Page 109 of The Life We Almost Had

Could he really connect our minds somehow? It sounds terrifying.

It sounds dangerous.

I have to stop this.

Stop her.

Chapter Seventy

Anna

Finding the bracelet had swept away any doubt I might have had that my experience with Adam wasn’t real.

Oliver is doubting himself now too; I can see it in his face.

‘You believe me,’ I say softly and then louder. ‘You. Believe. Me.’

Chapter Seventy-One

Adam

‘You believe me,’ Anna tells Oliver.

She’s talking him round. She’s persuasive, that wife of mine, I know that. If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t have a purple dining room. He doesn’t really have a chance. But still, I’m willing him to stand firm. Not put her at risk.

I long to get up. To walk away from Dr Fucking Frankenstein, but I can’t. The proverbial lab rat.

‘I know why you want to go back, Anna,’ Oliver says. ‘But I have explained to you when I connected to Adam in the scanner there was nothing to see. Harry… Harry isn’t real.’

At this, my heart splinters. ‘He’s real,’ I want to shout. But suddenly I’m not sure. Have I imagined it all too?

I think back to the day he was born; Elvis crooning ‘Love me Tender’.

Isn’t it real?

Isn’t he real?

But he must be. My arms remember the weight of him, my nose the smell of him – talcum powder. His dark blue eyes trained on mine.

If Anna’s seen him too then the tech must work? It must let us be together, but at what cost?

‘You nearly died,’ Oliver had said. If it takes living without me to keep Anna safe and alive then that’s what she must do.

They are standing either side of my bed. I feel like a bloody tennis net as objections are served and batted away. A game that nobody can win.

A scream builds inside of me but I can’t let it out.

‘I know that there comes a point where…’ Oliver’s voice catches. ‘Where we have to let the ones we love go.’

Again, Anna grasps my hand with both of hers. She squeezes. I squeeze back but she can’t feel it.

I’m back in Alircia when we first met. Watching Anna’s anxious face as the bird is placed on my arm. Feeling my fingers fumble against the chain that tethers it. Watching the parrot soar into the brilliant, blue sky. But I’m not there.

I’m here.

I’m at home with Harry.

I don’t know where I am.

---