Page 53 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘How long since last time?’ I ask.
‘An hour? I couldn’t leave. I just stayed here with you. We need to get you to the doctor.’
‘An hour.’ Hot tears start to flow down my face, and it feels as if they belong to someone else. All I can think about is the place I just left, the people I left behind, in a version of my life that feels a thousand times more vital and real than this one.
‘Do you feel strong enough to get dressed?’ Kathryn asks. ‘I’m taking you to the hospital right away.’
‘I don’t think they can help with this, Kathryn.’
‘What do you mean?’ She grasps my hands, her face full of concern. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘You could have called an ambulance to take me to the hospital while I was out, but you didn’t. Why?’
‘I was going to,’ she says, lowering her eyes briefly. ‘Another thirty minutes and I would have.’
‘You know something,’ I insist. ‘Something you’re not telling me.’
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not really. Nothing based on fact. Just stories – old and forgotten stories, nothing but whispers now.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I tell her.
Looking around the room, I see the book she gave me. Snatching it up, I open it to the photograph I looked at before.
It’s a row of smiling people standing in front of the smoking wreck of a crumpled plane.
It’s not a great reproduction – the image is a little grained and blurred – but it’s good enough. Turning the book to face Kathryn, I point at the young man in the centre of the group of people.
‘That’s Danny Beauchamp,’ I say.
Kathryn looks perplexed. ‘Yes, it says so in the caption.’
I run my finger across the people. There, in front of Danny, is a little boy, holding out what I now know is a copy ofBiggles. And there, on the left of the frame, I can see a woman watching the photographer from amidst the crowd. I didn’t even notice her last time I looked at this picture, but now I see the way she is standing on her left leg, right hip jutting. I feel the ache in her feet in her flat and worn tennis shoes. In the photograph, her dress looks white, but I know it’s bright yellow.
I point at a photograph of myself, taken more than eighty years ago.
‘That’s what I mean,’ I tell her.
Kathryn’s eyes widen. The book falls from her hands.
‘It’s real,’ she whispers. ‘All the stories are true.’
Part Two
‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?’
‘Ode to a Nightingale’, John Keats
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Monday 23rdJune 2025, 5.45 p.m.
‘Tell me again.’ I turn to Kathryn. We’re sitting in the courtyard of a little café, waiting for it to be time to visit Dr Gresch’s office. I didn’t want to go, but Kathryn has insisted on it.
‘If you want me to meet you halfway with the things you are experiencing, then you have to do the same for me,’ she told me sternly. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I might be the only person who has reason to. Even so, we need to make sure there is nothing else happening.’
Reluctantly, I agreed. She told me about ‘the stories’ once already, back at her flat, in a halting and disjointed way, as if she were really trying to convince herself of something. Whether it was to decide to believe in me or the opposite, I’m not sure yet.
‘Everything begins and ends with theHal Saflieni Hypogeum,’ Kathryn begins again. This time, her tone is even and collected, working through everything I’ve told her and everything she knows step by step. ‘It’s the oldest Neolithic site on the island, perhaps as much as eight thousand years old – we can’t really be certain. We do know that for thousands of years, it was forgotten, lying silent underground while life went on above it. And then in the early 1900s, a builder broke the roof of the site, and the complex was uncovered – a trulyremarkable discovery that tells us so much about the ancient peoples of the island and just how much we still don’t know about who they were or how they lived.’
