Chapter 1

Saturday, 13^th October 1962

He stood there, on the far side of the railway line, hidden from view by the untrimmed growth along the fence line. The public footpath slanted on up the hill towards the woods at the crest. Was this the place? Or should he climb to the greater privacy of the woods ... but the climb was in full view from below.

No, here would have to do.

If he delayed, he could lose his resolve. Shrugging off his coat, he retrieved the drawing compass from his school bag, its newly sharpened point glinting in the thin October sunlight. No knife, so no single smooth slice to a fast fade; it would have to be multiple punctures, the extra pain his reward.

He let the school bag slither to the ground and sank back into the matted grass edging the scrub. The thick wool of the school jersey slid easily up his arm. The diagrams of the wrist and forearm in his mother’s anatomy text were clear in his mind. The needle-like point of the compass teased his skin and he wondered how many punctures he would need. Would he need to do both arms? Possibly, so he slid his right jersey sleeve up past the elbow as well.

He would probably cry out with each plunge and so needed the camouflage of a passing train. A strange sense of detachment slipped over him and his mind drifted until he heard the distant clatter of an approaching train, its low speed and loud clanking marking it as a goods train – perfect.

The point poised over the first chosen spot and the train noise grew. Just a bit closer ... the point pressed down slowly, ready for the first swift puncture.

I jerked in surprise, pricking my skin with the compass in my hands. A bead of blood formed on my wrist and, instinctively I leaned forward to lick it, but stopped in shock when I realised my wrist ... was not my wrist: no greying hair and age-marred skin.

And yet – it was the wrist of this body: it flexed when I told it to flex.

I licked the bead of blood, feeling my tongue on my skin and the sting of my saliva in the tiny puncture. The lick left a smear in which a smaller bead started to form. I rotated my hands – fresh, pale skin with none of the blotches and well-known scars from seventy years of living.

I looked up and saw the hill crowned with woodland and the footpath climbing to lose itself in the autumnal russets and yellows. From deep in my brain, surging to the surface came the memory: the hill behind my junior school.

My last recollection was relaxing quietly, half a world away with a glass of Australian Shiraz beside me. I must have dozed off and be dreaming. But no dream had ever been this sharply drawn before, each strand of yellowing grass crushed under my feet executed in complete perfection. What had stirred this distant memory to surface with such preternatural detail?

And that thought brought me to a halt: whilst dreaming, I’m critiquing my dream?

I sat there looking around, expecting the dream to spiral away, but nothing happened. Only the quiet breeze whispering, gradually chilling my bare arms and legs. Minutes passed. Another train slipped into my world, building to a crescendo and then rushing away.

I surveyed my body – skinny legs sticking out of grey corduroy shorts, grey knee-length socks, black lace-up shoes, glasses on my face: such a youthful body, the body of my youth – and it had been about to spike its arteries. The dark emotions of my younger self flooded me with their bitter tide. My head jerked up and I felt tears running down my cheeks – the school bullies, my father’s beatings, my impotent rages, my loneliness. Eyes closed, I took a stuttering breath. The rawness of the emotions was agonisingly sharp to a seventy-year-old.

And I knew when I was as well as where: my first contemplation of suicide, aged twelve years. But then, I had only thought about it and it had happened on the other side of the railway tracks.

Dream or nightmare, this was different.

I suppose I could have sat there by the railway line and waited to see what happened, but I was starting to feel cold: time to go. If this were a dream, it could end somewhere else just as well as here.

I was still clutching the compass, so I opened my school satchel and dropped it in, slid my jumper sleeves down to my wrists, donned the blue school mackintosh and cap and set off, back across the railway line and through the village to the bus stop. I was hoping for a number 7 bus, which would take me within a couple of hundred yards of my house, but what came was a number 6, which meant a mile walk, with a steep climb to get home. I sighed and went up to the top deck. The conductor eventually followed me.

“Tickets please!” Her lilting West Indian accent still a novelty in the rural Kent of 1962.

For a moment, I froze and the conductor’s sunny smile started to fade to a questioning look, but then my twelve-year-old brain served up the knowledge of my season ticket in its leather case firmly attached by a cord to a button in my left-hand coat pocket. I dragged it out and the smile returned as she moved on.

Shoving away the season ticket, I wondered what else I had about me. My pockets turned up only fluff and a handkerchief, so I opened my school bag: a French text, a Latin text, Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, several exercise books: opening one of these revealed my awful handwriting. I felt my stomach clench – my father goes wild about this.

Goes wild?

My twelve-year-old brain was telling me he would be waiting for me at home, ready to thrash me for even a perceived transgression. But twenty-five years ago, I had insisted on viewing my father in his coffin: I had to see his corpse, to know it was finished. This dream was so confusing.

I dived back into the bag and found the Horse and his Boy, my favourite from the Narnia series. I escaped into that for the rest of the journey, refreshing my memory of Bree, Hwin and their riders Shasta and Aravis, trying to shed some of the turmoil I felt.

I kept an eye on the passing countryside and my twelve-year-old brain warned me to pack up and head downstairs for my stop at the foot of Mickleburgh Hill. I hated coming home this way, but the number 7 bus was only once an hour and so I frequently ended up on the more numerous number 6. Climbing the hill, my satchel banged annoyingly against my thigh until I remembered to hook the strap over the opposite shoulder. After the climb, the road flattened out before I turned down my street.

About halfway to our house, a boy was sitting on a low wall, idly kicking his heels into the bricks. He glanced up once as I approached and then went on staring at his feet as they banged on the wall. I stopped – anything to delay the arrival home.

“You are new around here,” I said, realising I had never seen him before, in either of my worlds. He wasn’t part of my memories at all.

His eyes narrowed, quizzically. The feet stopped. He looked up, staring at me with his wide, almost black eyes. “Neu ... new... Ja!”

He was speaking ... German. I had learned German in senior school.

“D ... umm.” I had nearly replied in German – but my twelve-year-old self didn’t speak German. “Ummm ... who are you?” I spoke slowly as I had the impression he spoke very little English.

He gave me an unblinking stare for a second or so and then jumped off the wall and headed rapidly back down the road in the direction I had come. I almost called after him, but I couldn’t think what to say in English that he might understand. I watched him turn the corner at the end of the road without a backward glance. This was getting strange. I had never met or even known of a German-speaking boy around here. I looked around me and it certainly seemed like the world of my childhood but at the same time, it clearly wasn’t. The strangeness of this dream was rising. What would I find at home – my mother, father and sister or some complete strangers who would throw me back on the street? Was this reality or a dream?

The kitchen lights were on and I walked warily towards the back door. A head sporting a long pigtail appeared in the window and turned, looking out. It was my bossy older sister as I remembered her as a teenager. She saw me and I saw her dismissive sniff of recognition. I climbed the two steps and opened the back door.

My father was seated at the kitchen table, so young, so menacing as he leaned forward.

“Why are you so late?” His flat voice snapped out the question.

Our final physical confrontation, one Christmas day when I was fifteen, crashed into my consciousness. Then, I had silently urged him to just touch me and I imagined I would hammer him but he had turned away and backed down.

But now, I was too small and all the angst and anguish that drove my afternoon’s decision flared through my brain, swamping any control my seventy-year-old self tried to impose. Suddenly I was crying impotently and fled through the house pursued by my father’s yells, up the stairs to my bedroom. Slamming the door behind me I threw myself on my bed and sobbed.

It was dark when the bedroom door opened and light from the landing crept in, wakening me. I lay still. The slight swish of a skirt told me it was my mother. I felt her hand lightly touch my shoulder. I must have flinched but I remained curled around my satchel, still wearing my coat.

“Will, do you want to come down for supper?”

I shook my head.

“Shall I bring you something here, then?” My stomach lurched and, again, I shook my head.

After a few seconds, I felt her hand leave my shoulder and with the same faint swish of a skirt, she left. The room descended into darkness as she closed the door and a terrible fear claimed me. I simply could not go through my childhood again. Even with a seventy-year-old perched on my shoulder I didn’t think I could do it. I would make sure I had a knife next time.

But ... was there a way back from here? I had to hope so. If this were a dream – what would happen if I went to sleep? Would I wake up from my doze, reach out and find that glass of Shiraz? If I killed myself here would I wake up there? Had I had a heart attack and died back in my old world – and what did that mean if I killed myself here? What importance did the differences between what I remembered and what I saw in this world have? My brain swirled with questions that had no answer.

Lying there I became increasingly uncomfortable, so I crept over and cracked open the door. I could hear muffled voices from downstairs. I took advantage of the quiet and got ready for bed, pulled the covers over me and finally drifted back to sleep.

Waking, I looked round at my childhood bedroom. No glass of Shiraz for me – I hadn’t gone back. I lay in bed, immobilised by my crushed hope and this truly strange situation.

I could hear my parents heading out for early communion. The front door closed and I heard the car crunch across the gravel drive. I decided to make my escape, to find time and space to think. Dressing quickly, I scuttled downstairs to find my sister preparing breakfast. I grabbed a couple of slices of bread, slapped on some lime marmalade, slipped an apple into my pocket...

My sister walked back into the kitchen. “Hey! What are you doing?”

“I’m going out. I won’t be back until after lunch. Bye!” And I flew out of the door, down the garden, across the back fence and into the field. Would my childhood sanctuary be here in this world?

The marmalade sandwich was a bit grubby from its encounter with the fence, but I was starving, so I ate as I walked down the field.

Three houses down the road had been a large, partially derelict house with a huge overgrown garden that marked the eastern boundary of the field behind our house. This was my private escape – specifically the massive cedar tree. I could lie back and hide, high in its enfolding arms, invisible from below – and, with considerable relief, I could see its top branches rising above the other trees in the garden as I walked down the field. I clambered over the rickety fence and pushed through the overgrown shrubs to the tree. It was so big and spread so wide that, under its shading arms, nothing could grow through the thick carpet of old needles.

I wiped my slightly sticky fingers in the long, dewy grass at the edge of its shade and walked in beneath it. There was only one way into the tree which required some acrobatics. I reached up and grabbed the lowest branch in both hands, swinging my feet up to catch the branch. I scrambled round the branch and started the climb.

I was reaching for the last branch before the fork when a head poked out just above me. This was so startling that I almost lost my footing, waving my reaching hand to regain my balance, but a hand clasped mine, placing it safely on the branch.

“Vorsicht.” It was the German boy.

Those large, black eyes looked down at me. For a few seconds we just stared at one another and then I hauled myself up. We sat in the fork, each leaning back against a spreading branch. He was the same height as me but slender, wearing long, grey trousers and a blue jumper over a grey shirt. His hair was longer than my short back and sides. Mine, however, was blandly mouse-brown whilst his was black and glossy, matching his eyes. His features were delicate and his skin quite pale.

He flicked his long fringe out of his eyes and tapped his chest. “Col.”

Oh, my god – my friend, Colin – Col, but he was English, well half English, half Canadian. In this world, Colin was German?

Bewildered, I tapped my chest. “William ... Will.”

He smiled. “Ach so! Willi!” He pronounced it Villi as the Germans say the name.

“Wo wohnst du? Wo ist dein Haus?” He wanted to know where I lived. I was trying hard to appear uncomprehending, as my brain was gyrating around this huge anomaly.

“House?”

“Ja. Dein ... you... Haus?”

I waved vaguely through the cedar branches to where I could see part of our roof.

“Ummm ... you?” I was still not thinking very clearly.

He pointed in the opposite direction, across some vacant land to houses along Sea View Road and I nodded. He did not look at all like my Colin, who had been (or perhaps is?) blond-haired and blue-eyed. I knew where my Col lived and it wasn’t in Sea View Road.

Col was eyeing me speculatively as all this bounced around in my head.

“You are new here!” I eventually said, in a somewhat accusatory tone as if it was his fault, he wasn’t my Colin.

“New ... here?” he nodded, pronouncing the words ponderously. “Yes... zwei Wochen ... two...” he held up two fingers and then shrugged, lost for the right word.

I paused, as my brain started working again. I held up seven fingers. “Week?”

He looked at my fingers. “Ja, Woche ... aber zwei ... two.” He held up seven fingers, twice.

I nodded, “Week is Woche!” carefully mispronouncing it Wocke.

“Ja – aber Woche, Woche!” He slowly emphasised the German ‘ch’ sound which doesn’t exist in English.

“Woche, Woche,” I copied and then looked at him and said “Week.”

“Veek.” I smiled and corrected him, making much of the shape of the lips for the ‘w’ sound, which doesn’t exist in German.

“Veek!” Again, I smiled at him, shaking my head,