Chapter Seven
As I lower my phone, the bombed hotel before me fades away and I see the modern Europa on a normal July day. No broken glass, no soldiers or terrified onlookers, no blazing light. Some birds fly from the roof overhead.
I bend over, gripping my thighs.
Deep breaths.
‘You’re scaring me,’ says Meg, placing a hand on my back.
I slowly rise up and exhale.
‘What was that? Did you have a fit or…?’
My head is fuzzy. ‘You won’t believe me.’
‘Try me.’
I exhale again. This is worse than coming out. ‘I saw the hotel just after it was bombed.’
‘OK… I think maybe we need to get you some water, or sugar or something.’
I show her my phone. ‘Look.’
She stares at it and blinks. ‘Holy shit. What is this?’
She looks up at the Europa Hotel then back at the phone, her mouth falling open.
The image is way too bright. The top half of the photo is completely whited out but the yellow car is there, a soldier leaning against it.
I look up but the hotel, the modern and definitely un-bombed hotel, is back to normal – tourists walking past, a smiling member of staff opening the door for an Asian couple.
The light is gone too.
‘Is this like an AI thing?’ says Meg.
I think I’ve forgotten how to speak.
‘Michael?’
Nope. Not really sure how language works right now.
‘What the fuck is this?’ she says.
Say it.
‘I think it’s the past.’
I stare at Meg, and to give her credit she keeps her face steady and doesn’t break eye contact. ‘I’m sorry. Could you say that again?’
My neck flushes in shame but what else can I say? ‘I don’t know how, but I saw the past.’
‘And you photographed it?’
I sound mad.
‘Yes.’
She points at my phone. ‘Then how can I see it?’
I blink. ‘What?’
She touches her acorn necklace. ‘How can I see that –’ she gestures again at the phone – ‘on your phone, but I couldn’t see it with, you know, my eyes?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This is insane, Michael. Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone?’
‘No, please don’t. I know it’s crazy. I know it makes no sense, but I’m telling you the truth. I swear.’ She looks back at the hotel and shakes her head. ‘Meg, please. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’
We stand quietly on the street as people walk past us. I wish I could say it was all a joke, but I want Meg to believe me. I need her to believe me.
She chews her lip. ‘OK. So, you can see the past?’
There’s no logical way to answer this. ‘I think so.’
She gives a half-nod, then bursts out laughing.
My cheeks burn. ‘It’s not funny!’
Meg places her hands on my shoulders. ‘Michael, you just told me you can literally see through time. You’ve shown me a photo that you just took of something that isn’t there. This is terrifying and also, like, fucking hysterical. Right?’
I snort because it is. It is ridiculous. I saw the past.
And something else is wriggling at the back of my mind, like a little kid trying to get my attention in a crowd. Something to do with the lights.
‘I’ve seen other visions too,’ I blurt out.
Meg’s eyes widen and she touches her necklace again.
‘Where? When?’
‘Yesterday, on the boat I saw…’
Wait, what did I see? It’s still gone. I close my eyes and think back, me on the ferry. Wind through my hair. A light and then… ‘I can’t remember.’
She rubs her temple. ‘I need another coffee.’
We’re back in the cafe. It’s quiet and I suspect they’d hoped to close early and not have to serve two teenagers. The woman from before eyes the clock over the counter as she sets our drinks down.
‘Thank you,’ says Meg, smiling her away. ‘OK, tell me everything.’
I take out my phone and set it between us. ‘There’s not much to tell.’ I clock Meg’s raised eyebrows. ‘Well, I mean apart from the obvious.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘I got this pain in my head and saw this flash of light, sort of like a massive column of light shooting up in the air. Or maybe shining down from above? Anyway, I knew I had to see what was in the light. It was shining on the hotel.’ I point at my phone.
‘Like a spotlight. For a few seconds, I could see the curtains blowing in the bombed-out windows. There was glass all over the ground. It was so real. I could see the world around me too. I could see people from the past, but also people from now, walking by. They clearly weren’t seeing what I was seeing, just like you couldn’t. And then it sort of faded away.’
My stomach twists as I say it all out loud. It sounds stupid.
‘That’s incredible,’ says Meg.
‘What?’
‘You can see the past!’
‘Shh.’ I glance up at the counter, where the woman is glaring at us.
‘She’d never believe us. Nobody would.’ Meg’s head tilts at an angle. ‘There’s one thing that doesn’t make sense.’
I set my cup down. ‘Just the one thing?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Well, yeah. I still can’t work out how you were able to photograph something that wasn’t there.
’ She lifts my phone. ‘It’s definitely not an app or AI?
’ I shake my head. She turns it over. ‘And this isn’t some sort of enchanted phone?
Did you steal it from a dragon’s hoard or outwit a sphinx? ’
I laugh. ‘No, my mum bought it.’
‘From a mysterious old woman in exchange for a terrible secret?’
‘At Argos.’
She grins. ‘Seriously though. I believe you, that you can see these things, but how can your phone see them?’
I shrug. ‘Add it to the list of things that make no sense.’
‘That’s getting to be a big list. OK, next question. You said it happened yesterday? What did you see?’
‘I told you, I can’t remember.’ I close my eyes again. There’s something there, but it’s like I don’t have the right key to unlock the door, and I don’t even know if it’s a door I’m looking for.
‘Nothing?’ she asks.
‘No, I only know that something happened. I fainted on the ferry and I remember seeing a light. And then earlier today at my nanny Bet’s…’ What was it? ‘I blacked out, but I think maybe I saw something. My head hurt like it does now.’
What did I see?
A face flashes in my head for a second.
‘Dad.’
Meg’s mouth falls open. ‘You saw your dad?’
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to grasp at the memory but it’s gone. ‘I don’t know. I think so. Maybe.’
‘Wow. OK, do you think this is all linked to him?’
Is it?
‘I definitely didn’t see him in the vision at the hotel.
Plus, those cars in it were from the seventies or eighties.
He was only born in 1980.’ My head throbs.
‘I don’t know what’s going on, sorry. But I do know my dad didn’t bomb a hotel when he was a toddler.
’ I attempt a laugh, but my throat’s sore and it cracks a bit.
Meg offers me a smile. ‘But you can remember what you saw just now, right?’
The blasted windows. The old-fashioned cars. The soldiers, rifles in hand.
‘Yeah, it was horrible. Was this, like, a big bombing during the Troubles?’
Meg takes the phone. ‘What, of the Europa? Which time? It’s the most bombed hotel in Europe.’
I frown. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, like over thirty times, I think.’
I flinch at the thought of twisted metal and shattered glass.
‘Who did it?’
Meg raises an eyebrow and leans in. ‘The IRA.’
I lean in too. ‘Why?’
‘Media attention,’ says Meg.
‘What?’
She taps on her phone and shows me a series of photos. ‘See,’ she says. ‘It was a prestige target, a way of drawing attention to –’ she looks up at the counter again – ‘their cause. Lots of journalists used to stay there when they were reporting on the Troubles.’
‘Was anyone killed?’
Meg shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. They died in lots of other places though.’
She stares out of the window and we don’t speak for a while.
The woman behind the counter is starting to clean the fridge.
She’s not as old as my nan but she would have lived through the Troubles.
She could have been working here on a day the Europa Hotel was bombed.
What else might she have witnessed? What did my parents live through?
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up here. It’s not just history. People I know experienced it.
And I can see it.
‘Why this one?’ I wonder out loud. ‘How come this time I can remember what I saw?’
‘Maybe you’ll forget this one too.’
I frown. ‘What?’
‘Maybe they fade with time,’ Meg says. ‘Although, would that make me forget as well?’
My head really hurts. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We could write it down somewhere. Then if we both forget, we could read it and be like, “Oh yeah, Michael can see through time.”’
‘But how would we know that what we were looking at was true. Why would we believe it?’
Meg nods as though this is a very ordinary problem. ‘What would we write? “Dear Meg and Michael, you might have forgotten this but Michael can see the past and might have a magical mobile.”’
My phone screen goes dark. I unlock it and the image is still there.
Of course!
‘I made a record of it.’
Meg mouth falls open. ‘And that’s why you can remember it.’
‘And why I didn’t black out this time!’
‘Wow.’
‘I knew I had to. When the vision was fading, part of me knew I had to get a picture of it. I just wish I’d photographed whatever I saw on the ferry.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
A chill settles on my cheeks as I remember a seagull screeching.
‘Maybe I did, but I broke my camera earlier when I blacked out at my nan’s.’
She frowns. ‘What about the memory card?’
I look up. How the fuck did I forget the memory card?
‘We threw the camera out.’
‘But the memory card was in it?’
I close my eyes, thinking back. ‘I suppose.’
‘We have to go see if it’s still there. What if you got a better picture than this?’ She points at the photo on my phone. ‘It’s obviously still pretty cool, but…’
‘It’s a shit picture though. Half of it is blasted out.’
Meg drums her fingers on the table then slams her palms down. ‘Wait, the camera was digital, right?’
I nod.
‘Well, that’s why it’s not working. We need to go analogue!’
‘Huh?’
‘Trust me. Phone cameras, digital cameras, they manipulate light and you have to adjust a million settings. But photographic film receives the light. It imprints it. It takes what’s there and creates an image. What we need for next time is an analogue camera!’
‘I know where we can get one,’ I say. ‘At my nan’s. We can look for the memory card and pick up one of Dad’s old cameras at the same time.’
‘Let’s go.’ Meg grins. ‘Meet you outside. I need the toilet.’
I stare at the photo of the hotel as I wait outside for Meg. The vision was so real. I close my eyes to remember what I saw and a thrill flows through me.
‘All right?’
I open my eyes to see Paul walking towards me. I cough, which then turns into a hiccup.
‘You OK?’ he says.
I fumble with my phone and push it into my pocket. Did he see the photo? ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m actually great, thanks.’
Actually? Actually?
‘How’re you?’ I add quickly. ‘Where’s Ellen?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Apparently I wasn’t taking the shopping seriously enough so I’ve been excused. What you up to? Wanna hang out?’
My neck heats up. ‘Oh?’
He grins. His dimples are really working their magic today. ‘Yeah, gonna meet back up with Cormac and head up our way. Come with?’
I look back in the cafe for Meg. ‘I can’t, sorry. Got plans.’
Paul shrugs. ‘No worries. You might wanna head back soon though. There might be a few more protests tonight.’
I tense. ‘Where? Will there be fighting?’
‘Probably.’ He frowns, no doubt clocking my low-grade panic. ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Just don’t go wandering across the city.’
I release the internal anxiety tornado. ‘Thanks.’
‘No sweat, buddy. See you soon.’
‘I’d love that,’ I say, and my voice squeaks again.
Fuck. My. Life.
I try not to watch him as he walks off, but when he turns round and catches me staring I give him a thumbs up. He laughs and gives one back.
This crush will end me!
‘Was that Paul?’ says Meg. I didn’t even hear the door open.
‘Yeah, he’s off to meet Cormac, then heading back. Mentioned some protests. We just chatted a bit. About nothing really. Just stuff.’
She raises an eyebrow.
‘What?’ I say.
‘You’re adorable.’ She links her arm in mine.