Chapter 7
7
SIX DAYS BEFORE HE LEFT ME
I step back onto the landing. Kit has packed his laptop in my old work bag. He flashes me a questioning smile as he hands me the bag. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling better?’
James is sitting on the top stair, his finger swiping across his phone as Kit asks. He looks up at me briefly before returning his focus to the screen. His hair is longer than I’m used to, more curls. I bring my attention back to Kit. ‘I’m fine, honest. Maybe I’ve got a bit of flu or something coming.’ I take the bag from him. Kit was always thoughtful, always making sure I had everything I needed. It’s not like that with James. At the thought I immediately feel guilty. Everything with James is different, not worse, just different.
My relationship with James is more about partnership. If he’s late up I’ll make him lunch for work. If he’s home before me, he’ll run the hoover round and get the tea on. With Kit, it was more that… I don’t know, I suppose I noticed the things he did more. There was always some flamboyancy in his actions. So, take my bag for example, as he passes it me, he’s packed it with my work things, but he taps the front pocket with a cheeky grin where there is a hastily wrapped package in tin foil poking out. A bacon sa ndwich, I’m guessing. James would do the same kind of thing, but for this scenario, I’d find it later, when I wasn’t expecting it. I suppose Kit always needed a response from me, whereas James is never looking for recognition or praise. I’m not saying one way is right or wrong. There is a boyish charm that goes with Kit’s need for praise, just as there is something sexy about James’s selflessness.
James stands and pockets his phone as Kit bends over, tapping his lower back. ‘Hop on m’lady!’ I let out a snort. James heads down the stairs, clearly impatient with us. Without warning, I get that old rush, the rush I would feel when I would wind James up. There was something sadistically satisfying in getting a rise out of him. ‘I’ll be your trusty steed,’ Kit continues, his smile and enthusiasm as infectious as they always were. James yanks open the door and strides through without a second glance. I’m going to have to get used to his dismissiveness while I’m here.
How long will I be here? How long will it be before I wake up from this… whatever this is? Is the week before he goes stretching out before me? Or am I here for an hour? A quick flash of my old life? What if I have to relive it all, bear the pain of Kit going missing again? The thoughts cartwheel around my head. I’m trying to find impossible answers to an impossible scenario.
In my stomach I feel the familiar heat, that tiny flickering light of fear; the familiar urge to hold my breath.
‘Kit? Can we… can we talk? Just for a minute?’
‘Sure,’ he replies, his face melting in concern. ‘Later though? You know how he gets. Now jump on. Chop chop.’ Kit grins over his shoulder at me, light replenished as he taps his lower back again.
I hesitate. ‘Can you just promise me something?’ His expression folds – a reaction to the tone of my voice. ‘Can you… not go… ’
I’m about to ask him to not go hiking, to stay home with me, so that I don’t lose him, but the words stick in my throat. I can’t get past them, a James-sized lump stopping me. Because if I thought Kit died next week then I would stop him. I would give up any kind of future with James to save his life. But if he’s not dead? If he hasn’t been lying in a coma for seven years or lost his memory, then maybe I don’t know him. I never did.
I’m here to find out the truth. I must be. And until I find out some answers, I will act as though I belong here, that I’m her – the woman who grinned up from the photos with Kit beside her.
‘Can you not go too fast?’ I finish my sentence.
‘Pffft! Too fast? When have you ever known me to go too fast?’ He winks and nods towards the stairs.
My body knows how to do this without thinking. I jump just the right amount to land on his back, my arms sliding around his neck easily, my legs hitched around his hips at exactly the right height. For a moment, I feel the horizon shift again, as an image of last night in the shower with James flashes through my mind.
‘Hold tight, m’lady!’ Kit turns his head, kissing my cheek. ‘Your carriage awaits!’
I let out a yelp as he jogs down the stairs with me bobbing up and down on his back. He makes ridiculous neighing noises as he gallops me across the car park. James is opening the boot of Bertha the car and yanks open the driver door, sliding into the seat. Kit lets out a whinny and crouches down, placing me firmly on the floor, before taking my bag and heading towards the boot.
I open the passenger door and climb in, pulling the seat belt and plugging it in. James is staring at me, a confused expression on his face.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Nothing,’ he replies, turning the key.
‘Bertha smells nice,’ I say, trying to lighten the mood, reaching for the air freshener dangling from the mirror. He turns towards me sharply.
Then it hits me. I always sat in the back, Kit up front, and I didn’t discover that James called his car Bertha until after Kit had disappeared.
I backtrack. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I… I’ll get in the back?’
He shrugs. ‘Makes no difference to me.’
Kit opens the door. ‘What’s this?’ He grins.
‘Nothing, I’ll’ – I unbuckle the seat belt – ‘get in the back.’
‘Just…’ James interrupts, shoulders lifting and falling with an exasperated breath. ‘We’re already late. Kit, get in the back, all right?’
Kit salutes and climbs in.
James doesn’t speak to me for the whole fifteen minutes we’re in the car.
I perch on the edge of the chair. In front of me is a makeshift desk made of an upturned crate, Kit’s laptop open. I was here two days ago. Two days and seven years in the future. I’d popped in on my way to Ava’s. Just a quick visit, a chat and a coffee while he worked on his accounts in the office. James spends most of his days here. It was me who convinced him to take over this place. Above the door outside of the building is an old sign – Park Lane Boxing Club – but two days ago, in another life, the sign was navy blue, the words ‘Fighting Fit’ in white writing.
We’d taken on the lease two years ago and we’d spent the summer holidays unloading the contents into a skip outside, both of us excited and yet exhausted at the end of the first week after the contract was signed. We had the ring repaired, new ropes installed. The brick walls painted grey, the floor scrubbed and varnished. We’d sourced second-hand gym equipment, cleaned it, repaired it, hung framed posters of the greats, bought a water cooler, a coffee machine, had speakers attached to the walls; we’d put our heart and souls into this place.
I look around at the stains on the walls, the tattered ropes, the barely-still-attached-to-the-walls speed balls, the punch bags with split seams.
There are only a few people using the equipment.
‘You sure you’re ready for me this time?’ Kit taunts as he wraps his hands in tape, tearing a piece off with his teeth, his eyes alight with mischief, the right side of his mouth quirking up in a smirk. My head turns quickly to the new-old sound of his voice, the hairs on my arms raised; I wonder if the neurons in my brain are having an electrical surge as they try to process what the hell is going on. I try to settle my thoughts.
I don’t know how or why I’ve been given this second chance, but I have it.
My focus is drawn back to him.
Where did you go, Kit? Did you leave me? Did you leave us ?
In response to Kit’s taunts, James’s expression remains calm, but I can see the way he’s rotating his head a few times, can see the energy pulsing through him. James finds it hard to keep still. He’s always on the move, a leg bouncing when we’re watching TV, pacing while he takes a phone call. He hides it as best he can when he’s in social situations, this energy that he can never seem to contain.
As Kit bends down to tie his laces, James twangs an elastic band, catching Kit above his ear. It’s then that I see him, the man I love, the man I’m about to marry. It’s in the smirk, the ‘what?’ shrug of his shoulders, the light behind those serious brooding eyes, the love there.
I had never doubted James’s love for Kit, but I can understand how James could be jealous of his brother. Kit was always the centre of attention with his jokes and easy charm, in the way he was always such an open book. And yet if he’s alive, he’s more closed than any of us gave him credit for.
James stands, pulls his arm across his body in a stretch and catches my eye. The smirk vanishes and his body immediately tenses. I realise I’m smiling at him. His head shifts to the side as though he’s appraising my actions, then he turns his back and steps up into the ring. Kit joins him and they bounce around a bit, throwing a few safe jabs.
I drag the laptop towards me, taking a deep breath, pulling Kit’s password from the depths of my memory and releasing it onto the keyboard. I hold my breath, glancing back at him, making sure he’s distracted. He laughs and moonwalks away from James. I lean towards the home screen, a photo of us smiling up at the camera. Our hair is wet and smoothed back, and we’re sitting on a sun lounger in Greece. That was six months ago, seven years and six months ago. We’d just been snorkelling and we’re holding blue cocktails with pink umbrellas in them.
I glance up as Kit laughs. He’s skipping from one foot to the other. James mirrors his movements, but he’s becoming more impatient as he waits for Kit to throw a punch.
My eyes are drawn back to the screen.
OK, Kit Palmer. What secrets are you hiding?