The Nearly Girl Read online

  ‘But didn’t Foster say that history wants to go a certain way? That it can cope with a little …’ He tried to find the right word ‘… a little meandering?’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s what you’re going to have to find out: how much meandering exactly she’s caused as a result of surviving. If she has survived, that is.’

  ‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘All right.’ He took a shuffled step towards her. ‘I’m sorry, Mads. I realize it was foolish, so it was.’

  ‘Recklessly, idiotically stupid is what it was. And, quite honestly, I’m inclined to let you sort this out by yourself.’

  ‘Uh … I’m not so good on the computer side of things, Maddy.’

  ‘I know. Which is why I’m going to have to help you.’ She sucked on the lid of a pen, deep in thought. ‘OK, we’ll have to drop, say, a dozen years forward. I guess that’s enough time to start with. See if she’s going to make her mark on the timeline … or not.’

  ‘You’re coming with me?’

  ‘Duh. Of course. You’re rubbish enough at dealing with the Internet in 2001.

  God knows how you’d cope with it in 2013.’

  7 March 2013, New York

  The time window opened and dumped them in a deserted, trash-filled backstreet just off Times Square. Familiar ground to them in terms of the general layout, but in a million ways different from the Times Square of 2001. Gone was the leering green face of an ogre for a movie called Shrek. Now it was replaced with a giant poster for a movie called Oblivion. The streets seemed a little scruffier, but just as vibrant. More of the billboards were animated screens rather than posters. Maddy noted scraps of bill posters from an election last year: a hopeful called Romney had lost to President Obama. And it seemed from scattered warning notices that stormy weather some months ago had resulted in several subway stations being flooded.

  Sign of the times, noted Liam. Not too long from now they’d be starting to build giant levees around Manhattan to buy the city a few more decades. Maddy spotted an Internet cafe and told Liam to go grab a booth in McDonald’s across the street. She said it wouldn’t take her too long to track down Jane Brookhill’s details.

  A couple of hours actually. She finally slumped down in the booth opposite Liam and sucked a lukewarm vanilla shake through a straw. ‘Bleughh. You might have got me a fresher frikkin’ milkshake.’

  She had pages of print in her hand and spread them out on the table in front of her. ‘I started by running her name through the database of 9/11 victims. It looks like she believed you. It looks like she decided not to go to work that day.’

  Liam smiled. ‘She did survive it, then.’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t know why you’re grinning like that. It’s not actually good news, Liam. Because a couple of months afterwards it seems she went and did an interview with a newspaper. Told some story about being visited by a guardian angel from the future.’ Maddy looked at him sternly. ‘She even ended up on Jerry Springer.’

  ‘Jerry …? What’s one of those?’

  ‘A TV show … Look, it doesn’t matter. Point is she went and blabbed.’ Maddy picked through her notes. ‘The newspaper interview was syndicated to several other papers. And the Springer show was aired on a number of networks. It appears she also got paid a visit on a few occasions by Homeland Security checking up on her story.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Maddy looked up at him. ‘Yeah. Oh.’ She looked back at her notes. ‘It could have been much worse. Luckily, it didn’t develop any further than that. She was written off as an attention-seeker, a fraud. A one-week wonder. She got her fifteen minutes of fame on daytime TV and then, it seems, obscurity.’

  ‘Then … isn’t it all right? Could we not just let the poor girl be?’

  ‘No.’ She picked up one of the pages from the table. ‘No one believed her.

  Which is just fine. But that’s people now, in this time. Before it’s known that time travel is a possibility. What about in thirty-one years when Waldstein shows the world it’s totally possible?

  ‘Well, no one will remember her story in 2044 will they? That’s long and forgotten.’

  Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Once on the Internet … always on the Internet. Miss Brookhill’s interview was reported on various websites in 2001. And that stuff remains online forever, Liam. It took me all of half an hour to pick up her trail,’ she said, waving the sheaf of printouts. ‘And it’ll all still be there in 2044. The net’s a digital garbage heap. No one tidies this stuff up. No one deletes old news stories or defunct web pages or dead blogs. That crud just sits there forever.’

  She looked at the printed cut-and-pasted text in front of her. ‘So, what if somebody in the future decides to do a search on “time travel” and, say, “9/11 conspiracies”? Voilà! Somewhere in the search results Jane Brookhill’s name will pop up. Hit that link and we get straight to a rather detailed account of …’

  She scanned the page, found the passage she was looking for and read it aloud. ‘… a young man with an Irish accent and an old-fashioned way about him. He warned me about an hour before the first plane hit the north tower … that exactly that thing was going to happen. Just like that. He even named the flight number correctly …’

  Again, another stern stare was aimed at him. ‘How much frikkin’ detail did you go into with her?’

  ‘Not flight numbers, an’ all that! I just said that someone was going to destroy them tall buildings with planes!’

  ‘Then perhaps she’s embellished the story. Or perhaps mis-remembered it. Or maybe the journalist embellished it. Either way it doesn’t really matter. The point is … our agency is meant to be secret, Liam. Top secret. Not carelessly advertising its presence like this.’

  Liam looked out of the window at the traffic outside. New York twelve years on didn’t look hugely different to him apart from different movies and different billboards – perhaps there were more people staring intently at their phones as opposed to holding them to one ear, and stroking glowing screens instead of tapping at little awkward keys.

  ‘Congratulations, genius,’ said Maddy. ‘She’s a problem. A problem you’ve got to go back and correct.’

  ‘Go back and …?’

  ‘And don’t tell her to bunk off work. Yes?’

  ‘You’re asking me to make sure she dies, Maddy. You … you’re asking me to kill her.’

  ‘No. Liam, you never killed her.’ Her voice softened. She could find an ounce of compassion when it was needed. ‘You can’t let yourself think about it like that.

  Nineteen religious fanatics killed her. Along with nearly three thousand other people. Not you, Liam. Stupid, ignorant, crazy men who wanted to be martyrs.’

  ‘But … I’ll be as good as killing her if I just let her go to work on time, Maddy.’

  He looked at her with eyes begging to be let off the hook. ‘Please, don’t ask me to do this.’

  ‘I’m not asking, Liam. I’m telling. We can’t have a giveaway story like this out there on the net. We have to remain totally off the radar. Totally.’

  He shook his head. He knew he couldn’t do it. When it came to it, looking into that girl’s bright eyes, so full of hope and excitement, goals, dreams, plans … he knew he couldn’t let her hurry away to her job. To her death.

  ‘Maybe this’ll help,’ said Maddy. She passed Liam a sheet of paper with a clipping from a newspaper printed on it. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t a happy-ever-after story for her anyway, Liam.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not a life anyone would want to live.’ She patted his arm gently and got up.

  ‘I’ll let you read it …’

  11 September 2001, New York

  ‘Where is it … where exactly is this new job?’

  Jane Brookhill grinned at him. So proud of herself. ‘McGuire Investments. In the north tower. The view’s just incredible from up there!’

  Liam smiled.
Quite an effort to do that. Smile. ‘Well, that must be … something.’

  She paused. Looked at him quizzically, noting the odd tone in his voice. ‘Oh, but it is. You can see all of Manhattan from up there! It’s awesomely inspiring!’

  He nodded slowly. Looked away. Fighting an urge to say something… something to save her.

  ‘You OK there? Did I say something stupid? Or –’

  ‘No.’ Liam turned back to her and smiled again. ‘No. Not at all. I just remembered …’

  ‘What?’

  Liam forced himself to get up off his stool. ‘I have to … I have to be somewhere shortly.’

  Jane cocked her head uncertainly. ‘Oh, OK.’ She frowned, puzzled.

  ‘Didn’t you just invite me to sit down and join you for a coffee?’

  ‘I know. I did. I just … it’s just I remembered I have to be somewhere.’ He shrugged and pressed out a hard-fought cavalier grin. ‘And you, Miss Brookhill, have a wonderful new job to get along to.’

  She nodded. Looked at her watch. ‘Yes, I suppose I better not be late. That would look totally bad on a first day, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  She hopped off her stool and grabbed her cappuccino. ‘Well, thank you for the coffee. That was so very gentlemanly of you.’

  He nodded at that.

  ‘You know, Liam O’Connor, nobody has manners in New York any more. I mean, really.’

  He knew she was stalling, hovering. Liam could see there was a question hesitating on her lips like someone waiting for a bus – just in case he didn’t ask it. She looked like she was going to ask it instead.

  ‘I think you’ll be late,’ he said a little flatly. Dismissively. ‘You should just go.’

  Jane Brookhill closed her mouth. No. It appeared there wasn’t going to be a suggestion from this charming young man that perhaps they could meet for coffee on another day when there might be a little more time for them to get to know each other.

  ‘Right. OK.’ She nodded awkwardly. ‘Well, uhh … anyway, thanks again for the

  …’ She brandished her paper coffee cup clumsily, sloshing a frothy drip over the rim.

  Liam watched her reach for the swing door of the diner. It bumped against her arm as an old man pushed his way in off the street. She caught Liam’s eye one last time and mouthed, Manners, huh?

  He forced a smile and nodded, then watched her merge into the swift-moving pavement traffic: one smartly dressed commuter among hundreds heading south down towards Wall Street.

  He pulled out the sheet of paper Maddy had given him and unfolded it to read the obituary once again.

  … was pronounced dead on arrival by paramedics. The thirty-year-old apartment tenant, Jane Anne Brookhill, was known to have suffered several severe periods of depression in the aftermath of 9/11, diagnosed as ‘survivor guilt’ by her therapist, Dr Carver. She was also known to have been voluntarily sectioned a number of times over the intervening years. Brookhill is best known for having appeared on a number of daytime chat shows after she claimed to have been forewarned on the morning of the attack by a miraculous ‘visitor from the future’. She has no children and is survived by her older brother, Lawrence Brookhill, and her mother …

  His forehead rested against the steamy window. He wiped the glass and could make out the top of Jane’s bobbing head in the crowd. She had the lively, purposeful up-down stride of someone eager to travel faster than her legs could carry her, eager to begin her day.

  Liam could still have run out there, caught up with her and stopped her.

  Perhaps on another loop-around Tuesday morning he might just do that.

  Perhaps on another Tuesday morning he might find another way to delay her going to work, a way that involved not telling her he was a time traveller, perhaps telling her something else entirely.

  I’ve just fallen in love with you. Say, could I buy you breakfast?

  I’m from the FBI, ma’am. You need to come with me now. Explanations later, ma’am.

  Help! I’ve lost my five-year-old nephew. He was just standing here moments ago.

  Any one of them might work. Maybe not delay her for a whole hour, but for five minutes. Perhaps enough of a delay that things might have worked out slightly differently for her. That she might have caught an elevator down from the eightieth floor in time, or have been distracted or delayed from entering that doomed tower by some other random confluence of chance and event.

  A million and one things that, spun out slightly differently, could have saved her.

  Or maybe Foster was right: history does have a way it wants to go. History has those people it requires to die at their proper appointed time and those it needs to live to go and do whatever it is they’re meant to do.

  He finally lost sight of her amid the crowd and knew that he probably wouldn’t be coming back to Tommy’s any time soon. The temptation to meddle with events, to save her, would be far too much for him. It was probably best he gave this place a wide berth at this particular time on a Tuesday morning.

  A wide berth indefinitely.

  The window was now fogged again by his breath. He sat back and looked at the fading oval of condensation for a moment. On impulse he finger-drew two letters in it.

  J. B.

  His memorial to a young woman who, under different circumstances, he might just have got to know a little bit better.

  Text © Alex Scarrow 2013

 

 

  Alex Scarrow, The Nearly Girl

 

 

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