‘But… how?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.’
‘Really?’
A thought occurred to me then. I opened my bag and handed her my Nokia phone.
‘This is my phone. It’s the latest model.’
Emma turned it over in her hands, prodded it. It sprang to life, the date and time glowing from the grey screen:2nd April 1999.
She dropped it as though it was on fire and it clattered onto the bench and bounced onto the floor. I bent down to pick it up, cradling it in my hand.
‘Why don’t you try and ring me?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I assume that fancy computer-camera-phone thing makes simple phone calls as well?’
‘Of course it does.’
‘Try and ring me.’
I watched as she swiped her finger across the screen of her phone, then I read out my phone number. I held my breath while we waited for it to connect.
The number you have dialled has not been recognised.The tinny voice rang out, and when Emma ended the call we both sat in silence for a moment. Then she shrugged.
‘You could have just given me a wrong number.’
I nodded. ‘I could have done. I don’t know what else to suggest.’
She looked at me, her expression hard to read. ‘Try and ring me.’
She read her number out and I tapped the numbers on the keypad carefully, checking it before I pressed the green dial button. We both waited, watching as my phone tried to connect. And then:The number you dialled has not been recognised.
We stared at it for a few seconds, taking in the implications. Although there was a chance that there was simply a problem with the phone network, or we’d both given out our numbers wrong, it was pretty clear to me that it was more than that. I hoped she’d realised the same.
Finally, she looked at me.
‘My God,’ she whispered. Her eyes were wide.
‘I know,’ I whispered back.
The world still turned, lives still went on around us. But something in this tiny bubble in which we were sitting had shifted. She ran her fingers through her hair and her eyes were wild. ‘This should be impossible. Thisisimpossible.’
‘And yet here we are.’
She nodded. ‘Here we are.’
I’d spent most of my life either studying maths – at school, at university – or working in the field of maths and logic. I understood how the world worked, how time is a continuous moving thing, that there is no chance that it can move backwards, or that two people living in different times can ever be together.
And yet, unless one of us was seriously ill or playing some elaborate hoax, then that’s exactly what appeared to be happening right here. The question was, what did it mean?
‘Did you feel a jolt when we touched?’
Emma turned to me, her face pale. ‘Every time. I thought it was just me.’
I shook my head. ‘It felt like more than the usual attraction. To me at least.’
