How to Stop Time. Matt Haig

He was called Cedar. Like the tree. Strange name. Strange man. Used to work at the funfair on Coney Island. He was very good at tightrope walking. Do you know the way you can tell if a tightrope walker is any good?’

      ‘How?’

      ‘They’re still alive.’

      He laughs at his own joke before continuing. ‘Anyway, he told me the secret to managing the tightrope. He said people were wrong when they said the secret was to relax and to forget about the drop below you. The secret was the opposite. The secret was never to relax. The secret was never to believe you are good. Never to forget about the drop. Do you understand what I am saying? You can’t be a mayfly, Tom. You can’t just relax. The drop is too big.’

      I take the phone into the bathroom and piss quietly against the inside of the toilet bowl, avoiding the water. ‘The drop. Right. I still don’t understand why you are calling me, Hendrich.’

      I look in the mirror and I notice something. Something wonderful and exciting, just above my left ear. A grey hair! This is my second. The first one I got in 1979. By 2100 I might have so many they could be noticeable. It gives me a thrill like no other when I notice such a change (hardly ever). I save the flush till later and leave the room, feeling happily mortal.

      ‘I call you when I want to call you. And you answer. Or I will get worried. And you know that you don’t want me to get anxious, because then I will have to do something. So, just remember your place. Remember how much the society has helped you. Okay, we’d have liked to have found your daughter. But remember everything else. Remember that before eighteen ninety-one you were lost. You had no freedom. You had no choice. You were just a confused grief-stricken man, who had no idea who he was. I gave you a map. I helped you find yourself.’

      I still haven’t found myself, I don’t say. I’m nowhere near.

      ‘Remember eighteen ninety-one, Tom. Keep it in mind.’

      And when the phone call ends, I do what he instructs. As I click off Camille’s photo I think back to 1891, I think of that moment when my life stopped being one thing and started being another, and I try to understand it. I try to work out if I sailed into a trap or into freedom, or if, maybe, it could have been both at once.

      Skyscrapers

      I

      Like

      The way

      That when you

      Tilt

      Poems

      On their side

      They

      Look like

      Miniature

      Cities

      From

      A long way

      Away.

      Skyscrapers

      Made out

      Of

      Words.

      Forest

      I want you to

      Slow down

      I just want it all

      To slow down;

      I want to make a forest

      Of a moment

      And live in that forest

      For ever

      Before you go.

      St Albans, England, 1891

      Jeremiah Cartwright had read the sky and declared, with a dark seriousness, that it was going to rain later and that he must go for iron while it was still dry. He wouldn’t be back for another hour. I was alone, by the forge, watching the metal as it glowed red, then orange. Yes, as in life, strike while the iron is hot, but not just any heat. You had to wait until the orange was starting to brighten, become that raw bright pink-yellow-orange. This was forging heat. The heat of change. The yellow quickly became white and as soon as it was white hot it was all over, so you had to watch and grab the moment before it was too late.

      It was only when I took the metal and placed it over the anvil to begin to strike it that I realised someone was standing there.

      A woman. A peculiar-looking woman.

      I can still picture her, vividly, the way I first saw her. She looked about forty years old.

      She was dressed in a long skirt and blouse, both black, and her face was shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. An outfit far too hot for the late June day, let alone for the hellish temperature of the forge. It took me a second, because of the shading over her face, to realise that she was wearing a jet-black silk eye patch over her left eye.

      ‘Hello there. How can I help you?’

      ‘You will find it is the other way around.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      She shook her head. She was wincing a little from the heat of the place. ‘No questions. Not just yet. Your curiosity shall be satisfied, I assure you. You must come with me.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You can’t stay here.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I said: no questions.’

      The next thing I knew she was pointing a small wooden pistol straight at my chest.

      ‘Blazing fuck. What are you doing?’

      ‘You have outed yourself to the scientific community. There is an institute . . . I haven’t got time to explain this. But, if you stay here, you will be killed.’

      The heat of the forge often made being in there a kind of delirium, a fever dream. For a moment, I thought this was a waking dream.

      ‘Dr Hutchinson is dead,’ she said. Her voice was composed, but there was a quiet force to it, as if not just stating a fact but an inevitable one.

      ‘Dr Hutchinson?’

      ‘Murdered.’

      She let the word stay in the air, with nothing but the sound of the roaring fire for company.

      ‘Murdered? Who by?’

      She handed me a news item that had been cut out of The Times.

      Doctor’s Body Found in Thames.

      I skimmed the piece.