‘I take it you know about my father,’ I say to Ellen.
‘I never met him, Claudia. Never spoke to him.’
‘But you know that he was … ’
‘In the car with you?’ She nods. ‘Yes, my dear. I do know about that.’
‘Mum said he couldn’t see the future … ’
‘None of us can do that.’
‘Maybe not,’ I say, although nothing would surprise me any more. ‘I do believe he couldn’t. Otherwise, he’d have stopped the crash from happening, wouldn’t he?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Mum said he believed that his other existences fed him instincts for the things he should do, the places he should be. I’m certain he must have been following one of those instincts when he got into the car with me, even if he didn’t know what it would cost him.’ Those words are very hard to say. The idea of what he did for me,gavefor me, gets no less painful for the amount of time I’ve now spent thinking about it. ‘I keep wondering whether he’d have done it if hehadknown. Mum said he loved me more than life, but—’
‘You were his child,’ Ellen interrupts. ‘I absolutely believe he would have still chosen to protect you. As for what he knew, has it not occurred to you he might have sensed it was his time?’
‘No,’ I say, because I don’t want to think about anyone having a settime.
Not my father.
Not my grandparents.
Certainly not Robbie, and Iris, and the rest of them.
‘I do keep wondering about his instincts though,’ I say. ‘We all get them. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, in our lifetimes. Anticipation, excitement, dread, caution … ’
‘Hope,’ proffers Ellen. ‘Courage.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘All that. Most of us don’t question where they come from. But my father did. Heknew. When Mum described his theatre to me, I could see it.’ I close my eyes, seeing it again. ‘So many infinite stages of time and existence, hovering over one another, each lit by its own house lanterns.’ I open my eyes, meeting Ellen’s focused stare. ‘Have you ever stood on a stage?’
‘I have not.’
‘You can’t see out. Not easily. Not when the lanterns are bright, and trained on you. They block everything beyond. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. You can hear it, if you listen. The coughs. The shuffles. A whisper.’
‘And you believe these whispers are where our instincts come from?’ Ellen says.
To my relief, there’s no scepticism in her tone.
No resistance.
Just desire to understand.
It gives me the courage to go on.
‘I do,’ I say. ‘I feel it now, everywhere, this sense of being amid layers of time. I’m sure that even if most of us aren’t consciously listening to those layers, we still always are. And we react, like my father knew he was reacting, trying different paths, making changes, no layer exactly the same.’ I draw breath, my mind moving to Tim, and all the different variations of his own past that he told Imogen. I see my own dreams too, of Nick and me enacting those variations, and picture us still doing it, on other stages. ‘I believe that for some of us, our lanterns can flicker off. We get to see beyond our own layer, and steal glimpses, however fleeting, of the infinity we’re part of.’
I look to Ellen, watching a crease form in her brow.
She’s thinking, I can tell.
Processing.
‘Do you have a theory for why this only happens for some of us?’ she asks.
‘My father thought it was a gift.’
