Space Hopper Read online

  ‘Remember this?’ she said.

  The sound of the wheels kept us confident of Faye’s whereabouts, while Jeanie and I talked in the garden, grimacing whenever we sipped our minty concoction. And we three spent our time like this until the sun went down.

  * * *

  It had been a warm day, which only made the night seem colder, and when Jeanie brought Faye in and took her up for a bath, I gathered all the things from outside and shut the garden up for the night.

  I lit candles in the living room, even though there wasn’t a power cut, wrapped a blanket around myself, and got cosy on the couch.

  ‘Faye said thank you again for the skates,’ my mother said, walking wearily into the room.

  ‘She already said it a hundred times,’ I said.

  ‘Well, she said it again. That was a nice thing for you to do. Do you want one of these?’ Jeanie had two small bottles of cold Babycham and two glasses. ‘Courtesy of Em and Henry. They bought me a six-pack at Christmas and I still haven’t had any!’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Better than the green stuff!’

  Jeanie flopped down at the other end of the sofa, and tucked her knees up to her chest; I passed her a folded blanket and she pulled it up to her chin.

  ‘How long can you stay?’ she asked.

  ‘I better go tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to overstay my welcome.’

  ‘You couldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘You have an open invitation. I’d like you to stay longer if you can.’

  ‘I’d love to, but I better get back,’ I said, wishing I could stay but really feeling the pull of my other life, the fear of never being able to return, the screaming urge in my DNA to be nearer my daughters, which I had muffled until now, but was starting to get louder.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Will we see you again?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yes. I promise,’ I said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon,’ I said.

  Jeanie leaned awkwardly to open a drawer next to the sofa, and took out a ready-rolled joint and some matches. ‘Shall we?’ she said, and I shrugged.

  She lit the end and it crackled, she squinted one eye, because the smoke darted there, and then she blew out a long, straight stream of smoke.

  ‘Do you believe in God?’ she said. ‘I suppose you do, if hubby’s going to be a vicar.’

  ‘I struggle with the notion,’ I confessed.

  ‘I pray,’ she said, and inhaled deeply before handing me the spliff. ‘Do you pray?’ I nodded and said my praying was indiscriminate, praying to anything or anyone to help me when I felt desperate.

  ‘I pray in quiet moments,’ she said.

  ‘Is it…’ I hesitated. ‘Do you pray because you’re worried you’ll die?’ I said.

  She shook her head and removed a thread of tobacco from her lip. ‘I’m not worried I’ll die, I know I’ll die. I worry about Faye, about missing out, about not knowing what will happen to her without me. More than anything, I have prayed, with all my heart, that when this life is over for me, I will get to see her again. And I believe that I will.’

  I felt dizzy, I wasn’t used to smoking pot, and apart from the night before, this was the first time I’d done it in years. But what made me really dizzy was the prayer that my mother had offered up to God. Had he answered it? Was I his response to her heartfelt request? But how could that be? My mother wasn’t seeing me after she was dead, I was seeing her after she’d died. Was that the same thing? Maybe the point was that it didn’t matter whether she was dead yet in her time; the point was that the essence of her prayer was to know that her daughter would be okay without her. That’s what God had answered, surely? My thoughts were like a bag of beetles, clambering over each other to get to the surface.

  ‘Are you talking about heaven?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘But something has been preying on my mind. If I see my daughter after I die, will she recognise me?’

  ‘How could she not?’ I said, thinking of Elizabeth Keel in her little shop, and how she looked the same at twenty-five as she did at fifty-five, more or less. ‘People don’t change so much that you can’t recognise them, unless – you know – under extreme circumstances.’

  ‘Maybe she wouldn’t recognise me because she’s just a child, and if she hadn’t seen me for years… if she saw me, if we met, would I be a ghost? Would I scare her? Would she think she’d gone mad?’ Her eyes searched my face as though I were an expert.

  I hesitated. My mother looked sad, forlorn, and I wanted to take that away from her.

  ‘I don’t think you’d be like a ghost,’ I said. ‘But even if you were, I don’t think you’d scare her. I think you’d be more like a guardian angel. A person who would show up in her life and, somehow, deep down, she’d know. She’d know it was you.’

  ‘You don’t struggle with believing in guardian angels then,’ she said.

  ‘Not as much as I struggle with God.’

  I averted my gaze. My mother leaned forward, coming closer to me on her knees, and held my face in both her hands. My mother’s eyes darted over my face as though she were looking for a microscopic diamond. I looked at her and willed her to know me.

  ‘You look so much like her,’ she said.

  17

  For a fraction of a second after she said those words, I pictured us both laughing, slapping our thighs theatrically at the fact that I was her daughter, visiting from the future to tell her all was well, that her daughter would survive and, even better, be happy. I visualised us looking at each other in enthusiastic awe, saying things like, When did you first realise that it was me!

  But as much as I wanted that, and as much as you might want to hear that, it’s not what happened. My mother slumped back into her corner of the couch, looking like a beautifully dishevelled elf: messy hair falling around her face.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ she said, in a charmingly petulant voice. ‘Too much of this,’ she said, relighting the spliff and taking a long, therapeutic drag.

  ‘What did you mean? Who do I look like?’ I had to ask.

  Jeanie sighed. ‘Well, I’m not sure, because the photo I had wasn’t that clear.’ She blew a smoke ring and we both watched it rise to the ceiling, becoming blurred at the edges, until it was nothing. ‘But the thing is, you look like my mother.’

  My expectations stumbled over her unexpected words. I had assumed Jeanie would see little Faye in me, but it made more sense that she would liken me to an older version of myself, rather than a younger one. I had never known it, never even thought about it, but I must look like my grandmother. And this explained a lot. Maybe this was the reason Jeanie warmed to me so readily, seemed idealistically keen to form a connection, perhaps even why she saw me as a good choice to look after Faye should anything happen to her.

  Jeanie wrapped her arms round her legs. ‘I was very young when I lost my parents. My memories of them are so faint, I can’t remember what my dad looked like at all, and I only have the image of him from a photograph, although I do remember being held by him. My mother, I don’t know if I can remember her outside of the photograph, but you make me think of her. You’re just like my image of her, though she would have been younger than you are now when she died.’ Jeanie stared into the middle distance as though trying to see something that wasn’t there. ‘There’s a physical similarity, I think.’ And Jeanie touched her hair and nose, whilst looking at mine. ‘But there’s also such a familiarity about you, which I can’t explain. But when I’m with you, I sometimes pretend I’m with her.’

  She stubbed out the smoking joint, as though it was to blame for her wistfulness. ‘I’m sorry, I really can’t remember anything about her. I’m being silly. You must think I’m nuts.’

  I held her hand. ‘No you’re not.’ Then, ‘Can I see that photo?’

  ‘I’m not sure where it is, I put it inside one of my
books, and I don’t know which one, I’ve looked for it a few times, but… I’ll search it out for you.’ She slapped her hands on her legs and grinned. ‘I don’t know how you came into our lives, or why, but I’m glad you did. I like having you around,’ she said. She watched me watching her. I was stoned, I was happy and I felt a surge of belonging to think I looked like my mother’s mother.

  ‘Do you really know nothing else about your parents?’

  She shook her head for ages. ‘No. Nothing. There’s just me and Faye. I suppose that’s why I worry about her so much. I worry about what would happen to her, if something happens to me. There is no one else.’

  ‘Why are you so sure you’ll die young, apart from the fortune teller?’

  ‘I feel it,’ she said, putting her hand over her heart. ‘And I believe what that woman told me at the fair; she was telling me the truth.’

  ‘Surely you know they’re all frauds,’ I said, feeling like one myself, after my stunt with Elizabeth.

  ‘Yeah, well, I could see it in her face, that something was wrong, and she tried to dress it up, but she read it in my cards. I made her tell me what she could see, she didn’t just joyfully tell me I was going to die.’

  I just nodded, topping up our glasses with Babycham.

  ‘I guess it’s made me a bit desperate,’ she said, sipping. ‘For hope.’

  ‘Would it make you feel better if I did a bit of fortune telling myself?’ I said.

  She stopped mid-sip. ‘You can’t do it, you’re a non-believer!’ she said, smiling at me. ‘And you are not qualified.’

  ‘You don’t have to be bloody qualified,’ I said. ‘You don’t study it at university.’

  ‘But you need to know how to do it, you need to know stuff,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘I am completely qualified,’ I said, with a confident nod. ‘I absolutely know my stuff. I know I’ve laughed at you, and it is all bunkum, in the nicest possible way. But nevertheless, I can actually read your palm.’

  ‘Then I would like that very much.’ She wriggled into her end of the couch, like a child getting ready to hear their favourite story. ‘But please’ – she reached out her hand – ‘only the truth. The good and the bad.’

  ‘I guarantee it,’ I said, solemnly. ‘Ready?’ I asked, and she nodded.

  ‘Okay, here goes. Jeanie, I think you’re right,’ I said, looking very closely at her palm and tracing the lines that ran all over it. ‘I think you’re a precious soul who will not be on this earth as long as she ought to be. But your light will never go out because it will live on in your daughter. If you die…’ I swallowed, and it was hard; I didn’t want to cry, but those words were like a valve on a tap; my voice trembled. ‘If you die, then your daughter will never forget you, she will miss you, and she will miss out, because nobody will love her as much as you do. And you will miss out, because you won’t see her grow up. But know this, because this is important, this is what you want to know: your daughter will grow up and be happy, she will have good friends and marry a good husband, and she will have children and they will be healthy and happy and good at hula-hooping, just because you are.’ My voice cracked and I stopped talking for a moment, because I couldn’t trust my words to stay steady. ‘Your daughter will pass that on to them. She will pass on so many good things to them that come directly from you.’

  I breathed deeply; it felt like I had been holding my breath.

  ‘Will she believe in heaven?’ My mother’s voice was small.

  I hesitated. ‘Yes. Probably.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t believe in heaven, then to her I will simply be gone. Is that right?’

  ‘No, you won’t be gone, you’ll live in her, and through her, and your genes will be passed on to her children,’ I said.

  ‘But if she believed in heaven, then she would know that I was watching over her, that I will never really leave her. And she could believe that one day, a long, long time from now, she will see me again.’

  ‘If you believe in heaven, Jeanie, then you know that you’ll see her again, so why do you need her to believe in it too?’

  ‘Because it would bring her comfort,’ she said.

  ‘Listen to me, Jeanie, you will see your daughter again. You know that. And I know that. In the meantime, glimpses of heaven are available on earth.’

  Tears ran down my mother’s face, and tears ran down mine too.

  ‘Will you be there for her?’ she said, almost inaudibly.

  ‘I will always be around, and she will be okay. I promise. I absolutely guarantee it,’ I said.

  She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. ‘You’re good at fortune telling, you should consider giving up the journalism.’ She stood and slowly gathered all the smoking paraphernalia and put it away so little Faye didn’t see it in the morning. ‘I’m going to bed, are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, unfolding myself. ‘Come here.’ I held out my arms and my mother put the things she was holding down on the table. We held on to each other, her damp cheek resting against my own, and I guessed she was imagining I was her mother, and that was close enough for me in that moment. She rocked me slightly and we swayed on the spot in our embrace and I didn’t ever want to let go. But all embraces come to an end, and then we stand alone once more. We climbed the stairs, and Jeanie got into her own bed with my younger self, and I returned to my old bedroom.

  As I was undressing in little Faye’s bedroom, I saw a photograph on the bookcase: the one of me in the Space Hopper box. I took it and crept downstairs with it, tucking it inside the little cookery book that was still on the counter in the kitchen because I didn’t think anyone else would do it.

  And, in a funny way, I suppose that was the beginning.

  * * *

  When I said goodbye I wanted to say ‘see you soon’. I intended to come back, but I couldn’t say when, because it might be a few weeks for me but months and months for them. I knew Jeanie would expect to see me within days and of course that’s what I wanted, but I couldn’t promise that, and I knew it was even possible that the next time I came back, my mother would already be dead.

  So when we hugged and kissed goodbye, for me it was like losing my mother all over again. The potentially final goodbye.

  Little Faye hugged me hard and thanked me once more for the roller skates, made me promise I’d come back soon. I nodded.

  ‘Do you guarantee it?’ she asked, grinning like a wolf cub.

  ‘I guarantee it,’ I said, because in that moment it felt true that a broken promise to myself was better than no promise at all.

  They left for school and I left for the shed. I dreaded getting into the box. I was tired of being hurt. I looked around the small space, and considered staying; my heart was impossibly torn. But much as I didn’t want to leave, I had to get home. I wouldn’t be in the same country as my children, but I would be in the same time, and my longing to be nearer to them now outweighed my urge to stay in the past.

  Back in the shed I made sure the area where the box sat was clear of everything, and not too close to the door. I wanted more skidding room next time and I double-checked that the shed door was firmly shut; it seemed a bit loose because it had taken such a bashing. I hoped I wouldn’t at any point crash completely through it; I didn’t want to appear flying out of the shed in a storm of splintered wood.

  I’d borrowed my mother’s clothes the day before, but now I was back in the clothes I arrived in. I pulled on the ski suit, tugging the cords of the hood tight, as before. I fastened the Velcro of the gloves and as I stepped into the box I tried to picture myself beyond the journey and at my destination. I would be landing on a mattress, and I was going to be okay. I breathed deeply and braced myself, and realised in a very small but distinct epiphany that all journeys are a process – often a painful one, with difficult decisions – to which there is always a beginning, a middle and an end. Even if the beginning is not the beginning in every sense of the word. Even if the end is not the end as we know it. />
  * * *

  As I now expected, the journey was like a fairground ride I badly wanted to get off. I just had to brace against the fear, the sickness, the inability to breathe, the terror of maybe never getting home. Lost in space, disorientated, and speeding into nothingness at what must be more than a hundred miles an hour, with no certainty that the ride would let you off in the same place you got on; no assurances that it would even stop at all.

  And then it did. It felt like I’d run at a door with my shoulder to get it open, but it wasn’t a door, it was my bedroom wall and I actually made an impression – literally – a crack in the plaster. Exhaustion was the overwhelming sensation and I rearranged my limbs on the mattress to look less like a discarded rag doll, lay on my back and shut my eyes. I wanted to sleep – time travel drained me – but as my eyes insisted on closing, my mind wouldn’t let me go under; there was something I needed to do, I just couldn’t remember what it was.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes slowly, and one stayed shut for a moment longer than the other, like a broken doll. What had I forgotten to do? It was dark, so it was definitely later in the day than when I’d left. But I needed to know how late it was and whether or not it was the same day. I needed to check the time, and the date; it was important to gauge the pattern of time between the past and the present. I rolled over, feeling fat and ungainly in the ski suit. I was like a drunk who had fallen on the pavement and decided to sleep there, and then been asked to move on. I got onto all fours and then to my feet, and waddled to the other side of the bed, where a bedside clock was turned slightly away. The time was eleven-thirty, but I forced myself to go downstairs and switch on the television to find out the day.