Chapter 26
NICK
Despite the comfort being in the house brought me, I knew Andy was worried about me.
And he had every right to be. Because I wasn’t really living.
In fact I was barely existing, so acutely aware that, at any minute, my life could be snatched away.
What was the point of doing anything, meeting anyone – of being happy – if it could all be gone, just like that?
It was about four years after finding the letter that something occurred to me, and for a few weeks I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
‘You’re not serious?’ Andy said, when I told him over Thursday curry.
I didn’t look at him, just shovelled in mouthfuls of curry like my life depended on it. ‘Why not?’ I shrugged, aiming for nonchalant, as though going to look for Emma was something that had only just occurred to me, but coming off more belligerent.
Suddenly my arm stopped moving and his hand was on my wrist, fork suspended mid-air. A piece of chicken fell off, dropping back onto the plate. Finally, I looked up and met his eye.
‘Don’t do this,’ he said, sadly.
I lowered my fork and sniffed. ‘I don’t see why it’s such a terrible idea,’ I said.
He frowned, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Tell me then. Tell me what you’re hoping might happen if you go looking for Emma right now. I’m all ears.’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know, Andy, but I can’t stop thinking about her and I don’t want to—’ I stopped myself.
I was about to say I still didn’t want to open the letter, but I hadn’t told him about it and now didn’t feel like the best time.
I took a gulp of beer and wiped my hand across my mouth. ‘I just want to see her.’
Andy shook his head slowly. ‘Oh, Nicky,’ he said. ‘I really thought you were over this.’
I looked down at my plate. My curry had started to congeal and I’d suddenly lost my appetite.
‘You never really believed me about her, did you?’
Now it was Andy’s turn to look away. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You didn’t need to. I wasn’t lying though.’
He looked up. ‘I never thought you were lying, Nicky,’ he said. ‘I’d never think that. I just—’
‘Just what, Andy? Thought I was going mad?’
‘No, that’s not fair. I just thought…’ He twisted his pint glass round and round. ‘I just thought it was the grief. You know, you lost Dawn, and then… well. You know. Emma came along and you wanted to believe there was something amazing between you, and that was fine for a while.’
‘But why would I do that? Why would I imagine the twenty-year gap? It would have been easier if everything was just straightforward. It makes no sense.’
‘No. I suppose not.’ He stabbed a piece of chicken with his fork and held it up to his mouth. ‘Except that this way you gave yourself permission to fall in love with someone else after losing Dawn.’
And there it was. This was what he’d believed all this time. I didn’t know what to say.
‘Can we talk about something else?’ I said eventually, pushing my half-full plate away.
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. ‘Sure.’
We did move on, but the conversation hung over us all night, and we left early.
When I got home I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not about the fact that Andy didn’t believe me, because I knew it was all real. But about finding Emma.
When I got home I went straight up to my office and started up my computer.
As it whirred to life, I thought about all the things Emma had told me about the future – about her phone which meant she had the internet wherever she went, about the fact that people found dates online.
It seemed so incredible that so much would have changed just a few years from now. It seemed almost impossible.
I pulled up the Yahoo search page and typed in Emma’s name, then I pressed search and waited, holding my breath.
There she was. Emma Vickers, age twenty-one, at the opening night of a play at a theatre a few towns away.
I clicked on the photo and her young, carefree face filled my screen.
I stared at it, taking in her sparkling green eyes, her cloud of red hair, her beautiful porcelain skin.
She looked radiant, and carefree. And so young.
With shaking hands, I closed the window, and shut the computer down, sitting in the dark for a moment with the image of Emma stamped onto my retinas. And in that moment I knew that Andy was right.
No good would come from looking for her. I had to stay away.
I was about to walk out of the room and go to bed when another thought occurred to me and I sat back down again.
In all the films I’d watched and books I’d read about time travel, people who go back in time try to change the past, and that affects the future. And while I knew that going to find Emma would be a terrible idea, there was something I knew about her future that could be within my power to change.
In 2017, Greg was going to fall from a tree and die.
Although that was still thirteen years away, I couldn’t ignore the niggling idea that I should try to warn him.
I turned over the implications in my mind – if Greg didn’t fall from that tree, then he and Emma would still be together, and that might mean that Emma and I would never meet.
I had no idea what that might mean for me – would the memories of everything that had happened between us these last few years be wiped from my mind because they had never happened?
Or would I still remember what could have happened anyway?
I had no idea. But I did know that I would be a terrible person if I didn’t at least try to stop it.
I spent a few hours trying to find Greg, and eventually, I did. There had been a news story in the local paper last year about his football team winning their semi-final. Greg was the captain and, alongside a photo of the team was a photo of him, beaming out at the camera.
He was handsome, with dark blond surfer hair and bright blue eyes in a tanned, rugged face. Of course he wasn’t a tree surgeon yet, but he looked like the perfect candidate to become one.
I stared at him for a long time, trying to work out ways that I could warn this man about a tragedy that was going to befall him many, many years in his future.
I pictured going to the football club and walking into the bar after a match, approaching him and striking up a conversation.
How would that conversation go, exactly?
‘Lovely to meet you, and by the way, don’t become a tree surgeon in case you fall from a tree and die one day’?
Clearly not. But there didn’t seem any other obvious way of making him listen either. A letter? Too easy to ignore. A phone call? Too easy to trace.
In the end I closed the computer and stared at my warped reflection in the blank screen for ages, thinking it through.
And finally it hit me that what I was contemplating was exactly what I’d begged Emma not to do to me: telling someone about future events. Of course I couldn’t go and warn Greg. Because even if he did listen, I could be ruining his life.
No. I’d just have to let destiny play out and hope that things might still change.
For Greg, and for me.