The last thing I’d expected was to be run over by an Austin Allegro. That’s the trouble with time travel; you forget things were different in the past, and I’d forgotten the High Street wasn’t pedestrianised in 1986.
Anyway, after I tumbled over the bonnet and fell into the carriageway, I wasn’t just worried about broken bones. It was the timeline. What if a road accident happens in the past that was never supposed to happen? Will it change the future?
An ashen looking Allegro driver got out of his car. ‘Oh, my God. You walked straight out in front of me.’
Then a crowd gathered, with people saying someone should run to the telephone box and call for an ambulance.
The next thing I knew, I was in A&E, going in and out of consciousness, worrying that they might do blood tests. Being full of statins and other drugs that hadn’t yet been invented might have complicated things. The other worry was the portal home to 2026. It would close in a little over an hour, but every time I tried to get off the hospital trolly someone pushed me back down, telling me to lie still.
I prayed they would be done with me quickly. NHS waiting times were much shorter back in the eighties, and I mumbled about needing to leave but they ignored me.
Everything hurt. My back, my legs, my head. But for all that, the biggest pain was in my heart. I’d travelled back in time because I wanted to see the girl I fell in love with in 1986 just once more. But I hadn’t seen her and now I wouldn’t get the chance before the time portal closed. I’d been in love more than once in my life, but she was the one. Hannah. The girl I’d never forgotten and never stopped loving.
Lying there I was feeling the consequences of breaking Time Travel Agency rules. No using portals for personal reasons. They’re strictly for historical research and the very occasional intervention to stop something that would prevent a future good. Wanting to see your ex-girlfriend again doesn’t qualify. I’d tried to find her in the present and failed. I shouldn’t have done, but I then started searching for her across time, but she just seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. No digital footprint, no records, not a thing. I often wondered if she ever thought about me. I also wondered if she’d ever tried to find me, but the agency keeps its operatives very much under the radar. I hoped she sometimes thought about that all too brief year we were together before life took us in different directions. Before I realised too late that she had been the one.
I winced as I tried to sit up on the hospital trolly, as much because I knew I’d have to leave this time without finding Hannah as for my injuries. But then my chance came. The nurses rushed off to deal with something more serious than my bruises and concussion, so I limped away. My watch face was cracked but I could see I had less than fifteen minutes to reach the portal before it closed.
I stumbled out of the hospital and down the road, attracting curious looks because of my bandaged head. My vision was blurred. My ears rang and my head and limbs hurt but, if I could stay on my feet, there was still time. In the distance I could see the gates to the park where the portal would still be open, deep in the bushes near the bandstand. But as I got closer, and my vision cleared, I saw the park entrance had a barrier: Police Line. Do Not Cross. There were armed officers ensuring no one did, and a crowd had gathered. There were TV crews and reporters with cameras. I asked a man smoking a pipe what was going on.
‘They’ve found something weird in the park, but they won’t say what.’
‘But I have to get in there,’ I said, too loudly.
My informant shook his head. ‘You’ve got no chance, mate.’
Though I knew it was pointless, I tried to push my way through the cordon, but a police officer grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
‘Can’t you read?’ he asked. ‘Police line. Look!’
And that’s when I knew I wasn’t ever going to get back to my own time. In moments the portal would close. There would be no sign of the weird thing they’d found, and I would be trapped in 1986.
I was still in a concussed daze as I walked back toward the town centre. In truth there wasn’t much for me in my own time. I was twice divorced – both good women, but they weren’t Hannah. I was living alone. I had few friends and no family to speak of. But how was I going to deal with being trapped in the eighties? Maybe I would find Hannah, but now I wondered what I’d been thinking? She was twenty-two in this time. I was sixty-two. Realistically, I could only gaze at her from afar. Even that felt wrong now.
I stopped to cross the road, checking more than carefully to make sure I didn’t walk in front of another car. And then I saw her. Bathed in the orange light of a streetlamp, I recognised her straight away. Hannah. But it wasn’t the Hannah of 1986. She was older. As old as me, though I could see through all the years.
She raised a hand in a familiar wave and I crossed the road.
‘Hello, John,’ she said, and her bright blue eyes shone as I’d always remembered them.’
My words caught in my throat.’ Is it really you?’
She nodded. ‘This may be the year we last saw each other, but it’s been a long time.’
‘I tried to find you,’ I said. ‘It’s like you disappeared.’
And then she was in my arms, and the years just melted away.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How are you here, like this?’
‘You’re not the only time traveller,’ she whispered, and then I understood why I’d never been able to find her in my own time.
‘Did they send you to find me?’ I asked.
‘They did.’
I sighed. ‘I suppose I’m in all kinds of trouble when you take me back.’
Hannah smiled. ‘If I take you back. But what if we just stayed here?’
All the years of wondering, searching, waiting, were over. People say we shouldn’t live in the past, but that’s what I’d been doing for forty years, whether I travelled in time or not. I didn’t know how it would work, but I didn’t care. I was with Hannah again. And as we walked hand in hand back into the town, just as we had done decades before, I knew we would never be apart again.
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