This time I follow his lead, lolling back against him. He won’t be here when I wake up tomorrow, I tell myself as I drift off to sleep; we’ll be apart all day until bedtime. I’m sure I’ll manage to survive, I muse with dozy sarcasm. It’s only one day apart, after all, and how bad could that possibly be?

12. Jungle

I feel unnervingly alone when I wake up on Monday morning, and instinctively I reach for Logan. It’s only after swatting my hand up and down his side of the bed that I remember that he’s not here. I can vaguely recall him whispering goodbye several hours ago, but sleep had me in such a tight grip that it could’ve been a dream as much as it could’ve been reality.

Drowsily, I check my phone and find two text messages from him, one telling me that his plane is about to leave, and the second informing me that it’s landed safely in Marseille. I type back a good morning greeting and then resign myself to conquer the almost unavoidable Monday morning blues.

The continual flow of messages between Logan and I as I get ready for work undoubtedly keeps my mood bright, and yet I can’t shake the feeling of something being off. There’s an eeriness that follows me around the house, which gets so bad that I begin to chide myself for behaving so childishly just because Logan isn’t here. It must be his absence that’s got me feeling off-kilter, I think, yet that’s no reason to stop functioning like a proper human being. Jeez, get a grip, Gem, I order myself, downing my morning coffee before sending Logan my last message of the morning:

*About to leave for work. Will call at lunchtime. Love you, Leary x*

I step out of my little cottage and almost laugh at the weather — it’s dark and foggy and so perfectly in keeping with my odd mood that it’s comical. I walk along the little pathway to the elevator that takes me down to the underground garage, and it’s only once the elevator doors have shut, when I’m rummaging around in my handbag for my lip balm, that I realise that I’ve left my phone on the kitchen counter.

I can’t possibly endure an entire day without it, I’m not too proud to admit that, and I have every intention of going back to get it until the elevator doors start opening at garage level and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Fuck, I think, as chills take over my body.

I don’t know why it happens, but it does — I go back in time, twenty-three years to be exact, and I’m sitting in the back of my father’s car, minutes before he took his last breath. It’s the same feeling, the same coldness, and the same sense that something wrong is about to happen. I feel the terror that coursed through my younger-self and yet I have no idea why this memory is occurring now.

I look up and see my neighbour, the male half of the couple who lives opposite from me, standing outside of the elevator doors, waiting to get in. His head is down and as my eyes scan his body, I see him tucking something under his shirt into the belt of his trousers, hiding it from my line of sight.

You have to get out of this elevator, Gem, a voice in my head tells me, and I remember that I’ve heard that voice before. You have to stay in the car, it told me twenty-three years ago. I did as it said back then, too young to have any other choice, but I can’t leave now, he’s blocking my exit. Him, and the firearm that I’m almost certain that he’s carrying.

My breath catches in my chest. Double fuck!

I hate knowing this feeling; it’s like I’ve travelled into the middle of a memory. The air down here is deathly cold. It’s not right, it’s not natural. I can barely breathe it.

My neighbour looks up, his eyes pierce mine, and I know I’ve stepped back in time. Oh my god! My heart lurches uncomfortably and it takes everything in me not to gasp. I’ve seen eyes like that only once before, mere moments before my father was killed. They’re hallow, soulless, utterly empty eyes, and I abruptly realise that the eeriness following me around this morning wasn’t about Logan’s absence at all. It was pure foreboding, but my mind couldn’t explain it, so it fabricated an explanation instead. A reasonable response, I think, considering that I never, ever thought I’d feel like this again.

Short, shallow breaths are all that I can manage. Get out of the elevator, I hear once more.

This can’t possibly be happening, I tell myself. My adult-self kicks in and I instantly reject all of the signs, all of the warnings, and all of the feelings of deja vu; it’s just not possible, I try to convince myself. He’s not carrying a gun, Gem. I’m going to get my phone, I think stubbornly.

Yet as my neighbour steps towards me, so too do I step towards him. We move around each other, our bodies centimetres apart, swapping positions until he’s inside the elevator and I’m outside of it, even though I don’t feel like it’s me that’s making my body move. I’m being pulling and pushed and moved by something else. Intuition perhaps, or a primal survival instinct, or something altogether more inexplicable?

“Passez une bonne journée,” he says behind me as I walk away. Have a good day.

Immediately, annoyance and confusion courses through me. Would a gun-wielding man say that, Gem? No, I think, and yet after I hear the elevator doors shut, I can’t stop myself from breaking into a run and hurrying over to my stationary car, my hands fumbling so badly that I drop my car keys twice on route. These mixed messages are doing my head in! I can’t explain this shuddering, shivering feeling of terror, I can’t explain why I feel like I’m simultaneously four and twenty-seven, and I don’t want to try right now. All I want to do is get away from here, from him. Far away.

Composing and calming myself, I get into my car, pull the door shut and lock myself inside. Bullets go through glass, a very unhelpful thought flits across my mind. I turn on the ignition, about to have a serious talk with myself about my tendency for extreme overreacting, when I hear a deafening gunshot issue somewhere above me.

No way! No. Fucking. Way!

I gasp loudly and catch sight of my terror-strewn face in the rear view mirror. I’m taken back once more to the last time that I heard that noise, in my father’s car, petrified. Somehow I knew what had happened, yet I had no ability to run, to remove myself from the situation. I had no choice but to sit and wait and hope that I wasn’t next.

I have a choice now. Fuck what’s realistic, fuck giving someone the benefit of the doubt, my instincts were right, and I have to get myself out of this garage! Drive, Gemima, I order, and I cease doubting and questioning myself. I put the car into gear and flatten the accelerator to the floor.

I’m out of the confined underground space in record time, swerving onto the road, narrowly avoiding a collision. I check my rearview mirror — my neighbour is nowhere in sight. I check the faces of the people walking on the street. Concern is prevalent — they all heard the gunshot too, and most of them are on their phones, no doubt to the police.

I need to do that, I think, except I don’t have my phone! I could pull over; anyone of the numerous shops that I’m hurtling past will have a telephone for me to use, and yet I’m too filled with fear to stop moving. Perhaps I’d feel safe enough to stop if I were outside a police station, but I can’t remember where the nearest one is. Dammit! I know there’s one somewhere near my house, I’ve seen it so often, but my brain can’t compute correctly right now, it just can’t. All I’m good for is driving. I don’t even know where I’m driving to. My movements are entirely auto-piloted, the adrenalin kicking in and taking over.