Space Hopper Read online

  ‘This is wasted on me, surely?’ he said.

  ‘Whether or not you can see it, it’s beautiful, and beauty isn’t wasted on anyone,’ she said. ‘You can appreciate that, can’t you? And you can display it in your house for others to enjoy as well.’ Then she looked at me and said, ‘You don’t need to see a thing in order to know it’s there. You can still love and enjoy it.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Elizabeth,’ Louis said. ‘No one ever gave me a gift just because it was beautiful to look at. This is a first for me.’ She took the egg from him, wrapped it again and bagged it up.

  It was hard to leave and hard to say goodbye. I told Elizabeth I’d like to come back one day, and then she hugged me like she’d never see me again. Which is something I guess we sometimes just have to do.

  21

  After the trip to see Elizabeth I felt oddly bereft. Before I went to see her, I’d eagerly contemplated another visit to Jeanie while Eddie was away, because I’d convinced myself that I would never be away for more than three hours, I knew I’d be able to go, and stay a few days at least. But Elizabeth had made me hesitate, doubt myself; she was right, I conceded, up to a point – I needed to give time travel and its potential consequences more thought.

  And while I was giving it more thought, I cleaned my house, which is how I came to realise that my fear of spiders had reduced, or changed. We have a nice house, but it’s a family home; lived in. I’m only really completely at ease when the place is tidy but, if I’m honest, it doesn’t have to be impeccably clean for me to have peace of mind. Which means I spend a lot of time picking up socks and things, putting books back on shelves, filing paperwork and throwing out leaflets, and less time actually hoovering and polishing.

  It was Wednesday when I started the spring clean (technically it was nearly the end of summer). I put on an old T-shirt and jersey shorts and I snapped on yellow gloves. I did the job one room at a time: put all the knick-knacks, frames and bowls and anything on a surface that could be moved, in a big plastic container, then I pushed all the furniture into the middle of the room and hoovered underneath. The spiders I encountered made me jump, but still, I encouraged them onto a duster, held it at arm’s length and then flapped it against the window sill until they fell outside. I cleaned the windows, the furniture and the curtains, and every ornament was gleaming before I put it back in its place. Anything that could be chucked out, I chucked. Then I opened the windows to let in air, and moved on to the next room. I left the kitchen till last, because it was a bigger job. I emptied the fridge and the cupboards and cleaned them, before putting all the tins and boxes back, with the labels all facing forward, like someone with OCD. It took me all of Wednesday and Thursday. My back and shoulders ached, but it was a good, hard-work ache. The whole house smelled of lemons, which made me think of gin and tonic and so I took a long bath, then poured a large one and sat in the garden.

  I listened to the birds still chirping at 9pm and I hardly moved as they got quieter and the dusk settled in fully for the night. I saw a bat swoop through the garden and over the shed, and there may have been another one, or it may have been the same little bat. When I say I saw it, I mean barely; it actually looked like a small black envelope whisking though the air. I guessed he was having fun whipping at high speed through our long back garden, until his sonar picked up the shed at the bottom about twenty metres away. I closed my eyes and remembered a time at school when people used to say that earwigs laid eggs in your ears when you slept at night, and how bats would get tangled in your hair if they got too close. But now I know that bats would only ever keep their distance.

  The peace of the garden felt almost spiritual, like when everyone prays in church. I thought of my mother. My memories of her used to be blurred and I couldn’t be sure of them because they were the memories of an eight-year-old and overshadowed by her death, as if death were a high brick wall that plunged everything near it into darkness. But now I have these wonderful crystal-clear memories of her, a thousand or more mental photographs taken over my two recent visits with her. I could see her smiling eyes and smell her hair when she hugged me, hear her voice, her choice of words and her laughter. A cool breeze washed over me and in it I was sure I could smell sticky toffee pudding and I saw my mother jump up to get it out of the oven. I felt happy to have these new images of her, but I missed her so much. I went inside to pour myself another drink, but the house was so lovely that I climbed the stairs, curled up on my bed and fell asleep fully clothed.

  * * *

  I was supposed to be at work on Friday, but I called in sick. I wanted to hang out in the house. Eddie and the girls would be back in the afternoon and I was keen to see them as soon as they got home. Despite the impression I might have given, I don’t normally take much time off work, and the boss was fine about it.

  I made myself fried eggs on toast and a pot of coffee and had breakfast in the garden in my dressing gown about 10am. Luckily I heard the knock at the front door and took delivery of a small parcel, addressed to me, which I had to sign for. As I walked through the house back to the garden, I tried to think what it could be; I couldn’t remember ordering anything, and I braced myself for something dull. The excitement of an unexpected delivery is directly proportional to how boring it turns out to be, I can usually guarantee it. But it was far from boring.

  The parcel was a puffy brown envelope, taped up with brown masking tape like it was never meant to be opened. I tried to get into it, but soon gave up and got the scissors. Inside was more bubble wrap with something small and hard inside, and a letter. I snipped open the taped-up bubble wrap and extracted a ring; an eternity ring, about five millimetres wide, with what looked like diamonds all the way round it. I didn’t think they could be real – the diamonds – although they glinted with tiny colours, which, someone told me once, was a sign they’re genuine. I put the ring on, because I was scared I would drop it, and it fitted my fourth finger perfectly. I held my hand up to the sky, and turned it this way and that to watch it catch the light. It was a thing of beauty.

  I pulled the letter out, blue paper, two sheets, written on both sides in old-fashioned cursive handwriting that I didn’t recognise. I sniffed the paper, don’t ask me why, and it smelled of nothing. I turned the pages over to the end and saw it was from Elizabeth, and this is what it said:

  Dear Faye,

  Words cannot fully express how I feel about finally seeing you again after all these years. To me you have been an angel that I thought I might have dreamed. To see you in the flesh, so real, so lovely, has come as a shock. But a very welcome shock. I have been waiting for you for years, so that I could have a chance to thank you for the kind of life you have given me. In many respects I have lived an ordinary life, but I have lived with peace of mind, and contentment and I attribute much of that to our meeting thirty years ago, (or ‘just the other day’, as you put it). You have lightened my burden.

  To have someone tell you that everything will be okay, not just because they hope it will, or because it’s an easy – if unfounded – reassurance, is one thing. Quite a different thing it is to have someone tell you that everything will be okay, and to know that it’s the truth.

  The fact has not escaped me that I cannot be sure that my life from now on will be fine. Presumably you only had knowledge of my life up until now, at most. And anything could be waiting for me round the next bend. But I’m so accustomed to living with faith in the future that it is a habit for me. I’m not scared. All will be well.

  I hope that you too can live your life this way, because ultimately none of us knows what’s in store. Stop worrying about the future, and leave the past behind, live for now, enjoy what you have. Try not to hanker for things that are beyond reach.

  I have been mulling over our recent conversation and fear that I may have seemed selfish, worrying about my life and not wanting you to do anything that might disrupt it. I can only apologise and say that I suppose it is selfishness; I love my family, and what I
have, and cannot bear the thought of anyone taking it away, I wonder if I would even have this life if it wasn’t for you. If it has been given to me, then it can be taken away, perhaps. I know that you can understand how terrible that would be. You also seem to have a lovely life, and I worry that you will put that at risk too.

  You gave me peace of mind, and I hope that in some way I have helped you too, because I vouch for you: I bear witness to your extraordinary journey and want you to always know that if you ever doubt yourself, or what has happened to you, remember that you are not alone. I was there with you.

  One last thing. I have enclosed a gift. I gave Louis a present, and I wanted to give you something too; I just needed a little time to find the right thing. I feel bad about your ring, so it seemed appropriate that I send you something to replace it. And a diamond eternity ring seemed appropriate.

  At your service, and with gratitude. For ever,

  Elizabeth Keel.

  I re-read it a few times. The words you are not alone made my heart swell.

  * * *

  I laid on the sofa and watched a movie, closing the curtains and pulling a blanket over me. Now and then I was lost in the film, now and then I gazed at my new ring, twisting it on my finger, and rubbing the back of it with my thumb. Elizabeth had given me so much to think about. She was right, I was risking everything to visit my mother. If I had to choose between my life with Eddie and the girls, or living back in the past, then of course I would choose Eddie and my children. But did I have to choose? That was my dilemma. Until very recently I hadn’t thought of the past as being out of reach, as Elizabeth put it. I had thought I could have both.

  Before I met with Elizabeth I thought I could visit my mother as many times as I wanted until she died, so that she wouldn’t be alone; I wanted to do that for her, for me. The fact that only a few hours passed while I was away was inspiration for thinking it was doable. That, and the fact that my expeditions to the past didn’t seem to have any real impact on my life in the present. Since Elizabeth had told me my ring had been stolen in the burglary, I felt differently. If that could change, then she was right, wasn’t she? Anything could happen. And she was certainly right when she argued that I didn’t know the rules of time travel and its consequences; I was still a novice.

  The physical damage I was doing to myself, well, I could handle that, but Eddie wouldn’t be able to. Since I kept hurting myself, I knew I couldn’t talk to Eddie about my time travel. Even if he believed me, he would definitely try to stop me, if only for my own safety. As far as I was concerned, a little hurt was a small price to pay, and if I was wearing the right clothes, and didn’t land too awkwardly, I could minimise the damage. Surely it wasn’t much different to what someone with a dangerous hobby would put themselves through.

  Doubts had been awakened in me. But I didn’t have long to decide what to do. I had left it only a few weeks between visits last time, and yet six months had passed when I saw my mother again. If I left it too long, it might be too late. And there was this nagging desire to always want a little bit more; I had been back twice and it had been beautiful, important, emotional. But if I had known that last time was the last time I would see my mother, maybe I would have done things differently.

  I sighed. No matter what we do we seem to leave the conversations we should be having too late. I bet that when Eddie returned, he would say the same: that even though he’d spent the week with his own mother, with the intention of avoiding that mistake, there would still be things left unsaid, unknown. I guarantee it. Maybe a few locked doors are inevitable in life, maybe there are questions we all have, that will never be answered, and that is something we simply have to accept. I closed my eyes and laid my head back. The voices on the TV were saying words important enough to make the script, but I wasn’t listening, and the velvet darkness behind my eyelids was so inviting; I was sleeping a lot lately. My inner voice whispered to me, One more visit, one more time; one more chance to get it right. I’ll tell my mother who I really am. And I drifted off to sleep to the hum of the dialogue on the TV.

  * * *

  The sound of my children and the sound of Eddie shepherding them, grunting as he hefted cases from the car to the house, woke me. Familiar sounds are as comforting as a pair of perfectly fitting shoes. I raised myself up on one elbow, remembering to slip the eternity ring off, and push it into my pocket.

  ‘You’re home!’ Eddie said, his lovely face beaming at me. ‘I didn’t think you’d be back from work.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you sick?’ he asked, looking at the blanket I’d just shoved to one side. ‘You been sleeping?’

  ‘I took the day off, wanted to be here for you when you got home.’ I was still sleepy as I stood and wrapped my arms round his waist. I breathed in his smell, and there were layers of it, like an aromatic Russian doll. On the outside he smelled of camp fire, then washing powder, vaguely, and his deodorant, and as I nestled my head into his armpit I smelt the most human of smells: sweat, and my body responded instantly, positively. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ I said, still with my nose tucked under his arm.

  ‘You must really love me, to want to sniff under there,’ he said. ‘I’ve been driving for hours, I’ve got dirt in my hair and on my face from having the windows wide open all the way.’ He rubbed his face hard with the heels of his hands.

  ‘Take a shower and I’ll get you a drink; we can sit outside.’

  ‘Place looks nice,’ he said, breaking away from me and heading for the stairs.

  ‘Well, I had to keep myself occupied somehow while you were away,’ I said. The girls barrelled into me then and I couldn’t get enough of their little bodies, their skinny arms and legs, with the finest down appearing on them, and the smell of their hair. ‘Let me look at you,’ I said, and I properly looked at them. I knew and loved every little bit: the crooked tooth, the curl of hair, the freckle north-east of an eyebrow, the dark eyelashes, the pale ones, the perfect, dirty toes. We fell back onto the couch as one wriggling mass, cuddling and tickling and in overlapping voices, erupting with giggles and childish sincerity, they told me about ants’ nests, and swimming and being stung by a bee, and a ghost they could hear in Grandma’s house, and stinky cheese they didn’t want to eat and Grandma getting drunk one night, and a hundred other stories, badly told, confusing, disjointed and all the more beautiful because of it. I felt myself falling into place, my body and mind was exactly the right shape for this and I slipped easily into the carved outline of my life with my children. I had a sense of belonging that was unavailable elsewhere.

  In the back garden, the girls ran barefoot through the grass, and I followed them. We plucked buttercups and they taught me a French clapping song I’d never remember, and that was okay.

  And when I saw Eddie come into the garden from the kitchen, he took my breath away, I couldn’t wait to hold him and be held again. He was barefoot too, and wore jogging bottoms with no top. ‘We didn’t really do clothes and footwear at Mum’s,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘The girls went a bit feral actually, they started peeing in the bushes at one point.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s good for them,’ I said, handing him a cold beer, the glass bottle beaded with condensation. He took a sip, and sighed. ‘You have a good week?’ I asked.

  ‘We did, it was fantastic. The only thing missing was you; you should have come.’

  ‘Well, I did get some things done, and loads of rest,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing interesting happen?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. But my lie came out an octave higher than my normal voice and I laughed a tight little laugh, like self-sabotage. Eddie looked at me in silence. There was love in his expression. And mistrust.

  ‘Who wants an ice cream?’ I shouted down the garden.

  ‘Me!’ shouted the girls, and there was my excuse to throw myself into the bustle of normality.

  22

  I didn’t look at the clock, and the girls went to bed late. We carried them upstairs, one each, a
nd they smelled of warm, dry dirt and straw. Evie was asleep in my arms before we got to the top of the stairs and Esther had put her thumb in her mouth, which she only ever did when she was dog-tired.

  ‘Don’t put your fingers in your mouth, they’re dirty,’ Eddie whispered, nudging her forehead with his.

  ‘I ate a daisy,’ she replied sleepily, mumbling around her wet thumb, and as he laid her in her bed, she curled into a ball like a woodlouse and turned her back to us.

  I sat on their beds and spoke into their ears, my words a little damp against their hair. ‘You are good, you are kind, you are clever, you are funny,’ and I felt a pang of sorrow that it was me who had said this to myself all those years ago, and my mother never got the chance to whisper good things to me beyond the age of eight. And if I didn’t take proper care of myself, keep myself safe, then I wouldn’t be able to do it for my children either.

  When I came back downstairs, Eddie had already poured a couple of glasses of red wine and I grabbed a blanket, wrapping it round my shoulders.

  ‘Tell me how it went with your mum,’ I said.

  He sighed and then smiled; it was easy to get him back. ‘It was good,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad I went. It was a good idea.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said, and he tutted.

  ‘I told her why I’d decided to visit: to ask all the things I might one day regret not asking,’ he said. ‘We talked a lot, and I asked her loads of questions. For most of them she just assumed I already knew the answers.’