Chapter 6 #3
‘I haven’t played this since…’
‘Since Dawn died,’ she finished, gently.
I nodded, swallowed down the lump in my throat.
‘If you can’t, it doesn’t matter.’
I shook my head. ‘No. It does matter.’
I needed to get over this, move on. Carefully, I cradled the neck of the violin, lifted it, then tucked it under my chin.
I picked up the bow, took a deep breath, then started playing.
I didn’t look at Emma, just stared out into the park as I dragged the bow back and forth across the strings.
It sounded slightly out of tune, but I didn’t want to stop.
I hadn’t decided until I started what I was going to play, but as soon as the notes began I knew exactly what to play.
‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ by Aerosmith, a song Dawn had loved and that I’d learned the violin part for especially to play to her.
I wasn’t sure whether Emma would recognise it.
A couple walking past hand in hand stopped to listen and I flashed them a smile.
Beside me, I felt Emma shift. With every note I played I felt a something fill my chest, a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
And as I reached the final note and brought the bow to a stop, I held my breath for a few seconds, letting the last notes slip away on the breeze.
The couple clapped, then turned and walked away, deep in conversation.
‘I had no idea you were so good,’ Emma said beside me, and for the first time since I’d taken the violin out of its case I met her gaze. Her eyes twinkled and a smile played on her lips.
I lowered the violin onto my lap. ‘I used to be. I’m pretty rusty now.’
‘It sounded pretty incredible to me.’ I jumped as she lay her hand on my arm, a warmth spreading through me. Would I ever get used to the jolt that passed between us every time we touched? Would it make it impossible for us to ever be together in a more intimate way or…
I felt a heat rise in my cheeks. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It felt pretty good to play. Especially here.’
She nodded but didn’t ask any questions for which I was grateful.
We sat quietly for a moment, watching our own views.
I imagined stepping across the invisible line that ran between us, separating us.
If there was a way for us to do it, what would it be like in her world?
How much could things really have changed in twenty years?
Would I feel like an alien, a relic? Emma had called me that one day, before we realised what was happening between us. A relic.
‘What are you smiling about?’ Emma’s voice interrupted my thoughts and I turned to look at her.
‘I was just wondering what it’s like where you are.’
She wrapped her arms round herself and shivered. ‘It’s bloody cold.’
‘It looks it. It’s a lovely day here.’
‘I want to be there with you.’
‘I want you to be too.’
A silence fell. Then: ‘I wonder what I’m doing today?’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
She blinked slowly at me, then shrugged. ‘I was seventeen in 1999. I wonder what I was doing right now.’
A stone lodged in my belly. Of course I’d realised how young she’d be right now, but I hadn’t really thought about it in any kind of detail. I moved away and rubbed my arm where her hand had been.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘I just… it feels wrong. You’re a child.’
‘But I’m not.’ She stood up suddenly and did a twirl.
‘Look. I’m thirty-seven years old and a proper grown-up.
’ She smiled at me, her lips wide, and I had a sudden urge to kiss her.
She sat down and leaned towards me without touching me.
‘It’s all right, Nick. Even if we never find a way to be together, whatever this is between us right now, it’s all right. ’
‘I know,’ I said. And I did, really. And yet I couldn’t completely shake the thought of her seventeen-year-old self being here, in my present day.
‘Why don’t you tell me about your music.’ She nodded at the violin that still rested on my lap.
‘There’s not much to tell. I’ve been playing the violin since I was six years old because my mother played and she wanted me to.
My father didn’t care because nothing I ever did was good enough anyway, and he thought I should be playing something more manly like drums or guitar.
’ I shrugged, remembering the first time he’d come to hear me play.
I’d been terrified, standing at the front of the school assembly, my violin trembling in my arm until I thought I might drop it.
When I played I felt so happy, but the moment I finished and sought out my parents my heart dropped.
Because while my mother was clapping and cheering with pride, my father just sat there, arms folded, staring at me, a smirk on his face.
I pushed the memory away. ‘What about you? Do you play any instruments?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I always wish I had but I was more into drama than music. I was a bit of a show-off.’ She smiled.
‘I was in plays at school, but I’ll never forget my first proper part, in the open-air theatre across the other side of this park.
I played Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest.’
‘Did you? Wow! When was that?’
She frowned, the crinkles in her forehead making her look unbearably cute.
Suddenly, she gasped. ‘Gosh, I think it was then – I mean now!’ She shook her head.
‘I mean, I think it was 1999! Yes, it was, because I was the youngest member of the cast and very young for the part, and it was in the papers at the time and Mum cut it out and stuck it to the fridge.’ She stopped, breathless, and looked up at me.
‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I…’ I started. ‘Sorry. I was just—it seems weird to me, that you have a memory from childhood, but for me it hasn’t even happened yet.’
‘Yeah. It is weird isn’t it.’
I didn’t want to think about it too much. I wasn’t sure I wanted that knowledge. Even knowing about something small that happens just a short time in my future felt wrong.
‘Actually I have something to tell you,’ I said, leaning down and placing my violin back in its case.
‘Have you? What?’
‘Hang on.’ I reached for my rucksack this time and took out the pieces of paper I’d printed at the library. ‘I found some things out.’
‘What sort of things?’
I smoothed the top piece of paper and stared at it, the words blurring. ‘I went to the library and did some research about time slips and time travel.’
‘Right?’
I glanced at her. I hoped I’d read this situation correctly. The last thing I wanted to do was be too intense and scare her off. I’d been so certain, but now I was saying it out loud I felt nervous, unsure of myself. I cleared my throat. I was a teacher, I could do this.
‘I was trying to find out what scientists know about time slips. I wanted to know what the explanations were for the phenomena, and how they were believed to occur.’ I picked up the first sheet and squinted at it.
‘Many people don’t believe time slips are possible.
But we know they are because we’re living one, so I was looking for explanations on how they would work, rather than whether they could.
’ I glanced at her, then back down at the paper in my hands.
‘One explanation is that they’re caused by electromagnetic fields which produce hallucinations in the brain.
But we know this has to be more than a hallucination, otherwise we’re both going mad.
Another possible explanation is that travelling at a certain speed can cause time to slow down, but unless we can work out how to travel faster than the speed of light then that didn’t seem to be helpful either.
’ I cleared my throat again. ‘Have you heard of cosmic strings or wormholes?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, it seems like they’re both a sort of defect in space-time which, if they warp, might be able to create paths that loop back in time.’ I lowered my hands into my lap and looked at Emma. ‘I wondered whether that could be the explanation for what’s happening here.’
‘You really are a teacher, aren’t you?’ Her smile softened the words, but I still felt myself flushing.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘I’m only teasing. It’s brilliant. But I don’t see how this helps us?’
‘Neither did I, at first.’
‘But now you do?’
‘I’m not sure. Probably not. I mean, scientists have never been able to deliberately recreate a time slip as far as I’m aware. But then they’ve never experienced what we’re experiencing either, so I thought, maybe, we could use our knowledge of that to help us.’
‘I’m listening.’ She closed the gap between us and I felt the buzz of electricity through my jeans from the press of her leg against mine. It made it hard to focus.
‘We don’t know how or why this is happening, just that it is, right?’
She nodded, a tendril of hair coming loose and sticking to her cheek. I wanted to brush it away but resisted.
‘I’ve been trying to think of a reason why it’s happening here, in this bandstand, and the only thing I could come up with was that we’ve both lost someone we love, and that we both live in the same house. So I wondered whether they could be the things that are causing a connection between us.’
Emma frowned. ‘But even if that’s true, how does that help us?’
I cleared my throat. ‘What if we could do something in the house that could somehow connect us there? Find some way that we could be together there, as well as here. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be something.’
Her eyes widened, her lips parted. ‘I love the idea,’ she said. ‘But I honestly don’t see how we could recreate this, however much we want it to happen.’
‘But what if we could? What if there was something we could try? Would you do it?’
‘Of course.’
Thank God. I wasn’t reading this wrong.
‘So, what are you suggesting? Do we need to concoct some sort of spell, or a weird ceremony?’ she said, a smile playing on her lips.
I shook my head, trying to stay focused.
‘My idea is actually simpler than that. Basically, as far as I can work out, a wormhole is a sort of short cut between two different parts of space and time. There’s clearly some unexplained force pulling the two of us through a wormhole here, in this bandstand, so what if we were able to create an artificial wormhole in the house? ’
Emma frowned and tilted her head to one side.
‘How do you suggest we do that?’
I took a deep breath. This was it. The moment I’d find out whether she thought my idea was a good one – or completely insane.
‘I wondered whether, if we did exactly the same thing at exactly the same time in exactly the same part of the house, we might somehow be able to override the natural timeline, and it would let us be together there as well as here.’
Emma studied me for a moment and I held my breath.
I was no expert (clearly), but I’d given this a lot of thought, and it was the only possible thing I could think of for us to try.
All my research pointed towards the idea that the principle of a wormhole relied on creating a time difference between the two ends of the ‘tunnel’, then bringing those two timelines together in space.
And while they had also talked about travelling faster than the speed of light in order to achieve this, I hoped that our experiment might just push the natural phenomenon to work without that added complication.
Finally, she let out a breath. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
‘Is… is that a good reaction?’ I said.
Her face broke into a grin. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I think… I mean, obviously I have no idea whether it will work but it’s better than any idea I’ve got, so it’s got to be worth a try, right?’ Her eyes were bright.
‘Right,’ I said, shivering with excitement.
‘So what do we have to do?’ she said.
‘Well, first we’ll have to sync our watches, then we’ll need to work out exactly what we’re going to do in the house, and where,’ I said.
‘I also wondered whether we could give each other one item that belongs to the other one, just to see if it helps to strengthen the connection. I—’ Something in her eyes made me stop in my tracks. ‘What?’
‘If this doesn’t work, we need a backup plan,’ she said softly.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, disappointed that she already seemed to have decided it wasn’t going to work. ‘We can arrange to meet back here again tomorrow, no matter what happens.’
‘That’s one idea.’ She shifted a little and her arm grazed against mine and I buzzed with electricity. ‘But I was thinking of something else we could try too.’
She moved even closer until I could see the flash of green in her eyes, a smudge of lipstick above her top lip, and suddenly my heart was beating so fast and so hard because I knew what was about to happen and I wanted it more than anything else in the whole world.
I held my breath, and then we moved towards each other.
Our lips touched.
It was an explosion; my whole body felt as though it had been set alight, fireworks going off inside my belly and across my skin, every nerve ending tingled and jangled. A feeling like gentle static made my lips fizz and I snaked my hand round the back of her neck and pulled her closer.
It was as though I was outside my body looking down, and yet I couldn’t have felt more present.
It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
It was like magic.
She moved away. I could still feel her breath on my lips and her hand on my thigh and I could barely breathe.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she whispered. ‘Was that—’
‘I can’t—’
We both laughed, and it broke the tension. I shifted away slightly so I could see her clearly, and she was looking at me, searching my face.
‘That’s the first time I’ve kissed anyone since Greg,’ she whispered.
‘And me since Dawn,’ I said. I felt breathless.
I’d never even considered kissing anyone else since Dawn had died, let alone imagined what it would actually be like.
In fact, apart from drunken snogs as a teenager, Dawn was the only woman I had ever been with.
I’d assumed that kissing someone else, touching them, would feel like a betrayal, as though what Dawn and I had shared had meant nothing to me, when it had meant everything.
But that wasn’t how it felt.
Instead it felt as though I’d simply found a space inside me for Emma to fill; new experiences, nestled alongside the old ones.
Emma shivered.
‘Are you cold?’ I said.
‘Freezing.’
I reached around her shoulders and pulled her gently towards me, and she pressed her cheek against my chest. I wondered whether she could hear the skittering of my heart.
We sat like that for a few minutes, not moving. I wanted to talk to her, ask her how she felt about what had just happened, but I couldn’t find the words.
So I said nothing and just held her.
And right then, it was everything.