We stayed there for a few minutes, just holding each other. Finally, as my sobs began to subside, Rachel pulled away. She stood, arms hanging by her sides, her face filled with sadness.
‘I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but screw Covid, I couldn’t just leave you sitting there like that.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, my voice gravelly. ‘I’m glad you did.’
‘I truly wish there was a way we could let Nick know about Flynn. But I think you’re just going to have to accept it’s impossible and try to move on.’
I knew she was right. It’s just a shame my heart didn’t agree.
24
NICK
Sometimes I wondered whether I was going slowly mad. Life ticked on, people moved, got new jobs, grew up. I went to work every day, taught the kids, came home. I still met Andy for a curry every Thursday night, and I still spent time with my nieces.
But most of the time I was alone, at home. Eating alone. Sleeping alone. Being alone.
Except that, sometimes, I wondered whether I actuallywascompletely alone.
It started one late autumn evening in 2001 a couple of years after I’d last seen Emma. The letter she’d left for me was still buried somewhere, far from view, and I only thought about it from time to time, when it would hit me like a blow to the stomach and I’d have to try and forget about it all over again. A couple of times I came close to going to find it and ripping it open and putting myself out of my misery once and for all, but in the end I managed to talk myself out of it. No good could ever come of opening that letter. And yet I still didn’t throw it away.
This particular night, I’d gone into the small spare room at the front of the house, the room Dawn and I had earmarked as a nursery. I didn’t come in here very often, but sometimes I likedto stand at the doorway and try to imagine another life – a life in which Dawn hadn’t fallen ill, in which she’d fallen pregnant instead and our baby was living here, its cot where my desk now sat, a changing table taking up the space where a small wardrobe now was. This day, I stepped over the threshold into the room and sat down on the chair by the desk. I tipped my head back and looked at the ceiling – and that’s when I felt it, and my body froze.
Slowly, I sat up and looked round the room, holding my breath. I stood and walked over to the corner, and the closer I got the more my skin began to tingle, a feeling like a feather was being run across it. I whirled round, looking up and down, my eyes tracing the entire room. Whatwasthat?
And then it hit me. It was the same fizzing, tingling feeling I’d experienced when I was in the bandstand with Emma. The feeling that I wasn’t quite in my body – how had Emma described it? Otherworldly, that was it. It felt otherworldly, and for a moment I couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to relax into the feeling, to let it spread through my whole body. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped, and I was left standing there, wondering what had just happened.
After that night I went into the box room every night, trying to see whether I would feel it again. But for some time there was nothing, just a room with empty air, and I tried to ignore the clench of disappointment in my chest.
I put it down to tiredness, stress. Work had been busy, and everything that had happened with Emma had hung over me like a dark cloud for the last couple of years. It was just my mind playing tricks on me.
Maybe Andy was right. Maybe I did need counselling, to help me move on once and for all.
But then it happened again. This time I was in the bathroom, soaking in a bubble bath, when I felt it. I sat up, water pouring off me, and looked around, searching for something, someone. But, just like before, there was no one there.
After that, it happened at random times, in different parts of the house. Sometimes I’d feel it in the dining room, other times in the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room. Once I felt it in the garden, out by the little apple tree. It was usually only fleeting, but it was definitely there. And while I had no proof of what it was, to me there was only one explanation. It was a connection to Emma in this house, twenty years in the future. And while it should have left me feeling shaken, scared, what it actually made me feel was comforted. A sense that somewhere out there, some time in the future, there was someone that I loved. Someone who loved me.
And for a while at least, it brought me some peace.
25
EMMA
‘Mummaaaaaaa!’ The yell from the other room had reached a deafening crescendo. I put down the crumpet I was buttering and poked my head round the living room door. I couldn’t see Flynn anywhere, but the huge pile of cushions in the middle of the room gave me a clue as to where he was.
‘Hello?’ I called.
No answer, just a giggle.
‘How strange, Flynn must have left for playgroup already. Maybe I’ll eat his crumpet instead.’
‘Nooooo!’ A cushion tumbled and then a little person appeared, clambering over obstacles to reach me. ‘My crumpog!’ he said, jumping up and down.
‘Oh there you are,’ I said, bending down to scoop him up. He wriggled in my arms but I managed to force a cuddle before he squirmed back to the ground and raced through to the kitchen. By the time I got back he’d already devoured half the crumpet I’d been part-way through buttering.
‘Someone’s full of beans this morning,’ I said, taking a foil-wrapped sandwich out of the fridge and placing it carefully into his Bluey lunchbox. I added a small box of raisins, some PomBears and a carton of blackcurrant juice, and then tucked a box of raw carrots down the side that I was certain would come home again completely uneaten, and zipped it shut.
‘Don’t break my cave, will you, Mummy?’ Flynn said, his blue eyes wide.
