The waiting in the hardest part. But time is fluid.
You taught me that, not once but twice.
I waited for you that first time. You had quite a grace period, I must say. I was seven years old, and I didn't know that time had rules; I didn't understand the rigidity of the clock or calendar. My mum used to say that dinner would be ready in five minutes, a time that seemed to stretch for an eternity. The last five minutes of recess seemed to pass me by in the blink of an eye. The five minutes that my aunt stepped out for would go from dusk until dawn.
And for you, five minutes stretched to twelve years.
It was two weeks before I unpacked my suitcase. (Although I confess that I had taken my teddy Freddy out the first night. I couldn't sleep without him.) It was another two weeks before my aunt noticed how longingly I was staring out the window, before she caught me sneaking downstairs every night to sit in the back garden next to the remains of her shed.
She hadn't even noticed how smashed up it was for three whole days.
The years passed by, and gradually I came to realize that you were not coming back. There were times that I doubted you; times when I lay awake at night staring at the crack in my wall and wondering if the psychiatrists were right. Maybe I did need pills, or maybe to be locked up in one of those big hospitals with all the doctors who weren't you.
The first time my aunt had taken me to see a doctor, I nearly skipped along side her. Maybe it was you, maybe you had set up and forgotten where I lived. But no, it was only a bald man with an immaculate suit and the smell of cigars.
They were never you.
I tried to make other people you. I dressed up that boy Rory like you, in clothes I found in dust bins and resale shops. But I knew, and he knew, that he could never be you.
And then you were there, in my house, calling my name like you were never gone. Like the mud on my welly boots hadn't dried, like twelve years hadn't gone by—me without you. Me here alone. I knew who you were the second I heard your voice echoing from the garden, but I thought that I was
dreaming again, like I had been so constantly.
I hadn't gone by my name in so many years. I hadn't wanted anyone to call me Amelia if they weren't you. I hadn't wanted to be a fairy story princess, because for so long I thought that I was. I thought that you would come for me, a white knight in tatter clothes and a blue police box to rescue me from everything.
You did more than save me, you saved the whole world.
And then, in what must have been the worst moment of my life, you climbed into your box and were gone again. I felt my heart breaking, could taste the bile rising up on my tongue. I knew then that you were never coming back. I would never see you again.
The vindication of knowing that you were real, the vindication that all my years of school crafts and poems were true... That was nothing compared to the way I felt now that you were gone. It was like having my heart ripped out and placed in my palms.
I laid in my bed for days, staring at the crack in my wall, hating and loving it at the same time. When I finally rose up, finally began to pick myself up and carry on, I had reconciled the fact that you were not coming back.
It happened one night. It happened the night before the day that should have the biggest of my life. I heard that police box. I few downstairs, and there you were. There you were, standing and bathed in silver moonlight. My white knight, my ticket to freedom, to peace.
To happiness.
It was the longest five minutes of my life.
