Page 76 of The Love of Our Lives
Simon and Fran.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
I must let out a noise because Fran and Simon both turn to look at me sharply.
‘Oh my god,’ Fran says, her face washing out completely.
Simon’s face just falls sadly, like he knows it’s all over.
But then Fran starts coming towards me. ‘E,’ she says, and another memory rushes up, finally pushes to the surface. Standing in this exact same spot, seeing Fran and Simon together. A dawning realisation that all the chat about an ex-girlfriend was a lie.
It was Fran he was at dinner with that night.He really was cheating.
With my best friend.My cousin.
And without another thought in my head, I sprint away from Fran towards the exit. I hear her calling sharply behind me, but I ignore it.
They betrayed me.
‘Emily, stop!’ she cries out to me again.
But I can’t stop, won’t stop, and running down the pavement, I see it, a lit taxi on the other side of the road. Without another thought, I immediately go towards it.
A honking sound then screams.
The bright lights of a car rush towards me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Light above me, faces, people asking, ‘are you OK?’ over and over, as the scent of perfume and aftershave surrounds me. And then a figure in white, Fran; Simon too, both crouching over me, and Fran is hugging me into her, and saying, ‘oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.’
My heart is racing, and yet I feel the oddest sensation coming over me again, hot and strong, as pieces fall together in my brain. Seeing Fran and Simon talking like that, running out and on to the road, the fact I almost killed myself but then someone pulled me back – they stopped me going over into traffic.
They stopped it happening.
It’s been growing since Charlie’s accident, I realise, this dawning awareness that I could change things.
Change the outcome.
But there was something else I couldn’t put my finger on – some missing piece of the puzzle.
Then at the sight of those car lights, the life-ending metal milliseconds away from me, that beautiful lifting feeling as someone pulled me back from it, I realised what I’ve known all along. What my brain clearly wouldn’t let me consider before: that I could accidentally kill Emily before the day of the heart transplant – which means maybe I can save her too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The train back to Edinburgh goes by in a shell-shocked blur. I barely look out the window, barely touch the chicken sandwich I made myself buy at King’s Cross. And as the train rushes northwards under the leaden sky, it all sinks in.
Maybe this was why I was here all along, and it wasn’t a glitch. Maybe Emily isn’t properly gone at all – and I could stop her dying at the end of all of this.
Which would mean, I’d die instead.
Me, Maggie.
Because there is only one working heart between us – this one here in my chest – and I need it in the future or my old self will die: it is a medical certainty and I knew how lucky I was to get that call. But what if I simply stop whatever happened to Emily from happening the day of the transplant? What if I change things?
Because I know that the skiing accident didn’t happen the first time with Charlie, I felt inside myself that that was a proper deviation from Charlie’s life, so why not for Emily too? The evidence is right there, staring me in the face: people can be killed here, like they can normally, and if they can be killed, surely they can be saved too. My mind was just in complete denial of it all. There I was, simply assuming that Emily was still going to die at the end of this, when the truth is, I might have a choice.
