Then and Always (29 page)

Again I didn’t reply.

“You okay?” asked Jimmy kindly, taking his hand briefly off the wheel to give mine a reassuring squeeze.

“He didn’t know me.” My voice was dull and toneless, but Jimmy’s ears still discerned the pain.

“I know.” There was compassion and understanding in his tone.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised, I should have been expecting it. But he was the first person who I’ve approached who I know well, who I really care about. He’s my friend, for God’s sake, and he didn’t know who the hell I was!” I thought
of the pub full of familiar faces, none of whom had recognized me. “No one does.”

I couldn’t blame Jimmy for failing to come up with some soothing rejoinder. What on earth could he say that could offer any comfort?

“It’s almost as though it’s not
me
with amnesia … it’s them! I’ve literally been erased from their memories.”

“Hey, you’re not going all sci-fi on me here, are you?” Clearly his mind was going back to the theory I had first put forward when we were last in London: the one about a parallel world, where everyone still existed, leading a similar but slightly different life than this one.

“It is a theory …,” I offered tentatively.

“A crazy one.”

“But what if it were real, crazy or not? What if something happened to me when I hit my head during the mugging? What if I actually did somehow swap places with another version of me?”

Jimmy laughed. But when I didn’t join in, the amusement quickly died.

“Rachel, you really cannot be serious about this,” he began gently. “I know there are loads of unanswered questions here, but I really don’t believe that people can go zipping about in time and drop in on their
other lives
.”

“I’m not talking about time
travel
. Maybe something happened on that night, and it created … I don’t know … some sort of anomaly in the space-time continuum?

“Do you even
know
what a space-time continuum is?”

“No. But maybe we could find an expert or a scientist in this field. Someone who
would
have some of the answers.”
Someone who wouldn’t think I was totally insane
, I finished silently in my head.

“Rachel, honey, that stuff only happens in books and movies. In real life you can’t find Weird Scientist Guy actually listed in the Yellow Pages. Where would we even begin?”

“I don’t know,” I replied mulishly. I knew he was right. I just didn’t want to hear it.

“Do you want to hear what I think?”

I turned in my seat to see him more clearly.

“Go on.”

“What I think is that something
did
happen to you when you hit your head. Something very unusual and unique. Something that is allowing you to … I don’t know, maybe read minds, pick up some sort of psychic energy and interpret it into memories … I don’t know.”

“And why would none of this neurological damage have shown up on the multitude of tests they’ve run on me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, I think that it must be incredibly rare. Perhaps it
is
on the tests but the doctors don’t even know what they’re looking at. You might be the only person this has ever happened to.”

His suggestion did have a degree of rational credibility, I had to grant him that. But it didn’t seem to fit, not in the way my own idea did.

I could go two ways with this: keep on insisting there was something more supernatural—for want of a better word—going on here, and risk losing his support completely, or be the bigger person and let it go. I chose wisely.

“So I’m unique then, am I?” I said with the beginnings of a smile. “One of a kind?”

“I’ve never doubted that for a single minute of my life.”

I couldn’t help it: my smile just kept getting broader and broader, until I was in danger of resembling some demented
version of the Cheshire Cat. I also couldn’t help noticing that he looked more than a little pleased by my response.

A few more miles down the gray ribbon of motorway, I brought up the topic again. “But what if we never get to the bottom of it? If we
never
find out the answers? What do we do then?”

Jimmy was quiet for a long moment. “Well,” he said finally, “you remember the first eighteen years of your life just fine, don’t you?”

“Yes. Right up to the night of the car accident.”

“So, in the grand scheme of things, we’re really only talking about having inexplicably …
lost
 … a small piece of your past. I guess what you have to ask yourself is how much time and energy you want to spend on looking backward.” His voice changed then, the timbre becoming softer and lower. “But speaking personally, it’s not your past that interests me so much as your future.”

I kept replaying those words in my head for the rest of the journey home.

MY FATHER’S EYES
lit up as I crossed the threshold with the large packing boxes and a suitcase full of my belongings.

“You don’t mind if I stay here with you for a little bit longer, do you?” I asked as I entered the house. An unnecessary question really, but even I was surprised to see his eyes glisten at my request.

“Are you feeling okay, Dad?”

He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Just getting a cold, I think,” he muttered brusquely, bending to pick up the boxes. “I’ll just take these upstairs for you. And of course I don’t mind. You stay here as long as you want.”

As I watched him climb the stairs, I was suddenly overcome by a wave of love for the only parent I had ever known, mixed with an enormous gratitude that in this reality he was so fit and well. Perhaps it had been talking to Joe once more about his wife’s illness that suddenly made me really appreciate that life here was in many ways a great deal better than the one I remembered. Well, aside from the unfortunate incident with Matt. But maybe that too would turn out to be not such a bad thing. Better to know now that he couldn’t remain faithful and get out while I could, before making the mistake of marrying him.

THE FOLLOWING DAY
I finally got around to answering one of his numerous phone calls. I had to really; he’d been calling both my mobile and the house phone nonstop since I’d caught him with Cathy. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation, and I said some things that I’m not particularly proud of. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but I had hoped we might at least have been able to remain civil. But any phone conversation that ends with one of you yelling at the other “Have a nice life!” can’t exactly be deemed a success.

The next few days should have been pleasant enough; Christmas was almost upon us, and although I didn’t seem to have my normal enthusiasm for the holiday season, I tried to put on a good show for my father’s sake. Not that I think I fooled him much, not when my first question upon returning home from a walk or a visit to the shops was, “Did anyone drop by or phone while I was out?”

I guess he thought I might be waiting to hear from Matt again, and I didn’t bother correcting that assumption. But it wasn’t the absence of contact from my ex-fiancé that was
troubling me, it was not hearing from Jimmy. Considering the things that had been said recently, I’d thought—well, hoped really—that he was going to be a more frequent visitor to our house, but I hadn’t seen or heard anything from him since he’d driven me back from London.

Of course he could just be busy at work, but
really
, how long does it take to pick up a phone? Could he already be regretting having spent so much of his spare time with me? Had I once again totally misinterpreted the words and actions of a close friend for something else entirely?

To fill the hours, I made a concerted effort to keep myself really busy each day, finding that physical exhaustion gave me far less thinking and brooding time. So I reorganized my old bedroom. Twice. And even cleaned the house to never-before-seen perfection. I also took up baking—which was a dubious pursuit, given the fact I had hardly baked anything before in my life. As I produced tray after tray of food in varying degrees of edibility, I saw the logical question in my father’s eyes, even though it was never voiced. What was I doing baking enough food to feed an army when it would just be the two of us on Christmas Day?

Each night I fell into bed totally shattered, hoping I would be so worn out that I could ignore both Jimmy’s silence as well as the recurrence of strange dreams and nighttime hallucinations that had returned to haunt me.

A FEW EVENINGS
before Christmas Eve, my father came into the lounge, dragging behind him an overly large pine tree.

I looked up from my place at the fireside, where I had been making small but steady progress with my father’s aloof
cat. At least she now tolerated me touching her for as long as five seconds at a time before bolting away.

“I thought we weren’t going to bother with a tree this year?”

“I know,” he said, struggling to drag the giant redwood wannabe across the carpet. “But I thought we could do with a little brightening up in here. Make it nice and festive.”

I hurried to clear a space in the corner, ducking out of the way of the approaching branches that looked sharp enough to take out an eye if you weren’t careful. The tree was so big its topmost branches bowed over against the ceiling

“Couldn’t you find a bigger one?” I teased.

“It looked much smaller at the garden center,” Dad explained.

“Leave your poor dad alone. You should have seen him struggling up the hill to carry it back.”

I swiveled around with enough speed to crick my neck. I’d been so busy examining the tree, I hadn’t seen Jimmy walk into the lounge.

“Thanks for the lift, lad,” said my father. “I knew I should have taken the car.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jimmy assured him, his words directed to my father but his eyes never leaving my face.

There was a long moment of silence that was just this side of awkward.

“Anyone fancy a cup of tea?” asked my father, already heading out of the room to make it.

I waited until we were alone before speaking. “Hello, stranger. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever see you again.”

He had the grace to look abashed. “I’m sorry I’ve not been
in touch. I got your texts, I’ve been meaning to call but …” His voice trailed off.

“You’ve been busy. I get that.”

“No. It’s not that. It’s just …”

This was getting tiresome. Was he
ever
going to finish a sentence?

“Nice tree,” he commented instead, studying the fir with unwarranted concentration.

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was nervous. But I couldn’t for the life of me think why.

As my dad passed out the tea, I took the opportunity to study Jimmy unobserved. It looked as though I might not be the only one who hadn’t been sleeping well recently, not if the dark smudges beneath his eyes were any indication.

“Do you have any decorations for this tree then?” Jimmy asked, after draining his cup.

“Are you volunteering to help us?” I got to my feet. “I’ll get the box. It’s still in the attic, right?”

I had expected one or both of them to get up at that point and offer to get the box of decorations for me, but when my dad looked just about to do that, Jimmy stopped him with a meaningful look, one that I probably wasn’t meant to see.

“You can manage that by yourself, can’t you?” Jimmy asked confidently.

“Sure,” I replied, taking the very obvious hint and leaving the room.

I wasn’t aware I was muttering under my breath as I pulled down the loft ladder and began clicking the struts in place, until I observed Kizzy staring at me curiously from the top of the banisters.

“And you’re just as bad,” I said to the disdainful feline,
who took off from her vantage point in a flurry of indignant fur.

Jimmy had obviously wanted to get rid of me so he could speak to my father alone. No doubt he was, even at that moment, recounting to him my slightly eccentric theory. Proving that Rachel was still far from well. This really was great. My dad had just started treating me normally again, now that he believed my “amnesia” might soon be cured, but if Jimmy told him everything I had said in the car the other day, I’d be right back to square one.

I felt angry and more than a little betrayed, and though I’d never actually told Jimmy I didn’t want my dad to know what I was thinking, I’d just assumed he knew me well enough to understand that information had been for his ears only.

Typically it took much longer than it should have done to find the blasted box of decorations in the attic, and by the time I had located them and packed away the ladder, whatever discussion Jimmy and my father had been engaged in was clearly finished.

And if I needed further proof that there was something funny going on, there it was when I walked back into the lounge and found both men deeply involved in some pseudo-conversation about football, a subject that didn’t particularly interest either of them.

Even as I began to rip the sealing tape from the box, Dad got to his feet and gave a huge exaggerated yawn.

“I think I might just turn in now. I’ve done my bit as far as the tree is concerned. You two can take over from here.”

I looked at the clock above the fireplace in amazement.

“It’s not even nine o’clock!”

Was that a blush on his cheeks, or was he just flushed from the heat of the fire?

“It isn’t? Oh well, never mind. It doesn’t hurt to get an early night every so often. G’night, Rachel. See you soon, Jimmy.”

I waited until I had safely heard the creak of the stairs as he climbed them, before rounding angrily on Jimmy.

“I know what you two were discussing when I was out of the room!”

And that’s when everything got weird, because instead of replying, Jimmy just looked strangely uncomfortable, and was that …? Yes, it was … the color in his cheeks was clearly heightened. I actually took my eyes from his face to glance over at the fire burning merrily in the grate. Either it was
really
hot in here, or something suspicious was going on.

“You told him. Didn’t you?” I continued, when it seemed unlikely Jimmy was going to say anything in his own defense. “You told him what I thought had happened to me?”