Chapter Twenty-Two
Cavill sees me approaching and smiles. I’m too scared to smile back. He reads my expression as an indication that something has gone wrong and breaks off his conversation with an elderly woman in order to come and meet me. ‘What is it?’ he asks softly.
‘I need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere private?’
His face darkens. ‘What’s happened, Eddie?’
‘Nothing’s happened. I just need to tell you something.’
We leave the foyer, avoiding getting caught by friends who wish to talk to us, and take the narrow corridor that snakes around the outskirts of the auditorium to a small, quiet back room.
Like the VIP room where I sit with Ulysses in the present, it has red upholstered chairs arranged around a low coffee table, and a long wooden console table placed against the wall. Very soon it will be consumed by fire.
Cavill looks at me with concern. ‘What is it?’
I don’t know where to begin. I wish I could ensure that he’ll remain quiet while I speak, but I know he’ll interrupt me before I’ve finished saying what I need to say, that he’ll deem me mad the moment I state that I come from the future. I decide to leave that bit to the end.
‘Sit down.’
‘Eddie, darling? What the devil is going on?’
He’s worried now, but he does as I ask. I stand before him and take a deep breath. I know this will change everything. End everything. My grief almost overwhelms me before I’ve even said a word, because he’s already lost to me.
I pull myself together, lift my chin and look at him steadily.
‘I’m going to tell you something that might seem very peculiar, unbelievable, actually. Will you promise me you’ll listen to what I have to say before you judge me?’
‘Of course,’ he says confidently. He cannot imagine how peculiar it’s going to be.
‘Take yourself back to June 1895,’ I begin, blindly feeling my way.
‘Very well,’ he replies. ‘I was at St Sidwell.’
‘You and Hermione were standing by the window of her bedroom. She took your face in her hands, and she asked you to look into her eyes. She said that when we die, we move into spirit. We leave our bodies behind and live on as souls. She asked you whether you would recognise her when you are made of light. Do you remember?’
He shakes his head in bewilderment. His deepening frown makes him look old, suddenly. ‘How do you know what Hermione and I talked about?’
‘You said you’d recognise her out of a thousand souls. Do you remember that?’ I want him to remember it. I want it to have meant something.
He nods his head slowly, struggling to see a path through the fog. ‘Of course, I remember that.’
Hope flares for a second. I continue. My heart is hammering in my chest, the blood pounding against my temples.
He doesn’t yet understand what I’m trying to tell him.
‘Do you remember, after Felix disappeared, Hermione awoke from a faint and didn’t recall anything that had happened over the previous two weeks?
Do you remember that?’ He nods again, very slowly, wondering where I’m going with this.
I soldier on. ‘Never again did she talk of souls, of life after death, of love that endures beyond time, did she? Hermione seemed quite different after that.’
‘What is this about, Eddie? I don’t understand.’ He’s rattled now. He moves to get up, but I lay my hands on his shoulders and make him stay seated.
‘Please, you said you would listen.’
He sighs. I know I’m scaring him. This isn’t the Eddie he knows. ‘Very well,’ he concedes and folds his arms. He’s now looking decidedly uncomfortable.
I stand back and heave another breath. ‘Do you remember the strange song she played on the piano? “Let it Be”? No one had ever heard anything like it.’ My throat constricts now, as I feel the pressure building in my chest. I never anticipated that telling the truth would be as hard as this.
‘How do you know about Hermione, Eddie?’ he asks quietly.
‘I will explain. Just hear me out.’
‘This is highly irregular, you know.’
‘Do you remember, on the Titanic, you were on the deck with Constance.’
His eyes widen and stare at me in disbelief.
I start pacing the room. I feel as if I’m wading through concrete, trying to explain something that’s unexplainable.
‘You lent her your jacket because it was bitterly cold,’ I continue.
‘The stars were the brightest you’d ever seen.
She told you she’d had a dream that the ship was going to sink.
Then on the night it did sink, she seemed to know it before it happened. Do you remember that?’
He’s staring at me with growing alarm. I can almost see his mind racing around in his head trying to make sense of the seemingly unconnected pieces of information.
‘Constance knew it was going to sink, Cavill. She knew the Carpathia was going to rescue those who managed to get into lifeboats. You knew she knew. You questioned her. How did she know? Then she told you …’ My voice thins. I put a hand to my throat. ‘She told you that you were dear to her.’
I’ve now scared the living daylights out of him. ‘Eddie, I don’t know how you know all of this, or, indeed, why you’re telling me …’
I cut him off. I kneel in front of him and put my hands on his knees. I hold his gaze, willing him to see me, Pixie, behind my eyes. Willing him to remember what he saw when he looked deeply into Hermione and Constance’s eyes. Willing him to see me and recognise me, at last.
But he doesn’t. He’s looking at me with distrust, not recognition. He couldn’t be further away from recognising me.
I have come this far. I cannot stop now. ‘Because I was Hermione and I was Constance, and now I’m Eddie,’ I whisper. My eyes well with tears.
He looks quite terrified now, and furious.
‘I come from the future, Cavill,’ I tell him.
‘I’m sitting in this very theatre on 26th October 2014, in trance.
My name is Pixie Tate. I’m a psychic medium with a very strange gift.
I can travel through time. I have travelled here to this time to release the soul of Nessa Blunt who is stuck, following a fire that will destroy her and this theatre tonight. ’
Cavill pushes me away and stands. I feel his incredulity and his contempt, and they are daggers in my heart. He cannot believe that I’m claiming to be Hermione and Constance and Eddie … and I don’t blame him. Why ever did I imagine that he would?
I talk very fast now, knowing that in a moment he will leave this room and never want to see me again.
I can’t think of Eddie and how this conversation will impact her. I have to end what I started.
I get up and stand before him. ‘When I slide back to my time, I will leave Eddie and she, like Hermione, won’t remember anything that has happened since last Friday.
Constance died on those stairs, but she was due to meet you in Central Park the following day, and she, I, was going to tell you the truth.
I was going to tell you who I am. But I never got the chance.
I never got the chance to come clean. But I wanted to.
You said there was something you wanted to tell her.
What was it? What were you going to tell her? ’
Cavill turns and stares at me with the eyes of a stranger. The cold in them knocks the wind out of me, and, as a consequence, the tears fall freely.
He’s lost for words. He’s looking at the woman he loves and hating everything she is saying.
‘I want you to leave,’ he says. He puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. ‘I don’t know how you know all of this … about Hermione and Constance. I can’t explain … but it’s madness. It’s sheer madness. I want it to stop.’
But I can’t stop now. I have to make him understand. ‘Do you remember the poem Hermione recited? The one Constance recited too? “The King’s Breakfast” by A. A. Milne. It hasn’t been composed yet. It’s a poem from the future.’
His frown deepens with horror. I know he remembers it. I start to recite it, putting on the voices as I did as both Hermione and Constance.
‘Stop!’
But I don’t stop. I can’t. I want to make him understand.
I put on the high-pitched voice of the queen, hoping he will realise the truth. But he resists it. It’s too outlandish. Too implausible.
‘Stop it, I tell you!’ He shouts. His eyes are wild with fear.
He makes for the door, but I hurry and put myself in the way, my back pressed against it.
I’m desperate now. I sense I’m losing him. I put out my hand, but he doesn’t take it.
‘Step aside, Eddie,’ he demands.
My feet remain firmly planted. ‘When you fell in love with Hermione, it was me, Pixie. When you fell in love with Constance, it was me, Pixie. Now I’m Eddie, and you love both of us.
I love you Cavill, with all my heart and soul …
’ My voice thins. I clear my throat. I gaze at him longingly and lovingly, but all I get in return is icy distrust. ‘Telling you the truth is the only way I can end our connection, so I don’t slide back as anyone else and disrupt your life further.
You and Eddie deserve to find happiness together. ’
‘You are Eddie!’ he exclaims in frustration.
‘I am not Eddie.’ I realise that I’m shouting too.
‘I was not Hermione, or Constance. I’m Pixie Tate, in possession of Eddie for the time I need to save Nessa’s soul.
I’m from the future. From 2014. I didn’t expect to fall in love with you when I slid back to 1895.
But I started something that gained momentum and now it needs to end.
So I’m ending it. It’s breaking my heart, but I have to end it. ’
He puts his hands on my upper arms and shifts me roughly away from the door.
‘Then it’s ended,’ he says dully. ‘I have nothing more to say to you.’
He leaves. I’m left reeling from the shock of what I’ve just done. My heart is splintering into a thousand pieces. I want to slide home and dive under the duvet and not emerge for a week. I want the pain to end. But I have a duty to Nessa, and I can’t let her down.