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rain, under my black
umbrella. It was September, I think. This time–travel thing was
beginning to mess with my sense of dates. “You remember when I
phoned you at school from Heathrow in 2011?”
    “ Yes…”
    “ That phone
call became part of your new reality – along with the death of your
mum, and the two presidents, right?”
    “ Okay, if you
say so Joe – but you know I’m still finding that difficult – even
though I’ve got Mama back now. What’s your point?”
    “ If you meet
young Niki, does it mean that when we come back to the present – to
our present – your memories will change, even though it’s you
that’s changing the future?”
    Niki screwed up her face
for a moment, considering this. “Well, I suppose so… why does it
matter? Is there a problem?”
    From the previous two
time jumps, I thought I’d been instrumental in changing the future,
but that I had been unaffected. Now that Niki was about to come
face–to–face with herself, I was beginning to doubt that
hypothesis. If, for the sake of argument, I met myself in 2011 and
cut off and destroyed a part of ‘my’ finger (the finger of my
younger self), would that mean that when I jumped back to the
present, I would find myself without part of that digit? Or would
it happen instantaneously – my own finger being simultaneously
mutilated with my doubles? The whole idea of interacting with a
duplicate of oneself – albeit in a different time frame – suddenly
became very interesting, and a tad disconcerting. I relayed these
thoughts to Niki, and suggested that perhaps we could do a little
experiment to see how things worked.
    “ What, you’d
like me to cut off part of my finger!” she exclaimed as we began
walking again.
    “ No – of
course not! But what if there was some small change we could make to Niki
junior to test the hypothesis. Nothing really damaging – but
something pretty permanent.”
    “ What if young
Niki had a tattoo?” she offered.
    “ Brilliant! It
could be a small one – not generally visible – but it would be
pretty permanent – not easy to remove without leaving a scar.” I
smiled back at Niki. “Love you baby. Now all you’ve got to do is
talk her into having one.”

    ***

Eight
     
    We walked across
Hampstead Heath on the way to the Henrietta Barnett School for
Young Ladies. The idea was to meet young Niki (let’s just call her
‘Junior’) out of school and talk about Steve. We found a secluded
spot on the Heath and I set the date on my phone to 19 May 1996
again. It was just after 3pm by this time. Niki held tightly onto
my hand, and we both felt the usual ‘wobble’. We looked around. The
park looked slightly different, owing to the different time period
and season, of course, but otherwise we wouldn’t know we’d
travelled sixteen years back in time. We walked in the direction of
the school.
    At the school gates, we
waited for Junior to emerge. We weren’t the only ones waiting.
“Joe, look…” Niki discretely pointed to a teenager standing about
ten yards away from us, looking towards the school entrance. “It’s
Steve,” she explained. This was not what we had planned.
    “ Okay, you
take Junior, and I’ll have a word with Steve,” I
whispered.
    “ What will you
say?” That was a very good question. We hadn’t banked on this
scenario, and I really didn’t want to go for the ‘We’re from the
future’ plan just yet. So Niki suggested that I talk to Junior,
whilst she talked to Steve. I would be one of Steve’s uncles –
(Niki never met both of them). So I became – believe it or not –
‘Uncle Sam’… Steve’s uncle who lives in Leicester.
    “ Uncle Sam?” I
said incredulously. “You can’t be serious!” Niki nodded wide–eyed.
So Uncle Sam it was. Just then, Junior emerged from the school and
Steve smiled in recognition. But before the two could meet, Niki
headed Steve off. I just heard her say something about being Aunt
Wendy from Shanghai. Wendy? And