Chapter 15 Jules “Across the Universe”
Jules
“Across the Universe”
I’ve spent the last two hours of my beach march with Groucho trying to calm the hell down, by telling myself that at least by now Adam will have destroyed all the tapes and CDs. Meaning that the threat of him changing my life or his—or of me doing the same to him—is over for good.
After everything that’s gone on, we’ll just have to commit to where and who we are now and find a way forward.
All of us. With Nelly, by supporting her, and maybe even getting some family counseling.
Liam needs us too. Just because he’s successful doesn’t mean he’s as happy as Adam’s determined for him to be.
I’m still worried about how he sounded on the phone, and even though he said he would, he hasn’t called back.
Only then I see Adam at the end of the garden, with the tapes and CDs still there on the barbecue, not burned or even smoking, and like a needle scratching across a record, any ideas of us patching things up screech to a halt.
I march over.
“Okay, okay, I’m doing it,” he stammers. “You’re right. We shouldn’t mess with the past…with any of this anymore.”
He won’t look me in the eye. As he holds up the box of matches and the match he hasn’t yet struck, I notice his hands are shaking.
Then I know. I just know. He’s done it again, hasn’t he? He’s broken his promise and he’s gone back in.
“What. Did. You. Do?” My voice is steely.
He closes his eyes, wincing. Then speaks fast. “I just thought that if I took the deal and we went to San Francisco, then…”
Oh my God. He means the deal with Darius. “Then what?” I demand.
“Then…then you’d be happy. Because I know you’ve always thought half of that money from Totally Sirius should have been mine. Ours.” He stumbles on his words. “And so I went back and signed.”
From the state of him, it’s glaringly obvious that didn’t go well.
“And? What happened?” I ask, tensing up even more.
“It didn’t work out,” he says. Then it’s anger I see in his face. “You left me. For Darius.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What the fuck?”
“So I had to go back in again. To change things round so I didn’t take the deal. So we didn’t go to America. So we didn’t break up…”
I put my hands over my face, feeling dizzy.
“But it’s okay now,” he says. “Everything’s fine—”
Just as I’m about to explode at him that everything certainly isn’t fine, and how fucking dare he, I’m interrupted by my phone. Furiously, I pull it out of my pocket, but then I see it’s Max’s mobile.
“Max?”
“Jules.”
Right away his tone makes my heart thump. My eyes flick to Adam and, livid as I am, I put the phone on speaker.
“What’s happened?” I ask.
“There’s been an…incident,” Max says.
“Incident?” I grip the phone. “What are you saying?” My voice is high, but already I’m remembering what Saori said about them playing too hard. Good God, did she mean drugs? As in something more than weed? Drugs that have now led to—
“Liam…” Max takes a difficult breath. “He overdosed, or would have—I found him before he lost consciousness.”
I let out a feral cry, my knees buckling.
“I’m so sorry, Jules. I should have kept a closer eye on him. He’s been struggling. Definitely the last few weeks. I genuinely think it was just a mistake…” Max chokes up and I realize he’s started to cry.
“And now?” Adam’s voice trembles.
“He’s stable.”
Stable. What does that mean? My heart feels like it’s been clawed in two.
“Where are you? I’ll come,” I manage.
Adam nods. We’ll come, he means.
Max says he’ll text me the details of the hospital, then rings off.
“You still think you fixed him?” I rail at Adam, shoving the phone forcibly at him. I feel like I’m sinking down into the ground.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he says, the blood draining from his face.
Sorry. Like that word is enough. Could ever be.
He looks suddenly young, hopeless, wiping his nose across the back of his hand. Like Liam did, when Liam was a child.
“But…but okay, I fucked up and should have listened to you, but we can still make this right,” he says, looking at the tapes and CDs like he’s an addict himself—addicted to them.
Only he’s the one who caused this whole bloody mess in the first place.
“No. I’m done,” I tell him, my voice and body both shaking. “Done with them. And done with you.”
“You can’t mean that—” He makes a grab for my hands, but I quickly push him off.
“Out! I want you out,” I scream at him. “Pack a fucking bag and fucking leave.”
He just stares at me for a second, his eyes bright with tears. Like he’s going to say something. Then he turns and heads toward the house.
Striking a match, I toss it onto the barbecue of tapes and CDs, choking on my own tears, as black smoke curls up into the sky.
—
Adam is packed and gone in under ten minutes. Packed with what? I don’t know. Going where? I don’t care. All I can think about is Liam.
My little boy.
Guilt thrums through me like a low, reverberating chord. What mother doesn’t know her son’s in that much trouble? Only on some level I did know. Which makes it even worse.
And what happens now? To him? To his whole life?
Rushing up to the house, I get online as fast as I can, determined to book flights to Japan tonight. Only there aren’t any available for days.
I bury my head in my hands, trying to comprehend everything that’s happening on the other side of the world.
Where I should be, not here.
It’s all because of Adam and the total and utter fuck-up he’s made of it all.
Then I remember everything he said about San Francisco. How nothing worked out. Maybe there never was going to be a happy ending for us? Even with our multiverse machine, even with all those second chances, and brave new worlds, no matter what we’ve done, we’ve still ended up broken, haven’t we?
Then it hits me. What I could do.
I feel the immediate sting of hypocrisy for even thinking it after the row I’ve just had with Adam. But in this he may have been right. What other choice is there?
Because I have to do something.
What if I could use the machine to create one last timeline?
One where I could stop Liam leaving so soon.
Where I could keep him with me and watch him more closely.
Yes…yes…and save him from what’s already done…
One where I could make everything better.
Where I could help Nelly to be happier and healthier. And I could be happier too.
I race back down the garden. There’s one CD left still unburned, with an image of my face on the cover. I snatch it off the smoldering pile with my asbestos chef’s fingers and squint down at the words written in Adam’s handwriting—Beach Party 2016.
Like it’s fate.
I run into the shed and straight to the old Sony and click the CD into it.
As “This Is What You Came For” by Calvin Harris and Rihanna starts to play, I dive greedily into that spinning tornado again…
***
I land in 2016 in the kind of sweltering day the newspapers like to report on with accompanying pictures of bare-chested Brits gurning for the camera from seaside pubs, and old people on deck chairs with melting ice creams.
It seems like the inhabitants of the entire city of Brighton and Hove, as well as half of London and most of the Home Counties, have been emptied out onto the beach, where they’re basking in the heat like a frothing colony of shit-faced seals.
Jules’s shoulders are stinging, and her skin is slick with sun lotion as she guards their patch of picnic blankets.
She kneels up and shades her eyes to look out to sea, where Liam and Nelly and their mates are in the inflatable kayak Liam got for his thirteenth birthday—Liam, my safe, happy little boy.
Farther out, she tries to spot Adam, who’s “testing himself,” swimming between the two piers.
“I think that’s him,” she tells Doodles, pointing to a dim figure in the distance, an orange float bobbing behind.
“He looks like a scientifically tagged radioactive turtle,” Doodles says, and Jules laughs. “A good name for a band, that,” he considers. “He’s making good progress, though.”
Jules admires the way Doodles supports Adam in all his endeavors, while not giving a monkey’s about exercising himself.
But she also knows she’s got an hour before Adam gets back to join them, and she already resents that they’ll all then have to fan his ego and tell him how amazing he is.
What’s he so busy getting fit for these days anyway?
He used to say it was to keep him at the top of his game for their move to America, but two years have passed since he put the mockers on that at her birthday barbecue, and other than exercise, he doesn’t seem to have much ambition of any sort left.
“Why does every single social event these days have to involve some kind of sporting activity?” she says aloud.
“What? Like professional cigarette-rolling?” Doodles smirks, lighting one up. “Any more beers?”
“Here you go,” she says, delving into the bottom of the cool box for the second-to-last of the beers and passing it over to him. She’s never seen such white legs and knows Doodles hates being out in the sun.
He only made it today because it’s Ngozi’s birthday and Jules is sure Doodles has a crush on her, a suspicion that’s now confirmed, as Ngozi walks up the beach toward us in a stunning orange bikini and Doodles quickly springs into action and hands her a towel.
“Thanks,” she says, taking it from him. She nods to the sea. “I left Geoff to it. Got too splashy for me.”
On the scratched Discman “Cake by the Ocean” by DNCE is playing and I nod along, listening to Doodles and Ngozi chatting. There’s no need to panic yet, is there? The reason I’m back here, what I’ve come back here for, is going to happen anyway, isn’t it? Just not yet.