“I lost my wife,” Mick said.
“I know, and I’m sorry. More than you’ll ever know. But if you expect my life to come crashing to a halt…”
He cut her off. “I’m already fading. One point eight this morning.”
“You always knew it would happen. It’s not like it’s any surprise.”
“You’ll notice a difference in me by the end of the day.”
“This isn’t the end of the day, so stop dwelling on it. All right? Please, Mick. You’re in serious danger of ruining this for yourself.”
“I know, and I’m trying not to,” he said. “But what I was saying, about how things aren’t going to get any better…I think today’s going to be my last chance, Andrea. My last chance to be with you, to be with you properly.”
“You mean us sleeping together,” Andrea said, keeping her voice low.
“We haven’t talked about it yet. That’s okay; I wasn’t expecting it to happen without at least some discussion. But there’s no reason why…”
“Mick, I…” Andrea began.
“You’re still my wife. I’m still in love with you. I know we’ve had our problems, but I realize now how stupid all that was. I should have called you sooner. I was being an idiot. And then this happened…and it made me realize what a wonderful, lovely person you are, and I should have seen that for myself, but I didn’t…I needed the accident to shake me up, to make me see how lucky I was just to know you. And now I’m going to lose you again, and I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with that. But at least if we can be together again…properly, I mean.”
“Mick…”
“You’ve already said you might get back together with the other Mick. Maybe it took all this to get us talking again. Point is, if you’re going to get back together with him, there’s nothing to stop us getting back together now. We were a couple before the accident; we can still be a couple now.”
“Mick, it isn’t the same. You’ve lost your wife. I’m not her. I’m some weird thing there isn’t a word for. And you aren’t really my husband. My husband is in a medically induced coma.”
“You know none of that really matters.”
“To you.”
“It shouldn’t matter to you either. And your husband—me, incidentally—agreed to this. He knew exactly what was supposed to happen. And so did you.”
“I just thought things would be better—more civilized—if we kept a kind of distance.”
“You’re talking as if we’re divorced.”
“Mick, we were already separated. We weren’t talking. I can’t just forget what happened before the accident as if none of that mattered.”
“I know it isn’t easy for you.”
They walked on in an uneasy silence, through the city center streets they’d walked a thousand times before. Mick asked Andrea if she wanted a coffee, but she said she’d had one in her office not long before he arrived. Maybe later. They paused to cross the road near one of Andrea’s favorite boutiques and Mick asked if there was something he could buy for her.
Andrea sounded taken aback at the suggestion. “You don’t need to buy me anything, Mick. It isn’t my birthday or anything.”
“It would be nice to give you a gift. Something to remember me by.”
“I don’t need anything to remember you, Mick. You’re always going to be there.”
“It doesn’t have to be much. Just something you’ll use now and then, and will make you think of me. This me, not the one who’s going to be walking around in this body in a few days.”
“Well, if you really insist…” He could tell Andrea was trying to sound keen on the idea, but her heart still wasn’t quite in it. “There was a handbag I saw last week…”
“You should have bought it when you saw it.”
“I was saving up for the hairdresser.”
So Mick bought her the handbag. He made a mental note of the style and color, intending to buy an identical copy next week. Since he hadn’t bought the gift for his wife in his own worldline, it was even possible that he might walk out of the shop with the exact counterpart of the handbag he’d just given Andrea.
They went to the park again, then to look at the art in the National Museum of Wales, then back into town for lunch. There were a few more clouds in the sky compared to the last two days, but their chrome whiteness only served to make the blue appear more deeply enameled and permanent. There were no planes anywhere at all; no contrail scratches. It turned out the aircraft—which had indeed been military—that they had seen yesterday had been on its way to Poland, carrying a team of mine rescue specialists. Mick remembered his resentment at seeing the plane, and felt bad about it now. There had been brave men and women aboard it, and they were probably going to be putting their own lives at risk to help save other brave men and women stuck miles underground.
“Well,” Andrea said, when they’d paid the bill. “Moment of truth, I suppose. I’ve been thinking about what you were saying earlier, and maybe…” She trailed off, looking down at the remains of her salad, before continuing, “We can go home, if you’d like. If that’s what you really want.”
“Yes,” Mick said. “It’s what I want.”
They took the tram back to their house. Andrea used her key to let them inside. It was still only the early afternoon, and the house was pleasantly cool, with the curtains and blinds still drawn. Mick knelt down and picked up the letters that were on the mat. Bills, mostly. He set them on the hallside table, feeling a transitory sense of liberation. More than likely he’d be confronted with the same bills when he got home, but for now these were someone else’s problem.
He slipped off his shoes and walked into the living room. For a moment he was thrown, feeling as if he really was in a different house. The wallscreen was on another wall; the dining table had been shifted sideways into the other half of the room; the sofa and easy chairs had all been altered and moved.
“What’s happened?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Andrea said. “I felt like a change. You came around and helped me move them.”
“That’s new furniture.”
“No, just different seat covers. They’re not new, it’s just that we haven’t had them out for a while. You remember them now, don’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“C’mon, Mick. It wasn’t that long ago. We got them off Aunty Janice, remember?” She looked at him despairingly. “I’ll move things back. It was a bit inconsiderate of me, I suppose. I never thought how strange it would be for you to see the place like this.”
“No, it’s okay. Honestly, it’s fine.” Mick looked around, trying to fix the arrangement of furniture and décor in his mind’s eye. As if he were going to duplicate everything when he got back into his own body, into his own version of this house.
Maybe he would, too.
“I’ve got something for you,” Andrea said suddenly, reaching onto the top of the bookcase. “Found it this morning. Took ages searching for it.”
“What?” Mick asked.
She held the thing out to him. Mick saw a rectangle of laminated pink card, stained and dog-eared. It was only when he tried to hold it, and the thing fell open and disgorged its folded paper innards, that he realized it was a map.
“Bloody hell. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to look.” Mick folded the map back into itself and studied the cover. It was one of their old hill-walking maps, covering that part of the Brecon Beacons where they’d done a lot of their walks.