Here I am.
I am in the car park. I have finished my second day at Oakfield School and am now in the process of unlocking my bicycle, which is attached to a metal fence next to the staff car park. I ride a bike because I have never trusted cars. I’ve ridden a bike now for a hundred years and I think they are one of the truly great human inventions.
Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes change isn’t for the better. Modern toilets with a flush are definitely a change for the better. Self-service checkouts are definitely not. Sometimes things are a change for the better and the worse at the same time, like the internet. Or the electric keyboard. Or pre-chopped garlic. Or the theory of relativity.
And a life is like that. There’s no need to fear change, or necessarily welcome it, not when you don’t have anything to lose. Change is just what life is. It is the only constant I know.
I see Camille head to her car. The woman who I had seen in the park. And the corridor, yesterday, where we hadn’t said much. But I had felt claustrophobic and needed to walk away.
But now, there is no escape. She reaches her car. Puts the key in her lock as I struggle with mine. Our eyes meet.
‘Hi there.’
‘Oh, hi.’
‘The history guy.’
The history guy.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Just having a bit of trouble with the key.’
‘You can have a lift if you want.’
‘No,’ I say, a bit too quickly. ‘I’m . . . it’s . . .’
(It doesn’t matter how long you live. Small talk remains equally complex.) ‘Nice to meet you again. I’m Camille. Camille Guerin. I’m French. I mean, that’s my subject. Was also my nationality, too, though who lets nationality define them? Apart from idiots.’
I don’t know why, but I say, recklessly, ‘I was born in France.’ This goes against my CV, and Daphne is mere metres away. What am I doing? Why do I want her to know this?
Another teacher – someone I hadn’t been introduced to yet – walks out and Camille says ‘See you tomorrow’ to them and they return it.
‘So,’ she asks me, ‘do you speak French?’
‘Oui. But my French is a bit outdated . . . un peu vieillot.’
She tilts her head, frowns. I know this look. It is recognition. ‘C’est dr?le. J’ai l’impression de vous reconna?tre. Where have I seen you? I mean, the park, but before then, I feel sure of it now.’
‘It’s probably a doppelg?nger. I have the sort of face people confuse easily with other faces.’
I smile, still polite, but distant. This conversation can’t really go anywhere but trouble. It isn’t making my head feel any better either.
‘I’m short-sighted. Hence the glasses. But I did a test once,’ she says, now adamant. ‘I came out as a “super-recogniser”. It’s a gift I have. The way my temporal lobe is wired. I was in the top one per cent, in terms of visual recognition. Strange brain.’
I want her to stop talking. I want to be invisible. I want to be a normal person with nothing to hide. I look away. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘When were you last in France?’
‘A long time ago,’ I say, doubting she is old enough to remember me from the 1920s. My bike is free now. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘I will solve it,’ she says, laughing, as she gets into her little Nissan. ‘I will solve you.’
‘Ha!’ I say. Then, when her car door closes, I say, ‘Shit.’
She beeps me as she passes, giving a fast wave. I wave back and I bike away and I think how easy it would be to just not turn up tomorrow. To talk to Hendrich and disappear again. But there is a part of me – a small but dangerous part – that is keen to know where she knew me from. Or, maybe, a small part that simply wants to be solved.
Later, at home, Hendrich calls.
‘So, how is London?’ he asks.
I am sitting at the little IKEA desk, staring at the Elizabethan penny I have been carrying around for centuries. I normally just keep it in the wallet, in its little sealed polythene bag, but now I have it out on the desk. I stare at the fading coat of arms, and remember Marion’s fist tight around it. ‘It’s fine.’
‘And the job? Are you . . . settling in?’
There is something about his tone that’s annoying. Patronising. The way he said ‘settling in’ in a vaguely amused way. ‘Listen, Hendrich, forgive me, but I have a headache. I know it’s only brunch-time with you, but it’s getting late here and I have to be up early preparing lessons tomorrow. I really would like to go to bed now if that’s—’
‘You’re still getting the headaches?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘They’re par for the course. We all get them towards our middle years. It’s memory pain. You just need to be careful. Modern life doesn’t help. Cut down on your screen time. Our eyes weren’t made for artificial light. No one’s eyes were made for that. It’s all the blue wavelengths. Disturbs our circadian rhythms.’
‘Right. Yes. Exactly. Our circadian rhythms. Anyway, I better go.’
Barely a second later: ‘It could be seen as ungrateful, you know?’
‘What could?’
‘Your recent attitude.’
I place the coin back in the bag and seal it. ‘It’s not an attitude. There’s no attitude.’
‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately.’
‘About what?’
‘The beginning.’
‘The beginning of what?’
‘Of us. When I heard about the doctor. When I telegrammed Agnes. When she came to collect you. When I first met you. Eighteen ninety-one. Tchaikovsky. Harlem. Hot dogs. Champagne. Ragtime. All of that. I made every day your birthday. I still make every day your birthday. Or could do, if you weren’t so obsessed with living the most mundane kind of life on offer. If you could get over your obsession with finding Marion.’
‘She’s my daughter.’
‘And it’s understandable. But look at what you’ve had. Look at the lives I have given you . . .’
I am in the kitchen now. I have the phone on speaker and am getting a glass of water. I drink the water down, taking big, continuous gulps, thinking of my mother, under the water, exhaling her last breath. Then, as Hendrich keeps talking I go and open up my laptop.
‘I’ve basically been your fairy godmother, haven’t I? You were Cinderella, shoeing horses or whatever you were doing, and now look at you. You can have the coach, the glass slippers, whatever you want.’
I log on to Facebook. I have set up a page for myself. It draws more suspicion not having a Facebook page than having one, so Hendrich was okay with the idea (even he, or the retired plastic surgeon he was currently playing, has one).
Obviously, the profile information is fiction. There isn’t even an option to put 1581 as your year of birth, anyway.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes, Hendrich, I’m listening. I’m listening. You are my fairy godmother.’
‘I’m just worried about you. Really worried, Tom. I’ve been thinking, ever since you came out here, there was something in your eyes. Something that worried me. A kind of yearning.’
I laugh a tired laugh. ‘A yearning?’