We wander the streets together, and for the first time in years, I stop struggling against my memories and simply let them launch out of my skin, like a projector. Translucent, they fill the air around me, playing simultaneously.
I see and feel and smell my mum everywhere. Sitting on the floor of the academic bookshop, wearing huge headphones, grinning with a poppy seed from the bagel she ate every single morning stuck between her teeth. The regular tap of her thumb against my hand as she held it, or the way she turned off all the overhead lights of every room we went into even if there were people already in there. I can feel the soft pink silk lining of her favorite jacket on my fingers, the smooth texture of her auburn fringe on my cheek when she kissed me; I smell the butterscotch syrup on her breath, dripped at 9:00 a.m. on the dot into her coffee. I see Dad too. Adjusting his black-rimmed glasses as we walk toward Emma College, chattering with the porter, hiding behind one of the ivy-clad walls to surprise me, naming all the plants. I see the tilt of his head when he put on a tie, and how he made conversation seem so easy.
Somehow, I wander through a now that is also a then: peering through the college window into Mum’s old office and watching a thousand smaller versions of myself grow steadily larger. Hiding under her desk. Sniffing her fountain pens. Running my hands along the spines of her alphabetized books while she forgot I was there for hours at a time. Except I didn’t mind, even if it meant no lunch that day. Because I could lose myself the same way, just like her, and as I watched her eyes glaze and her face slacken and her cheeks glow, I felt happy for her: knowing she was somewhere beautiful and safe and joyful, where nobody could reach her. Knowing that I had my own quiet, joyful places inside myself I could disappear to as well.
And I can’t help wishing again that I hadn’t spent the last five years of my time with her pulling so violently in the opposite direction.
Ludicrously trying to pretend that we were oh so different.
That we weren’t, in our essence, the same.
Intermittently chatting, Will and I walk through the gardens that Dad helped grow, and I see two dark shapes running, giggling; my father crushing a lavender stem between his fingers and holding it to our noses. I smell its purpleness all over again, warm and opaque. I see us all in the restaurant we went to every single Friday night, and the layers of time are still there, still separate, still goopy: a joke on top of an argument on top of a bored silence on top of Mum sending the same meal back five times until it came back just right and everybody laughing.
And I miss them in every part of me, but I don’t feel sad or lost, the way I assumed that I would.
I feel dark, glossy green, like the underside of a leaf.
I feel the color of being home.
Eventually, Will and I get ice cream again. I don’t drop it on myself; Pimm’s stays off my dress; dogs stay on their leads, as they’ve been told to. Encouraged, I bravely gather my inner resources and force myself onto the student’s boat; Will and I giggle together and kiss as he puns his way along the Cam.
By the time we return to London, I am giddy and primrose.
It’s tricky to identify my emotions, but—as I scan my body for sensations—I’m pretty sure it’s happiness, shining in a bright pastel thread. And yes, I’ve obviously cheated. Every now and then today, I’ve used time travel to experience the best bits of our date more than once. Twice. Sometimes three or four times. A specific look in Will’s eyes, a smile, a laugh; a finger gently lifting my chin. I can’t stop time—I’ve tried, and that’s out of my power—but I can certainly loop it and stretch it as much as I like, which is very nearly the same thing.
So I do: just to spend a little longer, in this day, with Will.
“I’ve had the best time,” he says when we reach King’s Cross, tipsy and with sunburnt noses. “Thank you.”
Will kisses me and I kiss him back vigorously, resisting repeating it forever.
“I kind of don’t want it to end yet.” Will scratches his head. “If you felt like...extending the date a bit longer?”
I blink at him. “What do you mean?”
Does he know? Has Will inexplicably guessed that I’ve been extending it in tiny little rollbacks all day already?
“Do you want to come back to mine?” Will laughs. “That wasn’t a very subtle way of putting it. Sorry.”
“Oh!” Relieved, I think about it. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Shit.” He flinches. “Did I just blow it? Is it too soon? I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No! That’s not what I mean!” How do I put it? “It’s just... I don’t think we’re supposed to have sex yet.”
We don’t have sex for another two weeks, according to our first timeline. And while it was lovely, and I obviously want to, I’m also a little worried about what will happen if we screw with that part of our chronology. It could send everything careering into total chaos, and it’s going so well.
Also, the internet very clearly says three dates minimum is Sexy Time, and this is only our second: I will ignore their anonymous advice at my peril.
“Next time?” I say hopefully.
“Of course.” Will kisses me again. “Next time, Cassandra.”
20
I am Hermes, with wings on my feet.
As I reach the bottom of my road in Brixton, I can’t be entirely sure how I got here: whether I walked back, or caught a train, or hovered three inches above the ground, balanced on my flip-flops. All I know for sure is that I’ve done the right thing. This second date beats our other second date in every possible way, and my brilliant plan is absolutely working.
Will and I feel infinitely closer and more connected already.
My phone beeps:
We never collected our prize! Xx
I laugh, still feeling drunk on him (and Pimm’s).
I guess we’ll have to go back and do the whole treasure hunt again! xx
Beep.
I’m going to be SO good at it the second time round. xx
I grin and type back:
Practice makes perf
“Cassandra.”
I stiffen; from Hermes to Galatea in two seconds flat.
“Cassandra.”
Marble, I fall out of the air.
“Cassandra.”
Frozen, I lift my eyes.
“Cass.” A young woman stands up from my front doorstep, where she’s been crouched: folded inward on herself, like a rosebud. “If you’re not going to read any of my letters, you need to talk to me. So here I am.”
I am made of solid quartz and all I can think is: that hat.
She’s wearing a hat, wide-brimmed, gray, and I know that hat. I have seen that hat before. Unable to move, I open my recent memories and rifle through them, searching for this hat as if it’s a joker in a pack of cards. I find it, almost immediately. This hat—and the woman inside it—was in the café in my original timeline. I bumped into her, and she tried to talk to me. Hey, wait just a—But I didn’t see her face. I was too overwhelmed. I then waited for her to arrive in my second loop, without realizing who it was. She was in the British Museum when I would have been at work in the first timeline, and now she’s on my doorstep when I was originally at the cinema on my own.
How many other parts of this story has this woman been hiding in?
It suddenly feels as if time is revealing her to me, like an ancient statue hidden under shifting sand. Or, more specifically, like the head of Hermes found under a shopping center during routine sewage works.
“Cass,” she says when I don’t respond, approaching me slowly with one hand held out as if I’m a temperamental horse and she’s my patient trainer. “Can you hear me, or have you already shut down?”
Her face is so young and so old at the same time: layered like tracing paper.
“Don’t bolt. Hear me out, okay? Five minutes. That’s all I need.”
Her hair was never this short, it’s the haircut of someone who knows their face doesn’t need softening, and everything is suddenly starting to saturate: pink flowers, red front door, green weeds, blue sky, I’m steeped in color like a tea bag and they run into each other and hurt my eyes and the volume turns up, sears my skin, prickles my spine, and it’s too much, it’s too much, it’s too bright, too loud, too big, and I cannot, I cannot, I—
You’re a monster.
Desperately, I close my eyes and hold my thumbs.
“What are you doing?” Her voice gets closer. “Oh my God, Cass, are you literally shutting me out now? There’s avoidant behavior and then there’s just physically closing your eyes while I’m talking to you.”
Honestly, I’m not sure exactly what it is I’m trying to do now.
All I know is I have to go.
“Come on, Sandy-pants.” She uses my old nickname, laughter lifting her voice like a hot-air balloon. “You’re thirty-one years old. You can’t just stand in your own front garden with your eyes shut—it’s patently ridiculous. We need to talk, Cass. This has gone on long enough now. I’ve sent you so many letters and tried to respect your space, but honestly, you’ve taken the piss with it, so now I’m not leaving here again until this is sorted. You can’t just keep running away from me.”
I squeeze my eyelids a little more tightly.