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thought
I’d taken the phone to go time–travelling… to see my old
boyfriend?” I couldn’t deny what I thought.
    “ I’m sorry,
Nik, I just reacted… it all seemed to fit…”
    “ Trust , Joe, remember? What we based
our marriage on?”
    I admitted she
was right, and I was wrong. So that afternoon I couldn’t help
thinking I owed her the chance to at least try to stop her old flame topping
himself. After all, if we get it wrong, we can always go back and
do it all over again. I think.
     
    ***

Seven
     
    When Niki was going out
with Steve, they were both thirteen. So it wasn’t some big
relationship thing – just first love curiosity more than anything
else. And I don’t think there was so much love about it either,
though she would say otherwise. Anyway, at the time Niki lived with
her folks in South Kensington, and attended Henrietta Barnett
School in Hampstead, North London. Very posh. (Rather different
from the government comprehensive school I went to). Steve was at
Whitefield School, a mixed comprehensive also in North London, and
his home was no more than quarter of a mile from Henrietta Barnett.
They were destined to meet. Well, in our current
universe.
    “ What if you
two had never met?” I said to Niki the next day.
    “ What d’you
mean?”
    “ Well, imagine
if you’d never known Steve… you wouldn’t be concerned about him,
would you?
    “ But that
wouldn’t stop the pressure on Steve – from his parents. He’d still
kill himself!”
    “ True – and at
this exact moment in time, both you and I know that. But if I went
back in time, I could make sure your paths never crossed. You’d
have no memory of ever knowing Steve, so no concern about one of
the thousands of suicides that happen in the UK every year.
Right?”
    Niki stared at
me, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you said that Joe! Ignorance
is bliss, is that it? And anyway, it was you who gave me the lecture yesterday about
travelling alone!”
    I had to admit she was
right – again. I was just playing with an idea, that was all. I
knew what we had to do, and I’d every intention of seeing it
through – for Niki’s benefit. So I gave her the green light, and
Niki was happy. Then we got scheming.
    Plan A was for Niki to
talk to her younger self – posing as some long–lost relative who
knew all about the relationship with Steve. Once Niki junior knew
all about the intense pressures Steve was under from his parents,
and the fact that he was actually contemplating suicide, then she
was bound do something about it. Meanwhile, I would talk to Steve’s
parents. That was going to be harder. How could I introduce myself
and then say, ‘Oh by the way – your son it going to kill himself if
you don’t take your foot off the pedal’? Mmm… In the end, we
thought it might be better if I talked to Social Services –
pretending to be a concerned neighbour, or something like
that.
    Plan B was for both of us
to meet up with Steve and Niki junior and say, ‘Hi – we’re from the
future!’ That’s only if we get desperate, of course.
    That night, after going
over the details, we took deep breaths, held hands, set the phone’s
date to 19 May, 1996 and waited. It didn’t work quite how we
imagined.
    “ Who
are you? ” We were
standing in an apartment which looked like ours, but it wasn’t
ours. “Well? What are you doing in my flat?” Whilst Niki gave the
middle–aged man an apologetic smile, I quickly switched the date
back to the present and we were suddenly back home. I’d forgotten
that I hadn’t moved into that apartment until 2004.
    “ What now?”
asked Niki.
    “ We go to your
old school, I guess, and jump from there.”
    As we emerged from
Golders Green tube station, a thought suddenly struck me. I stopped
in the street, and turned to Niki. “Just a minute...”
    “ What is
it?”
    “ There’s
something that’s been bothering me, and I’d just like to get it
clear in my mind.” We were standing in the