‘I wouldn’t have to tell you.’
He shook his head. ‘If you looked and you found out something bad, I’d know. And I can’t live with that. I just can’t.’ He took my hand again, the usual spark jolting me. ‘Promise me you won’t look.’
He looked so distraught I had no choice. ‘I promise.’ I attempted a smile. ‘But you’d better come up with a better idea soon, because we can’t keep this up forever.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
6
NICK
I thought about what Emma had said all the way home. I thought about it while I was in the shower, while I ate dinner and as I tried to fall asleep, staring up into the darkness until well into the early hours.
I knew I’d made the right decision telling Emma not to look for me in 2019. Knowing anything about the future felt dangerous, as though it could unwittingly make me live my life differently. Even knowing that I will eventually sell this place because in twenty years’ time Emma is living in it felt wrong.
The truth was, for the first time since Dawn had left me, I was finally coming back to life. When I was with Emma, the parts of me that had curled up and died after losing Dawn began to turn their heads back to the sun, to unfurl. At last, I could see a reason for living again.
I couldn’t look for her right now in 1999 because she would be seventeen years old and everything about that scenario was wrong. But apart from all that, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that, if Ihadstill been around in 2019, I would definitely already have found Emma. The fact that I hadn’t hung over me like a dark cloud.
The trouble was, I couldn’t see any other way for us to be together.
I sat up and switched on the bedside lamp, the room flooding with light. The wardrobe door hung slightly open and the empty coat hangers inside made my stomach flip over. It had taken me a long time to get rid of Dawn’s things, and for months after she died I would stand at this wardrobe and inhale the lingering scent of her. Eventually, when it faded, Andy had suggested it was time to let someone else enjoy her clothes, her jewellery, her things, and I knew he was right. We’d spent a whole day sorting through everything, bagging up the things I agreed to get rid of and putting everything else into a box to keep close by.
Handing those bags over to the charity shop was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but Andy reminded me that her things were not where Dawn was. Rather she was in my memories. My heart. My soul.
I climbed out of bed and kneeled down to pull a box out from underneath. It was only a small one, just a few nick-nacks and things I wanted to keep close to me. I used to look at it at least once a day, but I realised now that, since meeting Emma, I’d barely given it a thought. Guilt stabbed me. Did that mean I was forgetting Dawn?
I lifted the lid from the box and spread the first few items across the duvet. There was the note she’d written me during her last couple of days, a short message that I’d read so many times I knew it off by heart.
Promise me you’ll live your life. Find love, see the world, play in the concerts. Grab it all by the hands and whatever you do, do NOT grieve for me for more than a year. I absolutely forbid it.
My hands shook as I let my eyes slide over the words again. All the times I’d read it before I never dreamed I’d be doing any of those things. I dropped it and picked up a photo; my favourite of Dawn, her blonde hair shining in the sunlight as she sat reading a book, oblivious to the fact that I was looking at her. My heart clenched and tears stabbed behind my eyes. I sniffed and picked up the next photo. It was taken after she started her treatment, just after she’d shaved her head. I’d come home early and found her sitting in the bathroom, surrounded by blonde curls, looking up at me with eyes wide. She looked utterly beautiful and I’d wanted to capture her bravery so she’d lifted her chin and let me take a photo with my digital camera.
I was about to put everything back in the box when something caught my eye and I picked it up with trembling hands. It was a little toy sheep that Dawn had bought when we were trying for a baby. We’d agreed not to buy anything at all, not wanting to tempt fate. One day Dawn had come home and I remembered the light in her eyes as she pulled this little yellow sheep out of the plastic bag. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist it,’ she’d said, and we’d tucked it away in a drawer for later, not realising at the time that later would never come. That, in fact, three months after that moment she would receive the devastating news about her cancer that would rip our lives apart.
I threw the sheep back into the box, replaced the lid and slid it back under the bed. This wasn’t the time to look to the past. I needed to think about what to do right here and now. How to solve the problem that I’d started to fall in love with someone who was living in a different time.
I stood back up and opened the curtains, the sun bright against my face.
Outside, the street was quiet, all the other houses closed up, their inhabitants still asleep. The front garden was shades of grey in the early morning air, and a light mist hung in theair. My Ford Focus had a layer of condensation speckling the windscreen and I watched as a fox sprinted across the close and dived into the bushes.
Did Emma see the same, or had the view from here changed by 2019? Did she stand in this room and look out and try to picture me? I turned to face the bed. Was she here right now, asleep? Was she thinking about me, wondering the same things?
I checked the clock beside the bed. Almost 7a.m. Andy would be up soon and I really needed someone to talk to.
I showered and dressed, then went downstairs to the kitchen and filled the kettle. The phone was on the wall in here. I thought about Emma’s phone – what had she called it, an iPhone? – and all the things she’d told me it could do. I had a mobile but the landline was still what I used for everyday calls. Would that change soon? It was weird to think that Emma knew all the things that were to come, but for me they were a complete mystery, like something out ofDr WhoorTomorrow’s World.
I picked up the phone and pressed the button for Andy’s number which was stored in my phone. I heard it ring and imagined Andy and Amanda looking at each other in confusion, wondering who was calling this early.
It rang and rang. I was about to give up when a voice came on the line.
‘Oh hi, Amanda.’ Bugger. ‘Sorry to call so early.’
‘Hi, Nick. Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, yes, it’s fine. Sorry.’
A silence. Then: ‘I guess you want to speak to Andy?’
