There’s an email from Blake too, asking Nick, Felix and me for another meeting.Felix, I need to weaponise you.Ignoring it, I run to my room, where I shower, dress, and, pocketing Nick’s keys that he insisted I take last night, head off in his car to see Tim.
He’s ready for me when I reach him, sitting once again by his lounge window. He’s dressed smartly, in a pair of slacks, woollen jumper, and blazer, and has his thick white hair tamedinto a vintage side-parting. He’s obviously gone to an effort, and seeing it – seeinghimagain, so frail and vulnerable, fighting to be strong – I’m overcome by the same rush of tenderness I felt towards him the last time I came to visit. It’s stronger than ever now I’m thinking of what Ellen said about him falling apart when Clare died; his fear, and shame, and the war’slong shadow.I want to go to him, press his hands into mine and find the words to make it better for him, somehow. I feel such an overwhelming instinct to look after him.
Silently, he smiles – a slight, sad smile – like he’s guessed what I’m thinking.
And perhaps he has.
He’s read my letter after all.About fifty-five times.He knows more than most about the inner workings of my mind. And Ellen paid him a visit yesterday, spoke to him about a lot of what we discussed. She said on Wednesday that she’d try to, and left me a voicemail while we were filming last night, confirming she’d managed it.
‘Did he believe any of it?’ I asked her, returning her call on my drive here.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘It’s obviously been a great deal for him to absorb, which isn’t easy for him. He really is fading quickly.’ She paused, and I pictured her frowning. ‘He didn’t show me your letter. He still refused to confide in me about any of it. He insisted it’s only you he’ll talk to, so yes, I think he must believe you hold a link to her. I’m certain he needs to unburden himself.’ She sighed. ‘Don’t let him lose courage, will you?’
Removing my coat, I sit on the sofa I shared with Nick and Felix. It feels empty without them; cold, and overly large.
The coffee table before me has no tea or baked goods on it, just an old leather album, which I eye, curiously.
‘Is this yours?’ I ask Tim.
‘I’m its caretaker,’ he says. ‘It should have been Jacob’s. He took most of the pictures.’
‘During the war?’ I say, heart quickening at the idea; the possibility that there are photos, of all of them, contained in this album’s pages.
‘Yes, during the war.’ His eyes move to the framed picture of the crew on his bureau. ‘That was the last shot of Jacob’s film. It was a long time before I could bring myself to have it developed.’ Slowly, he brings his gaze back to mine. ‘Ellie told me you have memories. You said in your letter you’ve seen our past … ’
I nod. ‘There’s so much I haven’t seen though. So much I can’t find.’
‘But what if you’re not meant to? What if these lanterns you speak of are with us to protect us?Shieldus from those things it’s not ours to witness?’
‘I don’t want to be shielded.’
He gives me a pained look. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ I say, and, suspecting that his courage really is now wavering, at this eleventh hour, I will him the strength to go on.
And, with a laboured breath, he does.
‘I know myself what it’s like to live at the mercy of an unbiddable mind,’ he says. ‘Even when I was a young man, mine gave me knowledge I had no desire to hold. Warnings, of events looming, with nothing to help me know what to do about them. No specifics. No markers. Just …instincts.’ He swallows. ‘You said your father was the same.’ His voice catches. ‘Noah … ’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Noah Reeves.’
‘Reeves,’ he echoes, and blinks, clearly upset.
About my father?
I don’t ask; he keeps talking, giving me no chance.
‘I’ve been told my mind is failing,’ he says. ‘I’ve felt, these past years, as though it’s crumbling. Not so much with my lanterns going off, as my stage’s walls coming down.’ He takes another rasping breath, but doesn’t reach for his oxygen: determined to keep going, I think, now that he’s made himself start. ‘The memories I hold have always been my memories alone. But they haven’t always looked … the same.’
I nod again, and don’t consider asking how many of the memories he shared with Imogen were fabricated. Even knowing that there are things he’s concealed, and twisted, I still trust that most of what he passed on was rooted in truth – however many variations of that truth he might have lived.
His memories, for the most part, haven’t been false, I’m certain.
They’re just from different stages.
Different acts, but not different stories.
‘What about that night?’ I ask. ‘Have you always remembered that the same?’
