Fractured (29 page)

‘Is it possible to call up and let our friend know we are here?’ He really lied most convincingly for an officer of the law, which was somewhat alarming. However his comment seemed to add enough validity to our story that the guard turned to walk back to reception, motioning that we follow him.

Behind his desk once more, with visitors separated by the appropriate barrier, he clearly felt that order had been restored, for he was far more civil when he inquired, ‘Your friend who works here, could I have her name, please?’

Without even thinking I interjected, ‘Rachel Wiltshire.’

I saw Jimmy’s eyes close briefly in disbelief, even as the guard began running his finger down the W section of the staff list, looking for a name that no longer belonged on that particular sheet. Too late I realised the stupidity of my comment.

With his stubby index finger coming to rest at the foot of the directory, the guard looked up at us both, his distrust instantly returning.

‘Rachel Wiltshire, you said? We don’t have anyone of that name working here.’

I looked at Jimmy to see if he was going to extricate me from the mess I had just made, but he just flashed me the merest flicker of a smile, which clearly said
you dug this hole – now get out of it!

I narrowed my eyes meaningfully at my companion, and resigned myself to having to play the blonde card.

‘Oh, sorry, that’s
my
name!’ The guard’s look spoke volumes. ‘My friend is called Emily. Emily Frost.’ I plucked the first name I could think of from one of my colleagues. ‘But, actually, you know what, I think we’ll just wait outside after all and then we can… surprise her. Sorry to have bothered you.’ I grabbed Jimmy’s coat sleeve and began to drag him towards the exit.

‘Smooth,’ pronounced Jimmy, allowing himself to be steered towards the doorway. ‘That certainly didn’t make him suspicious, did it?’

I could still feel the guard’s eyes following us all the way across the foyer. As we reached the door I heard him speak, and thought at first he was about to call us back, but he was only bidding goodbye to a fellow guard who was going to lunch.

‘See you later, Joe.’

Hand already on the door handle, I turned back to see a second security guard crossing the foyer, also heading for the exit. He was a man of about my father’s age, with greying hair and a deeply ruddy complexion. My mouth automatically turned up to greet him with a warm smile.

‘Hi, Joe. How are you?’

Bafflement was his first emotion, but neither Jimmy nor I had expected how that would change to disbelief, when I made my next remark. ‘And how is your wife doing? Is she out of hospital yet?’

All colour drained from Joe’s face as his eyes flew from Jimmy and me and then back over his shoulder at his colleague. He bustled through the door, forcing us along with him. It wasn’t until all three of us had crossed the threshold and were out of the building that he turned sharply to me, questioning almost belligerently, ‘Excuse me. What did you just ask me?’

I wasn’t used to hearing him speak to me in that way, forgetting for a moment that to him I was a complete stranger.

‘I just asked how Muriel was doing. Her latest round of chemo must be finished now, mustn’t it? You said you were hoping she would be out of hospital by Christmas.’

Jimmy had taken a small step back, standing to one side and watching our strange interplay with curiosity.

Joe, on the other hand, seemed totally shaken by my words.

‘I don’t understand… who
are
you?’

‘I’m Rachel. Rachel Wiltshire.’ If I was hoping for anything resembling recognition, I was going to be waiting a very long time.

‘I don’t know you,’ Joe announced, shaking his head from side to side. It was a familiar chorus: everyone appeared to be singing it these days. I couldn’t think what to say to him that wouldn’t sound completely deranged.

‘But what I
really
want to know,’ Joe continued urgently, ‘is how the hell you know about Muriel. I’ve not told anybody at all here about her illness. Not one word.’

I think Jimmy got Joe to the pub on false pretences. Telling him that if he joined us for a drink we would explain everything was stretching the truth by anyone’s definition. However, when I suggested that we get out of the biting wind and move our discussion to the King George pub, where most of the staff went each day for lunch, Joe reluctantly agreed to go with us.

It was a little disconcerting to see the way he kept darting sidelong glances at me as we walked the few hundred yards to the popular watering hole; as though I might be some sort of weird clairvoyant or worse.

The pub was crowded, as it usually was at that time of day, and we struggled to find a table for the three of us. All around us were small groups of my work colleagues and I had to bite my lip to stop greeting everyone I passed. Eventually I spotted a vacant table towards the back of the pub and hurried to claim it, with a clearly reluctant Joe following in my wake.

I smiled at him tentatively as we took our seats. There was no answering response, which was sad, because I had always liked this man, long before I realised we had so much in common. Eventually Jimmy returned with a round of drinks, informing us that he had ordered three ploughman’s lunches which they would bring over shortly. Somehow I doubted that anyone was going to have much of an appetite before this meeting was over.

‘So who told you about Muriel?’ was Joe’s first question, fired out at speed.

I shook my head, thinking I had better not answer that particular question first. Joe was clearly extremely defensive, which was apparent by his next comment.

‘I don’t know what your game is but I don’t want anyone making any trouble for me at work about any of this.’

He was clearly exceedingly rattled that his most private secret was known by someone he had never met before. I reached out to pat his hand comfortingly and stopped only when I saw the look of horror on his face.

‘We’re not trying to make any trouble for you, Joe,’ assured Jimmy in a very soothing tone.

‘I don’t have any money, you know,’ Joe advised.

‘Of course you don’t,’ I agreed without thinking. ‘Not after putting two kids through university and keeping your mother in that retirement home.’

Half of Joe’s pint of beer slopped over the table as his shaking hand almost dropped his glass.

‘That’s it! How do you know all this? Who
are
you people?’

There was no easy way to begin, but all I could do was tell the truth as I knew it.

‘I know you might find it a little hard to believe, but actually, Joe, I’m your friend.’

Joe fixed me with a long hard stare. He then turned a similar look upon Jimmy.

‘Ah no,’ Jimmy corrected, ‘I
am
a total stranger. Rachel’s the one who knows you.’

Once again Joe looked back at me, still so openly confused that I felt sorry we had dragged him into this. He had enough to cope with already.

‘If we are friends then how come I don’t know you? I’ve a good memory, you need it in my job. And I don’t forget a face and I would most definitely remember spilling the details of my private life to some stranger.’

I smiled to soften my words, hoping he wouldn’t mis-interpret the baring of teeth as an act of aggression.

‘I know this sounds crazy. But we
are
friends. Good ones. And the reason I know so much about you and your family, especially about Muriel’s illness, is because I have been going through something similar myself, with my dad.’

For the first time Joe’s expression softened, revealing the kindly man who had been such a support to me as we swapped concerns and worries over loved ones who were battling the same illness.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he mumbled, and at last realising that we meant no malice here, he continued, ‘But I still don’t know how you could possibly know the details that you know. I’ve had to be so careful about not letting anyone at work find out. There’ve been so many redundancies recently, I couldn’t risk giving them a reason to let me go.’

‘I know,’ I said softly. This worry had been a familiar theme to many of our conversations. As had the progress of our respective family members in their fight for life. We had bonded together and both gained strength from it. It was sad that in this new version of the world, Joe didn’t have anyone he could share his burden with.

‘But
how
do you know all this?’ Joe asked once again. ‘Who was it who told you?’

I couldn’t evade the question a second time.

‘You did.’

I don’t know if we ever managed to convince Joe that we were sincere. All I know is that when I recounted detail after detail of his wife’s battle, which had so closely matched my father’s, he could no longer refute that I was in possession of facts he thought no one else had been told. In the end he struggled to find a solution he could live with, one that wouldn’t keep him awake at night for years to come.

‘It must be the stress that has done this,’ he pronounced at last.

‘Done what?’ Jimmy queried.

‘Made it so I don’t remember. Yes, that’s it. All the worry has given me a sort of… amnesia.’

There was a long silence at his words. I looked at Jimmy meaningfully for a moment, before replying solemnly, ‘There’s a lot of that going around.’

We didn’t stay in the pub for long after our food had arrived. Jimmy seemed to be the only one with any sort of appetite, although I thought Joe might eat more comfortably after we had gone.

I did have one bizarre encounter in the Ladies, when I emerged from a cubicle to see Emily Frost standing at the mirrored sink unit.

‘Hi there,’ I greeted, smiling at her warmly, forgetting she knew nothing about our supposed lunch date or indeed who the hell I was. She looked back at me warily in the reflected glass. Suddenly I was tired of being an outsider among people I had known for so long. It was time to go.

Jimmy held out his hand to Joe.

‘It’s been very nice meeting you.’

No one was entirely surprised when Joe didn’t return the comment. His parting to me was slightly warmer after I offered, ‘I’m sorry if we’ve upset you today. I really
do
hope everything goes well with Muriel. I’ll be thinking of you both.’

We turned to go then, Jimmy’s hand securely guiding me away from the table.

‘Er… Rachel?’ called out Joe, startling us both.

As one we turned around to face the man we had so confounded that day.

‘Your dad, Rachel. How is he? How is he doing now?’

I smiled slowly at my old friend and his concern.

‘He got better, Joe.’

‘Joe seemed like a nice guy.’

I said nothing, keeping my eyes fixed out of the window at the disappearing London suburbs.

Jimmy tried again. ‘I think we eventually convinced him we weren’t total crackpots.’

Again I gave no reply.

‘You OK?’ asked Jimmy kindly, taking his hand briefly off the wheel to give mine a reassuring squeeze.

‘He didn’t know me.’ My voice was dull and toneless, but Jimmy’s ears still discerned the pain.

‘I know.’ There was compassion and understanding in his tone.

‘I don’t know why I’m surprised, I should have been expecting it. But he was the first person who I’ve met who I know well; who I really care about. He’s my friend, for God’s sake and he didn’t know who the hell I was!’ I thought of the pub full of familiar faces, none of whom had recognised me. ‘No one does.’

I couldn’t blame Jimmy for failing to come up with some soothing rejoinder. What on earth could he say that could offer any comfort?

‘It’s almost as though it’s not
me
with amnesia… it’s them! I’ve literally been erased from their memories.’

‘Hey, you’re not going all sci-fi on me here, are you?’ Clearly his mind was going back to the theory I had first put forward when we were last in London: the one about a parallel world, where everyone still existed, leading a similar but subtly different life than this one.

‘It is a theory…’ I offered tentatively.

‘A crazy one.’

‘But what if it were real: crazy or not? What if something happened to me when I hit my head during the mugging? What if I actually did somehow swap places with another version of me?’

Jimmy laughed. But when I didn’t join in, the amusement quickly died.

‘Rachel, you really cannot be serious about this,’ he began gently. ‘I know there are loads of unanswered questions here, but I really don’t believe that people can go zipping about in time and drop in on their
other lives
.’

‘I’m not talking about time
travel
. Maybe something happened on that night, and it created… I don’t know… some sort of anomaly in the space-time continuum?

‘Do you even
know
what a space-time continuum is?’

‘No. But maybe we could find an expert or a scientist in this field. Someone who
would
have some of the answers.’
Someone who wouldn’t think I was totally insane
, I finished silently in my head.

‘Rachel, honey, that stuff only happens in books and movies. In real life you can’t find Weird Scientist Guy actually listed in Yellow Pages. Where would we even begin?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied mulishly. I knew what he was saying was right. I just didn’t want to hear it.

‘Do you want to hear what I think?’

I turned in my seat to see him more clearly.

‘Go on.’

‘What I think is that something
did
happen to you when you hit your head. Something very unusual and unique. Something that is allowing you to… I don’t know, maybe read minds, pick up some sort of psychic energy and interpret it into memories… I don’t know.’

‘And why would none of this neurological damage have shown up on the multitude of tests they’ve run on me?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Like I said, I think that it must be incredibly rare. Perhaps it
is
on the tests but the doctors don’t even know what they’re looking at. You might be the only person this has ever happened to.’