Christopher Evans - Omega

“Hang a left,” Tanya said.

I managed to indicate and turn at the last moment.

“Sorry,” I told her. “Daydreaming.”

“As long as that’s all it was.”

Her tone was gently questioning. She liked to check that I wasn’t off with the fairies, by which she meant back in Owain’s world.

“Honest, guv,” I assured her. “It’s not on my vacation list any more.”

We didn’t talk about it much these days. It was over, done with. Everyone there was dead, the entire world extinguished for all I knew. I had flashed from the final explosion to find myself already back in the house that I finally knew was my home. The same house which we were now approaching.

“I gather Rachel nearly thumped Adrian,” Tanya remarked.

They had also been at the party, Rachel a week overdue and desperate for a distraction. She had taken umbrage when Adrian was overtly attentive to one of the waitresses.

“She dumped a trifle in his lap,” I told her.

“Really?”

Tanya hadn’t seen it because she had taken the children into the garden when their party packs proved to contain plastic recorders that were much more fun when their mouthpieces were removed so that they could be used as blowpipes for raisins.

“You didn’t hear Rees laughing, telling him she’d creamed his jeans? He had jelly coming out of his nose. Keisha had to stop him colouring in all the pictures in the children’s party packs. It was like a pantomime.”

“Serves him right. He’s a bloody fool sometimes.”

She meant Adrian. “He wants the baby.”

“And what about Rachel?”

Both Tanya and Keisha had been very touchy-feely with her, gently kneading her bulge, delighting in any hint of movement.

I had no answer for this, though I hoped as she did that there would be a happy ending. Adrian was gung-ho for the new series, and it was as much as I could do to restrain him. At present I was only going into the studios two days a week and spending the rest of the time ostensibly doing background research at home. This actually comprised a little internet surfing and a slow progression through my father’s entire corpus. I had decided it was time I thoroughly acquainted myself with his achievements while he was still with us.

I parked the car in the driveway. A gusty wind assailed us as we climbed out, the daffodils in the flowerbeds swaying. Tanya remarked that while jelly was always a staple at children’s parties she knew no actual child who ever ate it.

“Rees,” I said. “He had at least two helpings. Inhaled most of it, I think.”

“He looked like he was enjoying himself.”

“In his element. We want to use him again when the new series gets up and running. I hope Keisha sticks with it.”

“Fingers crossed.”

Tanya unlocked the front door. Moments later the Scenic arrived. Geoff helped Sarah and Beth out of the back. The girls had insisted on travelling with Geoff and Candida’s three.

“I’ll get the kettle on,” Tanya said to Geoff.

“I think we’re going to pass on tea,” he replied. “We need to get our lot home. They’re all high on sugar and E numbers.”

James had his face pressed to the window, making disgusting faces at the girls, who were reciprocating. Candida sat calmly in the driver’s seat, a benevolent smile on her face, serenely tolerant. She and Geoff had looked after Sarah and Beth when I came out of hospital. Tanya had even arranged a temporary placement in a local school while I was recuperating. My behaviour had been too disturbing for them—particularly after my display in the park, when I had simultaneously been raving while failing to recognise them as my own.

Abruptly it began to rain. We said our goodbyes. I shepherded the girls inside while Tanya exchanged final words with Candida.

“Dad,” Beth said to me the instant we crossed the threshold, “Sarah said I’m fat.”

“No, I didn’t,” replied her sister. “I said that if you eat Monster Munch and chocolate sandwiches all day you’d be like Humpty Dumpty.”

Beth thought about this. Pointedly she said: “ Anyway , I’d rather be fat than skinny.”

Sarah gave her a look of lofty disdain that implied she wasn’t going to descend to swapping insults.

“I’d hate to have stick legs,” Beth persisted.

“Better than having a pot belly.”

“See?” Beth said to me as though vindicated.

“Enough,” I told them firmly. “Truce, otherwise there’ll be no stories tonight. Neither of you are fat or skinny, so stop being silly.”

“That’s a rhyme,” Beth said.

“I hope you two weren’t behaving like this in the car on the way back.”

I led them straight up the stairs, ignoring their pleas for a half an hour’s television, and started running a bath.

While it was filling, they sneaked off. I wandered into Tanya’s study, where framed photographs of all of us were in clear evidence. It was Geoff who had suggested that I must have blanked them out because they didn’t fit in with my fantasy world. We hadn’t told him anywhere near the full details of it, but he saw it as a clear case of displacement and what he called “compensatory abstraction”. It was an expression worthy of my father.

Tanya’s desk held neat stacks of books, magazines and papers. She was gathering material for a new book, as yet untitled, though she described it as “a sceptic’s guide to para-science”. Apparently I had inspired her to it after my flirtation with another realm of experience.

It was Tanya who had stimulated my father’s interest in science and pointed him towards the books and periodicals he needed for his research. She had never been daunted by him, holding her own at the many dinner-table conversations we had over the years when we visited him.

The girls were now playing peaceably in their bedroom. The one with the heart-shaped mirror on the back of the door, though the walls were coral pink rather than amethyst. Tanya had kept it locked because of my obvious agitation whenever she mentioned the girls. I simply refused to acknowledge any evidence of their presence.

From the window I saw the Scenic finally drive away, Tanya waving after it. A sense of vast tranquil relief suffused me. It had been doing so at regular intervals since my recovery. As I stepped back from the window something went snap under my foot.

“Dad,” Sarah said with weary fatalism. “You just killed Mr Saucepan Man.”

I picked up a broken Lego figure. As usual, pieces were scattered all over the floor around a bizarre tree-like assemblage that they were building.

“Bath-time,” I told them. “Last one in gets a raspberry on the belly.”

They squeaked and scampered off across the landing.

I tidied the pieces into one of their boxes and shouted to them to put their cast-off clothes in the laundry basket and go easy on the bubble bath.

“Everything all right up there?” Tanya called from the hallway.

“I’m a toy killer,” I called back.

At least the girls were as I remembered them,, even though it was Sarah with an h and Beth, as in Elizabeth. Why all the false memories? Particularly of Lyneth. She had indeed come to London to live with me but we had parted after a year when I finally admitted I wanted to be with Tanya. Prior to that I had got Lyneth pregnant, but she lost the baby and was left infertile as a result. She had gone to Australia to live and I’d had no contact with her since. I went to visit Tanya in California and persuaded her to come home with me. As soon as she became pregnant with Sarah, we’d married. Somehow I had muddled their stories, perhaps because I felt I had ruined Lyneth’s life.

That would be the conventional psychological explanation, at least; but it begged many questions. Why would I create such a bleak world as Owain’s as an expression of guilt? Easier to believe that Owain was real, that his invasive presence had skewed my memories. That was how I’d rationalised it at first. But I didn’t think so now.