How to Stop Time(19)

I want her to stop talking. I want to be invisible. I want to be a normal person with nothing to hide. I look away. ‘That’s wonderful.’

‘When were you last in France?’

‘A long time ago,’ I say, doubting she is old enough to remember me from the 1920s. My bike is free now. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘I will solve it,’ she says, laughing, as she gets into her little Nissan. ‘I will solve you.’

‘Ha!’ I say. Then, when her car door closes, I say, ‘Shit.’

She beeps me as she passes, giving a fast wave. I wave back and I bike away and I think how easy it would be to just not turn up tomorrow. To talk to Hendrich and disappear again. But there is a part of me – a small but dangerous part – that is keen to know where she knew me from. Or, maybe, a small part that simply wants to be solved.

Later, at home, Hendrich calls.

‘So, how is London?’ he asks.

I am sitting at the little IKEA desk, staring at the Elizabethan penny I have been carrying around for centuries. I normally just keep it in the wallet, in its little sealed polythene bag, but now I have it out on the desk. I stare at the fading coat of arms, and remember Marion’s fist tight around it. ‘It’s fine.’

‘And the job? Are you . . . settling in?’

There is something about his tone that’s annoying. Patronising. The way he said ‘settling in’ in a vaguely amused way. ‘Listen, Hendrich, forgive me, but I have a headache. I know it’s only brunch-time with you, but it’s getting late here and I have to be up early preparing lessons tomorrow. I really would like to go to bed now if that’s—’

‘You’re still getting the headaches?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘They’re par for the course. We all get them towards our middle years. It’s memory pain. You just need to be careful. Modern life doesn’t help. Cut down on your screen time. Our eyes weren’t made for artificial light. No one’s eyes were made for that. It’s all the blue wavelengths. Disturbs our circadian rhythms.’

‘Right. Yes. Exactly. Our circadian rhythms. Anyway, I better go.’

Barely a second later: ‘It could be seen as ungrateful, you know?’

‘What could?’

‘Your recent attitude.’

I place the coin back in the bag and seal it. ‘It’s not an attitude. There’s no attitude.’

‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately.’

‘About what?’

‘The beginning.’

‘The beginning of what?’

‘Of us. When I heard about the doctor. When I telegrammed Agnes. When she came to collect you. When I first met you. Eighteen ninety-one. Tchaikovsky. Harlem. Hot dogs. Champagne. Ragtime. All of that. I made every day your birthday. I still make every day your birthday. Or could do, if you weren’t so obsessed with living the most mundane kind of life on offer. If you could get over your obsession with finding Marion.’

‘She’s my daughter.’

‘And it’s understandable. But look at what you’ve had. Look at the lives I have given you . . .’

I am in the kitchen now. I have the phone on speaker and am getting a glass of water. I drink the water down, taking big, continuous gulps, thinking of my mother, under the water, exhaling her last breath. Then, as Hendrich keeps talking I go and open up my laptop.

‘I’ve basically been your fairy godmother, haven’t I? You were Cinderella, shoeing horses or whatever you were doing, and now look at you. You can have the coach, the glass slippers, whatever you want.’

I log on to Facebook. I have set up a page for myself. It draws more suspicion not having a Facebook page than having one, so Hendrich was okay with the idea (even he, or the retired plastic surgeon he was currently playing, has one).

Obviously, the profile information is fiction. There isn’t even an option to put 1581 as your year of birth, anyway.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, Hendrich, I’m listening. I’m listening. You are my fairy godmother.’

‘I’m just worried about you. Really worried, Tom. I’ve been thinking, ever since you came out here, there was something in your eyes. Something that worried me. A kind of yearning.’

I laugh a tired laugh. ‘A yearning?’

And then I notice something.

I have a friend request on Facebook. It is her. Camille Guerin. I accept the request. Then – as Hendrich keeps talking – I find myself looking at her wall.

She updates in a mixture of French and English and emoji. She quotes Maya Angelou and Fran?oise Sagan and Michelle Obama and JFK and Michel Foucault. She has a friend in France who is raising money for Alzheimer’s and she links to his donation page. She has written a few little poems. I read one called ‘Skyscrapers’ and another called ‘Forest’. I like them. Then, hardly thinking, I click through her photos. I want to find out more about her, and how she might have known me. Maybe she was an alba. Maybe I had met her a long time ago. But no. A quick look through her pictures shows that in 2008, when she joined Facebook, she looked, well, a decade younger. She had looked in her twenties. She was also with a man. Erik Vincent. A frustratingly good-looking man. In one photo he is swimming in a river. In another he is wearing a running vest with a number on it. He is tagged in the pictures. In almost every profile pic up till 2011, and then there is nothing at all until 2014. I wonder what happened to Erik. I look back at the poem ‘Forest’ and realise it is dedicated to him. His profile page is no longer there.