Rewind

"- So when you continually wind and rewind you use up your own time and age while all around you remain unchanged or get younger when you go backwards?"

"Yes, it appears so. From what he told me at the dinner party, he had discovered the power when he was ten and used it pretty sparingly until he went to Yale age eleven. Then he used it so much that in a matter of calendar months he aged several years and had to move to England. Then he must have met your counterpart Terry, perhaps when she guest-lectured there and fell under his spell."

"Oh, honey, I am sorry, not just for you, but her. I don't even want to think about life without you and our kids." she paused as she held me tightly. Then she lifted my chin to look into my eyes, a mischievous grin on her face, "So, how much older than the old Bobby, the pre-tux Bobby, are you?"

"Exactly a year, plus a couple of hours at most." I had to smile at that.

"So you really are my 'old man'? My old man?"

"Exclusively, your old man."

"I can live with that, darling."

"I took Clinton to the Cambridge of the future and left him there, and put some distance between us before coming back. I could hear wolves baying for blood. When I got back to the lecture hall I was arrested. I didn't know if he would make it back, I didn't tell him exactly how far we went."

"Couldn't you have come back a few hours after? Days, weeks even?"

I could see her mind working it out, I didn't need to tell her, she was the smart cookie I lived with and would die for.

"Of course you couldn't," she said after a few moments. "If you hadn't come back in real-time, you might have come back into a timeline where another Bobby existed, perhaps at work in the lab. It might have been a universe where you and I never met, or I never existed, or was married to someone else. You couldn't take that risk. You were prepared to be charged with kidnapping, possibly murder, happy that you had removed a threat, this Clinton, from my - our - timeline, right?"

"I knew I had married the smartest, most beautiful woman in the world."

"Wow!" she looked at me "The whole concept is fantastic!"

"Of course, it is so fantastic, so unbelievable, it could all be a fantasy, all in my mind, other than the tux we threw away, there is no evidence."

"I believe you. I did have other evidence and I destroyed it at the time."

"What other evidence?"

"Your credit card. You removed it from your wallet before you left for Cambridge and gave it to me to cut up and destroy. I assume you didn't want it found on you when you were arrested, which you obviously planned to happen. I did destroy it, but only after I had rung up the bank's helpline and explained that we had been sent a card not due to be valid for seven months and they assured me it must've been a mistake as they are only sent out in the month they are valid. Also, they checked the number on the card and the account didn't even exist. They thought it was a test piece released in error by the manufacturers. I cut it up into tiny pieces and dropped them in lots of different bins. I never heard any more about it."

"I had forgotten about that, to be honest. Well, that confirms it, no concrete evidence, only my nightmares."

"Oh, honey, you'll always have me to kiss your nightmares away." she said. "What about Chantelle?"

"As soon as the police let me out on bail, in Cambridge, I tracked her down. She was a chemistry undergraduate, living in Cambridge at the time."

"I was with you, I wondered why you wanted to stay for an extra few days as the policeman at the front desk told me you were free to go home. You said we needed to stay local for a week. Another little lie, honey?"

"A white one," I replied, "I felt we needed to stay, as Chantelle was a threat to others, not just us, and I had to see if, without Clinton's influence, she would behave herself."

"She was horrible," Terry said, "Even though we had only known her for an hour or so, she was so blatant that she was boasting to us about what she could do with her chemistry set.

"You worked her like a pro, honey," Terry continued with a smile, "You were charming, disarming her. With your common ground of chemistry research, you flattered her by saying you had even heard of her in Oxford and by then you were a national celebrity, you picture splashed across the newspapers, and she thought you were hitting on her because you admired her design and use of drugs."

"So long you didn't think it was anything other than an act. I needed you there with me. If I'd gone alone and you had become aware of what it looked like I was doing, it might have been one straw of inconsistent behaviour too far for our relationship. I was so full of love for you that night, seeing you so trusting, not questioning my motives. You must've thought I was crazy or sick."

"Honey, I would trust you with my life, as my life wouldn't be our life, which is everything to me, without you in it. I didn't know what you were up to or what we were getting into but I trusted you that we would come out of it soon and get back to normal. I think we made Mia that week in Cambridge." She giggled at the thought.

"Getting back to normal was so important to me, it was why I was so determined. That is why I can never use this power ever again, it is too much for any one to handle."

"You are strong enough to resist using it. I know you are, you've proved it."

"What if, sometime in the future, something happens, the unthinkable? Will I be tempted then?" I had my doubts, in my darkest moments I always had my doubts and had never been able to share them.

"I'll be here to help you resist."

"But what if you are hurt or killed in a road accident? I would want to go back and stop you going on that journey. I'm not sure I would be so strong if I was tested."

"Honey, if you believe there are multiple timelines,multiple universes, then somewhere in a multiple timeline I would not be in that accident. If you jumped into that other Bobby, you would snuff an innocent man out of existence in order to possess that other Terry. That would make you just as selfish as Clinton."

"Of course you are right. I ... I have already taken out your Bobby when I popped up in the shopping centre in my tux! I never really thought about it before. Sweetheart, I am so sorry! I am a monster!"

The enormity of what I had done was suddenly upon me. For years I had had little guilt episodes about what I had done to two of those Clintons, it had never occurred to me that by abandoning my timeline where I had lost my Terry, I had destroyed one of my alternative lives forever and imposed myself on a different Terry. I was indeed a monster!

"Hush, you are no monster!" Terry soothed. "Let's look at this logically. If you hadn't come along, my Bobby would have been as clueless as you were, he'd have lost me, your Terry, forever to Clinton. It was inevitable without your intervention. So you are my hero and have done nothing that wasn't essential for the happiness of the ones you loved. Other than put your parents at ease after a minor discretion on your part ..." She lifted an eyebrow waiting for me to acknowledge.

I nodded. When she's right, she's right. "Probably ..."

"... Let's recap. How you used the power of rewind. You got yourself a job? ..." she asked.

I nodded again, "which I accepted but never took up."

"Because you disappeared off the face of the earth in that universe, right?"

"Yes."

"Then you had the tux episode, for which I totally forgive you, you are my one and only Bobby. Tell me, so I am clear on this, why did you do all those things? Starting with the indiscretion with your parents?"

"I was drunk and sick on her living room carpet."

"What, that old Axminster flowery carpet? They've had it for years, since you were a kid."

"No, in my universe it was brand new, the old replaced with a fluffy cream colour. Back in this universe they were considering replacing it at the time I was arrested. So, they put everything on hold until the police eventually dropped the whole case twelve months on, by then Mia was on the scene and soon after crawling around regularly doing just what her dad had done on their 'other' carpet," I grinned.

"So then you were offered the job, which again pleased your parents?"

"I guess I had been eating and drinking them into ruin."

"And you thought the job plus your new skills would help you get back with that other Terry?"

"I suppose I did, just that Terry got in by calling me first and I was grateful that I didn't have to make the first move."

"Then you used the rewind because of the way she treated your offering of flowers?"

"It looked like we were getting off on the wrong foot and I wanted us to be together."

"For you or for both of you?"

"For both of us, but also I thought without me to look after her she would be a complete mess. And that was before I knew about Clinton."

"So, confirm to me why you felt you had to take Clinton out of the equation?"

"Because he was going to use her, degrade her, destroy her and her obvious potential in the end. He only cared about himself and passing on his genes with two genius parents."

"After Clinton and you were gone, what do you think would happen to her, the other

Terry?"

"I had to think quickly, time and opportunity were running out. I didn't worry too much about any threat from Chantelle, she was into manipulating men. I thought at least Terry would be safe. There was bound to be a reaction to Clinton and I disappearing like that, we were after all the main reason for being there so that he could crush me, show Terry how much better he was than me. I assumed they'd all sober up pretty quickly. When all the dust died down and without Chantelle's drugs, Terry would be herself and decide either to continue having Clinton's baby or terminate it. I think she would have the support of my parents to help her whichever way she went."

"And why did you come back to Cambridge and face the music? You could have come back days, weeks or months afterwards and the police wouldn't even know who you were, would they?"

"Because I had realised that if I deviated by even one minute from coming back to that spot in real time, so that the ten minutes I spent in the future was the same time as elapsed here, I thought I might come back on a different timeline, one in which Clinton was still here, or worse."

"And then, why did you shop Chantelle?"

"I took you with me to go see her in Cambridge that same day I was released, I didn't want you to think I was seeing a woman behind your back. I had already been corresponding with her for a couple of days from the cells. She was a monster too. Once we got her confidence and she admitted what she was doing, I bought those class A drugs from a contact I met in the nick and planted them in her car -"

"And we called the cops! I was with you,walking away from her flat when we stopped at the phone booth and made the anonymous call. So you did everything you could to put things right for others, and not yourself at all?"

I nodded, "I suppose."

Terry visibly relaxed into her hospital pillows and smiled. "Mum has said, if this is our last baby, she's getting a new carpet!"

"What brought that up? I thought we were still talking about ... you know, rewind ... and is this our last baby?" I asked, adding, "Now that you know what terrible things I have done to get here?"

"I wanted to show you, by talking about your Mum's carpet, that our discussion of what you did in the past is over and I am completely at ease with all of it. I love you even more than I ever did, Bobby, knowing what you went through and I really didn't think I could ever love you more than I do. I cannot envisage my life without you at the centre, the bedrock, of everything we do. As for more babies? Well, I'm 37, I could easily have another, even two more. We are both young enough and could afford them without a problem. Would you like another one or maybe more?"

"I think I'd like to get used to having Jake around first, before we discuss it. Basically, as we can afford it, I have no problem having more kids around. I adore our kids. What it boils down to it is that it's your body that bears the pain."

"I'll worry about the pain, darling."

"I'll never stop worrying."

"I know. ... I think I have an explanation for all this, you know," Terry suggested. "I know you are not a religious person, neither of us are really. But I do believe that there is a higher authority at play in this game of life. Somehow, Clinton was given this power to do some good, but he used it for his own gains, including affecting someone you loved. How coincidental can it be that you of all people was suddenly able to have access to the same power? And once you discovered you had it what did you actually use it for, once you'd practised a couple of times?"

"I didn't really think-"

"You acted on instinct, to protect the people you love, didn't you?"

"Maybe."

She grinned, looking tired but happy, gripping my hand in both hers.

"Clinton misjudged your inexperience and grossly underestimated your grasp of the possibilities. I think he was fixated on his own pleasures, while you critically analysed what you knew and what conclusions would result and quickly devised workable solutions. It is what you do best, my dear, in the lab and in life. You used this power of what you call 'rewind' to undo Clinton's evil and put things right as best you could in your original universe and came to mine and made my - our - timeline ... well, perfect."

"Our timeline perfect?"

"Yes, darling, let us be absolutely clear on this, you made our timeline perfect."

The end.