I point at the posh-looking tinsel-strewn pub across the street. ‘I thought we could get a pint after I’ve sorted my watch,’ I say. ‘Two birds with one stone.’
Harv shrugs and takes another bite. ‘Fair enough.’
We walk up the little staircase and pause in front of the bright purple front door, its gold number 15 glinting in the dying sunlight. On the Tube over here, this seemed like a brilliant idea. But now the doubts are starting to creep in. I mean: what if this is just somebody’s house? How will I even begin to explain what I’m doing here without sounding like a total lunatic?
It’s only the building’s strong Harry Potter vibe that’s keeping my scepticism at bay. If I was a time-travelling watch salesman, this is exactly the kind of place I would live.
Harv looks over at me as I stand dithering on the doorstep. ‘The normal procedure is to knock, man.’
He pounds the door three times with his non-sandwich hand.
For a few seconds, nothing happens. I almost feel relieved. I’m on the verge of suggesting we leave when suddenly I hear muffled footsteps, and the clunk of a heavy lock. And then a familiar scraggly-bearded face emerges.
‘Ah!’ The watch-seller beams. ‘You found me, then!’
A minute later, Harv and I are sitting at the old man’s kitchen table while he makes tea at the stove. And if I thought this place had a strong Potter vibe from the outside, then the inside makes it look positively conventional.
Wooden beams jut out at bizarre angles across the ceiling, and there are clocks covering almost every inch of the walls. They’re all different shapes, styles, colours and sizes, and their combined ticking sounds like the hooves of a hundred tiny stampeding horses. Cogs and watch faces and straps and springs are scattered across the kitchen counters, nestled among dozens of notebooks and pieces of paper, all of them teeming with strange diagrams and illegible scrawls. Next to the old-fashioned stove, there’s a sink big enough to bathe a St Bernard in, which sends out a howling clanking sound as the old man spins its rusty faucets. He is still wearing the same ill-fitting blue suit and reindeer tie, and his unruly copper-grey hair flaps wildly as he flits about taking mugs out of the cupboards. There’s something so familiar about him.
Harv is gazing around the room, looking understandably bemused. ‘So you … sell watches, do you?’ he asks.
‘Among other things.’ The old man chuckles. ‘In fact, I was selling chestnuts fairly recently.’
He shoots me a wink and I nod back, dumbly. Even though I was expecting to see him, that now-familiar sense of confusion and nervous excitement is thrumming once again in my chest. There’s so much I need to ask him.
The old man plonks three mugs of tea down next to Harv’s half-eaten sandwich, and settles in the chair opposite me. ‘So, I told you we’d meet again, didn’t I? What’s on your mind this time?’
I look back at Harv, who’s blowing the steam off his mug of tea as he stares around him. The idea of bringing him along now seems utterly, obviously insane. I mean, how am I supposed to have this conversation in front of him?
The watch-seller reads my mind. ‘Don’t worry about your friend here,’ he says. ‘Back in the present, he won’t have any memory at all of this encounter taking place. It will be like it never happened.’
‘Er … what was that, mate?’ Harv says.
The watch-seller grins and glances down at Harv’s belly. ‘You’ve filled out a little since I last saw you.’
Harv’s mouth forms the ‘W’ of ‘what’, but no sound comes out. Despite everything, I find I’m quite enjoying the novel sensation of not being the most bewildered person in the room.
‘What is going on, Ben?’ Harv demands. ‘Seriously, who is this dude?’
The watch-seller answers for me. ‘In the year 2020, I gave your friend here a wristwatch that allows him to revisit various moments in his past. He’s reliving one of these moments right now, and I assume he’s here because he wants my advice.’
Harv continues to stare at him blankly, his mouth a perfect straight line.
‘It’s true, Harv,’ I find myself saying. ‘It sounds mad, obviously …’
Harv sniffs and takes a gulp of his tea. ‘Look, if you’re both gonna be twats, I’ll just go to the pub.’
I turn back to the old man. ‘Will he really not remember this?’
The old man shakes his head.
‘So, nothing I do in these moments will have any effect in 2020?’
‘Not directly, no.’
‘What. Is. Going. On?’ Harv thumps the table with every word, making the mugs rattle. ‘Is this some kind of prank? Are we being filmed or something?’
‘Do you really not remember?’ I ask him. ‘When we talked about time travel, the night of Marek’s play at uni? Before we played Sardines in the maze? You came with me to the Drama Barn because I was so late. And before that, we talked about Groundhog Day in the kitchen.’
Harv narrows his eyes. ‘No … that’s not what happened, Ben. I only saw you later, after the play. And we definitely didn’t talk about Groundhog Day. I would remember if we did, because I bloody love that film.’
The watch-seller nods. ‘Great film.’
I try to process this new information. So, nothing I do in these revisited moments will be remembered by anyone but me? All this new stuff – Daphne getting to accept her award, us falling asleep together in my room the night of the play – it will be like none of it ever happened when – if – I finally get back to the present?
That means I can’t change anything. I can’t affect the future in any way. The Monopoly game with Mum flashes suddenly into my head. I had the idea that night that I might be able to stop what
