Page 42 of Right Place, Right Time
Adam’s kitchen is separated from the lounge by a sort of breakfast bar with stools underneath. ‘The opportunity never came up,’ I say, walking over to it and pulling out a stool to sit on. ‘It had already been developed into offices by the time I took over. I moved in with my grandparents at the house I live in now when I began helping them out with the shop, and I just stayed there as things … well, as things changed.’
‘What were you doing before you came to Cambridge?’ Adam expertly pours frothy milk over the top of the two coffees.
‘Er … not a lot. After I finished university, I was doing some odd jobs and stuff. Trying to find my way in the world – you know?’
‘Yeah.’ Adam passes me a beautiful-looking coffee. ‘Been there. But you would have finished uni in what … 2009, 2010, if you’re thirty-six?’
‘2010. I had a gap year after my A levels.’
‘What did you do – anything exciting?’
‘I went travelling with a friend. Boyfriend, actually,’ I say, thinking about Jake for the first time in ages.
‘Cool – where?’
‘European cities, mostly. Neither of us were quite the backpacking kind so we stayed in B and Bs. We’d both saved a bit working part-time beforehand, and we found bits and pieces of work while we were moving around.’Happy times,I think to myself.If only we’d been able to have many more years of them …
‘I used to enjoy the travelling part of my job. I saw a lot of the world that way,’ Adam says, leaning on the countertop while he sips his coffee. ‘So, after uni, what did you do? You said you’d only been in Cambridge for about ten years, so what happened between 2010 and 2014? Did you stay with this Jake?’
I feel my heart begin to beat hard and I swallow. ‘Lovely though this trip down memory lane is,’ I say hurriedly, stirring my coffee as I swiftly change the subject away from these particular years, ‘you still have a great big metal door in the middle of your shop. I think we should talk about Ben and what kept you up into the early hours of the morning, don’t you?’
Adam nods. ‘We probably should, yes. Especially if you don’t want to talk about yourself …’
I ignore this. ‘So, what have you found?’
‘This.’ Adam goes over to the table at the side of the sofa and lifts some of the books, then carries them over to where I’m sitting and puts them on the worktop in front of me. ‘When I packed these up for the shop, I thought they were just leather-bound volumes of the classics. I’d brought a few of them up here to sort through and read, so after you left last night, I had a shower and made myself some food. There was nothing on TV, so I thought I’d maybe start reading one of them before I went to bed.’
The image of Adam sitting up here reading a literary classic before bed is not one I ever expected to pop into my head. It just doesn’t sit with the image I have of him. Although the juxtaposition of these two images is confusing to me, for some reason I also find them comforting too.
‘But when I picked up this copy of Charles Dickens’A Tale of Two Cities, and opened it expecting to read about Paris and London during the French Revolution, I was surprised to find this …’
He opens up the leather-bound book and lays it in front of me. But instead of the usual pages full of prose, there’s a series of what look like mathematical equations.
‘They’re on every page,’ he says when I glance up at him for an explanation. ‘There’s also diagrams too. I can’t make head nor tail of them. So, I went toGreat Expectationsinstead.’
‘Was that the same?’
Adam shakes his head. ‘Nope, that was just a book with the actual story inside. I looked in some more Charles Dickens books and there was nothing unusual in any of them. So, I went downstairs and pulled out some more of these ‘classics’ in case there were any otherslike this. I almost gave up looking when I didn’t find anything after a few minutes, but then I stumbled upon a series of Shakespeare volumes in similar leather covers, and when I opened a copy ofTwelfth Night, the same thing happened. It was full of handwritten mathematical equations and hand-drawn diagrams.’
‘But why hide them in the covers of these books?’
‘It gets better,’ Adam says, laying the copy ofTwelfth Nightout in front of me. ‘To cut a long story short, eventually I found eight more books exactly like them. All classics, but instead of the actual book between the covers, they all had handwritten notes hidden inside.’
‘That must have taken you ages – no wonder you were up so late.’
‘I would probably still be doing it now, if I hadn’t figured out the link between them.’
‘Other than them being classics?’
Adam nods. ‘The link is they all have numbers in the title!’
‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh, and after I’d been through things likeTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the SeaandCatch-22, and they were just the books with no notes in, I realised that not only were the titles numeric, but they were specifically the numbers found on a clock.’
‘Why a clock?’
‘I don’t know, but look.’ He lifts a book from the pile. ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoeby Agatha Christie. Took me ages to find that one, I can tell you.’
