I pulled my car door shut in Mum and Dad’s drive, and held back the tears. I couldn’t believe how much I was letting this get to me. I ticked off 2:30pm on the time-sheet and checked the mileage to make sure it hadn’t changed since I had been inside. It hadn’t.
Mum and Dad watched me pull out of the drive. Now I could see that they both looked older, not just Dad. It made me realise how precious time was. But also how cruel and relentless it was too.
I wondered why we gave ourselves time. Why we gave ourselves the means to measure it. Hours; minutes; seconds. Days; months; years. Why had we imposed those things on ourselves? They imprisoned us. Reminded us every moment that our lives were unstoppable. We couldn’t pause time. As each measurement passed, our lives decayed. We grew another year older, and another, and another.
I drove the car through the streets and thought about removing time — taking all the measurements away. I was no longer thirty-six years old. I was one life. I was living one life, and at each moment, I was at a certain point in that life. I wasn’t old, or young. I had no years — time measurement didn’t exist anymore. For a moment I felt a rush of adrenalin pump up from my stomach and flow through my body.
I felt free. Unrestricted by time or age. If I didn’t mark off the years anymore, did away with birthdays and anniversaries, perhaps I could pause time. I wouldn’t age in the conventional sense. I would just be living my life. My one life.
I checked the clock on the dashboard. I was still there, in “real” time. Then I put my hand over the clock. Blotted it from my vision. I think if I could have removed it from the dashboard at that moment, I would have. I would have happily thrown it out of the window.
I wondered whether I could persuade Neil and the kids to do away with time. If not for themselves, perhaps just for me. Just my time. The excitement filled me up. Although I was strapped into my car seat, I felt taller, healthier, like I could live forever. I smiled. I smiled at the cars coming past me in the opposite direction and I smiled at the people walking around the streets. I didn’t know if any of them could see me smiling at them. I didn’t care. I felt so happy. Felt like I hadn’t felt since the attack. Since before the attack. I wondered what I looked like. How silly my huge grin looked.
I checked the road and then looked at my grinning face in the rear-view mirror.
There was a woman in my car.
I felt like I had been smashed in the chest with a railway sleeper. My foot instinctively hit the brake. I saw her in the mirror, behind my reflection, on the back seat staring out of the window.
My head froze, I couldn’t move my neck or any of my upper body. I felt like I was paralysed. I couldn’t look away from her in the mirror. She turned her head slowly to look at me. My heart strained to break out of my paralysed body. I could feel it beating against my chest. My head felt like it was being covered with a dark sheet, as though it was being crushed down by an outside pressure. I felt like I was losing consciousness.
And the woman in the back screamed at me. She raised her hands in front of her face, protecting herself, and she screamed at me. My body was suddenly loose. My arms grew strong and my eyes grew livid. The voice in my head forced its way through. Pushing me, urging me. I wanted to kill her, I wanted to pummel her until she died.
I turned around and returned the scream, at the same time raising my right fist, clenched and full of fury, ready to be unleashed on the bitch. I was ready to kill.
And she was gone.
The car had come to a standstill by now. Thankfully I had somehow pulled it over to the side of the road, and although it was annoying for the cars coming up behind me, they could still get past.
I put my hand up to my forehead. It was clammy. I pushed my hair back and stretched my neck. My heart was still pounding out of my chest and my throat had a painful tingling sensation from my scream. In fact it had probably been more like a roar than a scream. A horrible growling sound with enormous power behind it.
I released my safety belt and turned off the engine. I shut my eyes and stretched out my legs as far as I could. I didn’t feel like getting out of the car.
My legs were shaking. Almost as though they were shivering. A fast, vibratory shake. And I realised that my whole body was shaking in the same way, as if suffering from the after effects of an electric-shock.
Or had I been outside in the cold for a long time?
I looked at the clock — 2:51pm. I hadn’t lost any time at all. I was still there.
While my heart was still pumping double-time I decided to take another look on the back seat, just to make sure I really was alone. I sat low in my seat so that my head came below the top of the seat-back. I peered around the side. No one.
No sign of anyone.
But something was on the seat. Right in the middle, where the woman had been sitting. My mobile phone.
I reached back for it. It felt warm in my hand. I pressed the unlock buttons. The screen flashed on immediately. I checked the battery bar at the top of the screen. Full battery. There were six missed calls, a couple of text messages and one voicemail. I dialled the number. It was Neil, telling me he was having to work late again. So he had rung me.
Four of the missed calls were from our home number — presumably me ringing my mobile to try and find it. The other one was from Margaret at the school. I assumed it was before her visit about Michael fighting at school.
I put the phone on the passenger seat and started the engine.
I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take on my own. I was convinced that I needed more help. I thought about driving directly to see Doctor Jones, or perhaps Colin, just to see if there was anything else they could do for me. I felt shocked that I had gone from such a joyous high to what felt like the depths of hell in a split second. I wondered how much a body could take before the organs started to go wrong. Was it possible that I could get a heart-attack from all this?
The thought of having a heart-attack behind the wheel of my car made me feel sick. I could imagine what sort of damage I would do if I was driving. I decided that it might not be safe for me to drive the car anymore. I had wanted to use my bicycle more anyway. It would be good to use the bike. I could get fitter, help the environment and, hopefully, be less of a danger to others.
As I drove, and my heart found a more healthy rhythm, I thought about the woman in the back of my car. I knew she wasn’t there now, and I knew she wasn’t physically there at all. But she was real. I replayed what I had seen. The woman, behind me, sitting in the back. There had been something funny about the back seat. I hadn’t noticed it at first, probably due to the terror of seeing the reflection of a woman in my car. But now I remembered. I had seen in the mirror the top of the back seats behind her. They had been white, they looked like leather. All the seats in my car were dark grey, and they were material, not leather.
There was one other thing about the woman. Something I had tried to direct my mind to ignore. But I couldn’t ignore it.
I knew her.
And I think she knew me.
It was the woman from the dream. The one who had been sitting at the table, writing. The one who had looked scared when she saw me, and closed her writing book.
And now, having just seen her close up in my car, in daylight, something else hit me. A realisation that made the hairs stand up on my arms. She looked like me.
A lot like me. Perhaps several years younger. But although she looked younger, there was something old about her. I couldn’t figure it out.
For a moment it crossed my mind that perhaps it was me. Perhaps I was seeing a different version of me, maybe someone I could have been if I had taken a different path in life. Maybe it was me if I hadn’t met Neil, hadn’t had Michael and Rose.
Maybe it was a vision of a bleak life that I had somehow avoided. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe it was showing me how lucky I had been — how lucky I was now. Maybe.
I had stopped shaking, or shivering, or whatever it was my body had been doing. I
wanted out. I wanted to go somewhere completely different. Somewhere where I could get my head together in safety. Where I wouldn’t be worried about hurting anyone. My long ago trip to the Andes came to mind.
I had pushed every sinew and limb on that trip, had challenged my body and my mind, and in doing so I had found contentment and peace. At the end of each day trekking I had felt relaxation like never before. And a pure clarity in my mind that I had missed ever since.
I wanted that again. I needed it. I wondered how I could make it happen.
I slowed the car before turning into our close. I think I was nervous of who, or what, I might find waiting for me. But there was no one there. No Margaret, no police and no attacker.
I made a note of the mileage, ticked off 3pm on the time-sheet and grabbed my phone. I had a quick look in the glove-box to see if there was anything I needed. I wasn’t planning on being back in the car until my head was sorted. Then I checked the boot. Only my wellies. I grabbed them, slammed the boot shut and locked the car.
For a split second I thought I saw her back in the car again. The shape of her head, her long hair blowing gently. But it was nothing more than the shadow of me. I was still alone.
I dumped my wellies inside the front door and made straight for the kitchen. The car keys jangled in my hand. I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Bearing in mind that I had driven during both of my blackouts, it seemed sensible to hide them somewhere. But obviously, if I hid them, I would know where they were. I filled the kettle with water and reached for the decaf. I found a couple of semi-stale chocolate biscuits in the biscuit-barrel and grabbed both of them.
I sat down at the dining table with my coffee. The biscuits were gone before the kettle even boiled. The keys swung back and forth on my finger and I tapped them with the other fingers. I could always get Neil to hide them somewhere. But I would probably find them anyway. I knew how his mind worked. He wasn’t very imaginative. And what if I had another blackout between now and him coming home?
I needed to do something immediately. Then the simplest of answers came to me. Neil had a spare set of keys to my car, as I did for his. Just in case either of us lost our key, or locked it in the car by mistake, the other one would be able to come to the rescue. And that was the answer. I took the house keys off my bunch and went out to the car. I unlocked the doors with the electronic key fob, opened the passenger door and clicked “lock” on the key fob. All the door locks thudded into place. I put the keys in the glove-box, shut the passenger door again and watched the indicator lights flash to confirm that the doors were all locked and the alarm set.
Back inside the house, I opened a small window in the living-room, finished the rest of my coffee and sniffed the air. Nothing too horrendous. The fresh air from outside was slowly making its way around downstairs. I found my time-sheet and ticked off 3:30pm. I felt as though I had scored a little victory with the car keys. But I knew there was something else I had to do too.
I marched into the kitchen, picked up the telephone and dialled the health centre.
36