The truth was I missed Emma like a limb, the need to see her like a physical ache. There were plenty of times I almost went back to the bandstand at the time we usually met to see whether she was there. I wanted to confront her, ask her what she thought she was doing, writing to me.
I also wanted to throw my arms around her and hold her forever.
So I resisted going back and slowly, as the days and weeks passed and the memory of that night – of those few amazing weeks we spent together – faded, I began to emerge from my cocoon of grief and start to live again.
I spent time with Andy, Amanda and my beautiful nieces, Ella and Imogen. I went for the deputy head position at a nearby school and got it. I went on the occasional date, usually set up by Andy and Amanda, and although some led to a second date or a third, I wasn’t looking for love, necessarily. I just couldn’t seem to let myself go, to give enough of myself to someone.
Because all the time I kept wondering how long I had left. I felt like a ticking time bomb, scanning myself for signs of illness, worrying that every little niggle was cancer, or wondering whether today was the day that I’d step off the kerb and get run over by a bus. It was no way to live, and one day, almost a year after walking out on Emma, Andy had a suggestion.
‘Do you think you should get some counselling?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m fine. I’m happy,’ I said.
He gave a mirthless laugh and shook his head. ‘You used to be the happiest person I knew, but it’s like the joy has drained from you and I’m looking at a shell of my baby brother.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ I said.
‘Come on, Nicky, you know I’m right. Ever since you made the assumption that Emma had discovered you’d died, it’s like you’ve been waiting for it, not living.’
‘I am living. Nothing’s changed,’ I insisted, but he just shook his head and said, ‘That’s exactly my point.’
23
EMMA
Even though Rachel was true to her word and was with me every step of the way, coming to scans and buying me folic acid and giving me advice on which buggy, cot or nappies to buy, being pregnant was still overwhelming. It wasn’t as though I’d been left alone by someone who wanted nothing to do with being a dad, and there were so many nights when I lay awake, imagining different scenarios in which Nick and I got the chance to bring up our baby together.
‘What will you tell the baby about their father when they’re older?’ Rachel asked one day.
‘I honestly don’t know. I suppose I’m just clinging onto the hope that by the time they start asking questions, I might have found him.’
She didn’t need to tell me it wasn’t a great plan. I already knew. It’s just that I had no idea what other option there was, and could only pray that I’d know what to do once the time came.
As for telling everyone else, that had been tricky too. Mum and Dad struggled to understand why I didn’t want to bring the baby’s father into it. We’d always had a strained relationship – they’d never really approved of Greg, thought he was too flighty,and were never there for me after he died in a way I truly needed – but this just alienated them even further. Everyone else, including my colleagues and boss, simply assumed it was a one-night stand and that I didn’t know the father’s name. It wasn’t ideal but at least it avoided awkward questions.
As promised, Rachel was my birthing partner. And in the days and weeks leading up to the birth, knowing she was going to be by my side calmed me.
Then, on 28 January 2020, almost fourteen years after his father had died, my baby boy was born. And from the moment he arrived in the world, a bright red bundle whose screams filled the hospital room, I felt a wave of love so strong it almost overwhelmed me. My whole body was flooded with it.
Alongside that came relief that my baby was actually here; that he’d made it. He was a little miracle time traveller, and only two people in the world knew about it. And that thought led to an all-encompassing feeling of sadness, which settled like a small rock in the middle of my chest; a constant reminder that my boy was never likely to meet his daddy. It would most likely always be just me and him.
I called him Flynn. It was Nick’s surname, and it was at least something to bind them together. It was all I had.
For the first couple of months, things were great. Exhausting, overwhelming and emotional, but great. I’d turned the small front bedroom into Flynn’s nursery, decorating it in a beautiful shade of pale green and buying a second-hand cot. A mobile hung above the cot, casting shadows of stars and moons all around the room, and I hung a photo of the bandstand on the wall, a reminder to me of where my little boy had come from.
It was amazing how something so small could change a life so completely. And even though I’d spent seven months preparing for his arrival and becoming a single mum, it still knocked me for six.
Most days Rachel would drop by. Sometimes she’d bring me new nappies or a packet of baby wipes, other times she’d come with a giant bar of Dairy Milk and we’d sit and devour it together while I fed Flynn or rocked him in his Moses basket.
But then the world went into lockdown, leaving Flynn and I all alone, and with the rest of the world on the other side of a window.
It was during those long, lonely days and nights that a thought began to form in my mind. A thought that I tried to ignore, but that proved to be insistent.
I knew – or at least I suspected – that finding Nick was likely to be impossible for at least another six years: even if my letter did have the power to change the future, it appeared so far that I was going to have to wait until at least 2026 – or 2006 in Nick’s life – to find out whether I’d saved him.
But there was someone else I could track down. Someone to give me some connection to Nick.
His brother, Andy.
