Time's Mistress by Steven Savile Read Free Book Online

eight minutes a day, or fifty-six minutes a week. In a month I’d lose a little over four hours, which meant something like two days over the course of a year. It was funny how time could just fritter away because a spring was coiled a little too loosely.
    An old couple sat huddled up so close together they might have been Siamese twins. The woman had a yellow Kodak envelope in her hands and was thumbing through pictures. She tutted in that wonderfully French way when I sat down beside them and went back to her photographs, occasionally shrugging oh so expressively.
    Her fingers fastened on one. She pulled it out of the pack and then turned to her husband, tapping it. They looked at the photograph together, and then she looked at me and said, “ Est-cevous? ilest, n’est-ce pas? ”
    I felt like an idiot. My French didn’t go beyond, “ Je m’appelle Steve,” and I wasn’t one hundred percent on how to say that. I shrugged in a much less expressive manner and said, “I’m sorry?”
    “English?”
    I nodded.
    She smiled, slightly. “It’s you, isn’t it?” She said, holding the photograph out for me to look at.
    It was.
    Or more accurately it was me and Isla. It took me a moment to realize when it had been snapped—about nine months ago. We’d taken shelter under the bandstand at Hyde Park, because the rain was pouring down. We’d huddled up close and watched the swans while Isla had told me how swans mate for life and I’d asked her to marry me. I smiled. I couldn’t quite believe that some complete stranger waiting for a train on the Parisian underground had a photo of one of the happiest moments of my life. I could see it all in my head, me going down on one knee, her giggling, then putting her hand to her mouth when she realized I was serious, and the way she couldn’t stop saying yes.
    I nodded. “Yes. Yes, it’s me. How did you get this?”
    The old woman smiled, but it was the man who answered. “That is where Isuelt agreed to be my wife,” he said with a smile, obviously remembering the day. And I thought again just how much I missed the woman I never got to marry. All I wanted to do was grow old with her, like these two. “The war was over, and we were young, reckless and very much in love. I convinced her to come with me to England, and it was the start of a lifetime together. We went back for the first time last year, and it seemed only right we should take a photograph of the place where it all began.”
    “I was asking Isla—my girlfriend—to marry me,” I said, pointing at the photograph.
    “We know,” the old woman said. “We stood in the rain watching you. Where is she?”
    And there it was, the question I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to rob this lovely old couple of their happy memory, but I didn’t know how to deflect the question either, so I said, “She couldn’t make the trip.”
    “Ah, that’s a shame.”
    “This is going to sound strange, but would it be possible to keep this?” I asked, reluctant to let go of the photograph.
    “Oh, of course, of course. We’ve got the negatives, we can easily make another copy. You should have it. It’s the start of your life, after all,” the old man said.
    “Thank you so much.” I put the picture in my pocket.
    A few minutes later the train rolled in and we said our goodbyes.
    I can’t begin to explain how I felt. It was as though they’d given me a part of my life back that I’d lost forever. Now it wasn’t just my memory. I’ve always believed that the more people who remember something the more real it is. Now, with three of us to remember, that day in Hyde Park was real again.
    Next stop, Prague, guided by May , a battered collection of poetry by Karel Hynek Mácha. The train was cramped and hot and sweaty, filled with backpackers. I’d booked a private compartment which I ended up sharing with half a dozen young students broken up for the summer and looking to get drunk and lucky in one of Europe’s