“Are you okay?” His pores are large and he has a ripe whitehead on the end of his nose, perched like a tiny hat. “Do I need to call someone for you? I can see you’re having a crisis or whatever, but you’ve been down there for quite a while now, and no offense, but you’re putting off potential customers.”
Just past his shoulder, three defeated-looking people with terrible posture are standing on the pavement. One of them is unblinkingly eating a sandwich and staring at me as if I’m one of those painted Yodas that hover in Covent Garden.
“Not that I blame you,” the manager adds with a smile. “Hump day. Oof. No fun for anyone. But this is a new bar and we’re going for a more upscale, less panic-attack-on-the-pavement vibe.”
I check my watch again. Forty minutes.
I’ve been crouched in this doorway like a self-appointed snail for nearly three-quarters of an hour and the furthest back I can get is 1:02 p.m. on Wednesday, the sixth of June, which is the day I met Will. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’ve moved to a different bar doorway and then back again. I’ve tried chanting and singing. I’ve attempted (and failed) to cry. I’ve given passing out again my best shot. I’ve curled in a ball, lain down flat, stood up. I’ve scratched my legs and rocked. I’ve even attempted overwhelming myself on purpose by standing next to a builder drilling a hole in the pavement, and it had absolutely zero impact.
Apparently all I actually need to do is close my eyes, focus hard on when I want to be and open them again. That’s it. Time travel: nailed. Except I’ve tried seventeen times now, and I can’t get back any further than this specific moment. Frankly, it’s less time travel and more of a time tweak. An imperceptible trim. The horological equivalent of what I ask my hairdresser for every six weeks.
All I want is to use my new powers to go back a decade and stop my parents from getting in the car. Hop back quickly and tell them to get a train instead. Stop them being late because Dad pulled over to buy me congratulatory roses. Ask them not to take a small country road and stick to the motorway. Hell, maybe I just won’t graduate at all. That way they won’t be killed on their way to the ceremony and (bonus) I won’t have to get up on a bright stage and smile at people I don’t even recognize because I so rarely turned up to lectures: they were far too noisy and crowded.
But the universe isn’t even faintly interested in this story. Instead, it would quite like me to stay stuck here: gazing into the eyes of a strange man who keeps telling me I’m unwanted and asking me to leave.
Which appears to be quite the reoccurring pattern.
“I’m sorry,” I say yet again, finally giving up and struggling to my feet. I need to start working on my thigh strength: getting up from the ground should not be this consistently difficult.
“No worries.” The manager tilts his head to the side for the seventeenth time. “Why don’t you come inside for a drink? I’m sure we can send you back to work feeling a lot more relaxed.”
On the upside, I guess at least I do now have a job to return to.
“No, thank you,” I say politely. “I don’t think midday intoxication is going to make traveling through time any less confusing.”
Or any less tiring. It turns out rewinding your own life is both physically and mentally exhausting, a bit like changing all your bedding.
I have now reached two possible conclusions:
a) I don’t have the power to go back further than four months, and/or
b) This is a significant date, beyond which I am unable to move.
There’s a good chance I’m simply not strong enough.
Or that this is some kind of horological safety catch. Cassandra is brand-new at time travel and doesn’t seem to be naturally gifted: let’s make sure she doesn’t accidentally destroy the entire planet and everyone on it. The universe is stepping in to limit the damage I can do. You get four months, Cassie, and that’s it. No saving your parents for you. Frankly, we cannot trust you with that kind of responsibility. Baby time wheels for Cassandra Dankworth it is.
Which is devastating, obviously, but also not miles away from what I’ve already been told at multiple jobs: I rarely get the key for the stationery cupboard.
Wiping my face, I breathe out slowly and try to acclimatize to the overwhelming disappointment. I have failed to control all of time and I need to be gracious in defeat. There’s no point sulking about it. I don’t want the universe thinking I’m ungrateful or spoiled and taking my new powers back off me again. Frankly, I’ll take whatever I’m given. I can move about in small hops, and that’s enough. Today matters—that’s what the cosmos is trying to tell me—and four months is still enough to make a real change to my life.
And if that’s the case...
Well, I may not be the best person at reading between the lines—frankly, I struggle to draw the right conclusion when the information is written directly on them—but it’s pretty clear exactly what I’m being directed toward.
Or, more importantly, who.
To: Barry Fawcett
From: Cassandra Dankworth
Sorry but feeling strange today so taking the
afternoon off.
Cassandra.
Having now thoroughly checked my phone, it seems that everything is precisely as it was four months ago: calendar, diary, emails, texts or sobering lack thereof. Time has simply reset. This means—if my memory serves correctly, which it always does—I’m just about to go into an “Idea Hurricane” at work in which somebody suggests putting dogs in capes and everybody claps for no reason.
If I can’t use my new prophetic ability to get out of things like that, I don’t see any remaining point to this gift at all.
Twenty seconds later:
To: Cassandra Dankworth
From: Barry Fawcett
We’ve spoken before about your email etiquette, Cassandra. Please note your tone. No, you can’t have the afternoon off for “feeling strange.” Are you sick or are you not sick? I saw you eating a cheese sandwich fifteen minutes ago.
Unless you are physically ill, please return to the office after your lunch break.
Barry
I could just email back, but this also seems like an opportunity to practice a little traveling within the set time boundaries I’ve apparently been given. Closing my eyes, I focus on the moment just before I sent my email.
Then I open them again and carefully check my Sent folder: my email is gone.
Undone, as if it never happened. Result.
Thinking hard, I write:
To: Barry Fawcett
From: Cassandra Dankworth
Dear Barry,
Hello, how are you? Well, I hope. :)
Isn’t it nice weather today! So sunny! ;)
You have a three-hour brainstorm scheduled for after lunch and I won’t be attending. They are not my clients, I have nothing of value to add and frankly you will be paying me for doing absolutely nothing. I do not feel comfortable about this so I have decided to take half a day’s owed holiday instead.
I hope it goes well! :)
Cassandra xxxxxx
Apparently the trick is to write what you actually want to say and then go back in afterward and surround it with irrelevant niceties and emojis just to make it harder to find, the way you bury a sweet in a pile of flour and force children at birthday parties to sift for it with their faces.
But tone: dutifully amended.
Pleased with how this is already going, I turn my phone off and pop it in my bag. I now have a few hours to make sure I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, at exactly the time I’m supposed to be there. This seems important. After all, much like Andromeda—tied to her rock—who knows the difference a minute could make? What if Perseus had taken a different route, or Pegasus had flown too slowly? What if the sea monster Cetus had risen just a moment earlier, or Medusa’s head had gotten stuck in the bag?
Time is the invisible thread that weaves our stories together.
And sixty seconds can change everything.
The café bell tinkles. I look up just in time to see an elegant old lady walk in wearing a beautiful tartan flat cap that I immediately covet. She assesses the room and greedily eyes the big green velvet chair opposite me.
Feeling like a criminal, I plop my bag on it.
I’ve been here more than an hour already, illogically camping out like someone waiting outside a store for the release of a new iPhone when they know they could just order it online. In my original timeline, I’d only just arrived at the café—flattened by the brainstorm, hoping to delay a return to the flat—but it’s just too risky.
Without being too dramatic, an old lady could have sat down on the wrong chair and ruined my entire life.
Relieved, I watch as she takes one by the window.
“Another coffee?” The waitress hovers next to me like a monochrome hummingbird and I can feel the blue impatience pouring out of her. In my defense, the café is not that busy. In her defense, I’ve been picking at the same banana muffin and sipping the dregs of a cold coffee now for seventy-five minutes.