30
‘Are you sure about this, Barney?’ I ask the next day when we’re back down in the office.
We’ve attached the two carved wooden doors to the cupboard – checking first whether they too have the same dates engraved on them as the tree, which of course they do – and now we’re trying Barney’s various ideas about how we might pinpoint specific years to travel to.
‘No, but we have to try everything. Time travel is an incredibly complicated process. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.’
‘Would they, though?’ Adam asks from the corner of the desk where he’s currently perched. ‘In every movie I’ve ever seen about it, something always goes wrong. I’m not sure I’d want to risk getting stuck in the past.’
‘No one is getting stuck in the past,’ I say to reassure him. ‘All we want to do is to be able to choose just where and when those doors open out to. We’re not actually going to go back there ourselves. Just see if we can get Ben back to see his mother.’
‘Fine, but so far we’ve been down here all morning and we haven’t even been able to get this portal working again. Let alone choose where we want it to take us.’
He was right. Every time we’ve tried one of Barney’s ideas – which all seem to be based on time-travel philosophy from TV programmes or movies – all we find when we open the doors at the end of the tunnel is the same brick wall that faced Archie when Dotty disappeared.
Adam refused to go down the tunnel each time we tried something new.
I knew why that was, of course – it was dark and cramped, and must immediately remind him of a time he didn’t ever want to return to.
So it was just me checking the doors, because Barney’s wheelchair was currently upstairs in Adam’s shop.
As I anticipate, Barney’s latest idea – involving some very complex equations, along with some strange chemicals, a test tube and a Bunsen burner – fails once more.
‘Let’s give this a rest for now, shall we?’ I say as Barney’s face, currently covered in some sort of sooty ash, looks desperately disheartened. ‘Perhaps some fresh air might help?’
Adam carries Barney back up the stairs and reunites him with his wheelchair. Then we all head outside to sit on the bench in the middle of the court.
I haven’t spoken to any of my fellow residents of Clockmaker Court since last night’s revelations by Ben and Orla, but I know I’m going to have to at some stage.
Even though I know why they’ve kept their past lives a secret from me, it still feels like they’ve been lying to me all these years.
I know I’m not exactly great at sharing my secrets with anyone, but the difference is they all know my backstory.
They knew from the minute I arrived in Clockmaker Court to work with my grandparents.
But I still can’t shake the feeling of being let down by those I trust.
Now that we know Ben’s story, so much of what has been going on kind of makes sense – if stories of a time portal and people travelling from the past can ever really be fully believed or understood.
‘So, what’s next, then?’ Adam asks as we sit in the lunchtime sunshine drinking takeaway cups of coffee from Fitzbillies.
Neither Adam nor I want to see Harriet and Rocky today, knowing what we now know.
We are both worried about putting our foot in it with Rocky, as he knows nothing about Harriet’s past. ‘Any more bright ideas, Barney? Should we be considering strapping the shop to the back of a DeLorean car and driving it at eighty-eight miles per hour through a thunderstorm until it gets hit by lightning?’
‘Hilarious,’ Barney says flatly. ‘I think you’ll find I’ve mostly based my ideas around scientific formula, rather than Hollywood special effects.’
‘Maybe that’s where we’re going wrong,’ I say, sipping on my coffee as I think. ‘Perhaps we’re basing our attempts too much on scientific reasoning like Dotty and Archie did. Maybe there’s another way …’
‘Like what?’ Adam asks. ‘Should we just stand in the tunnel and request what year we want to go back to? Do you think it’s listening to us …’ He makes a sort of spooky gesture with his hands, then grins.
‘If you’re not going to take this seriously,’ I tell him, ‘then perhaps it should just be Barney and me trying to make the tunnel … the portal work.’
‘Sorry. But we have to keep this light, otherwise when you think about the seriousness of the situation and some of the things these people were running from, it gets a bit heavy.’
‘I know. I think I’ve been through some trauma in my life, but when you hear these stories, it puts a lot of things into perspective.’
Both Barney and Adam look expectantly at me, waiting for me to say more.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say lightly. ‘You don’t need to hear about my past troubles. We’ve got enough of our own right now.’
‘Perhaps we do,’ Adam says. ‘I told you about my own trauma and I have to admit, it really helped me at the time to talk to someone new about it. Someone who wasn’t a therapist, but a friend.
I was caught up in a gas explosion many years ago,’ Adam tells Barney.
‘I was trapped under the side of a house for hours with only a dog for company. It doesn’t sound much now, but it messed me up a bit – guilt that I’d survived when others hadn’t, you know? ’
‘I do know, actually,’ Barney says to my surprise. ‘I wasn’t always paralysed from the waist down like this. It was only after the fire that this happened.’
‘What fire?’ I ask. ‘You never told me that before.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Eve.
When I was four years old, the house that I lived in with my real parents caught fire – electrical fault, not gas this time,’ he says.
‘They managed to throw me out of my bedroom window, to neighbours below, who were supposed to catch me in a sort of blanket thing. They did catch me, but not firmly enough, so I sort of twisted badly as I landed and I tore my spinal cord. Apparently I never walked again after that. I don’t actually remember it, to be honest, which is probably just as well. ’
‘What happened to your parents?’ I ask, knowing from what Barney told us before about being adopted that it was unlikely to be good.
‘Both they and my baby brother perished in the fire. I was adopted by a lovely family, though, and I grew up not knowing anything different. It wasn’t until they told me when I was older that I’d been adopted, that I realised I’d ever had another family.’
I’m shocked to hear this from Barney. We’ve known each other for a number of years now and until today I had no idea how he’d come to be in a wheelchair. He never said anything to me before and I didn’t want to appear nosey, so the subject never came up.
‘So you don’t remember anything about your first family?’
‘Not a thing. But when I found out what happened, I always wondered, why me? Why did I survive when they didn’t?’
‘That’s exactly how I feel,’ Adam says. ‘Why me? Why did I survive that explosion with no permanent injuries, other than my hearing’ – he taps the hearing aid in his ear – ‘when another person had to die? It just doesn’t seem fair.’
‘I know exactly what you both mean,’ I murmur quietly, unable to prevent my own trauma from being forced to the front of my mind. ‘Why did I survive?’
‘What happened to you, Eve?’ Barney asks, looking surprised to hear me say this. ‘What’s your story?’
I look at them both, and see two kind faces gazing back at me with worried and concerned expressions, and, for the first time ever, I want to share my story. I want to unburden myself to these two people I’ve become so close too.
‘I was in a car accident,’ I tell them. ‘My whole family was – including Jake, my then fiancé.’ I glance at Adam to see if he remembers me mentioning Jake to him before.
He nods to let me know he does. ‘I was twenty-four at the time and we were on our way to visit my grandparents here in Cambridge for Christmas. It wasn’t like we were even packed into one car or anything.
I was driving with Jake in my car, and the rest of my family, including my younger sister, Ruth, were in the family car.
A lorry was going too fast on the opposite side of the road.
He lost control on some black ice, jack-knifed and skidded into us both, pushing us off the road and crushing our cars between his vehicle and an incredibly strong drystone wall that held its own even with all the force thrust upon it.
’ I shudder as I remember both the force of the blow from the lorry, which sent us spinning across the road, and then the awful sounds that followed, of hot metal buckling as the cars were crushed between the weight of the lorry and the rocks the other side.
‘My father and my sister were killed on impact, my mother died on her way to the hospital, and Jake died after an emergency operation – one I didn’t even know he was having until they told me afterwards.
I was rescued and taken to hospital, but with only a broken bone in one hand and a few cuts and bruises.
The paramedics and the police couldn’t understand how I’d managed to be in the same accident and come out so unscathed.
I might have been relatively unscathed physically, but the mental trauma of what happened lived long after the physical scars had healed. ’
Although I told them quickly and without drama, I realise that what took only seconds for me to say has suddenly and powerfully unburdened me of the years of anger, anxiety, sadness and guilt that have weighed heavily on me for so long.
I can’t believe how much lighter I immediately feel.
When people talk about the weight of the world being lifted from their shoulders, I now know exactly what they mean.
‘Christ,’ Adam says, taking my hand. ‘That’s bloody awful. Losing all your family in one accident? I just don’t know how you’d ever come back from something like that. I knew you were a strong woman, Eve, but I had no idea how strong. You’re amazing. Really you are.’
‘I’m so sorry, Eve,’ Barney says, looking shocked. ‘At least I was too young to remember what happened to me. You were twenty-four. No chance of forgetting.’
‘It messed me up, that’s for sure – for a long time.
That’s how I came to live here in Cambridge with my grandparents.
They were my only remaining family. I was in such a bad state that I couldn’t look after myself.
So even though they were going through their own grief, my grandparents cared for me just like they had when my sister and I would come to stay with them when we were young.
They loved me and listened to me, and did everything they could to try to help me – even when I didn’t want to be helped. ’
‘Is that why you stayed here and never went back to your previous life?’ Adam asks. ‘You felt you owed them something for looking after you?’
‘Partly, and partly because living here in Cambridge, and working in a little antiques shop, was easy and just what I needed to begin healing. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Clockmaker Court is a very calm and healing place.
I’ve always felt safe here, nestled among the buildings, with this strong oak tree protecting us from above.
So I decided to stay and to give back to both them and Clockmaker Court what they had given back to me – my life. ’
‘That’s really beautiful, Eve,’ Barney says. ‘You’re right – this place does feel special. I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed working here with you so much more than my other job at the university.’
‘Thank you for sharing your past with us.’ Adam squeezes my hand. ‘It seems like we’ve all had far too much trauma in our lives and yet I suspect we’ve all come out the other side stronger because of it. We survived when many of those around us sadly did not.’
‘It’s almost like we were saved,’ Barney says, considering this. ‘Saved because we had a greater purpose to fulfil.’ He hesitates. ‘I hardly dare say this, but do you think that purpose was protecting this time portal?’
‘Whoa, that’s a bit deep, man,’ Adam says, his brow furrowing. ‘Suggesting we were saved from death because we had a greater purpose in life than those around us.’
‘Sorry.’ Barney’s face reddens. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just what it sounds like, though, when we all tell our stories, don’t you think?’
‘If what Orla and Ben were saying last night is true, maybe we were saved?’ I say quietly. ‘It seems an awful coincidence that all three of us survived different life-changing events when those around us didn’t.’
We all stare at each other as the enormity of what I’m suggesting begins to sink in.
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ Adam asks just as quietly, as though we’re all party to a huge secret that no one else knows about.
‘I really don’t know what I believe any more.
So much has happened over the last few weeks and months since I met you at your grandfather’s house back in February.
Some of it good.’ I squeeze his hand now.
‘But a lot of it very strange and extremely odd.’ I shiver, and I realise the sun has moved in the sky so we’re now bathed in shade from one of the branches of the tree.
I glance up to see exactly how far the shadow is being cast – across the court and between our two shops, so it completely covers the missing building, the one that was bricked up, the one that hides the secret office and the time portal …
‘Oh, my God!’ I leap up, letting go of Adam’s hand.
‘What is it?’ Adam asks as I stare at the tree above us. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing … Nothing is wrong at all. In fact, everything could be all right from now on.’ I look down at Adam and Barney still staring at me. ‘I think us sitting out here might just have allowed me to figure out how the time portal actually works …’