Emma, this is for you. It's only fair you should know what happened. That much I owe you.

To begin with, I was a lot less confident than I wanted to admit that it was going to work. It was only an idea, and maybe a crazy one. But it's like they say about being paranoid: it doesn't stop people plotting against you. In the same way, being crazy doesn't mean you may not be right.

The trance was no problem. Nor was the regression. And those depth reports you wanted were very useful. Having to call out numbers like that worked a little like jet thrust, pushing me back and down, helping me figure out where I was and how fast I was going.

The past flashed by like a video on rewind, only I had the feeling I was inside the picture instead of watching it on a screen. For a while I felt like a man drowning. I started to panic.

That was when I lost contact with you. And when Richard went off after Rick to rescue him. From that point on they became one.

So who am I?

Well, now, that's the question, isn't it?

***

Scaring him awake with that apocalyptic 'fire in the skies' scenario was pure clumsiness. I was searching around in his unconscious for something I might be able to use, when I somehow drove this thing out of the undergrowth. It was like stepping on a sleeping rabbit: I scared myself as much as I scared him.

I tried my best to get his attention when he went downstairs and looked out at the garden in the moonlight, but all I managed was to make him want a cup of hot chocolate to soothe his nerves! Then there wasn't much I could do while he and Anne had their little scene in the kitchen and back in bed. Following which he fell into a deep sleep, and I had to lie low until Charlie came and told him that the cat was stuck on the roof.

The damn cat, of course, sensed something. That's why it lashed out at him. It sensed some alien presence — me — that scared the hell out of it.

I knew the fall was coming, so I braced myself, thinking I could maybe use the shock as a way of getting through to him. But he was too stunned to be aware of anything except the fact of his survival. The incident had scared him more than I had realised myself the first time around.

My next chance was when he looked in his mirror to shave. He was alone, still shaken up, but sufficiently recovered to be receptive. For a moment I thought I was getting through to him. He started consciously reflecting on what might have been ('Another couple of feet either way and it would have been like a coconut against concrete'). This provided an opening through which I might possibly have planted the idea in his mind that all the might-have-beens in his world were actual realities in other worlds. But then, sensing my presence unconsciously, he side-tracked the whole train of thought into that little waking nightmare about brain damage.

What I desperately needed was something that would affect what Anne did that morning. If only I could make him ask her some favour, to stop by a shop, post a letter — anything so that she would not be in her car at the time and place where the accident was due to happen.

But the idea had to seem to arise spontaneously within his own consciousness. I couldn't risk direct communication; there was no time to explain rationally everything that I would have had to explain.

The next time I came close to getting his attention was while he was driving to the office. The trouble was that I became so engrossed in leading his thoughts the way I wanted them to go that I forgot all about the truck that was due to come barrelling around the corner. His reactions were impressive. We were both alive, but I was no closer to my goal.

After that I couldn't find a crack through which to slip even half a thought into his mind. He was so scared by this second brush with death that his concentration became superhuman. His fainting spell in Crossfield's office was caused by me throwing all caution to the wind and screaming at him to listen while there was still time. He tried instinctively to shut me out, as he would a bad memory or an unseemly thought.

He knew at that moment — I know he knew! — that something in his head was urging him to call Anne, to make an excuse, any excuse, to prevent her going out in her car with Charlie that morning. And yet he wouldn't listen.

It was understandable, of course. And yet I would like to think that I, in his position, would have shown a little less rigidity and a little more imagination.

But how can I be sure? Did I ever, before this happened, really trust my imagination? We tend to think of it as no more than a distorting mirror of reality, a screen upon which cheap fantasies can be projected. How wrong we are. Imagination is the door to everything.

I knew that my last chance was in the men's room. By the time he got into the meeting and started doodling on his pad, it would be too late. I knew that I had to hit him with everything I had right there while he was dowsing his face with water and wondering what was wrong with him.

What I didn't know was how much I had to hit him with, or precisely what form it would take. I wasn't any more ready than he was for what actually happened.

Emma, this is new ground. This is where you lost 'Richard' as well as 'Rick' — because Rick needed all the help he could get. This is where this whole identity thing gets really mixed up.

He — the old Rick; the, if you like, original — was feeling like shit and looking at himself in the mirror wondering what the hell was wrong and (you'll remember this from what I wrote before) he gets the feeling that something is behind him and he whips around. There was nothing there the first time.

But this time . . . oh, boy!

I was there!

He stared. What little colour he had left in his face drained clear away and I thought he was about to pass out.

Frankly, I didn't feel too great myself. I didn't know how I'd got there. Will power? Desperation? Was I really there at all?

I could feel the floor under my feet and I could see my reflection in the mirror behind him.

I was wearing Richard's clothes!

And I had — I can't explain this, maybe you can — I had this great gash on my forehead, like I'd been hit, or I'd fallen. But hard. It looked nasty. Does that mean anything to you?

Anyway, there I was, feeling as surprised to be there as he was to see me. But I had the edge on him — just. I grabbed him by the wrist and said: 'Don't ask questions! Just come with me.'

You may ask why did I have to drag him along. Wouldn't it have been simpler just to get into a car — any car — and take care of things myself? I knew where Anne was. I could have gone straight there without having to argue with him all the way, without having him maybe do something stupid and ruin everything. Why didn't I do that?

The answer is I don't know. I'm not even sure that I consciously thought about it at the time. What I do know is what I felt. And what I felt was that I was in some strange way bound to him. I knew at that moment that I was real to him, but I didn't know whether I'd be equally real to Anne. I couldn't be sure that if I tried to run out of there on my own and tell her not to drive her car that morning . . . I couldn't be sure that she'd even know that I was there, let alone listen to me. And I didn't have time to find out.

'Don't pass out!' I said, my first words to him. (I could say my first words to myself, but why complicate matters?) 'I can't explain,' I went on, 'at least not now. Anne's in danger. She'll die if you don't come with me.'

He — thank God, or Whatever — was too shaken to give me an argument. It was all he could do to stay on his feet and control the speed at which his head was spinning. He looked like his mouth wouldn't work. Or maybe his brain. Or both.

'Don't panic, it's all right,' I said, several times. I wanted to shout but didn't know if the others would be able to hear me or not through the door, so I kept my voice down. 'I'm going mad!' he said. His hands had gone up to his head, like he was trying to keep his skull from splitting open.

'You're not going mad,' I told him. 'What's happening is going to take a lot of understanding, but you will understand it. Right now we've got to get out of here.'

I looked around for a way. We could have just raced through Crossfield's office, but I didn't want to risk the tangle. Can you imagine? One guy goes to the can and comes out twins.

Or, equally undesirable, even if the others couldn't see me, they'd see him looking like a man demented and send for security!

There was a good-sized window, steel-framed, partially open. I pushed it and looked out. 'There's a ledge. We can crawl along it to the fire escape. Come on!'

He still didn't move. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. 'Don't think about it! Just do it! It's Anne's life!'

His eyes searched mine. I saw raw fear in them. 'I know,' I said. 'It's impossible, but it's happening. You're not going mad, and you're not dreaming. But Anne is going to be crushed to death in an automobile accident in half an hour. I've been trying to warn you since you woke up in the middle of the night. Everything that's been happening has been me. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

He nodded dumbly, as though something, somehow, was getting through to him. I half pulled, half pushed him out the window and on to the ledge. He was starting to shake, and for one awful moment I thought he was going to lose it right there — four floors above a small courtyard of solid concrete.

'Get a grip!' I hissed back at him, struggling to turn and make a grab if he keeled over. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then nodded that he was all right. At least he didn't suffer from vertigo. That much I knew for a fact — from the inside.

We didn't exchange more than three words until we were down the fire escape. The last section of it made so much noise as it swung down that I thought we were certain to be caught. In fact only one person looked out to see what was going on — Crossfield's assistant, Gaines, appeared at the window we'd just climbed out of. Luckily he didn't see me — I'd just stepped into the shadow of a doorway. But he called out, 'Rick, what the hell are you doing?'

Rick looked up, made a sort of vague gesture, didn't know what to answer. 'Come on,' I said. 'The garage.' He followed me into the darkness.

'Give me your keys.' He fumbled in his pockets and handed them over. My own keys to my own car.

He didn't take his eyes off me as I started her up, backed out of the visitor space, and swung around for the exit. I felt my face crease in a smile. I couldn't help it.

'You're looking at me like I'm a ghost,' I said. 'Maybe I am. I'm a little unsure about my exact status — but I'm here.'

'How . . . ?'

'Many Worlds theory. It's all true. Everett was right.'

'I don't . . . '

'Of course you don't. Who would?'

'But why . . . ?'

'Because if Anne dies, you make a leap into a parallel universe. And believe me, we can all do without what follows.'

'But how come you . . . ?'

'I time travelled. Used hypnotic regression to get back into my own head. Your head.'

'But you're not in my head.'

'Don't assume. Don't assume anything.'

He was silent for a moment, finally taking his eyes off me and looking out at the world flashing by. 'Where are we going?'

'The accident happens on Pilgrim Hill. She's going up and there's this rig coming down. I figure if we cut through Fishergate we can intercept her before she gets there.'

Again he hesitated a moment before speaking. His eyes flickered my way, and again I saw fear in them. But a different sort of fear this time.

'Will it work?'

'I know it will.' I didn't feel as confident as I tried to sound, but what else was I going to say?

He continued to look at me. 'What happened to you? How did you get that cut on your head?'

I fingered the cut, looked at the blood on my hand. I'd forgotten about it.

'I don't know,' I said. I looked down at my clothes. They were the clothes I'd been wearing in prison. But I didn't know how I got that cut. It worried me. I don't know why, but I felt there was something wrong. Still, I didn't have time to vex about it then.

We made good time through the traffic. I jumped no lights and took no risks. The last thing I wanted was a siren and a cop waving me — us — over.

Rick, the 'old' Rick, remained quiet. He was reacting just as I hoped I would have to a seemingly impossible situation: ask a few critical questions, then stay calm and let things unfold.

'You didn't tell me about Charlie,' he said after a while. 'Is Charlie in the car with her?'

'Yes, he is. But he's strapped in the back seat, as always, and comes out without a scratch. Anne's the one who takes the full impact.'

He fell silent again. Then: 'What do we do when we see her?'

'We stop her!'

'Then what? Do we both get out and tell her what you've just told me?'

'Let's worry about that later. Right now let's just find her.'

I looked at my watch. In a moment we'd be nearing the foot of Pilgrim Hill. She couldn't possibly have got there yet, so I figured that if we pulled on to the hard shoulder and waited we'd be in good time to stop her.

'We can't just park here,' he said. 'You know what the cops are like. If they see us . . . '

'I know.' I reached under the dash to release the hood. 'Pretend you're working on the engine. I'll watch the road.'

'We'll both watch the road,' he said.

'Okay — but not standing there like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or she'll freak!'

He ducked under the open hood, peering around the edge, while I stood by the road scanning the two lanes of cars that were approaching the long, curving gradient up Pilgrim Hill.

I checked my watch again. She should be coming into view any second. I couldn't see her.

A shiver went down my spine. Could I have got it wrong? Was there any other direction she could have been coming from? I raced through all the possibilities, but couldn't think of one. Aside from she'd been going down the hill and made an illegal U-turn. But she wouldn't do that. She was a careful driver. And with Charlie in the car . . . !

Then I saw her. The pale green Deux Chevaux was in the outside lane between two other cars. A truck was coming up on the inside lane, and I suddenly realised that if I didn't move fast it was going to block our view.

I shouted. 'She's there! Quick!'

He took in the situation at a glance, and started running in the direction of the traffic to try and catch her as she came around the truck.

But her lane slowed and the inside one kept moving. I ran against the traffic, waving furiously, shouting. She didn't see me.

Then her lane picked up speed and she disappeared from my view. I looked at the other Rick. He'd realised what was happening and was jumping up and down waving his arms. Suddenly a smaller van in front of the truck blocked his view. He started to run, one way, then another, finally diving into the traffic and triggering an angry blaring of horns.

It was no good. She was past and we'd missed her! To my alarm, I realised that the truck was pulling in. I saw it was a breakdown truck. The driver had seen our hood up and was signalling an offer of help.

The other Rick was already racing back towards me, white with fear, screaming something I couldn't make out. He slammed down the Mustang's hood and wrenched open the door.

The keys were in the ignition and he was already behind the wheel and gunning the engine when I leapt in alongside him. We almost skinned the driver of the breakdown truck as he was climbing from his cab. I looked around and saw him yelling something and giving us the finger, but he was unhurt.

Rick swung the car into the traffic without looking. He was hunched over the wheel and oblivious of the renewed blaring of horns and the wrenching of metal as we took somebody's front fender and lost our own rear one.

'Take it easy,' I yelled. 'We want to get there.'

He didn't answer. His eyes were staring like a madman's. I hung on to the dashboard and the door as he wove in and out of the traffic with no regard to his own or anyone else's safety.

A kind of lassitude came over me. I don't know if it was a reaction to fear, or just simply that my energies were spent. I'd come this far, and now things were out of my control. I felt myself fading, as if I were no longer wholly there.

The pale green Citroen came into view a few cars ahead, still in the outside lane and slowing as the climb steepened.

'There she is!' I pointed.

He had already seen her, and was pumping his horn and grinding gears as he tried to force a way between the two lanes. It didn't work.

I gave a yell of alarm as he swung back into the outside lane, making a beat-up old Chevy brake so hard that it was rear-ended by the car behind.

Suddenly we were speeding up the middle of the highway, straddling the centre line, heading into a long, blind turn against fast traffic coming down.

I cried out. 'For Christ's sake watch out! It happens just here . . . '

Then, just as we drew level with Anne's car, I saw it — the truck that was going to kill her. It was going fast, too fast, but it seemed to be under control. For a moment I thought it wasn't going to happen. I thought we were going to get away with it.

Then, for no reason I could see, the truck swerved towards us, its rig coming around with a terrible slow-motion effect, starting to jack-knife.

Then the impact!

I felt myself hurtling through the air, and everything went black.

***

When I came to, I was lying by the roadside and somebody was putting something soft under my head. I looked around.

There were no cops or ambulances, but the traffic was stopped in both directions and people were crowding out of the vehicles to see what had happened. Obviously I'd only been unconscious for a few seconds.

I couldn't see Anne. I didn't know whether she and Charlie had escaped the crash, or whether we'd all finished up in it together — the truck, the Mustang, and her Citroen. For all I knew, I might have just made things worse by my meddling and killed Charlie, too.

Then I saw them. She was carrying Charlie in her arms and pushing through the crowd towards me. She looked stricken, as though she'd seen the whole thing and was sure I must be dead.

But then she saw my eyes open, looking at her. I saw her give a little cry of relief. I couldn't hear it, but I knew how it sounded. This was Anne. My Anne! I knew the sound that came from her throat when her lips moved like that.

She ran to my side, still holding Charlie, and knelt by me.

'Rick, my darling! Are you all right?'

'I'm fine,' I said. I felt my neck move. And my head. I shifted my legs a fraction. I wasn't paralysed.

'Lie still. There's an ambulance on its way. Oh, Rick, what on earth were you doing . . . ?'

She had put Charlie down and was dabbing at a cut on my head. Charlie was holding on to her, silent and wide-eyed with fear and incomprehension.

'Everything's okay, Charlie. Don't be scared,' I told him.

But at the back of my mind a dreadful question was starting to hammer at me like a migraine.

Where was Charlie's 'other' father? Anne's 'other' husband?

Was he still in the car? Buried in the wreckage?

Dead? Alive?

Had no one found him yet?

What would happen when they did? What would I say?

From the moment I found myself standing in that washroom with my identical twin, I hadn't thought any further forward than preventing the accident. I certainly hadn't thought about what Anne was going to do with two husbands. Or Charlie with two fathers.

I suppose that, in some instinctive way, I figured that those kind of logical contradictions were impossible. They couldn't be sensibly thought about, therefore they couldn't happen.

Wasn't that what Tickelbakker had said? 'Anything possible can happen. But not anything conceivable.'

Was it possible that the laws of physics would allow such an absurdity?

But then they seemed already to have allowed it. There had been two of us.

I heard sirens, running feet, the voices of authority. A moment later I was surrounded by cops and paramedics.

'What about the other guy?' I said. 'How is he?'

The paramedic looked alarmed, like he'd missed something vital. 'What other guy?'

'In the car. The one who was driving.'

A cop loomed over us. 'There was nobody else in that car, buddy. You were driving. We'll talk about that later. Now get him to the hospital.'

I didn't argue. Warning lights were going on in my brain. Stay quiet, I told myself. Don't make the same mistake twice. Take your time, let things unfold. Don't give them any excuse to call you crazy.

It was then, as they lifted me on to the stretcher, that I looked down at the rest of my body. I only caught a glimpse as they were wrapping a blanket around me, but it was enough.

Emma, if you ever get this, you're not going to believe it. But you are going to get it. And in some way that will make you believe it.

I'll find a way. I know I can do it. Because now I know — really know — that anything's possible.

Anything.

What I saw, Emma, when I looked down at myself, was this:

I was wearing his clothes.

Let me try and make this absolutely clear. At the moment the accident happened, the Rick/Richard that you knew, and whom I have been referring to as 'I', was wearing the clothes that Richard had been wearing in jail: blue jeans and a thick grey sweater.

Rick — the Rick we had come back to warn — was wearing a dark business suit that morning, with a pink shirt and a tie in red and black and with a touch of blue.

And that's what I found myself looking down at as they lifted me on to the stretcher.

The suit, the shirt and tie were torn and smeared with blood and dirt, but they were his clothes!

And I was in them.

So who the hell was 'I' now?

***

'Rick . . . ?'

'Mmmm . . . ?'

'I don't believe you.'

'I can't help that.'

We were in bed back at Long Chimneys. Miraculously, I only had a few cuts and bruises, and they let me go home that night.

'But . . . '

I kissed her.

'Don't interrupt.'

'Sorry. You were saying.'

'Believing it in theory isn't the same as believing it for real.'

I sighed and stroked her hair, pulling her closer. 'You know what I think?' I said. 'I don't think it's important.'

'How can you say that?' She looked up at me, and there was a note of protest in her voice. 'You abandon your meeting at the bank, climb out of a window so they'll probably think you're a lunatic and never lend you another penny — and all because you had this sudden "feeling" that I was going to have an accident.'

'A feeling that was strong enough', I reminded her, 'to take me to exactly the spot where you happened to be, and which I couldn't have possibly known about — and at exactly the moment that a truck burst a tyre and jackknifed in the road. Now, if you've any other explanations besides telepathy, I'd like to hear them.'

She was silent. We made love again. There was nothing more to say.

***

Be honest, Emma. What would you have done in my place? Tell the truth? I doubt it.

I'd given things a lot of thought in the ambulance and in the hospital. Finally I came to a conclusion:

I am whoever I want to be.

And I want to be Charlie's father and Anne's husband. Here, in this life, where everything is just the way it was — with one exception.

Me.

But that's my secret. No one will ever know.

Anyway, I couldn't tell the truth even if I wanted to. You see, no one ever saw the two of us together. Not even the driver of the breakdown truck. He saw only one man at the roadside, and one man driving off like a lunatic.

Don't ask me how all this can be. It just is.

I'd rather be accused of driving like a lunatic than sounding like one.

***

Actually, Emma, there's something else that I can't tell anyone but you.

I've learned how to do it at will.

Leap universes.

Weeeeeee-eeeeee-eeeee-eeee-eee!!!

It's amazing.

You remember how I said to Tickelbakker that maybe the human mind was capable of doing for itself all the weird stuff that it dreams up? He thought I was losing it, suffering from shock, so I didn't push the point.

But I was serious. And now I've proved it.

Emma, I've been visiting other universes. Once you've done it a couple of times, it's relatively easy. You don't need to be hypnotised. You don't even have to meditate. All it takes is a moment's concentration. Of a very special kind, admittedly. But it's not difficult. My technique isn't perfect yet and I sometimes miss the target universe. But I've learned something very important:

You can't change anything.

All you can do is transplant yourself into one of the alternatives.

For instance, this universe that I'm in now, the one I use as home base, is not the same as the one in which Anne dies. It branches off from that one at the point where 'I' get back and confront myself in the washroom at the bank. From that moment on, I'm in a different universe. Everything in it is different, even if only minutely. This is the universe where Anne does not die.

Correction, one of the universes where she does not die. The Anne who survives is as close to the other Anne — my Anne — as a clone, but she's not the same Anne.

And that other universe, the one where Anne dies, is still there. I'm still a widower looking after Charlie in it. I still have the dream of becoming part of Richard again and killing Anne and Harold. But, in that universe, I wake up from it. It's just a bad dream.

And they do fine — that Rick and Charlie. I stayed in his head just long enough to be sure. He gets over the Emma thing in a month or two, and even agrees to be Harold's best man at the wedding. That's partly because by then he's met a girl who . . . but that's another story.

The point I'm making, Emma, is that you can never get back to where you were. Even if I got back into the 'me' that you were dealing with on that day when I died, from that moment on 'we' would be in a different universe, you and I, with a different 'me' and a different 'you'. Only marginally different. But all the same, different.

That's the one frustration. You can't go back. The universe you want to change goes on just the way it would have — except that 'would have' is a distortion caused by a language that was neither formed out of, nor is capable of dealing with, the reality I am talking about.

God, Emma, I know that in shrink talk these are the ravings of a madman. But you're different. That's why I want to tell you all this. (If only I could. Incidentally, Emma, in one universe you and I are married. In another we're lovers. There's one where we . . . but no, that must be 'their' little secret.)

By the way, there's another thing I want to tell you. I've now learned how to move backwards and forwards in time — not as far in either direction as I'd like yet, but I'm improving. I think, if I wanted to, I could spend weeks, months or even years in one of my other lives, then return to home base where no time at all had passed. If I kept on doing it, it would be a form of immortality. Almost. But I'm not sure I want that. Left to themselves, all the versions of me will come to their natural end. Maybe that's how I'll leave them.

Still, for the moment, I'm enjoying the travelling. Some of the small differences between neighbouring universes can be interesting, but they can also get boring after a while. It's a little like an endless game of Trivial Pursuit. You know — who got the Vivien Leigh role in that 'other' version of Gone With The Wind? Or who was president in place of Jimmy Carter? Who cares? And it doesn't make a lot of difference.

But some of the more distant universes . .. now they are extraordinary!

I think I've glimpsed Heaven. I know I've had a whiff of Hell.

They exist.

There is no 'Time'.

All things are contained within a grain of sand.

Many suspect these things are true.

But I know. I have seen and touched them.

Yet I always come back to Anne and Charlie.

And they never know I've been away.

***

Anne will be having the baby soon. I'm excited about that. Of course, I realise that he's (we know it's a boy) not entirely my son. Genetically, yes. But he's the son of the man Anne married, and I am — in a sense — someone else.

But I mustn't let myself dwell on that. When I find this depressing sense of secret alienation beginning to envelop me, I go on my travels again.

On the whole I stick now to a fairly small circle of other universes and other selves. These are all versions of what I call the 'essential me'. I suppose in a sense I've created them. They all branch off from various aspects of the me I was when I first talked to you. So in a sense they're all alienated from their worlds in the way I am from mine, which is comforting.

We're like friends popping into one another's houses without knocking. Our lives are so nearly identical that we amuse ourselves by comparing minute differences of detail. For instance, last Tuesday one of us sneezed at breakfast, but nobody else did. That was the only difference we could find.

Imagine, a whole universe hanging on a sneeze.

Sometimes, Emma, it's only thoughts like that that keep me sane.

***

I'm very tired now, Emma. I've finally reached you, but it wasn't easy.

The next question is, how am I going to make you believe me?

I think I know how.

Reach out and touch me, Emma. Reach out and touch my face. Now . . .