Chapter 19 Anna #2
She takes a deep breath. ‘A long time ago, something happened to me and my sister—I had a twin sister—and it sent us through time…’ The telling of it takes hours, Mum going into minute detail in the hopes that will make it more believable.
She needn’t bother, after the day I’ve had I’m ready to believe it all.
But the entire time, it feels like she’s holding her breath, her chest isn’t quite relaxed and her face is set with determination.
When she shows me the fragments of the catopthura in the old hope box, her hands are shaking.
She tells me about impossible things: a post-quantum computer called CHARL1E, a hive of tiny robots, a tree that sings, and dreamy meetings with a twin in the distant past.
A tingling fear grows at the nape of my neck, and the hollowing eyes of the-face-that-isn’t-my-face watch me from incidental reflections.
By the time Mum’s finished, we’re sitting at the breakfast bar with empty hot chocolate mugs and cereal bowls.
Through the window, a pallid dawn grows.
Mum watches me, anxious and waiting. It all seems so improbable, but I desperately want to believe it.
I want to believe neither of us is crazy, that it’s just a crazy world.
I rub the back of my neck, trying to get rid of the itch, and Mum frowns.
‘Did your twin ever come back?’ I ask.
Mum strokes the edge of her hot chocolate mug. ‘Actually, I’m still trying to figure that out.’
‘What do you mean?’
Her eyes lock on mine. They’re not dry now. She swallows. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry. I thought we had more time.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, stretching my neck, trying to get rid of the now painful itch.
‘That soreness in the back of your neck, how bad is it?’
‘How do you—’
‘Doesn’t matter how I know, just tell me how bad it is.’
‘Not that bad.’ I lie. It’s so bad it’s making me a bit queasy. ‘But it’s getting worse.’
‘I think…’ Mum trails off, gets up and gazes out of the window, right through the-face-that-isn’t-my-face.
All these years, I’ve been afraid she’d see it, but she can’t.
The decaying eyes stare out alongside Mum’s, then the whole face splits into dozens of versions from different moments in life.
A bare skull sits next to a newborn baby, a middle-aged woman beside a teenager—and I realise for the first time that the reflection doesn’t only look like Mum, it also looks like me.
Uncannily so, as if Dad didn’t donate any genes to my body, as if I’m all entirely Mum.
Mum turns and comes back to the breakfast bar, but the fractal faces in the glass remain, multiplying across every reflection in the kitchen, diffusing into the rays of light I’m not normally aware of.
Mum doesn’t sit down, but kneels in front of me, taking both my hands in one of hers.
‘I don’t know what happens next. Whatever it is, you must know I’ve loved being your mum. You are so precious to me.’
Adrenaline thumps through the pain in my neck. ‘What are you talking about? You’ll always be my mum.’
She strokes my rubbish new fringe off my forehead. ‘You’ve been my little girl, and you always will be.’
‘Mum, stop it, you’re scaring me.’ My neck aches so much my head spins. Whatever she’s about to do I don’t want her to do it.
She shakes her head, breathing back tears. ‘I love you, Anna. You hear me?’
‘Mum, I mean it, stop.’
She’s still holding that breath, waiting on the edge of the precipice with me, not sad because we have to fall together, but because she has to push me. Because it’s time to spray paint over all the chalk messages in my mind.
This is how it has to be. The road taken before my birth led here and whatever its onward route, I’ll have to walk it. I love you. Do you hear me? I nod, setting my jaw. ‘I hear you. I love you too, Mum.’
She nods, looking lost, as if she’s never going to hear me say it again. Am I going to die? Is she about to—
But before I can finish the thought, she lets the breath she’s been holding go. ‘Are we not drawn onward ere divided?’
The words make zero sense, but my throat moves in response without my thinking. ‘We few live on mirror rims.’ I see those borders in my mind’s eye, the microscopic film where time and space collide, me and Mum standing on its edge like rays of reflected light.
Mum matches me word for word: ‘Emit no evil that eutopian no place and dystopian bad place; that inconceivable blank page of ashes and flood.
The pain in my neck grows, bringing out spots in my vision.
It’s so horribly painful, but I won’t scream.
I will not scream. I bite my lip, whimpering, as Mum finishes:
‘Redrawn onward to new era.’
The tugging on the back of my neck suddenly releases, but in its place the white spots in my vision explode.
The locked door in my head swings open—
—and the past comes flooding out.