A Stitch in Time (25 page)

‘Let’s not talk about that for a while, just let me hold you. You are right, I’m to blame, too. I shouldn’t have lied. Lies are never the best option and I hardly broke my neck trying to get you back, either. But that was only because I didn’t want you to be caught up in this freak show that I call my life.’ John stood and pulled her to him, hugging her tightly with his one good arm. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he murmured into her neck.

‘I’ve missed you so much too; in fact so much I thought I’d go crazy.’ She cupped his face and drew his mouth to hers.

For a man with an injured hand, John had lacked nothing in the ‘bedroom department’. (Another one of her gran’s.) The kiss half an hour ago had gone from tender and loving to passionate and urgent in ten seconds flat, and here they were in John’s bed, hot, sticky, out of breath and stupidly happy.

Sarah propped herself up on one elbow and placed little kisses along his chest. ‘So did time stand still for you, Time-Needler?’

‘Hey, you missed your vocation, you should do stand up.’ He grinned.

‘Stand up? I thought you preferred me lying down,’ she said, replacing a kiss with a playful nip.

‘Ouch, don’t you think I’m in enough pain with my hand?’

Sarah frowned. ‘What exactly happened anyway? Did it sprain when you smashed Ames in the gob?’

John sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Not exactly …’

She kissed the corner of his mouth. Why didn’t he just tell her? ‘“Not exactly.” OK, so what
did
happen to it then?’

‘Let’s just leave the twenty questions till later, huh? I think we deserve a bit of time away from stitching, needling and the rest of the world. I like just being here with you in our own little bubble.’

That worried her. She could tell that John was being evasive to try and stop her worrying, but that just had the opposite effect. ‘I love being in our own little bubble as well, John, but I need to know what happened. How serious is the injury?’

He sat up and slipped out of bed. ‘Look, why don’t I get a nice bottle of wine out of the fridge, make a bite to eat and we’ll take it outside?’ He slipped on his jeans and turned to her. ‘Sound like a plan?’

‘I’d prefer it if you explained the whole thing to me first. Is what happened to your hand something serious … because of my stupid behaviour with Ames?’

‘I’m afraid so, but I’d prefer it if we left it until we had a glass of wine in our hands and food in our bellies.’ He avoided her eye and left the room.

Sarah flopped down on to the pillow. Damn, she had had a feeling in her gut all along that this was serious. Just what the hell had she done now? Had his finger been bitten off by Ames before he was knocked out? There had been quite a lot of blood around Ames’s mouth … and perhaps Ames had got so mad with the 1928 Sarah after he’d picked himself off the floor, that he’d actually murdered her or something.

Just when everything seemed as if it were coming together and a glimmer of hope for the future was shining brighter by the second, her reckless behaviour in 1928 had fucked it up.

She picked up John’s pillow, put it over her face and yelled at the top of her lungs into it.

If her actions had jeopardised her future with John, and perhaps the life of the 1928 Sarah, she’d never be able to forgive herself.

‘Want me to do anything?’ Sarah asked, breezing in to the kitchen. John was cooking a chickeny pasta-type dish. She had set the table and poured the wine and kept her mouth shut about the elephant in the room. She reckoned that John would decide to raise it in his own time and with any luck, the elephant might pack its trunk and rumble back to the jungle.
The 1928 experience may just turn out to be a figment of your imagination, Sarah
 …
yeah, right.

‘You can grate the cheese if you like, and do you want garlic bread?’

‘Only if you do; I’m easy.’

‘Yes, I noticed earlier …’

Sarah threw a bit of cheese at him. ‘Watch it!’

The view from the patio seemed even more breathtaking today than it had last time she’d been here. The sky was blue and free of cloud. The hills were green, complete with sheep, and her ears were full of bird song. It couldn’t have been more perfect if she’d have ordered it from the Perfect Scene Company. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Going online and ordering a lovely spring day in the countryside, blue sky, temperature set to a comfortable 70 degrees and definitely no chance of grey cloud, please.

Sarah took a sip of perfectly chilled wine and a fork of perfectly cooked pasta and wondered if she had fallen on to the set of
The Stepford Wives
. But glancing at John’s sling put the perfect day in perspective and she hoped the damned elephant would make an appearance soon, so they could try and move forward.

John picked up his glass and held it up to her. ‘Let’s have a toast.’

She raised hers and smiled.

‘Here’s to us, to being back together, starting afresh and to never being parted again.’ He clinked his glass to hers. ‘To us!’

‘To us!’

They both took a sip of wine and then John resumed his meal. Sarah picked up her fork and then set it down again. She couldn’t eat another morsel until he’d told her exactly what had happened in 1928. After a few seconds had passed he realised she wasn’t eating.

‘Something up with the grub?’

She pursed her lips and shook her head. She wanted to know, but there was no way she was dragging that pachyderm on to the patio. John told her he would tell her, so it had to be down to him.

‘So why aren’t you eating?’

A shrug and a sigh in return.

He scooped the last bit of pasta on to his fork. ‘OK, you want me to spill the beans then, eh?’

‘If you’re ready to.’

He drained his glass and poured another. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be … Look, why don’t you do the twenty-question thing, or the hundred one in your case, and I’ll answer. I’ll leave what happened to my hand till last, if you don’t mind.’

Now he’d said that she didn’t know where to start. She took another sip of wine and sat back in her seat.

‘OK, firstly, did I protect the discovery of penicillin?’

He shot her a wide grin. ‘Yes, of course you did, you were bloody marvellous.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m so relieved, but angry at the same time. Why the hell would the spindly ones put the weight of so many lives on the shoulders of one Stitch? So stupid if you ask me.’

‘Spindly ones … you mean the powers that be?’

‘No, I mean the ones who make banisters for stairs, John.’

He laughed. ‘OK, I asked for that. They do that kind of thing from time to time, no idea why. Perhaps they have no choice … again, I don’t know. Reading the background to the brief, I did realise that if you failed, penicillin wouldn’t have been invented in time to save lives in the war. But reading between the lines, it
would
have been invented not long after.’

‘Oh, that’s alright then; if I’d have failed, thousands of soldiers would have died from their wounds. Bloody hell! How can they play with people’s lives like that?’

‘As I said, Sarah, I don’t know; perhaps the spindly ones have no real control over anything. You’ll just have to accept that we may never know. And, until you eat the rest of the meal I lovingly prepared, I won’t answer another thing.’

A forkful or two later, Sarah ventured another question. ‘So, did you get a chance to see if Ames did anything horrible to Sarah?’

‘Yes, and no he didn’t. He was so shocked about what he’d assumed she’d done to him that he steered clear of her. It appeared he thought she had special powers or something, so he daren’t sack her, but he eventually left the hospital. Doris continued to run the kitchen and Fred became a trusted porter and sometimes even assisted Fleming in his tasks.’

Sarah started to enjoy her food again; things were certainly looking up. ‘I see.’ She grinned. ‘I know I shouldn’t have meddled, but it looks pretty promising so far.’ She looked at his sling again and then back to her plate.

‘That was better luck than judgement; don’t
ever
think that what you did was acceptable, do you understand?’

Sarah looked up, startled at the anger in his voice. ‘Yes, I’m sorry; I’m getting carried away with my success again, aren’t I?’

He nodded and picked his glass up with a shaking hand. ‘Yes, you are, Sarah.’

She lowered her eyes and continued to eat.

Poking the last little bit of pasta around the bowl, she thought she’d better get a few more questions in while she could, in case John became even more grumpy. ‘Can I ask you how you knew I was in danger and how you managed to get to me if you don’t normally travel in time, well not like me anyway, especially if you didn’t have permission from the spindly ones?’

He smiled. ‘I see, doing your trick of running one question into another again? OK, sometimes when there’s a problem with one of my Stitches I get an alert, like a flag comes up on an email?’

She nodded.

‘Well, normally, it’s something like the Stitch needs to be brought back and I have to meet them at a certain place and calm them down or something, or it may be that the Stitch has become overly emotional and needs talking through a problem. This time though, I had three alerts come through
and
a message on my phone. That had never happened in all my time as a Needle – you had put yourself in grave danger …’

He stopped and looked away over the hills. ‘I had to make some big decisions … potentially life threatening for me; luckily I got away with just this.’ He nodded at his sling.

Sarah felt her heart beating faster as images of Ames biting John’s finger off ran through her mind. ‘God, John, what happened, please tell me.’

‘Alright. I messaged them that I was going to get you. They said there was no way that was going to happen, and that I should just be on hand straight away after you got back. They said you would need a memory wipe, at least for the Ames bit, but they were so angry that they said they were tempted to wipe the whole experience, which of course would mean you wouldn’t remember me at all. I know you said that’s what you wanted, but I thought you still needed to have a choice about it when you got back.’

Sarah put her hand to her mouth and blinked back tears. ‘So what exactly did you do?’

‘I told them I was going in regardless, that I realised you had brought the situation on yourself, but I loved you and couldn’t let it happen. In my last message to you I said that they were right about you, but I knew deep down you were just hurting and I guess I wanted you to stay away from me – to protect you. They said if I disobeyed them, I would be punished. I would have to come into physical contact with Ames, and would suffer the consequences.’ He stopped and took her hand. ‘I just went for it before they could stop me. I did a few time tricks and whacked Ames twice.’

Sarah didn’t know what to say. How could she have ever doubted his love for her, even taking into account what Josephina had said? She should have gone to see John that Wednesday and just ignored the bitch. And now, because of her wrong-headedness, the poor man had something seriously wrong with his hand. But what exactly had happened to it?

‘John, will you tell me just how badly injured your hand is?’

He sighed. ‘I think it would be better if I showed you.’ He carefully slipped his left arm out of the sling and placed his hand on the table. It was completely bandaged to just past his wrist and he flicked open the safety pin holding the bandage together.

Sarah was scared to look as he unwound the material, but scared not to look, too. She clasped her own hands together and tried to calm her breathing and heart rate, both of which insisted on galloping away like a team of wild horses.

‘I’ll warn you, it isn’t pretty,’ John said as he prepared to unwind the last layer. A second later, the bandage sat in a heap next to his hand, or what was left of it.

‘It isn’t pretty’ was the understatement of the century. Sarah couldn’t believe her eyes. She wanted to put her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming. But she knew that she mustn’t do that. John had sacrificed himself for her; the least she could do was sit there and take it.

His left hand looked as if it had been crushed, mangled and dislocated all at the same time. The thumb looked normal, though the other four fingers were bent, gnarled, twisted, and appeared almost welded together in a claw-like fist. She couldn’t tell where one finger ended and the other started.

‘Oh, John … How the hell … Have you seen a doctor?’ She forced herself to hold back tears.

‘No, there’s nothing they can do for this. It doesn’t hurt much now, it’s just practically useless. I deliberately hit him with this hand, as I’m right handed and would be right up shit creek in my job without that. Mind you,’ he held his ruined hand up to his eyes, ‘it’s not going to be easy working the garden with just one hand, anyway.’

Sarah couldn’t help it. She burst into tears and put her hands over her face. She hated herself, for it was
all
her fault. She heard his chair scrape back and then he was beside her, hugging her to him. ‘Hey, come on, stop that. I’ll manage somehow.’ He lifted her chin and wiped away her tears. ‘I could always ask Josephina to come and help, what do you say?’ His eyes twinkled and a mischievous smile curled his mouth.

She laughed, but it came out as a snort, along with an attractive strand of snot. ‘Over my dead body she will.’ She blew her nose and took a big glug of wine. ‘But I will help. I’ll go part-time from September and work the rest of the time here with you. I have been thinking that I need a change for a while now. I’ll try and keep my nice Year 10 class into Year 11, but not Year 9, they are the toughest year in my opinion. It will be a relief not to have to teach Danny anymore, there’s no way that he would opt for history! And in the meantime I’ll help out after school and at weekends. I’ll be damned if your business will suffer because of my stupidity.’

‘There’s no need for that, I’ll manage …’

‘There’s every need.’ She kissed his injured hand tenderly. ‘I’ve already told you I wanted to cut my hours anyway, and I’m sure I’ll love working here, especially alongside you.’

John pulled her up and held her tightly. ‘Well, if you insist, how can I refuse? And if you’re really sure, then I think it would be great.’

‘I’m really sure,’ she said, kissing his chin, then her lips brushed his mouth, jaw line and finally she placed small kisses all along his neck.

He sighed and looked into her eyes. ‘Right, in that case we’d better go for it.’

‘Upstairs again, you’re insatiable.’ She kissed him passionately.

He pulled away and shook his head. ‘Upstairs? No, my girl, get your wellies on, we’re off to have a look at some veggies.’