No, you cannot.
I turn to Hamish, who is flicking through pictures on his phone. When he sees he’s got my attention, he flashes the screen at me.
‘I made an album,’ he says with cheeky grin.
‘Oh?’
‘Some of my favourite photos from the old days, when it was me and you.’
‘No way.’ I can’t help but smile. ‘Can I see?’
Hamish hands his phone over and together we flick through a load of photos from that summer together. Hamish was big into a sepia filter back then, so all the shots have this retro, warm glow to them.
‘I’d forgotten that day,’ I say, enjoying a shot of me standing stock still on a skateboard, looking like I’m about to fall off. ‘Never did quite get the hang of that.’
‘You did look cute on a board, though. Ah man, these photos,’ he says, shaking his head.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Just brings back all these regrets, you know?’
I frown. ‘Regrets?’
‘Yeah, because I let you go. Those were the best days, Nee. You know I’ve called the album Take Me Back?’
‘You are kidding? I have the exact same album title for my old photos of you and me. Look.’
I grab my phone from my bag, pull up my photos. But when I look for the Take Me Back album I made on a previous Monday, I can’t find it. In fact, I can’t find any pictures of Hamish and me whatsoever.
I freeze, the phone dropping from my grip and landing on the floor of the plane with a thud.
‘Nee, you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ says Hamish.
I can’t find the words to answer him. I feel paralyzed by an icy fear that seems to inch closer and closer towards my heart with every breath. Where are the photos? Hastily I scoop up my phone and scramble to the tiny plane bathroom.
Locking the door behind me and slumping down onto the toilet seat, I clutch my phone in both hands. My head feels clammy as I open the photo app back up. I try to calm myself down by whispering ‘you must be mistaken’ over and over to myself as I scroll back through my photo library, all the way to the start. The summer I met Hamish.
But I can’t scroll back far enough.
You must be mistaken. You must be mistaken.
I try again, as if the more I attempt to carry on scrolling, the more chance that my oldest photos will magically reappear in my library. But there are no photos from the summer we spent together. No photos from that year at all. And I know for sure they were there, just a few days ago, because I clearly remember putting an album together with the express purpose of dazzling Hamish with cute reminders of our past. If it was just the albumthat was missing, then I could reason that out. I made it on a different Monday and I’ve looped back in time since then. Makes sense, in an utterly bonkers sort of way. But it’s not just the album, it’sallthe oldest photos in my library.
The last photos stored on my phone go back to the yearafterI met Hamish. It can’t be right?
I stab at the screen, panic making my vision blur.
That’s when a year’s worth of photos pixelate and disappear right in front of me. I watch the memories fade in my hand.
My stomach bottoms out and I feel a deep sense of dread rising in my chest.
What the fuck is going on?
The past,mypast, the thing I cherish most in the world, is disintegrating right in front of me.
I realize with crashing certainty, there and then, that I have got to do everything I can to save it before I’m left with nothing. A marble rolling endlessly inside a cylinder. No start, no finish, just this.
I burst out of the toilet and march straight back to my seat, ready to tell Hamish everything about The Plan. The Plan, by the way, is to be honest with my former lover, tell him I’d like to work on being friends and maybe build up a relationship one day if the vibes are right, and then walk off this plane and out into Perth with him by my side.
