What's the triggering event for a set of circumstances that mathematically and rationally should never have taken place? But did take place. To describe a set of circumstances that did take place, mysteriously, mystically, magically, not just for one person but for two - where do I start?
At the beginning, is the logical place. But when was that? Nine years before, when something else ended? Three or four or five years later when some unknown, intermediate, causal event must have taken place?
A strict, linear sequence of events must have been underway, to end up in a culminating event - a logical person might assume that? But how to know that event?
And if one tiny thing changed along the way, then it's pretty likely that the path of our times would have been different, and "never" would have been the outcome.
Rosie's parents dying within a year of each other, then she discovers they were never married, and she has a half sister twice her age? That's gotta be unpredictable, yeah? Or my dad, too young, dead on a beach? Fuck that, didn't see that one coming. Oh no.
Rosie. Cathy. The other women who curved into and out of my life during those years. Any one of them could have said something different, and I could have said "yes" or "no" in a different order, and there's a life changing event, right there.
How the fuck did all of those people know what to do or say, at the exact time they did it or said it? I for one have no fucking idea. But they did, sure as day follows night. Or in my case, sure as night follows day.
I hope you get what I mean. I hope so.
Where in time do I start to describe the nonsensical sequence of events that got us, her and me, to that nondescript suburban shopping square, at that particular time of day, and no other time would do. I don't remember the precise time of day, late morning, probably.
But it has to far more precise than that, because I've already done some maths elsewhere that shows we only had a twenty or thirty second window of time to be where we were, on that day, in that place, for the defining event to actually "happen". So let's say, for the purposes of this narrative, that she and I had to be on the opposite sides of that shopping precinct at, I dunno, let's call it 11.23 on a Saturday morning in May, 19something. A while ago, now, but only yesterday.
--- ooo OOO ooo ---
Back then, all my yesterdays began tomorrow.
Tomorrow was Saturday. Rosie had been driven to the airport a month or so before, Cathy had come and gone in the meantime. I never saw her again, which is sad, and I wonder if she eventually ate properly.
I never did learn to play a musical instrument, but it seems I didn't need to. Nowadays I prefer the cello, it is deeper and richer than a violin, a more sophisticated instrument but harder to play. It needs practice. But you know what they say... I'm still taking lessons.
Work was a steady beat during that time, and I had a job where I had some proper responsibility, and actually made a difference. It gave me stability, some good colleagues and a routine. Given that the emotional side of my life at that time was all over the place (death, Rosie, Cathy, all too complicated, really), routine was a handy way of passing the time. Numbing the time.
But that night, winds shifted and weirdness started. Must have. It was the next morning, that Saturday morning in May, that I can truly say, something happened that day. So let's start there. It's a point in time that I can reliably say, it happened this way, from here on in.
It will do, then, as a start.
That morning was a clear and sunny day. Autumn was advancing, nights were getting colder, leaves were turning, falling, gutters running with showers of rain. Weather forecaster stuff - there will be showers clearing by late afternoon, that kind of thing.
This day wasn't like that, though. On face value, just another Saturday in May. A clear and sunny day. Waking up was the same, feeding the cat and myself was the same. Even looking out the kitchen window and wondering if I would ever see a glimpse of my neighbour again, through her bedroom window, like that late night when I needed a glass of water before bed, but didn't turn the light on. Even that was the same.
My kitchen window was on the side of my house, on the high side of the hill, and looked out and over the fence between the houses. Her bedroom window looked the other way, looking onto the fence. Walking into the kitchen late one night, my eye caught a movement, and it was enough to stop my hand on the light switch. Her curtains were open, and there was a low light in a small room, illuminating the naked legs and the bending body of my neighbour.
A solitary woman, she was alone like me, and I watched the flickers of movement as she undressed and wrapped a robe around her body, unclear given the distance between the houses, unclear in the low light, and her movements were quick and efficient. But sufficient to keep me there, back in the dark, for five minutes.
Thoughts of her aside, that Saturday morning in May started like any other day. And progressed like any other day. Until it didn't. Somewhere a switch was thrown, and the day was different.
I decided to take a long walk to some distant shops, a bigger suburban shopping centre some two or three kilometres away. Why did I do that?
Hindsight explains everything, but foresight, nothing at all. I'd not done this before, the idea had never entered my head. The local shops, a ten minute walk down the road, they would always do.
Why did I need to go further, so much further (and then, not far enough)? It's simple, really. If I hadn't set out on that walk, it would always have been "never". I had no need to take this walk, and had never before taken it. But I did, I set out on a long, first time ever, walk. Strange. At the time, though, it was just a long walk to get some exercise, to exchange some boredom with another place. To pass the time.
I walked out the front door and locked it behind me, at a precise moment in time. It must have been a precise moment, because there was a precise period of time, a certain number of steps that had to be taken, to get me to that place on time. Don't have a clue what time it was though, because I never wear a watch on weekends, because time doesn't matter.
But that day, it did. Even seconds mattered, that day. Or it would have been "never". I couldn't bear that, not now, not since.
I'd driven this route many times before - there were cafes, a wide range of shops, including a bookshop. I was probably heading for the bookshop, if I had a particular destination in mind.
It was a pleasant enough walk through wide streets in suburbia, planned streets every one, every house the same age. Nothing spectacular, nothing scenic. So sight-seeing wasn't a motive for this walk. Truth be told, at this point in the walk, there was no point to the walk.
Down the hill, along a long flat stretch, turn left then right, and I'm twenty minutes from home, and not sure how long before I arrive. That in itself is part of the oddity of this whole convergence. I'd never walked it before, so didn't know how long it would take to walk there, to my destination.
I didn't yet know, but I was getting closer to the time of the coincidence, the 11.23 point. And I suppose, by this time, she must have been rounding up her mum to get in the car, to drive there herself, find a parking spot, drive round the car park twice, who knows. Well, I don't know, but she knows what she did. I never asked her, though.
