Chapter Text
“It’s just...it’s just not fair.”
It’s far from the first time Callum’s said the words tonight. The expression on Jay’s face is definitely getting more exasperated than it was earlier in the evening as he once again sadly shakes his head at Callum and shrugs.
“Look...Ben just needs time, that’s all, to sort his head out and that. He’ll get there, and then the two of you can sort things out.”
“No, that ain’t what I mean. I mean...” Callum trails off, staring despondently at his half-drunk can of lager. There’s a growing pile of empty cans on the coffee table, mostly down to him rather than Jay.
What did he mean?
He hadn’t meant to spend the evening getting drunk and maudlin. He’d thought he was handling it, that he was holding himself together ever since he’d found out the truth about what Ben had gone through. Approaching Ben in the café, going with him to the police station earlier today, walking home with him, he’d thought he was taking it all in his stride, being there for Ben with quiet determination and no expectations, giving Ben all the time and space he needed.
Then after he and Ben had parted and Callum had dragged his feet up to the empty flat by himself, he’d sat on the sofa, put his head in his hands, and sobbed and sobbed until Jay had come home and found him there. He didn’t even really understand what he was crying for; for Ben, for himself, for their marriage, for the whole sorry situation. Grieving for what should have been. But there was still something missing, something he couldn’t quite identify.
“But we were happy,” Callum says, finally putting his finger on it, the source of that gnawing feeling in his stomach.
That’s what isn’t fair. Ben’s retreated back to that old familiar mindset of blaming himself for everything that went wrong between them, back to believing Callum’s too good for him, that they weren’t happy or would never have worked. But none of it’s true. It never has been.
“If it wasn’t for those scumbags who attacked us at New Year,” says Callum slowly, feeling his way towards the truth of it, “we would have been okay. We were fine before that, we were happy. That’s when it all went wrong, that’s when Ben started keeping stuff from me. That’s how Lewis” – he spits out the name – “could worm his way in.”
Jay’s shaking his head. “You can’t start thinking like that, mate. There’s no point in what ifs. Where do you stop? You might as well say...” He waves a hand in the air, searching for the words. “...if only Paul had never died, messing up Ben’s head. If only... If only Kathy had never ‘died’ so Ben got stuck with Phil in the first place. If only half the shit that’s happened to Ben – or to me or to you - had never happened. It’s pointless, right? It happened, we can’t change it.”
“Okay, but...what if Paul had never died?”
Jay groans, throwing his head back in despair.
“I just mean, it’s all down to those stupid little homophobic idiots, ain’t it? If they hadn’t done what they did... They didn’t just kill Paul, they messed up Ben’s life as well, messed up his head.”
“Yeah, well, if I were a billionaire I wouldn’t be here listening to your drunk nonsense – but I ain’t and I am. And if my dad hadn’t died then Ben wouldn’t be my brother now, but he is – and he’ll get through this, trust me. You’ll work things out.”
Callum doesn’t answer. There’s a burst of applause from the television, playing in the background. Some quiz show has started, a smiling host interviewing the contestants about their day jobs.
“The past is done with, right? You can’t change it. What matters is where you go from here. And personally,” says Jay with a grunt, heaving himself off his chair, “I’m going to bed. Suggest you do the same.”
He claps Callum on the shoulder in silent solidarity on his way out the room.
“And finally, contestant number four!” chirps the excessively cheery quiz show host on the TV, and Callum has an irrational urge to punch the man in his perfect white teeth.
“It’s just not fair,” Callum grumbles once again to the empty room, feeling another uncontrollable urge to punch the air, or the universe, or God if such an entity exists for the fundamental unfairness of all of it. Part of him feels a surge of anger towards Jay for pointing out you can’t change the past, for the crime of being annoyingly, smugly correct.
What would Callum change if he could?
He’d stop Ben from going through this horrible ordeal to start with, that was a given. He’d punch that bastard in the face the first time he saw him, and another white-hot flash of rage sparks through him at the thought of it.
But it wasn’t just Lewis. Ben had been right about that at least. Things had gone wrong long before that, ever since the attack at the start of the year which had sent Ben spiralling into fear and then violence. They’d stopped understanding each other, somehow, like they were communicating on different frequencies and struggling to hear each other through the static.
He’d do things differently, if he could go back, Callum tells the empty lager can held between his hands. Not surprisingly it doesn’t reply, though there’s another burst of applause from the television as the quiz gets underway, the host asking contestants which topics they’d like to come up.
No, he’d do things differently, he’d react differently, but if Callum really had the power to go back and change everything, he’d stop it all from happening in the first place. All that pain and fear, destroying Ben’s life, stopping Ben from thinking clearly... No one should have to live with that. He’d do anything to take it away from Ben if he could.
“And what would you wish for, if you had the choice?” comes the voice of the gameshow host from the TV in the corner. Callum doesn’t even have to think about his answer.
“I wish Paul had never died,” he says out loud to the empty room. “I wish Ben had never had to go through that.”
“Done!”
Callum looks up in surprise and a little amusement to see the smiling face of the host looking directly at him through the screen, as though he’s looking right down the camera lens.
“Best of luck! You’re gonna need it.”
And Callum’s last coherent thought before the world goes black is, what the hell kind of quiz show is this?
He wakes up with the kind of hangover that could act as a public health warning about the dangers of mixing your drinks past the age of thirty. Throat dry, head banging, bladder full, he lies in the warm cocoon of his duvet and regrets all his life choices.
Then, through the fog of his hangover, Callum remembers why he was drinking last night, even if the exact details of the evening are a bit fuzzy, and with a groan he pushes his head further into his pillow, eyes screwed shut and a great wave of sadness and anger rolling over him. Sadness for Ben; anger at the universe that keeps letting him down.
He's unable to stay wallowing in self-pity for long though, an insistent buzzing noise cutting through his thoughts as his phone vibrates somewhere next to him. He rolls over to reach out and turn off the alarm, vaguely cursing himself for not remembering to turn it off last night, but his flailing hand fails to connect with his phone. Instead, he hits his hand on something sharp and hard that shouldn’t be there, the pain waking him all the way up and bringing him to his senses.
“Ow!”
Sitting up and rubbing the bruise beginning to form on his hand, Callum stares in bafflement at the sight of the bedside table that had caused it.
Not his bedside table. Not his bed, he realises as his brain finally catches up to what his eyes are seeing. Not his bedroom.
Not a room he’s ever seen before; it’s small and cramped, with too much cheap furniture crammed against the walls. There’s a window, or rather half a window, throwing some natural light onto the plain beige walls. It was clearly once a larger room, but someone’s partitioned part of it off to create a tiny en-suite shower room that Callum can just glimpse through an open door.
Just how drunk was he last night?
Panic setting in, Callum scrambles out of the strange bed, pushing the duvet away, and takes stock as he stands on the unfamiliar carpet. Thoughts of Ben’s ordeal lurking in his mind, he’s relieved to find he’s fully clothed at least in a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, and he feels normal, as far as he can tell. Hungover, but no different from a usual hangover – though he’s never been drugged before, so he’s not sure he’d be able to tell if he had been.
Looking around, there’s no sign of the proper occupant of this room, whoever they are. The other side of the double bed doesn’t seem to have been slept in, and Callum’s mobile is the only one in sight. Callum grabs for it with shaking hands, unplugging the charger and swiping it open.
It only adds to his confusion though. The phone is his own, familiar mobile, but the lockscreen is a bland, abstract swirl of colours that clearly came with the phone. It’s not the picture of Lexi and Ben he’s had for years, nor the picture of baby Roland he’d been using since the split from Ben.
He opens up the Maps app quickly to establish where he is – and is further baffled to discover he’s miles away from Walford, somewhere well south of the river – and then goes straight to Contacts in order to call Jay and ask what the hell happened last night.
Jay’s number isn’t there.
He stares for a moment in baffled incomprehension, then starts scrolling through his contacts in mounting disbelief.
No Jay. No Ben. No Lola or Lexi or Kathy or Phil or Whitney or Rainie... In fact there’s very few names in his contact list at all, and most of them he’s never heard of. With unsteady fingers, he chooses the one name he does recognise from the list, and rings it.
When the call connects and Stuart’s familiar voice comes through, it’s all Callum can do not to burst into tears of relief at the sound.
“Callum? Is that you, mate?”
“Stu, thank god.” Callum’s voice is unsteady and sounds wrong, echoing in that strange room, but he swallows down the fear and panic and starts talking. “Something really weird is going on here, bruv – I dunno if I’ve had a bang to the head or what, but I’ve woken up in some stranger’s house and all the numbers in my phone have, like, vanished or something...”
“Callum, slow down, mate.” Stuart’s voice, warm and sounding faintly amused, helps Callum calm down a bit. He takes some deep breaths as Stuart goes on. “Say that again?”
“I’ve woken up in a strange house,” says Callum, a bit slower and calmer now, though the panic is threatening to creep back at any moment. “I think it’s an HMO maybe... I don’t know where I am though, looks like Balham or Tooting Bec, somewhere round there...”
“Sounds like a good night out to me then, bruv, good on ya,” says Stuart, and he’s definitely amused now. “Bout time you started having some fun. What’s the lucky lady like?”
“Lady,” echoes Callum blankly. He sits back down on the bed again, his legs suddenly no longer able to hold him up.
“What, you still drunk from last night? You’ve pulled, you muppet. Ain’t she there?”
“Stu,” says Callum, rubbing one hand over his face and wondering wildly if this is a dream and when he might wake up if so, “if this is meant to be funny, I’m really not in the mood.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the call; then Stuart’s voice comes spitting out of the speaker again, dark and angry. “If I’m trying to be funny? I ain’t heard from you in months, bruv, years, and now you’re calling me out the blue just to wind me up and then have a go? Well, fine, I get it – you’ve got your own life to lead, you don’t need your big brother poking his nose in. Whatever joke you’re playing, go play it on someone else, yeah?”
“Wait, Stuart, wha--?”
But the line has already gone dead, Stuart hanging up on him in one of those abrupt mood swings Callum’s never quite got the hang of. He stares at the dark phone screen for a long moment, overwhelmed and unable to move.
The ‘bang on the head’ theory he’d mentioned to Stuart was beginning to sound more and more plausible. Perhaps he’s lost his memory. But no, his brain rejects the idea almost as soon as he thinks of it, and a quick glance at his phone confirms that the date is today’s date. It wouldn’t make any sense – a future in which he barely speaks to Stuart and has lost contact with all of his friends and loved ones in Walford is bad enough, but a future in which Stuart has somehow forgotten he’s gay?
He needs to get home.
The idea is an overwhelming one. It consumes all of his brain and blocks all other thoughts as he stands up again and looks mechanically for something to wear. He doesn’t let himself think about the fact that he can’t find the clothes he remembers wearing yesterday, but the wardrobe and chest of drawers are full of items in his size that look like...his clothes, actually. He finds a pair of jeans on the floor that have his wallet in the back pocket, and he pulls them on without thinking too hard about that, either, or the fact that the shirt he steals from the wardrobe fits him perfectly and smells of his cologne.
Nor does he dwell on the fact that the wallet isn’t his wallet, his leather one which was a present from Ben with a picture of Lexi inside and his initials on the front; the wallet currently in his pocket is a cheap one fraying at the corners, but it still has his driving licence and all his cards inside. He tries not to think about the keys with a West Ham keyring he picks up from the bedside table, lying on top of a book of football stats, nor the mobile phone he slides into his pocket, with its missing numbers and odd background pic.
He needs to go home. The thought echoes round and round his mind as he leaves the room, stomach churning and on high alert for a stranger appearing any moment to ask what he’s doing there. He needs to go home. He just needs to get back to Walford and talk to Jay and everything will be fine.
A stranger does appear as Callum finds the stairs in this big old Victorian house – definitely an HMO – and heads down them. But the young man carrying a bowl of cereal upstairs in two careful hands does no more than nod at Callum on the way past, completely uninterested in him. With shaky breath and a head full of static, Callum flees the house and heads straight for the nearest tube station.
It takes him a good 45 minutes or more with two changes to get to Walford, and his mind definitely isn’t any calmer by the time he gets there. He had nothing else to do on the journey but scroll endlessly through his phone.
It’s weirdly...empty.
It’s not just the lack of his usual contacts, there’s a lack of everything. No videos of Lexi dancing. No pictures of him and Ben together, the ones he’d never been able to delete no matter how much it hurt to look at them. None of his group chats or texts are there. No sign of the long running chat he’s had with Jay about football for the past three years. The phone doesn’t even seem to have the fantasy football app they use on it.
There’s not a lot in their place, either. A text exchange with Stuart from March where he wishes him a happy birthday. Messages with someone called Kevin, who seems to be some kind of employer, texting Callum to ask if he can cover a shift at short notice. Apart from those, the most recent message is from a dental practice, reminding him about a check up.
It’s the mobile phone of someone who has almost nothing in their life. No friends, no family to speak of, and no husband – estranged or otherwise.
Callum is shaking and shivering like he’s got the flu by the time he gets off the train at Walford East. He’s almost relieved to find the tube station still looks exactly the same as it ever has, and his footsteps speed up until he’s almost running under the railway bridge, desperate to get home.
Then he stops dead in the middle of the street. The relief dies in his chest.
Walford is...gone.
Okay, that’s a little melodramatic, it’s not gone exactly. The Argee Bhajee, the old Indian restaurant that’s been derelict for as long as Callum’s lived here, is gone however. So is the Prince Albert, and all the other familiar buildings on that walk up from the tube station towards Bridge Street. In their place is a shiny new development of plate glass and steel, looking like every other new development in London; offices above, and shops below.
He hurries past a Pizza Express and an All Bar One, footsteps speeding up as his mind refuses to take in the sights around him, the odd mix of familiar and alien. The pharmacy and the bookies are still there where they’ve always been, but the market seems to be totally gone; not even the empty skeletons of stalls in their old familiar places. He turns the corner into Bridge Street and almost chokes with relief at the sight of the neon Kathy’s sign still shining proudly in the café window; but his heart almost stops again as he looks the other way and sees the Vic.
Or lack of Vic. Where the pub should be is surrounded by boards, with loud construction noises coming from behind a large sign advertising Luxury 1 & 2 bed apartments – coming soon!
He hurries past with eyes averted, static in his head and focused solely on his goal; the comforting and familiar front door of 29 Albert Square on the other side of the gardens. Home.
His key doesn’t work.
It takes a while for Callum to accept this. It’s stupid, really, perhaps he should have expected it after everything else he’s seen. But in increasing panic he tries the key this way and that; jamming it in with force, gingerly easing it into the lock and trying to coax it round. There are other keys on his key ring, but they don’t work either, though he tries and tries again almost robotically, unable to accept this final straw.
“Are you okay?” says a concerned, familiar voice and Callum almost shakes with relief as he turns his head to see Whitney standing on the front step of no. 31, the Slater house next door.
“Whit, thank god,” Callum says, and he can hear the tears threatening to break through in his own voice. He clears his throat and goes on, “Yeah, I’m fine, but something really weird—” He doesn’t get any further though, Whitney interrupting him as she takes a step towards him, wide eyed.
“How do you know my name?”
“Whit.” He huffs out a laugh. “It’s me.”
Whitney doesn’t look reassured by this. She moves closer to her own front door, one hand reaching into her handbag, face full of fear.
Callum’s heart sinks.
“I don’t know you,” says Whitney, chin up and full of bravado, though her eyes give her away. “My uncle lives the other side, yeah? And he’s police. So either you tell me how you know my name or I call him right now.” She clutches her fingers around the mobile phone she’d taken out of her bag. She doesn’t look like she’s kidding.
A tiny spark of self preservation clears some of the fog in Callum’s brain. Whatever’s going on here, Whitney clearly, genuinely doesn’t seem to know him and is more than capable of calling the police. The last thing he needs right now is to sit in a police cell and attempt to explain what’s happening when he doesn’t understand any of it himself.
Is he even a police officer himself in this backwards world? The messages on his phone would seem to say not, and he hadn’t seen his Met ID in that room he’d woken up in this morning.
Callum flashes what he hopes is a reassuring smile at Whitney and does his best to look unthreatening as he backs away from what should be his own front door.
“Sorry...I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I was, um, looking for Jay – Jay Brown?”
“You’re looking for Jay Brown,” says Whitney flatly, an odd expression on her face.
“Yeah!” he says, too quick, too loud, too happy as hope flares at the fact she seems to know what he’s talking about. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“Not really, no.” Whitney’s suspicion seems to be growing, her face set hard. “I ain’t seen him in years, no one has. He moved away years back.”
So much for hope. “Right.” Callum feels frozen in place, the terror rising up again and threatening to overwhelm him, this time with a creeping sense of danger behind it. He’s isolated and alone here, with no one knowing him and nowhere to run to. His home, his safe place twisted out of all recognition. He blinks back the hot prickling behind his eyes as Whitney glares at him.
“I don’t know who the hell you are, mate, but I’m giving you thirty seconds to get out of here before I call the police.”
“I’ll, um...” He backs away with hands held high, stammering out apologies. “I’ll go. I’m so-I’m sorry.”
Callum flees, feeling Whitney’s eyes boring into his back as he goes, following him across the gardens and up Bridge Street. He heads towards the tube station, not knowing what else to do. The thread that had pulled him all the way here to Walford, to home, has been cut loose and flapping and he has absolutely no idea what to do next—
“Oi, mate, watch where you’re going!”
He’d nearly collided into someone coming out the café in his panic, barely aware of his surroundings, though the voice was friendly rather than furious. Callum starts to splutter more apologies anyway, but the words die in his throat as he looks up to see Kush Kazemi – a very much alive and more than that, not dead – Kush Kazemi frowning gently at him.
“You all right, mate?” says Kush, eyes narrowing in slight concern –
- though how can it be Kush, Kush is dead, he’s definitely dead, Callum saw the report –
- no doubt because of the way Callum is just standing there, staring in shocked silence. Callum manages to pull himself together –
- but Kush is alive, how is Kush alive, who else might be alive –
- manages to pull himself together enough to nod his head and even twitch his mouth into something resembling a smile. It seems to be enough for Kush, who nods his own head and wanders off, though not without one final suspicious look at Callum before he goes.
Callum hurries up Bridge Street as fast as he can go, the previous desperate need to get to Walford flipped on its head to become a desperate need to get out of Walford, away from this world where everything is wrong and nothing makes sense.
He’ll never know what impulse makes him glance to his right up Turpin Road rather than turning straight to the left to head back to the tube station. Some sort of niggling subconscious thought perhaps. Whatever it is, when his eyes fall on the familiar sight of the funeral parlour with very unfamiliar signage, the final piece of the puzzle finally clicks into place.
He stands stock still, a vague feeling of vertigo like the world is falling down around him keeping his feet planted firmly to the floor.
~Coker & Grandson~
Not Coker & Mitchell, as it was when Callum worked there, or Coker & Sons as it changed back to at some point. Coker and Grandson.
The Cokers’ grandson.
Paul.
The memory of his words from last night, sat on his sofa talking to the TV, flash back into his head and the world spins furiously round him again.
Somehow...he’s wished himself into a world where Paul never died.
Well. Shit.