bottle included as she reached down to turn it so that he could see the label. “Recognize this?”
“Is that the one I bought you all those years ago?”
“It sure is. If you manage to have a sip of this, I’d say that’s 1999 and 1978 just about taken care of.”
He sipped, then quickly spat the champagne back into the glass. Some of it sprayed over their knees.
“What year did you say I got you this?”
“1978. Why?”
“Just taste it.”
She did, and her taste buds flinched, like sucking on a lemon.
“I thought wine was supposed to get better with age.” Her shoulders dropped with disappointment at the thought of all the years she’d been keeping it.
“Apparently not all of them,” he said, brushing his wet trousers. But he liked the sentiment. “Let’s say it still counts.”
* * *
The city rose around them as they pulled into the traffic. Buildings towered above them. Elizabeth couldn’t hear what was said as Tom leaned forward and spoke to the driver, but when he sat back, he turned to her.
“Are we on a time limit?”
“Sort of. Why?”
“Can we spare thirty minutes? I’ve got something I’d love to show you.” He watched as she checked her watch. “It would take care of 2004.”
The earliest wishes were imprinted on her memory, but some of the later ones were harder to recall. What was 2004?
“I suppose half an hour is fine,” she said.
“Great. Driver,” he called through to the front. “We are a go with the history tour. Fasten your seat belts,” he said, as if there were a car full of people. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
* * *
They started with an office building, then a bridge, followed by part of a school. All places he had in some way helped build. That year, along with the flower and the wish, he had left her a little model of a house. They finished up parked in a narrow lane in the shadow of the Barbican Estate, and had been driving around the city for much longer than half an hour.
“And you built all that?” she asked as they peered up at the towering apartment blocks.
“Well, not really. But I worked on the central tower.”
It was so tall she couldn’t see the top from her position in the car. Everywhere felt so different from their village, but somehow with Tom there with her it didn’t feel strange. It was, perhaps, how she had once imagined her life would be. “You came a long way, Thomas Hale.”
“Not bad for a fisherman, eh?” he asked.
“You finally got to live your dream.”
“Well, one of them.”
“And we still have a lot of little notes to get through.”
“Yes,” he said, and she wondered for a moment what was wrong. Was he sad? Tired by it all? Fearful of his own mortality? She couldn’t read him. “But some of those wishes might be harder to fulfill than others, wouldn’t you say?”
Her aged hands shook in her lap. “Yes, Tom. Some of them will be almost impossible.”
* * *
That afternoon he found himself in a private cinema screening—Armageddon, the movie, and his wish, from 1998. At the time he had thought it was wonderful, and although he was fighting back a tear as the credits rolled, Elizabeth seemed distinctly unmoved. “It was totally unbelievable,” she said, and left the building shaking her head, hurrying as best she could to get to their next stop. But even though they hadn’t done all that much to expend energy, he didn’t have much to spare. The limousine pulled up on Fleet Street, and moments later the driver’s door opened.
“Are we there already?” A weary breath fluttered through his lips. “I thought we might head home for a rest soon.”
“A rest?” she said, pulling on her shoes. “You’ve been sitting down all day, and we’ve just been stuck in this car for the best part of forty-five minutes, thanks to traffic.”
“It wasn’t that bad today.”
“Well, it’s not like Porthsennen. I didn’t expect it to take us so long to get from one place to the next.” When he didn’t relent, she sighed before asking, “Do you want to go home instead?”
“It’s not that I’m not keen. I’m just a bit tired, love. That’s all.”
“It was a mistake, wasn’t it? I should have known we couldn’t fit forty-nine years into a few hours.”
Her expression made him feel guilty; she had gone to so much effort, and all he could do was complain that he was tired. All those years