to reveal a massive pair of soapy breasts.
‘We worked together,’ the man in the jacket insisted. ‘In this room. Your desks were here – right here – and mine was here, and just over there was a … there was a woman … dark hair … her name was … her name was … oh, dammit, you boys remember. She was one of us and her desk was right there and she was called …’
His mind reeled, but the name would not come.
‘Why can’t I remember her name? Why can’t I remember?’
Ray exchanged a knowing look with Chris, then tapped the side of his head with his finger.
The man in the jacket saw the gesture and shouted, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sanity. I know who I am.’
‘If you say so, boss.’
‘I know what’s real and what’s not. And I know that woman’s name. She sat right there and here name was … her name was …’
Furiously, the man grabbed a brick and hurled it against the remains of a wall.
‘Got a temper on ’im, this lad,’ winked Ray.
‘P’raps he should go up against big ’Enry,’ said Chris.
‘That’s what you said before.’ The man in the leather jacket jabbed his finger at Chris. ‘When I first came here, you said – you said I looked like I’d gone ten rounds with big Henry. It’s what you said when I first walked through that door.’
‘What door, boss?’ asked Chris.
Where the door had once been there was now only a ragged hole and heaps of rubble.
‘Ain’t no door here,’ said Ray, chewing his gum. ‘Ain’t nothing no more.’
‘All broken,’ said Chris.
‘All gone.’
‘Busted.’
‘Like you, boss. Broken, and busted.’
The man in the jacket looked from Chris to Ray and back again. ‘What do you mean by that?
‘There’s nothing here for you,’ said Ray, fishing out a cigarette from his breast pocket and sparking it up. ‘You could have gone back where you belong. You had your chance. But you threw it away. You threw yourself away. Don’t you remember?’
Chris turned his fingers into a pair of walking legs and mimed them running, jumping, plummeting. He made a long, descending whistle that ended with a splat.
The man in the jacket backed away, his hands clutching the sides of his head. His mind was reeling. Memories were swilling wildly about inside his skull: of standing atop a high roof with the city laid out all around him; of making a decision, and then starting to run. He remembered sprinting, leaping, falling, an expanse of hard concrete rushing up to meet him.
‘Topped yourself, boss,’ said Chris, taking back his copy of Soapy Knockers and leafing through it. ‘Smashed yourself to pieces.’
‘And everything else along with you,’ put in Ray, letting smoke trail from between his lips. ‘Just look around. See what you done.’
‘I remember …’ the man stammered, trying to piece together the jostling fragments in his mind. ‘The year was … It was 2006. There was an accident. I got … I got shot …’
‘Run over,’ Chris corrected him. ‘Very nasty.’
‘Run over … yes, yes,’ the man said, starting to see the pattern of events forming. ‘And I woke up … But it wasn’t 2006 any more … It was nineteen … It was nineteen-seventy … nineteen-seventy …’
‘… three,’ Chris and Ray intoned together.
‘Nineteen seventy-three. Yes, that was it,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t know if I was mad, or dead, or in a coma …’
‘Or a mad, dead bloke in a coma,’ piped up Chris. ‘Three for the price of one.’
‘But I did know I had to get back home, back to my own time, back to 2006. And I did it. I got there. But then, it was like … It felt like …’
‘Being dead?’ suggested Ray.
‘Being in a coma?’ added Chris. ‘Being a mad dead bloke in a coma all over again?’
‘Yes,’ said the man in the jacket. ‘It did feel like being a mad dead bloke in a coma. And I realized then I didn’t belong there after all. I belonged here, in 1973.’
‘But this ain’t 1973, boss,’ said Ray, staring flatly at him. ‘It ain’t nowhere.’
‘Hell, maybe,’ shrugged Chris.
‘Same thing,’ said Ray.
‘No,’ said the man. ‘No, that’s not true. I came back to 1973. I jumped off a rooftop in 2006, and I landed here – in ’73 – where I belong.’
‘You landed nowhere,’ said Ray. ‘Sorry, boss – you ballsed it up. You should’ve stayed in your own time. There’s nothing here for you – no life, no future. Still … Too late now. Too late.’
The man in the jacket seemed about to faint. He reached out to a desk for support, found it was as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke, stumbled, and fell against a broken wall.
‘He’s done his head in, Chris,’ said Ray, a grin just beginning to flicker beneath his moustache. ‘Must have been when he hit the ground.’
Chris nodded sadly. ‘Bumped his noodle. Concussion.’
‘And then some.’
‘Skull would have shattered like a vase.’
‘Brains all over the place.’
‘Scrambled eggs.’
‘Stewed tomatoes.’
Ray winced. ‘And his dear old mum called in to identify the scrapings.’
‘Bet that did her head in,’ Chris suggested.
Ray nodded, drawing deeply on his cigarette, narrowed eyes fixed on the man in the jacket. ‘Bet it did. Still – he reckons he did the right thing.’
‘I … I did the right thing,’ the man in the jacket said, straightening up and trying to sound as if he believed it. ‘I had to come back here … I had to.’
‘If you say so, boss,’ shrugged Chris.
‘It was important to come back. I – I know it was important …’
Ray laughed. ‘You know nowt. Not even your own name.’
‘I know who I am.’
