientific,"...the moment you begin to feel anything happening, you must let me know immediately. Now, every time the train starts to slow down as we come into a station, I will switch the camera on, and when we leave I will switch it off. That way I will save film. We could be here for a long time, and this camera eats up film. I only have four spare cassettes with me."
"No problem," I reply, looking at the doors.
We ride the train all the way up to five stations past Green Park, and nothing has happened. So the Professor lifts up the camera and its stand, and we get off the train and walk across the platform, getting onto the train opposite which is waiting to begin its run back down southwards underneath London.
All the time my mind is flooding full of thoughts, and my body is awash with emotions. I can't stop thinking about Sarah, and her face fills my mind. I think of the last year I have spent working at Cohen’s, and the achievements I have made there. I think of the people I will let down, and the projects that may fail when I leave. The face of Stu Roberts fills my mind. A friend to whom I made a personal promise. A promise which will become a lie.
"Judas". A voice inside shouts to myself again.
I blink and shake my head, and my thoughts turn instead to my father, now dead, and then to the mother I will leave behind. And then I think of my children, my wife, and my old job at Kitte-Kat. What will I do for a living when I get home? It's one thing to decide to switch career, but how will I actually go about starting to get a job in advertising? It dawns on me then, just how difficult it will be for us all when I get back. I know that there's no way I'm going to return to my old job. Not now. But to get a start in the world of advertising I will have to start at the bottom, and realistically what chance will I have of getting a decent opening at my age? And then that horrible thought again, where I wonder what I will do, if after going to so much trouble to get home, I find that Sarah has got ove
r me, or never wants to talk to me again. After all, I did just vanish without a trace for a year. And what if she's now married to someone else?
What happens if I get back to my old life, and I find that I have no life there at all?
Of course, all of these are 'what if's?'. A man can worry himself to death by always going, "What if this?" or "What if that?". The proper response to all of them, is "What if none of them happens at all? What if there are no ‘What ifs?’"
What if it is just Sarah, and Nicole, and Keira, and they are all waiting for me, needing me, desperate to see me again?
As we approach Green Park, I start to get nervous. The moment of truth could be near. At any second, I could have that feeling on my neck, that weird sensation in my mind as the wheels of time come to a grinding halt, and the doors back to my world open up.
Who Stole My Life? Page 45