Coincidences

Chapter One

Monday 11th August 1997

Alice Turnbull lay in bed shaking, too scared to move,
perspiration cold on the back of her neck. A lock of her hair fell onto her
face, covering her eyes. Alice jumped. Her heart began to palpitate. As she
caught her breath, and moved the hair away from her face, she noticed something
red from the corner of her eye. Instinctively, she turned towards it, and
breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the luminous red numbers on her radio
alarm clock. It was 12.15 a.m. She seemed to be strangely drawn to stare at the
clock. As she did so, she felt that the clock was almost staring back at her in
the pitch black, as if it had taken on an existence of its own. Panic gripped
her.

Continuing to lie in bed, as her
eyes adjusted to the dark, she became more aware of her surroundings.
Everything was shrouded in shadows, and she had a hazy feeling as though she
were trapped in a nightmare and could not wake up. Alice felt frightened as she
recalled the noise that had shaken her from her sleep. It had sounded like an
explosion of some kind. Had someone broken into the flat? She lay frozen,
unable to move, straining her ears to detect any sound. But she could hear
nothing. Feeling restless and uneasy, she knew that she would not be able to
get back to sleep until she checked her flat to make sure she was alone—but she
still felt too scared to move.

After a few moments, she somehow
managed to summon up the courage to reach out of her bed and switch on the
bedside table lamp. Her arms continued to shake. The soft lighting of the lamp,
with its familiar orange glow, brought with it a warmth that comforted her.
Sitting up, she continued to listen for any noise. She noticed the time again:
it was 12.38 a.m. Slowly, she forced herself to get out of bed.

Putting on her slippers, she
hesitantly walked towards her bedroom door. It had been almost half an hour
since she had woken, but she still felt strangely scared and anxious. Taking
hold of the knob on her bedroom door, she nervously pulled it open. For a few
moments, she stood at the door, on constant alert for any sound, but all she
could hear was the beating of her heart in her ears and the ticking of the
kitchen clock. The clock had been a moving-in present from her mother when
Alice had left the family home six months ago. Each tick of the clock in the
darkness now reminded Alice of the countless times her mother had begged her to
come back home.
‘You shouldn’t be living alone, a girl of your age. I worry
about you’.
The clock seemed to tick more loudly as Alice’s fears grew.
Tick, tock, tick, tock... Taking a few steps towards the kitchen, she switched
on the light, hoping that it would somehow detract from the sound.

Finding courage in the light,
she proceeded to switch on all the lights she could find. Once she had checked
every corner of the flat, and assured herself there was no one else in there,
she could breathe easier. She returned to her bedroom, and although she had now
switched off all the other lights in the flat, she could not quite bring
herself to switch off her bedside table lamp. Her unusual awakening had
disturbed her inner peace, and she still felt an unnerving fear deep inside her
mind.

She could not forget the loud,
banging sound that had echoed in her head when she had awoken. She recalled
fragments of her dream: she had dreamt of a fire, she had heard screaming,
there had been lots of water... a sea. Eventually, Alice drifted back to sleep.

When her alarm clock sounded at
7.30 a.m. that morning, she woke up feeling refreshed. She had managed to sleep
well, despite the incident in the early hours. She remembered the fear she had
felt, but it had lost its hold on her; it was like an old memory, as distant as
a dream. If her bedside table lamp had not still been on, she would have
thought that she had dreamt last night’s disturbance. Alice shrugged, turned
over in bed and reached over to the lamp to switch it off.

***

At twenty-one years old, Alice Turnbull was a Law
student, due to start her final year of studies in October. During the summer
break, she worked part-time at a local bookstore;
Bairns’ Books
. On the
morning of the 11th of August, she was sitting in the kitchen of her flat,
eating her breakfast. It was 8 a.m. when she looked at the kitchen clock. The
round, bright yellow clock, which was framed with a hand-carved wooden hen,
hung benevolently from the blue, painted wall. The ticking of the clock, which
had been so loud in the darkness, was hardly audible now above the daytime
sounds of people rushing off to work. Turning away from the clock, she almost
laughed at herself for being afraid of the ticking during the night. Casually,
she reached over and switched on her portable radio. Yawning, she continued to
eat her corn flakes. The news on the radio told of a plane crash into the
Atlantic Ocean. Alice was only half-listening to the radio as she thought about
what she would be doing that day, and was at the same time thinking that there
always seemed to be chat or news on the radio; she would have preferred a bit
of music to start her day. But the following announcement caught her attention:

‘The plane crash, which happened at a quarter-past
twelve this morning, claimed the lives of at least thirty people. Air-Sea
Rescue operations are still continuing in an attempt to locate survivors...’

She didn’t hear the rest of the story. All she could
think about was that when she had looked at her alarm clock last night, it had
been 12.15 a.m. The same time as the plane crash. Images from her dream coursed
through her mind. The fear she had felt now seemed more real. ‘Quarter-past
twelve,’ Alice said to herself, as she sat alone at the kitchen table. Her
words reverberated in her head, like an echo, and as she closed her eyes she
could see the red numbers on her alarm clock staring back at her.

***

Whilst on the bus, on her way to work, Alice could not
stop thinking about the night before. Something was nagging her at the back of
her mind, but she could not quite understand what it was or why she felt so
confused.

‘Hi, Alice,’ Charlotte, her
colleague, greeted her cheerfully as she arrived at the book shop.

‘Oh, hi,’ replied Alice, still
in a bit of a daze.

‘Well, do you notice anything
different about me?’ Charlotte was pointing to her new hairstyle and posing.
She’d had most of her once long, tousled, blonde hair cut off, and Alice had
hardly noticed.

‘Oh, yeah, it looks nice,’
responded Alice, coming back down to earth.

‘You’re very observant today,’
giggled Charlotte.

One or two customers had come
into the shop now, so the girls settled themselves behind the counter. It was
never very busy in the store on weekdays, so much of their time was spent
chatting. Charlotte liked to talk about herself.

Charlotte Wade was twenty-two
years old. She worked part-time at the bookstore, and was also a part-time film
extra. She was forever telling Alice about her latest “roles”. Charlotte’s aim
was to become a famous actress. She had changed her name a few months ago.
‘Well, no one has ever become famous with a name like “Susan”, have they?’
she’d said to Alice. Alice was tempted to mention Susan Sarandon, but thought
she would let it slip as the deed had already been signed and “Charlotte” had a
new name.

Charlotte had an interesting
social life, and it seemed that she always had a different boyfriend. She would
spend ages telling Alice all about them. Alice didn’t have anyone special in
her life. There was a boy at university called Andrew, whom she liked, but she
had kept it to herself. Somehow, she didn’t feel she was ready for a
relationship and preferred to dream about such things.

‘So how was your weekend,
Alice?’

She knew that Charlotte was
probably only looking for a reason to talk about her own weekend by asking that
question; she always liked to be the centre of attention. Alice replied: ‘Oh,
it was fine, how was yours?’