A crumpled smile cuts through his scruffy beard, and his blue eyes sparkle at me. ‘I think you’ve already worked that out, haven’t you?’
‘Because one minute to midnight is when my time here is up?’ I say, slowly. ‘It’s when I … jump again?’
The old man beams and nods, like a teacher who’s just coaxed the correct answer out of a particularly dim student.
‘So, I will jump again, then?’ I ask him.
‘It’s highly likely.’
‘Where to?’
The old man sighs. ‘That, I can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you already know the answer.’
‘Trust me, I don’t.’
He jabs at the chestnuts with his spoon. ‘I’m confident it will come to you.’
I lean my head back in frustration. ‘Look … I get that being vague and mysterious is sort of your thing. But I could really do with some proper, concrete answers right now.’
He laughs through his nose. ‘The most important thing to ask yourself is why you might be revisiting these particular moments. Perhaps after experiencing them a second time you might feel differently about them. Or perhaps you won’t.’
‘But … will I get back to the present at some point?’
He opens his mouth to answer this, but a voice rings out behind us.
‘Excuse me?’
I turn around to see three old ladies smiling at us. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ one of them says. ‘We were after a few chestnuts.’
The watch-seller claps his hands and grins at them. ‘Finally! Some paying customers.’ He looks back at me. ‘You’d better be on your way.’
‘But … hang on,’ I stammer. ‘I need to know—’
He cuts me off by raising his hand and checking his own watch. His eyebrows leap up into his scruffy hair. ‘It’s getting on a bit. Time to head back to your mother’s.’
‘What?’ I ask, confused.
He looks me straight in the eyes, suddenly deadly serious. ‘Trust me. Time to go. I know you have more questions, but don’t worry, you’ll see me again. I guarantee it.’ He turns back to the women, smiling again. ‘Now, ladies. Will it be three bags of chestnuts, then?’
‘I do like your tie,’ one of them says, and the watch-seller gives me a what-did-I-tell-you smirk.
I turn and start walking, feeling possibly more confused than I did before. I am still no clearer as to what is happening, or why. But something about the firmness in the old man’s voice when he said ‘Time to go’ keeps me moving forward. I glance back over my shoulder, half expecting him to have disappeared, but he’s still there, nattering away cheerfully with the old ladies.
It’s only when I get back into the house that I remember why I left in the first place: mustard. I take my coat off and hang it on the banister. It’s only me who likes the stuff anyway; I’ll just tell Mum that I’m fine with gravy.
I walk back towards the kitchen, still feeling so dazed that it’s like I’m on autopilot. The door is half open, and I can hear Mum and Daphne chatting away over the rattle of pans and the thwack of the knife on the chopping board.
‘My sister is the worst,’ Daphne is saying. ‘All the Christmas presents she buys us are just presents for herself. Last year, she got into Wicca …’
‘What, as in basket weaving?’ Mum asks.
Daphne giggles. ‘No, I wish. A basket would’ve been quite nice. I mean Wicca with two c’s. As in witchcraft.’
‘Gosh. Right. How interesting,’ Mum says, giggling now too.
‘She’s a massive hippie,’ Daff says. ‘I unwrapped her present to me last year, and it was two tiny bells to be used, in her words, “to mark the differences between ritual ceremonies”. I said to her: “Kat, seriously, do you think I’ll be doing enough ritual ceremonies to need special bells to distinguish between them?”’ I hear the potato pan clattering as Mum shakes with laughter. ‘And then when she left on Boxing Day, she just picked them up and took them with her, saying, “Well, if you’re not going to use them …”’
I’m about to push the door open and walk in when Mum stops laughing and says: ‘You know, I’ll never forget the present Ben got me the Christmas after his dad left.’
The chopping noises die out suddenly, and I wonder if Daphne has broken off to give Mum her full attention. My heart starts thumping. I hardly ever heard her talk about Dad. As a kid, it was always me that seemed to bring him up. It feels odd hearing her even mention him.
‘He must have been … what was it? Ten?’ Mum continues. ‘And everything was a bit up in the air at that time. Things were quite tough, really, on both of us. Anyway. In the run-up to Christmas, I started to notice things going missing around the house. Only little things – like my stapler, or the Sellotape, or the pad of Post-its I kept by the phone; stuff like that. But I didn’t think anything of it, because there was so much else to think about. And then, come Christmas morning, there were three presents for me under the tree from Ben. I unwrapped them, and there they were: my stapler, my Sellotape, and the pad of Post-its.’
There’s silence for a second, and then both of them burst out laughing.
‘Oh my God,’ Daphne says. ‘OK, I think you’ve trumped me there. That’s worse than the bells.’
‘I know.’ Mum snorts. ‘But you know, the funny thing was, I was genuinely really pleased to see them. I told him, “I’ve been looking for these everywhere!” and he was so delighted with himself. I hadn’t been expecting him to get me anything – he was only ten years old. I suppose he was just trying to cheer me up, and that was the only way he could think to do it. It’s silly, really. But it made me laugh and feel genuinely happy at
