‘I want to change things,’ I said eventually. ‘I want to live differently.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Beth. She grinned again. ‘You’ve not had a religious experience have you?’
‘No, no, nothing like that, I just want to see if I can connect with people. I know I’ve been difficult to live with. I know I tend to see things in a mechanical way, but, well, I had a bit of a scare in the Yuneec.’
Beth’s grin disappeared. ‘What happened?’
‘No, nothing, nothing, I’m fine, the Yuneec’s fine, I just, well, I got lost in some low-level cloud and, it’s very confusing, when I managed to get out of the cloud, well, I felt different.’
Beth sat down at the small kitchen table opposite me. She tidied some bits of paper that were scattered across the table and then put her hand on mine.
‘What happened?’ she said flatly.
‘Honestly, nothing. I wasn’t in danger. I don’t know how to explain it. Afterwards I just understood things a lot better. It made me tired, which is why I slept for something like 14 hours last night.’
‘I know, I couldn’t believe it when I got back. I came and checked, and you were out for the count. Are you feeling ill?’
‘No, I’m feeling rather good actually. Hungry, but fine.’
Beth continued to look at me with a slightly concerned expression.
‘You look different,’ she said, ‘you look older.’
That made me worry. For some reason hearing her say that made what I’d read in the book seem more credible. I had decided that there was no way I could tell anyone, even Beth, about what the book implied had happened. I knew people would think I was barking mad and also, I had no memory of any of it. Reading the descriptions of the places I went to and the people I met did not jolt a single memory. I had absolutely no recall of anything.
‘I feel a bit different. It’s very weird,’ I said, ‘but I think it’s best if we don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to have to explain to people because it sounds like I’ve gone a bit loopy. I flew into a cloud and came out and I was different. It doesn’t sound good does it?’
‘Well, it sounds mad. I mean you are a bit…’
‘I’m a little bit on the autistic side, I know,’ I said.
Beth grinned again. ‘Wow. You’ve never, ever said that before.’
‘Haven’t I?’
‘No.’
‘D’you think I’m a little bit autistic then?’
‘Well…’ Beth sighed deeply and pulled her chin back, which wasn’t her best look. ‘I suppose some people would say you were on the mild end of the autistic spectrum.’
‘There you go,’ I said, sitting back and grinning at her.
She let go of my hand and stood up.
‘I haven’t been shopping, I don’t suppose…’
‘I haven’t set foot outside the house all day,’ I said.
‘D’you want to go and get something to eat?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Wait. You, Gavin, are prepared to go out, to go to a pub or a restaurant and eat, with me?’
‘Yeah, I’d love to,’ I said.
‘Wow, you really have changed,’ said Beth. She walked out of the kitchen shaking her head and singing. Beth only sings when she’s in a very good mood.
36
It’s now exactly a year to the day since my flight through the cloud and a few things have changed in our lives.
Beth says I’ve changed beyond all recognition but I think she’s changed quite a bit, too.
However, the biggest change is the one sleeping next to me at the moment. My three-month-old daughter.
She’s called Grace.
After I had repeatedly read the book I accept I must have written somewhere, somehow, it seemed an appropriate name and thankfully Beth didn’t disagree.
Grace was born in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on March 3rd, without question the happiest day of my life.
I hold her for hours just listening to her breathe. She is beyond miraculous.
I’ve never had any interest in babies or other people’s children. I don’t think I hated kids, I just wasn’t interested in them.
That’s changed; I’m obsessed with Grace.
I regularly think about what the world will be like when she’s an old woman, what her children’s lives will be like, and her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren who I could potentially have met if what I recorded in the book has any truth.
Every day I slip her into the backpack carrier I bought and take her for walks through the village. If there’s one thing I’ve already learned about parenting it’s all about routine. Grace loves her routine.
As we walk I think about the way I described Kingham, or the complete lack of Kingham in Gardenia, the fact that it probably ends up as a Garden Square in London, or a blasted flatland of bare rocks in the world of the cloud cities.
I want the world to be better for her, not worse. I want to do what I can to bring that about. Sometimes this makes me worry that I’m becoming a bit of a hippy but if that’s the case it’s a small price to pay.
The other big change is where we live.
We moved house, although we only moved about 50 metres. We sold our little house and bought the barn conversion that our old garden backed onto.
I kept it as a surprise for Beth. I heard it was being sold, made an offer and boom, that’s where we live.
I like it, Beth absolutely loves it and we are fairly broke. I managed to cash in some of my pension, I sold my shares in Tempus Engineering, which thankfully raised more than I expected and we have a modest mortgage.
After a long hassle with the Oxfordshire planning authorities we were allowed to install solar panels on racks in the garden. Because the building is listed we couldn’t put them on the roof but they are quite discreet, tucked away from neighbours unless you are actually in the garden.
Beth changed jobs, which came out of the blue for me but she told me she’d been thinking about it for a long time.
She left Kingham School and started teaching at a comprehensive in Bourton-on-the-Water. She tells me she loves it but it sounds like a tough job to me.
Along with this change of career has been a change in our Sundays. Beth no longer goes to church. I have to say it always struck me as a bit odd that she went because she never mentioned anything religious on a day-to-day basis. It turns out it was expected of all the staff at the private school she used to teach at.
We now go for walks on Sunday and I cook dinner. I love cooking. I’ve even started a vegetable patch in the garden. All Beth does is stare at me dumbfounded as she watches me weed around my very orderly rows of carrots.
As for my so-called career, I’ve effectively taken a year off since the cloud incident. I’ve done quite a bit of work on the house; apart from the solar panels it’s been mainly insulation in the barn and replacing the windows. Triple glazed and super-tight seals. I love our windows.
I am going to start work again soon, consultancy work for large-scale wind and solar energy companies. It will involve a bit of travel but nothing like I was doing before.
I can’t say if my change of direction is as a result of reading my own book and contemplating what it’s clearly telling me, or if the events really did happen and that’s what changed my outlook.
And the Yuneec has been an endless worry.
I haven’t flown it since I got back from the cloud.
For a few weeks after the cloud day, I spent weekends with Ed taking it to pieces. Some of the fittings on it were baffling. I eventually had to go to a toolmaker in Milton Keynes and hand-make a tool to undo some of the holding bolts on the motor mounts.
Ed is really the only person who knows anything about my adventure and so far
he’s been very discreet. He’s also let me store some of the Yuneec components in his barn.
When Ed and I investigated the motor one night we were both a bit frightened by it. It’s essentially a doughnut-shaped alloy casing full of a peculiar mauve liquid. There are no obvious magnets or commutators, no solid axles or gear systems.
It’s just a pot of liquid. There are no power inlets or outlets and yet we know from seeing it in action this small device has incredible power.
We also removed what I can only assume was a battery pack, although again this turned out to be a small, pillow-sized container full of a yellow viscous liquid.
I have kept a small sample of each liquid in two jam jars and one day, maybe in a few years’ time, I’ll take them to a materials science professor I know who teaches at Imperial College London.
I’d love to know what it’s made of. The only thing holding me back is that I don’t want to be asked where it came from. I simply don’t know.
Grace is going to wake up soon, and I’ve got to get the lasagne I made out of the oven ready for when Beth gets home.
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