For some reason, I feel dizzy and slightly winded, like I’ve just been flung from an out-of-control merry-go-round. I didn’t even feel that drunk last night, but I guess those pints of snakebite were stronger than I thought.
With my eyes still closed, I groan softly into the pillow and flip it over to the cold side. I lie groggily under the duvet, still half asleep, feeling a weird combination of things: warm and fuzzy and happy after what happened last night, but also – somewhere in the pit of my stomach – fraught and scared and anxious. Because as right as it felt – as perfect as we seemed for each other – I know exactly how things will pan out. How sour our relationship will eventually become.
I nuzzle my face further into the cold pillow, wishing I could get my head around what’s happening. I half open my eyes, remembering that at any moment now, Harv will be pounding my door down, demanding one final bacon-heavy fry-up before we head home for the Christmas holidays.
I reach across instinctively for Daphne. But she’s not there.
I open my eyes fully and squint at the daylight streaming in through the curtains. The first thing I focus on, propped up against the lamp on the bedside table, is an advent calendar. Nearly every window is already open on the front of it, but rather than revealing badly drawn images of the infant Christ, they contain cut-out magazine pictures of an actress I used to have a major crush on: Larisa Oleynik.
For the second time in as many days, I shoot bolt upright in bed, suddenly wide awake and breathing heavily. I stare wildly around the room, which is much more instantly familiar than my university dorm, but feels far less comforting to be waking up in right now.
Clothes are strewn haphazardly across the frayed carpet, a PlayStation 2 is buried under a molehill of games in the corner, and the walls are decorated with ragged Blu-Tacked posters: a mixture of scowling New York rappers and gurning mid-air skateboarders.
Daphne is gone, and I’m in my bedroom at home. Home home. The home I grew up in.
I have jumped forward this time, instead of backward, and thanks to the single unopened window on the advent calendar, I know exactly which date I’ve landed on.
This must be December 24th, 2006.
I squeeze the bridge of my nose tightly, and a shard of sunlight bounces off my watch. I’m still wearing it. I am now naked except for a pair of boxer shorts I don’t recognise, and yet I am still wearing this watch. The hands are stuck in the exact same place – one minute to midnight.
The watch-seller’s weirdly cryptic line about the clock striking midnight flashes into my head again. I looked at the watch last night, just before Daff and I fell asleep. That must have been when it happened: last night, when the real time matched up with the time on my watch … that must have been when I ‘jumped’ again! I guess I was already asleep by then, because I definitely don’t remember it.
I feel a momentary burst of pride at having potentially figured out the logistics of this time-hopping madness – although it’s quickly buried under a fresh heap of confusion as I remember I have no idea how this is happening, or why.
With my heart still thudding, I reach over to pick up the advent calendar. I remember it so well, though I have no idea where it is back in 2020. It’s a cheapo supermarket thing with a ruddy-cheeked Santa Claus grinning maniacally on the front. But Daphne customised it especially for me; ripped the cardboard back panel off and replaced it with a whole new collage of photos. A few months into our relationship, we’d been watching the stone-cold classic Nineties romcom Ten Things I Hate About You, and I’d confessed to spending my post-puberty years obsessing over the film’s star.
And so, just before the first term of second year ended, Daff presented me with this calendar, full of hidden pictures of Larisa.
‘Now you can take your one true love home for Christmas,’ she deadpanned as she handed it over.
I pick open the final window, which is much bigger than the others, and it reveals a surprisingly realistic composite of Ms Oleynik and myself standing next to each other, smiling. It has to be said, we actually make a pretty good couple.
I drop the calendar back onto the table. It takes me a couple of seconds to figure out the significance of this date. If my maths is right, then Daff and I have now been going out for just over a year, and today – Christmas Eve 2006 – is the first time she ever came to my house. In fact, it’s the first time she ever met my …
I hear spoons tinkling and cups clinking downstairs, and my stomach instantly turns in on itself. My chest knots so tightly that for a second I think I might pass out, and there’s a sudden hard, hot pressure thundering behind my eyeballs.
‘Benjamin!’ Mum yells up the stairs. ‘Will you please – please – get your backside out of bed and come and help your poor mother?’
And the next thing I know, I am crying so hard I can barely breathe.
Chapter Thirteen
Mum died on November 26th, 2018.
It was a Monday – a grey, drizzly, nothingy Monday – and I was coming back from work when I got the text.
I was temping at a travel agency at the time, spending forty hours a week knocking out press releases about Pacific cruises for the over-sixties. It was around 7 p.m., the end of yet another mindless, monotonous day, and I felt my phone buzz in my pocket as I stepped off the Tube. I remember staring down at the name on the screen. My uncle Simon, Mum’s brother. That’s weird, I thought. I don’t think Simon’s ever messaged me before.
All it said was: Are you at home?
I texted back: In about 20 mins – why? But there was no reply.
As soon as I got in the front door, I called Mum to see if she knew what was up with him. It went straight to voicemail, her cheery voice ringing out in my ear: ‘So sorry, but I can’t come to the phone right now …’ Even then, I didn’t make the connection. It didn’t even cross my mind. Why would it?
When Simon knocked on the door a few minutes later, my first thought was that he’d had an accident. His shoulders were hunched, his eyes red raw and his face twisted like he was in agony.
I asked him what was wrong, but he walked past me and said, ‘Let’s go in and sit down.’ And when we were sitting at the kitchen table, he just came out with it: ‘Ben. I’ve come from the hospital. I’m so sorry, but something terrible’s happened. Your mum’s died.’
And that was it. Just like that, the world ended.
Simon told me later – months later – that the nurse had instructed him to say it that way. Direct and to the point. No beating around the bush. Like pulling off a plaster.
I didn’t believe him at first. I thought it was a joke. Some weird, dark, sick joke. But then his voice broke as he said it again. And as he started to cry – these horrible, heavy, jagged sobs – the truth ripped through me like a blade.
I remember just sitting there, gasping like I was drowning. The shock was so severe – so insanely violent – that it took the wind right out of me.
The only thought in my head was that I would do anything – anything – for this not to be true.
I sat, paralysed, as I listened to Simon explain what had happened. An aneurysm. A weak blood vessel in her brain. No warning, nothing anyone could have done. She’d been on her way back from the shops, and she’d fallen right there in the street. Dead at fifty-eight. Gone forever.