Chapter 5 #3
‘I was just thinking,’ he said, slowly. ‘We don’t really know how any of this works – or why.
All we know is that it does work. We know that we can’t see the same things out there.
’ He gestured towards the park. ‘And we know that we can only see each other when we’re inside this thing together.
But maybe that’s another “rule” of this, that other people can’t see us. ’
‘And when we’re with other people, we can’t see each other either,’ I finished.
‘Blimey,’ he said, sitting down heavily. ‘This is a lot to take in.’
‘It is.’ I looked down at him, at his handsome face, his clean-shaven chin, the dimple in his cheek, and sat beside him.
‘What?’ he said, rubbing his hair self-consciously. ‘Have I got something on my face?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask you a favour actually.’
‘Oh?’ He arched an eyebrow.
‘Rachel’s waiting for me, out there.’ I pointed to the tree, and he glanced over and quickly back again. ‘She doesn’t believe me, about you, and I wanted to prove to her that you’re real. That it’s not just the grief making me go doolally.’
‘So how can I help?’
‘I need concrete proof.’
He nodded. ‘And I assume you’ve had an idea?’
‘I have.’ I told him the idea I’d come up with. He considered it for a moment, then nodded, dug out his pocket knife, and turned to me. ‘Back in a minute,’ he said. Then he got up and disappeared into the park.
While I waited I looked over at the tree. Rachel was sitting on the ground, her back leaning against it, and I looked away before she noticed me. Even though I knew I wouldn’t see Nick there, it still felt strange to me, to know he was both here and not here at the same time.
Just as I was beginning to wonder whether Nick was ever coming back, he appeared in the opening.
‘I did it,’ he said, his eyes shining.
‘Thank you,’ I said. I glanced behind me. Rachel was still there. ‘Do you need to get going soon?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Can you give me five minutes?’
‘Sure.’
I picked up my bag and jumped off the bandstand, and raced towards the tree. As I approached, Rachel stood up, shielding her eyes from the sun.
‘What’s happened?’ she said, squinting at me.
I stepped round her and peered up at the tree trunk at the place where Nick had carved his and my initials. And then I spotted it and my heart leapt.
‘Look at this,’ I said, my voice a whisper.
Slowly, Rachel turned, and peered up at the trunk. She reached out her hand and ran her finger over the brand-new carving that had appeared since we last looked, just below the other one: Rachel, April 2019. It looked worn, as though it had been there for some time.
As though it had been there for twenty years.
I waited, my heart in my throat, as she took it in. Then slowly, she turned to face me. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, her cheeks reddening. ‘This is… it’s mad.’
‘You can see it?’
She looked back at the tree, then back at me, then shook her head. ‘I can’t get my head around it. It can’t be real.’
‘But you know it is, right? You believe me?’ I so desperately needed her to.
She looked back at the initials and then back at me. ‘How can I not? But—’ she looked stern ‘—you do understand that this doesn’t change anything, right?’
‘What do you mean?’
A frown flitted across her face. ‘I know you really like this man, Ems. But he… it’s—’ She stopped. ‘It’s completely impossible.’
‘I…’ I’d been about to say I didn’t really like him, that he was just a man I’d met, but I stopped myself.
Because Rachel had always been able to read me, often better than I could read myself, and I knew she was right.
I didn’t know what was going on here, or why.
All I knew was that, for the first time since Greg had died, I was thinking about another man. I liked another man.
‘Oh, Em,’ Rachel said, and suddenly her arms were round me. I let my head rest on her shoulder and my tears soak into her jumper. When I pulled away, she pressed her hand against my cheek. ‘Is he still there?’
I nodded.
‘Go back to him. But promise me something.’
I nodded.
‘Don’t go falling in love with him, will you?’
I smiled. ‘I’ll try not to.’
Nick looked up as I stepped back inside the bandstand, a question on his face. ‘She believes me,’ I said. I didn’t tell him about her warning.
‘That’s great,’ he said, as I tucked my bag under the bench. When I looked back at him, he seemed thoughtful.
‘You okay?’ I said.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said, unconvincingly.
‘Come on, tell me.’
He gave a small smile. ‘Am I that easy to read already?’
‘You must be.’
He sighed. ‘It’s nothing really. It’s just… I feel a bit sad that you’ve got someone to talk to about all of this and I… well, I haven’t, not really.’
‘What about your brother?’
‘Yeah, I guess. I just… Andy’s brilliant, but he’s a real straight down the line guy. You know, black is black, white is white. I just don’t think he’ll believe me, even if I could prove it to him the way you just did with Rachel.’
‘You never know,’ I said. ‘He might surprise you.’
He looked at me and I shivered under his gaze.
‘Yeah, he might.’ His gaze became more intense and the shiver turned into a swirling in my belly as he reached his fingers towards mine, which were resting on the bench between us.
I held my breath as they slid closer, and then, finally, with a crack and a feeling like being hit by lightning, he curled them round mine.
The outside world receded, the sides of the bandstand shrinking around us so that it was just the two of us here, in this one moment in time.
I imagined closing the gap between us and pressing my mouth onto his, the feel of his lips warm and soft against mine and—
‘Do you mind?’ he said, breaking into my thoughts.
‘This?’ I said, indicating our hands, and he nodded. ‘No,’ I said, simply. ‘It’s nice.’
‘Good.’ He moved slightly closer and I could feel the heat from his thigh.
My skin where our hands touched hummed and crackled with a feeling, soft and gentle like TV static turned down low.
We sat for a moment and watched the world go by.
It had all been such a whirlwind over the last few days I’d hardly had time to think.
But now, sitting here, hands intertwined, I allowed myself to imagine what it might be like to be with another man.
Greg and I had been together for almost a decade.
We’d been very different, but we balanced each other out and it worked.
He grabbed life by the horns, never let anything faze him or get him down.
Sometimes it was exhausting, but it was good for me when I was younger.
Greg helped me to grow, come out of my shell and see what the world had to offer me.
He always described us as two sides of the same coin, and that was how it felt, most of the time.
Other times, I found his lust for life exhausting, and craved some downtime.
He loved being with other people, said yes to any invitation.
Sometimes, I wished it could just be me and him.
Because the times when it was – the times when he was usually restless, wondering what to do next – were my favourite times.
After ten years together Greg and I knew each other inside out.
I knew that he preferred his coffee with cream and liked tea so strong a spoon could stand up in it; I knew what side of the bed he liked to sleep on, that he would always choose to take the stairs rather than the lift because when he was eight he’d got stuck in a broken-down lift and wet himself; I knew when he was sad or stressed and that he believed that nothing he ever did would ever be good enough to please his father.
When he died, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to speak to anyone again, let alone meeting and getting to know someone completely new.
And yet now here I was, sitting with this man I knew very little about, having feelings I never imagined feeling again.
Although I didn’t know him well yet, being with Nick already felt calmer than being with Greg had ever felt.
There was an energy about him that was soothing, gentle, and I wanted to get to know him better.
‘I’ve been trying to work out whether there’s any way we can control this,’ Nick said, suddenly.
I looked round at him. ‘What do you mean?’
He rubbed his face. ‘Have you thought about what this means, that this is happening to us?’
‘Of course,’ I admitted.
‘Me too. A lot. I keep thinking that it makes no sense, that things like this don’t happen outside science fiction films. And yet here we are.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you ever think perhaps we were meant to find each other, for whatever reason? That the universe wants to bring us together?’
I stared at him. ‘This is exactly what I’ve thought,’ I whispered.
He smiled. ‘Well, if we’re right, then surely there has to be a way for us to actually make it happen. I mean, it would be a pretty cruel twist of fate if the universe let us meet but then kept us apart forever, wouldn’t it?’
I smiled. ‘And have you worked it out yet?’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet. But I hate not knowing whether I’m ever going to see you again every time we part. There has to be a way.’
I looked down at the bench, my fingers worrying at a loose piece of wood. ‘I have had an idea,’ I said.
‘Go on.’
I raised my eyes to look at him. ‘I could look for you in 2019.’
‘No.’ The word shot out like a bullet.
‘But—’
‘No, stop.’ His voice was harsher than I’d heard it before and I stiffened. He softened. ‘Sorry, Emma. But I’ve already thought about that and it’s a definite no for me.’
‘But why? I mean, I know you said you’d be older than me, but it would only be fourteen years and that’s not much.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not that.’ He let out a long breath of air, his cheeks puffing outwards from the effort. ‘What if something terrible has happened to me in the last twenty years or… what if you can’t find me at all?’
It took a moment to realise what he meant. ‘You mean, what if you’ve died.’
He nodded. I swallowed.
‘I wouldn’t have to tell you.’
He shook his head. ‘If you looked and you found out something bad, I’d know. And I can’t live with that. I just can’t.’ He took my hand again, the usual spark jolting me. ‘Promise me you won’t look.’
He looked so distraught I had no choice. ‘I promise.’ I attempted a smile. ‘But you’d better come up with a better idea soon, because we can’t keep this up forever.’
‘I’ll do my best.’