As we rounded a corner, I turned and walked backward, my eyes fixed on my younger self’s bobbing mess of curls. The small red ball hit the paddle and shot upward; her eyes were on it, and so were mine. She missed, and the ball hit the pavement and the corner of a small rock, which sent it springing up in an unexpected direction. It was like a tiny meteor flying peacefully through space, only to collide with another meteor with a silent boom and fly off peacefully in a direction it had never considered. Little Faye reached out for the ball, but it glanced off her hand, sending it in yet another curious trajectory, at the mercy of the universe. Toward the road.
The little girl—little me—stepped casually into the street to follow the ball. But at that moment I heard the sudden roar of an engine as a car rounded the corner, looming behind the child and heading straight for her. I gasped as time lurched from a peaceful slow-motion to a raggedly rapid full-speed at the flick of some switch. I lunged toward the child and threw myself at her. Car, me, child, in that order collided in the cosmos, but the greatest impact was not me with the car, which only clipped my hip, but me with the road. Child in my arms, the sounds I could hear were the short squeal of brakes and the screaming of a woman.
But actually, it was the screaming of two women, and one of them was me. The road had cut like hungry teeth through my sweater and into my flesh, leaving a deep graze up my left arm and grit embedded in my face where my head had slowed my skid along the abrasive surface. Plus I had an instinctive and powerful grip on this six-year-old child, a grip I was making with a wrist that hurt like hell.
“Oh my God oh my God thank you thank you thank you,” exclaimed my mother, as she flung herself upon us and peeled back my arms to see her child, cocooned and safe within, eyes wide like a small animal.
“Are you all right, baby?” my mother said.
“I think so,” I said, assuming in the moment that she was talking to me.
“She smells like you,” said my younger self, and I knew it was the sweater I’d taken, which smelled of my mother’s perfume.
A man was standing over us: the driver. His shadow moved around a bit and there were apologies and the smell of smoke, and the twisting of a foot stamping out a cigarette butt on the road; apart from that I wasn’t particularly conscious of him. I couldn’t see him, I only had eyes for my mother. He drove away.
“You saved her life,” my mother said, her words like a rush of wind. “And you’re hurt.” She gazed deep into my eyes with gratitude and concern; her fingers gently brushed over my forehead and cheek, and I could barely feel the pain when I compared it to the wonder of her touch. I almost forgot how to breathe. She held out her hand to help me up and—stunned—I let her heave me to my feet.
“I think you better come with us, my place must be closer than yours. You’re not in a good way,” she said, peering into my face, as though she realized she’d lost something there and was trying to find it.
And as we walked in the direction of her house I knew all the pain was worth it—more, if necessary. Plus, I might even have saved my own life. How fortuitous was that?
My mother’s hands waved in the air, reliving the position of me, the position of the car, analyzing all the what-ifs. Her voice broke and she stopped, cupping little Faye’s face in her hands. She looked at me, and all the what-might-have-beens swam in her eyes.
“How can I ever repay you?” she said, barely audible.
“There’s no need,” I said.
I could have explained that my gain from preventing my younger self from being hit by a car was at least as great as hers. But I just let it tickle me, in a mind-boggling sort of way.
My mother took a deep breath and smiled. “We’re okay,” she said, as though reassuring herself of the truth of it. She chattered away as we walked, and I listened, mopping up her words like a piece of bread in the gravy. Her tone was familiar, at once calm and excited, like that of an adult telling a child a story that promises adventure. She told me what we would do when we got to her place, that she would look at my cuts and make some tea, and she thought she ought to run me a bath.
“It’ll help get the grit out.” She looked closely at my face again, and my arm, and grimaced. “I’ll see to that when we’re home, I’m a good nurse.”
“You’re a nurse!” I said.
“Not a real one, just a good pretend one,” she said. “We’ll take a look at it, and if it’s really bad, I suppose we ought to get you to a hospital.”
“Mummy doesn’t trust hospitals, she says they make you sicker.” Little Faye slipped her hand into mine and I felt something like an electric shock run through me. In that moment I remembered the stories where you shouldn’t let your past self see your current self, otherwise something would happen, something bad. Ah well, I would have to discover the rules for myself, and hopefully not break any that mattered.
“Well, yes, I think that can happen, you can go to the hospital with one thing, and come out with something even worse,” I said pulling a silly frightened expression at little Faye, and wondering if my mother’s chest infections could have been helped if only she’d gone to a hospital. She gave me a sideways glance.
“It does happen,” said Jeanie in a low voice, suddenly serious.
“What are we going to do?” I said, looking at little Faye. “We have the same name and we’re going to get all muddled up.”
She giggled. “I could be Faye One and you can be Faye Two, as you came along second.”
Jeanie laughed. “Well, technically, she came along first,” she said, nodding in my direction and winking at me as she had back at Em and Henry’s. I’d forgotten my mother’s winks, but they were so familiar that I must have kept winks in cold storage in my mind. I had also filed away the habit she had of sweeping her hair to one side and over her shoulder.
“We could call you by your middle name,” said little Faye. “What is it?”
I started to say “Susannah” without thinking, but stopped myself just in time and said “Sarah” instead. It would be too much of a coincidence to have the same middle name.
“We have the same initials!” said little Faye in a reverent whisper, as though she had found treasure.
“Wow!” I said, bobbing down in front of her. “We could be twins!”
“Well, she looks more like you than me,” said Jeanie.
“Do you want to call me by my middle name then?” I asked. “I don’t mind.”
“No, I’ll call you Faye, we won’t get confused. And thank you for saving my life. I have a feeling we’re going to be friends, don’t you?”
“Friends? Me and you?” I pretended to look uncertain about that for a moment, then took her hand again and smiled. “I guarantee it.”
* * *
“I HAVE A top just like this!” Jeanie said, holding up the torn black sweater I’d taken from her drawer earlier that morning. “Mind you, I suppose everyone does.” We were back at the house, in my mother’s bedroom. I had taken off all my clothes and put on one of her dressing gowns. She’d asked me whether I wanted tea first or a bath, and I chose tea. But she’d suggested I get out of my clothes and into something warm straightaway. I was worried she’d see the boots—her boots—so I quickly put them in the bottom of her wardrobe; everything else I laid on her bed. My jeans were ripped, and absolutely filthy.