Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 38: Chapter 38

When Viv gets to Astrid and Celeste's house, she is pink-cheeked and short of breath after racing over as quickly as she could once her shift came to an end. She bursts into the house the moment the door is opened to her, racing to the conservatory.
"Sunny," she says, the name coming out as barely more than a breath. Sunny looks up into those deep, dark eyes, her body unfolding itself from the ball she has been curled into on the sofa; she allows herself to be gathered into Viv's strong arms and she breathes in the scent of Viv's conditioner, rests her cheek on the rough polyester of Viv's work polo.
"What's wrong?" Viv asks when they pull apart. "You look upset. What's happened?" Her eyes dart to Astrid, to Celeste. "What's going on? Sunny, why did I get a call from Fen saying that you were high and she's worried about you?"
"I told her not to call you," Sunny says. Damn it, Fenfen, she thinks, though she can't be mad. She gave Fenfen several good reasons to be concerned.
"What was she talking about? Are you high?" Viv steps back, her hands on Sunny's elbows, searching her face for the signs.
"No! I just ... I told her the truth about what happened with the well and the black hole and the time skip and everything and you know Fen, she assumed I was tripping."
"Why did you tell her?" Viv asks. Her voice is a lullaby. Sunny could listen to it forever. She wants to rest her head on Viv's chest, to be told a story, to lose herself in her girlfriend's soft vowels and forget everything else.
"I went back to tell her that I'm moving out," Sunny says, "and I had a bit of a breakdown, and it all came out."
She's feeling better now. The second cup of tea helped; so did sharing with Astrid and Celeste. Sunny is a firm believer in the idea that a problem shared is a problem halved, the uncomfortable fizz in her chest dissipating with each fraction of her worry that she gives away.
"You had a breakdown? About moving in with me?" Viv rolls her lips together. Her fingers slide around Sunny's arm. "Sunny, I told you, if it's too fast we don't have to. Please, bambi, there's no pressure."
"It's not too fast. I love you, Viv. I can't wait to live with you," Sunny says. She takes both of Viv's hands and holds on tight. "There's something I need to tell you, though."
I can do this, she thinks. She's doing alright so far. She can tell Viv what she learnt today and it will be okay. But then she opens her mouth to let it all out, to explain the afternoon she spent in the library, and nothing will come out. Her throat constricts. Her words die before they ever reach her tongue. Viv frowns, waiting for something, anything, but Sunny is frozen.
Celeste steps in. Cool, calm, collected Celeste. "Sunny isn't the first person we've known to end up in this situation," she says, folding her hands in her lap as she takes a seat opposite Sunny and Viv. "There have been others, two of whom sought us out, like Sunny did, when they made the connection."
"There are others?" Viv looks from Sunny to Celeste and back again. "You never mentioned that, Sunny. Why didn't you say?"
"Vivian." Celeste's voice, although barely more than a hush, commands attention. Only when everybody's eyes are on her does she continue. "One of the women who sought us out had made a wish, similar to the one Sunny made. She wanted family and happiness. I know to you it may not seem like it, but Sunny is lucky to have only lost the year that she lost."
Fourteen months, actually, Sunny thinks, but she says nothing. She's not sure she's capable of words, and she would much rather Celeste be the one to tell the story. The way she speaks, the way she holds herself, there's a confidence there, a self-assurance that Sunny doesn't possess, something she can't possibly embody right now.
"When this woman came to us, she had lost twenty years," Celeste says.
"Oh, god," Viv says. "That's awful."
"Mmm." There's a quiet pause as Celeste breathes in, holds it, lets it go. "
"Has this got something to do with..." She trails off, her gaze slipping to Sunny. "But you're okay, Sunny. You're here, it's okay. You haven't lost twenty years." Her thick eyebrows pull together as she turns back to Celeste. "I don't ... I don't understand why you're telling me this."
"Her name was Margaret," Celeste says. You could hear a pin drop. "Margaret Gastrell. But you'd know her as–"
Viv lets out a strangled gasp. "My mother."
The colour drains from her face the way bathwater empties, as though someone has pulled a plug, and Sunny's stomach rolls, an uncomfortable lurch. She can't take this. The hurt in Viv's every pore. The deafening silence that fills the room, the atmosphere thick with sorrow.
"She came to us in 1974," Celeste continues. Sunny can't bear to listen but she has to. "I don't remember when, exactly. Sometime in the spring."
"May," Astrid chips in. "It was the start of May. You had just taken the children to school and I was listening to the radio in the kitchen. There was a story on the news about a missing painting turning up in a graveyard; I was annoyed when someone knocked on the door, but her story ended up being far more interesting than a vanished Vermeer."
Celeste looks at her with an expression that says how on earth do you remember that?
"My birthday," Sunny murmurs to herself. With three sets of eyes on her, she says, "The sixth of May. I remember reading about the painting. She ... she found you exactly a year before I was born."
There isn't a chill in the air – the house is warm, as though it is still winter outside rather than the middle of spring – but Sunny's arms prickle with goosebumps. It's only a day. A day that she wasn't even alive for, but still it sends a shiver through her.
"That's a month before she died." Viv's voice is hoarse. Her nails are digging into Sunny's hands. "She died at the start of June."
A flicker of emotion imbues Celeste's voice when she says, "I'm so sorry, Vivian. I am so, so sorry."
Viv turns her big eyes on Sunny. "When did you know?"
"This afternoon." Sunny finally has her words back, a backlog flowing out now that the stopper has been lifted. "I knew there were others but I didn't tell you about them before because it was all so fucking depressing and it terrified me, and I didn't want to ruin what we have. But things have been so good recently, I wanted to learn more about them so I got their names off Celeste and I went to the library." She squeezes Viv's hands and says, "I didn't know she was your mum. Not until I saw her obituary."
Viv's eyes are full of tears that don't fall, two trembling puddles at her lash lines. "I don't understand."
"Your mother made a wish," Celeste says.
"What kind of wish would make her kill herself?" Viv cries out. "This doesn't make any sense!"
"What do you know about your mother?" Astrid asks, turning the conversation around. Her words have a gentler tone, her face a gentler smile. "Did your father ever talk about her?"
"All the time," Viv says. "She was his soulmate. He always talked about how she was a free spirit. Happy go lucky."
"What about her death?" Astrid carefully enquires.
Viv shakes her head. "He never understood," she says at last. Sunny's heart cracks in two. "He never talked about it until I was older. I asked about it a few years ago and he said ... he said it was as though a switch had been flipped." Her eyes meet Sunny's, the first tear spilling over when she says, "Like she woke up one day and she was a different person."
Just like me, Sunny thinks. That's how she felt when she woke up. Like she had been thrown into someone else's life.
"I was a baby," Viv says. Her voice is wobbling but she is holding onto her composure in a way Sunny admires. "Dad said he thought she must have been depressed, that she'd been hiding it. She was the happiest person he knew and then, in the blink of an eye, she was stuck in this depression. He never understood what happened."
"That's when she woke up," Sunny says. "She made the wish when she was twenty and that's when she woke up. All she wanted was to have a family and to be happy and she woke up in a life where she had it."
"But she couldn't hold onto it," Astrid says. She drops her eyes to Sunny and Viv's joined hands. "It takes a certain strength to hold onto what you wish for."
A sad, strangled little noise comes out of Viv. The kind of noise that breaks Sunny's heart. It goes straight through her, piercing the deepest part of her soul.
"I thought she had postnatal depression," Viv says. "From what Dad said, I just assumed. I was a baby and she was depressed. That's what made the most sense." Her breath hitches, her hand over her mouth. "All this time, I thought my mother died not loving me. But she died not even knowing me."
That's when the tears fall. Viv chokes on a sob and Sunny pulls her close, throws her arms around her, holds her against her chest. She can't bear to see Viv cry.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry, Viv."
They hold each other for what feels like an age, though it is no longer than a couple of minutes that Sunny clutches her girlfriend, her hands buried in Viv's pink curls, whispering over and over how sorry she is. It isn't her fault, she has nothing to do with Margaret Gastrell's – no, Molly Galanis's – suicide. She hadn't even been conceived when it happened; she was barely a star in the sky. But she feels responsible somehow, even if only for dredging it up now, twenty-six years later.
"Perhaps," Astrid says after a few minutes of quiet, "this is the universe trying to make up for the past."
Both Sunny and Viv look at her. Viv asks, "What do you mean?"
"The universe stole your mother from you, but now it has given you Sunny. Somewhere down the line, the strings of your fates have twisted together. Perhaps you were always destined to meet."
Celeste rests a hand on Astrid's arm and says, "I don't think this is the time, darling."
Sunny likes the thought, though. Some small positive to be found in all the gloom. She looks at Viv. Viv, who is usually so level-headed, so unflappable, is unmoored; she is a boat in the ocean, missing its anchor in the middle of a storm.
"Who was the other person?" she asks after another minute has passed, another minute of quiet processing.
"We didn't know much about her," Celeste says.
"I found her, too," Sunny says. She tells them about Isabelle, about the impressive life she led after the devastation that forced her to flee her hometown. Astrid peppers in the details she and Celeste know. Isabelle's wish. Her misfortune. The tragedy that sent her bouncing through time. It's a winding tale, as Sunny's emotions fluctuate: her awe at Isabelle's accomplishments; her sorrow at what led to them; her fear that time is temporary; her despair that the only people who know what she's going through are dead.
But she isn't crying when she reaches the end of her story. At last, it seems, she is all cried out.
"You've been carrying all this around for all these weeks?" Viv asks.
"Not that Margaret was your mum, or that Isabelle's dead. I only found that out today."
"But the rest?"
Sunny nods. She tips her head at Astrid and Celeste and says, "They told me the rest, the first time I came here."
Viv's face crumples. She grips Sunny's hand and says, "You could've told me, Sunny. This is so much. God, this is so heavy."
Sunny shrinks as she thinks I didn't know you. Not when she found out, three days into this new life. "I didn't want to scare you off."
"Sunny." Viv laughs. It's a weak laugh, like the sun outside, struggling to pierce through the clouds that have knitted together overhead, but it's a laugh nonetheless. "If I didn't get scared off when you told me you'd fallen into a crack of time and you couldn't remember a single moment of our life together, that you didn't even recognise me, then I don't think I can be scared off."
"This is all so fucking weird," Sunny says.
"It's really fucking weird," Viv agrees. She cups Sunny's cheek in her hand, her thumb brushing away a stray eyelash. Neither of them make a wish. "It's strange and it's upsetting to hear about my mum and I don't really know how to feel about it," she says, her other hand going to Sunny's other cheek, the lines of Sunny's jaw nestled in her palms, "but I don't remember her. I only know her through my dad's memories. I'm more concerned about you, bambi."
"It's been a lot," Sunny admits. Damn it, the lump in her throat is returning, and she almost says I don't know how your mum coped with losing twenty years, until she remembers. Of course. That's why they're here. Because she didn't. Sunny tries really hard to not think about that too much.
"I must admit," Astrid says, "I was rather worried when you turned up on our doorstep, Sunny."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I was just overwhelmed."
"Understandably so." Astrid smiles that warm, grandmotherly smile. "I think everything's going to be okay, though. You have let so many people in, darling. You're alright."
Viv, rubbing Sunny's back, nods and says, "We're alright, bambi. You can't scare me away. If anything, all of this only makes me want to hold you closer."
"Please do," Sunny says. Viv complies. She pulls Sunny against her chest, tucking Sunny's head under her chin, and Sunny closes her eyes as she listens to the thud of Viv's heart. They stay for another cup of tea, another hour whiling itself away with less heavy conversation – they talk about Cassie and Apollo, who are coming home to their mothers next week for Astrid's eighty-second birthday; they talk about Sunny's twenty-fifth birthday on Saturday; they talk about how well Britney has settled into her new home – and that last topic is the one that prompts Sunny and Viv to stand.
"We should get back to her," Sunny says, filled with the sudden urge to scoop her cat into her arms and breathe her in. She slips her hand into Viv's as they leave like it's second nature, like it is something she has done every day for the last fourteen months. "Um. Sorry for bursting in and crying all over you."
Celeste laughs. She leans forward to kiss Sunny's cheek and then Viv's. "You're more than welcome to burst in any time you need, darling. Hopefully, as times goes on, there'll be less need for tears."
Sunny's on the sofa with her legs flung over the side, Britney purring and pummelling on her stomach, as Viv brews the Sunny Special. It's the first week of May but the whole flat smells like Christmas thanks to three sticks of cinnamon infusing in a pan of milk simmering away on a low heat.
"I hate to think that you don't want to tell me things because you think they could scare me away," Viv says after they've been quiet for a few minutes, each happily engaged in their own activity.
Sunny tips her head back as far as it'll go, looking at Viv upside down. "When I first found out about the other women, I barely knew you," she says, "and then I tried not to think about them too much because it freaked me out."
"You can tell me anything, Sunny. I'm not going anywhere."
Sunny smiles up at her upside-down girlfriend and she says, "I know that now." She takes her creamy cinnamon coffee and sits up carefully, jostling Britney as little as possible because she doesn't want the kitten to jump off. "Plus, you kind of can't leave me. That would be very irresponsible of you."
Viv grins. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"
"Because, if Isabelle's story is anything to go by, if I lose what I wished for then I will get chucked back to 1999."
Viv's smile falls. "Sunny! Don't say things like that."
"What!" The sudden squawk startles Britney, who jumps off Sunny's tummy in favour of the cat tree in the window. Sunny pouts at the cat, but she takes advantage of the freedom to sit up straight. "It's true. Maybe. Possibly? I think. Fuck knows," she says, and she gets whacked with a cushion by a scowling Viv. "Don't leave me and we'll never have to find out."
Viv harrumphs. "I'm not going to leave you," she says grumpily as she takes a seat next to Sunny and wraps strong arms around her, and Sunny's organs are an orchestra of flutters as she nestles against her girlfriend.
"Good," she says. "I've gone through a lot of emotional fuckery to get here."
Viv presses her lips to Sunny's temple. Sunny sighs and twists so she can sit with her legs over Viv's lap, her arms around Viv's waist, head on her chest.
"I just wish I could talk to somebody. I wish there was someone who got what they wanted and it made their life better, someone who can show me that it really can be okay and I can stop worrying that the rug could be pulled out from under me at any moment."
"Maybe they're out there," Viv murmurs, stroking Sunny's hair. Sunny loves the feeling of fingers in her hair, the gentle tug, the brush of nails on her scalp. "Perhaps the ones who get what they wanted don't come back. They don't want to mess with a good thing. Maybe," she says, "there are hundreds of people out there who barely lost any time, maybe they didn't even notice it, and they didn't care because their lives turned around for the better."
"Maybe," Sunny says with a quiet hum. She cups her mug in both hands and slowly sips her coffee and idly wonders if, one day, another woman will turn up wanting answers and she will be able to help. As much as she hopes no-one goes through her emotional turmoil, she likes the thought that she could help some future victim of the black hole.
"Imagine if you threw a coin in the well and you wished to win the lottery, and the next day your numbers come up. You're not going to go banging on Astrid and Celeste's door to ask what the hell is going on," Viv says. She sips her coffee and sets it down out of the way so she can separate a lock of Sunny's hair into three strands, plaiting as she talks. "You probably wouldn't think twice. You know what, by the way, while you were wishing for me, you could've asked for a bit of money, too."
"Sorry, babe. Tell you what, if I end up back where I started, I'll be more specific with my next wish," she jokes.
Viv tugs on Sunny's hair. "That's not funny."
"Give it fifty years and we'll be able to laugh about it. If you can still tolerate me when we're in our seventies." Sunny looks up, a cheeky smile on her face. Viv kisses her grinning lips.
"I plan to be together a lot longer than that, bambi."
Sunny settles into Viv's arms. She is incredibly comfortable to lean against, and Britney realises she's missing out on prime cuddling time; she vaults from the cat tree to the armchair, onto the sofa and then Sunny's lap, and she purrs so loud that it sounds as though a lorry is rumbling past the window.
"I could just stay here forever," Sunny says. "I don't want to have to go to work tomorrow." It's almost twenty-four hours away so she still has a day to enjoy, but she reckons today is the kind of day that requires at least forty-eight hours to recover from.
"You're not working tomorrow," Viv says.
"Huh?"
"You took the weekend off, Sun. You're not in until Monday. You wanted to enjoy your birthday and dedicate the next day to a hangover."
"Oh, shit. Good one, other Sunny."
Viv opens her mouth to say something – you're the same Sunny, perhaps – but she thinks better of it and sighs instead, kissing the top of Sunny's head as she says, "We didn't make any actual plans, but maybe we could meet your friends at Lickety Split tomorrow night? If you want?"
Sunny thinks about it. A night of drinking and dancing with her favourite people, ringing in her birthday at midnight with a cocktail and a kiss and all of her friends. "That," she says, pressing her lips to Viv's collarbone, "would be perfect."