Chapter 23
EMMA
Even though Rachel was true to her word and was with me every step of the way, coming to scans and buying me folic acid and giving me advice on which buggy, cot or nappies to buy, being pregnant was still overwhelming.
It wasn’t as though I’d been left alone by someone who wanted nothing to do with being a dad, and there were so many nights when I lay awake, imagining different scenarios in which Nick and I got the chance to bring up our baby together.
‘What will you tell the baby about their father when they’re older?’ Rachel asked one day.
‘I honestly don’t know. I suppose I’m just clinging onto the hope that by the time they start asking questions, I might have found him.’
She didn’t need to tell me it wasn’t a great plan. I already knew. It’s just that I had no idea what other option there was, and could only pray that I’d know what to do once the time came.
As for telling everyone else, that had been tricky too.
Mum and Dad struggled to understand why I didn’t want to bring the baby’s father into it.
We’d always had a strained relationship – they’d never really approved of Greg, thought he was too flighty, and were never there for me after he died in a way I truly needed – but this just alienated them even further.
Everyone else, including my colleagues and boss, simply assumed it was a one-night stand and that I didn’t know the father’s name.
It wasn’t ideal but at least it avoided awkward questions.
As promised, Rachel was my birthing partner. And in the days and weeks leading up to the birth, knowing she was going to be by my side calmed me.
Then, on 28 January 2020, almost fourteen years after his father had died, my baby boy was born. And from the moment he arrived in the world, a bright red bundle whose screams filled the hospital room, I felt a wave of love so strong it almost overwhelmed me. My whole body was flooded with it.
Alongside that came relief that my baby was actually here; that he’d made it.
He was a little miracle time traveller, and only two people in the world knew about it.
And that thought led to an all-encompassing feeling of sadness, which settled like a small rock in the middle of my chest; a constant reminder that my boy was never likely to meet his daddy.
It would most likely always be just me and him.
I called him Flynn. It was Nick’s surname, and it was at least something to bind them together. It was all I had.
For the first couple of months, things were great.
Exhausting, overwhelming and emotional, but great.
I’d turned the small front bedroom into Flynn’s nursery, decorating it in a beautiful shade of pale green and buying a second-hand cot.
A mobile hung above the cot, casting shadows of stars and moons all around the room, and I hung a photo of the bandstand on the wall, a reminder to me of where my little boy had come from.
It was amazing how something so small could change a life so completely. And even though I’d spent seven months preparing for his arrival and becoming a single mum, it still knocked me for six.
Most days Rachel would drop by. Sometimes she’d bring me new nappies or a packet of baby wipes, other times she’d come with a giant bar of Dairy Milk and we’d sit and devour it together while I fed Flynn or rocked him in his Moses basket.
But then the world went into lockdown, leaving Flynn and I all alone, and with the rest of the world on the other side of a window.
It was during those long, lonely days and nights that a thought began to form in my mind. A thought that I tried to ignore, but that proved to be insistent.
I knew – or at least I suspected – that finding Nick was likely to be impossible for at least another six years: even if my letter did have the power to change the future, it appeared so far that I was going to have to wait until at least 2026 – or 2006 in Nick’s life – to find out whether I’d saved him.
But there was someone else I could track down. Someone to give me some connection to Nick.
His brother, Andy.
I wanted to discuss it with Rachel, but I knew she’d tell me it was a terrible idea and try to talk me out of it.
And she’d be right of course. There was nothing to be achieved by looking for him. And yet I knew I was going to do it anyway.
Finding him was easy, as it turned out. He had a Facebook page and although he didn’t post on it often, there were a few photos of him and his wife and two girls, both now in their late twenties.
We hadn’t had much time to talk about families, but I remembered Nick telling me how much he loved them, and I wondered how they’d coped when their uncle Nick had been killed.
Although Andy looked familiar from the photo I’d seen alongside his interview in the newspaper back in 2007, a year after Nick’s death, he’d aged and his skin was leathery, his hair now entirely white. I tried to imagine Nick at the same age, but it was impossible.
I scrolled back a few posts, and that was when I saw it. A photo of Nick, just a few years older than he was when I last saw him.
It had been posted on 12 March – the fourteenth anniversary of his death – and my eyes blurred as they wandered over the caption, reading about how much he was loved and missed by his loved ones. But it wasn’t even that which made me stop in my tracks. It was his eyes.
Because they were Flynn’s eyes.
I shut the laptop, shaking. I wanted to keep scrolling through Andy’s page, to find more and more photos and torture myself studying photos of Nick before he died.
But I knew I had to step away. These people had been through so much grief and pain.
I couldn’t bring any more into their lives.
I couldn’t try and find Andy – at least not until after I’d found out for sure whether my letter had saved Nick.
But thinking about Nick’s family had shaken me. Because it reminded me that, somewhere out there, Flynn had a family he may never get the chance to meet.
To take my mind off it during the long, lonely days, I got into the habit of taking Flynn to the park.
The weather had been freakishly hot and sunny for weeks, as though the weather gods were trying to make up for the fact that nobody could go anywhere or do anything.
Usually this part of the park would be packed with groups of friends and families enjoying the sunshine.
But today there were only a few people walking alone on the paths that wound between the patches of parched yellow grass, afraid to break the strict rules by stopping for too long.
It was an odd feeling, to be so isolated from the rest of the world.
I rounded the corner and the rose garden and bandstand came into view and as always my heart began racing. Throughout my pregnancy I’d come here a few times, even though Rachel had thought it was a bad idea.
‘You’re just torturing yourself,’ she’d said.
And although I knew she was right, because the note I’d left here all those months ago had gone but the news stories about Nick dying in the train crash had remained the same, I couldn’t help myself. What if he happened to be there and I didn’t go? Seeing him one more time could change everything.
But since Flynn had been born, I hadn’t been able to pluck up the courage to step back inside.
A deep-rooted fear kept me away. Fear of seeing Nick and him not wanting anything to do with Flynn and me.
Fear of him still being angry. Fear of finding out that nothing I did was going to change the course of time.
It became easier for my shattered heart to simply stay away.
Today, though, on yet another hot day in June, something made me steer the pram away from the main walkway and up the small side path towards the bandstand.
It was shady here and a relief after the heat of the sun.
I adjusted the parasol that had been protecting Flynn’s face and gazed down at him.
He lay flat on his back, his arms splayed out to the sides, his little cheeks red, long eyelashes spread out across the round apples of his cheeks.
He looked so like his daddy, and my heart filled with love as I gazed down at him, fast asleep and totally oblivious to the turmoil I was going through.
‘Hey, baby, this is where I met your daddy,’ I whispered.
I looked up at the bandstand. It was usually fairly clean, but clearly nobody had been around recently to maintain it, and dust and spiderwebs gathered in all corners, empty bottles and cans littered the ground.
I stood rooted to the spot, staring at the bench where Nick and I had met, where we’d got to know each other, told each other stories about our lives, confided in one another.
Where we’d fallen in love and discovered the impossible; the place where Flynn had come into being.
I bent down and scooped Flynn into my arms. He grizzled at the disturbance, then settled his cheek against my shoulder and closed his eyes again. I loved the feel of him against me, his warm little body moulding itself to mine, his heart beating against my chest. How had I ever lived without it?
‘Shall we go and see if we can find your daddy?’ I whispered. He shuffled, a little smile forming on his lips, then went still again. I placed my foot onto the platform and paused, nervous. What if Nick was here? What would I do?
Before I could change my mind, I took a deep breath and stepped up.
Blood roared in my ears and the world turned fuzzy round the edges, as though someone had added a filter to the scene. I stood still, let out a low, slow breath, and allowed everything to settle.
There was no one here.
I walked across to the bench and sat down, leaning back against the wooden slats. I ran my free hand over the smooth wood of the seat and pressed my lips to the soft roundness of Flynn’s head, smelling his sweet, comforting baby smell.