Is it?
‘I definitely didn’t see him in the vision at the hotel. Plus, those cars in it were from the seventies or eighties. He was only born in 1980.’ My head throbs. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, sorry. But I do know my dad didn’t bomb a hotel when he was a toddler.’ I attempt a laugh, but my throat’s sore and it cracks a bit.
Meg offers me a smile. ‘But you can remember what you saw just now, right?’
The blasted windows. The old-fashioned cars. The soldiers, rifles in hand.
‘Yeah, it was horrible. Was this, like, a big bombing during the Troubles?’
Meg takes the phone. ‘What, of the Europa? Which time? It’s the most bombed hotel in Europe.’
I frown. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, like over thirty times, I think.’
I flinch at the thought of twisted metal and shattered glass.
‘Who did it?’
Meg raises an eyebrow and leans in. ‘The IRA.’
I lean in too. ‘Why?’
‘Media attention,’ says Meg.
‘What?’
She taps on her phone and shows me a series of photos. ‘See,’ she says. ‘It was a prestige target, a way of drawing attention to –’ she looks up at the counter again – ‘their cause. Lots of journalists used to stay there when they were reporting on the Troubles.’
‘Was anyone killed?’
Meg shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. They died in lots of other places though.’
She stares out of the window and we don’t speak for a while. The woman behind the counter is starting to clean the fridge. She’s not as old as my nan but she would have lived through the Troubles. She could have been working here on a day the Europa Hotel was bombed. What else might she have witnessed? What did my parents live through?
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up here. It’s not just history. People I know experienced it.
And I can see it.
‘Why this one?’ I wonder out loud. ‘How come this time I can remember what I saw?’
‘Maybe you’ll forget this one too.’
I frown. ‘What?’
‘Maybe they fade with time,’ Meg says. ‘Although, would that make me forget as well?’
My head really hurts. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We could write it down somewhere. Then if we both forget, we could read it and be like, “Oh yeah, Michael can see through time.”’
‘But how would we know that what we were looking at was true. Why would we believe it?’
Meg nods as though this is a very ordinary problem. ‘What would we write? “Dear Meg and Michael, you might have forgotten this but Michael can see the past and might have a magical mobile.”’
My phone screen goes dark. I unlock it and the image is still there.
Of course!
