The view of Rachel, 2004

Quite frankly, Rachel had had enough. She was walking along the street because the subway was having problems but that wasn't what she was annoyed about. She was getting married to Ross very soon but somehow, people thought it was a good joke to go on about how many times he'd been married before. Not funny, not remotely funny.

And joking about how long it had taken for them to get it together was even worse. Years and years of it. Oh sure, there had been some good times but there had been a lot of heartache as well and since she and Ross had ended up together, their break up over Chloe was needless. If she could turn back time, she'd tell herself not to make any suggestions about a break, or any suggestions that could possibly be misunderstood as a suggestion that they break up. It would be very clear to Ross that they were not, in any way, separate, just because they were having a temporary disagreement. Oh no.

But there was no way to wipe out the past. She'd heard of memory clinics in Europe, which were banned in the US, but these clinics were notoriously problematic. There was the person whose memory of foreign languages was completely wiped, which for that person, a UN translator, was a disaster. Another person had had only the good memories wiped out and not the bad ones. Sure, things were better now, allegedly, but it sounded pretty crazy to Rachel.

Anyway, the cost of going to Europe to get that done was prohibitive and getting back into the US might be tricky. Customs were saying that people who had had erasure done couldn't sign the declaration forms saying that they had no criminal convictions and no intent to commit terrorists act and that therefore they could not enter - or re enter - the country.

Besides, she would still have the same problem - loss of seven years. And Ross would remember those years, even if she didn't. No, to go back and undo the past, that was the thing. She sighed. That was a fantasy.

'Bloody useless, innit?' said a voice ahead of her on the street. A thing young man with long hair in a ponytail, maybe about twenty was complaining to his companion in an English accent - was it called? Cockney? Watney? 'I've only ad it six weeks and look at it, bloody jammed.'

'Well,' said his companion, a slightly older, better dressed man, in a cut glass English accent, 'You shouldn't have taken it water skiing should you.'

'Oh come off it, shoulda bin waterproof, I mean, it's a bleedin' clock an' all, innit? Poxy thing. I've arf a mind to chuck it.'

'You'd better not.' That sounded mild enough but the reproof was there. 'You'll have to take it back to headquarters. You'll have to learn to take better care of it.'

'Awright no need to keep goin on abaht it.' The younger man put what looked like a complicated pocket watch - the old fashioned big round kind that you only saw in old movies - in his battered looking back pack.

The pair ahead were silent and walking faster than Rachel, who followed on behind looking at the ground. Half a block later, she came across the watch. She picked it up. It must have fallen out of hole in that young man's bag. She had had the vague impression that the pair ahead of her had turned into a building and Rachel hurried forward to see if she could catch them. They hadn't been that far ahead of her after all. But look as she might, she saw no sign. It was as though they had vanished into thin air.

The outside casing of the watch looked rather battered and Rachel thought that the watch probably wouldn't go. That was a shame she thought. It could be an antique. There was no sign of the owner from the outside and she opened the watch to see if there was anything in the middle.

There was definitely something wrong with the clock part. The numbers were all wrong... sort of. It hurt her eyes to try and work out what it was. On the other side of the inside of the watch, was a dial. She turned it forward and suddenly she knew, without being told that she was fifteen years into the future. She stared. Well, she never in a million years would have thought that people would be wearing clothes like that! Yuck. She turned the dial back to zero and she was back where she was, breathing a sigh of relief.

Someone stumbling by muttered,

'I think I've got to have another joint, right now.' The young female speaker had a good stare at her as she passed. Rachel must have vanished and reappeared on the street.

Rachel closed the watch and hurried back to her apartment. She should be picking up Emma but she wanted to work out what she had got hold of first. Sitting at the kitchen table she stared at the open watch in her hands. Of course if she went forwards, she could go back. What had she been thinking, just before? Going back. Fixing things up. It wasn't as though she could return the watch to the young man, since she had no idea who he was or where he'd gone. If she turned it in to the police there could be all sorts of trouble. They'd want to know how she came by it. They certainly wouldn't let her use it - she'd take the watch to the police after she'd made the most of it.

She could go back - she could speak to herself, or she could find Chloe and stop her having anything to do with Ross. Then Rachel would have her extra years. All she'd have to do was make sure that Emma got born. Luckily she had a record of the date Emma was conceived, so all she'd have to do was make sure it happened again. Of course, Emma might end up with older brothers and sisters - that wouldn't be so bad, Rachel thought.

So she turned the dial back.

The kitchen changed and two very surprised looking strangers, a middle aged man and woman were staring at her.

'Who the hell are you?' The woman demanded. Seven years ago, other people had lived in this flat and were living here now, totally unprepared for a strange woman materialising in front of them.

'Sorry,' Rachel said, and flipped the dial back to zero. It was almost perfect. If it had been perfect, she would have just rushed out the door. She knew where she should be, the trouble was, she wasn't quite when. She had known, without being told, that it had been the day after Ross had slept with Chloe.

Of course she had only guessed how far back should turn the dial, so maybe she should try it again. She went outside the apartment and turned the dial further back but found that it jammed. Suddenly her apartment door opened with the sound of a man's voice saying, as though to someone in the apartment behind him.

'Do you know where she went?' Suddenly she was face to face with the man from the kitchen. 'You!' he said in amazement.

'Sorry,' she said again, and turned the dial back to zero. That was what was wrong with it, what the young man had complained of. It didn't go back any further in time than the place she'd just been. She'd gone a minute later, then the time she'd been before, because it was a minute later in her own time. It would take her a fixed length of time to get back and no further.

She returned to her apartment. So she couldn't fix it up. Ross would always have cheated on her with Chloe. She felt depressed about this for a moment. She'd had a great chance only to have it snatched away.

There were other chances, she supposed. She could probably go back to a more recent time. After the Vegas wedding, she could have told her younger self to give the marriage a serious go, to try and get Ross to stay married, not because he didn't want divorce number three, but because he wanted to be with her. But that would leave the whole Emily thing in the past.

She could go back to the time just before Emily arrived, and she could get her number, ring her at the apartment she was staying at, and cancel, like she should have done. No angry Emily on her doorstep snapping at her, storming off, ready to have her wet feet dried by a sentimental Ross. Perfect. Except would the Rachel of that time turn to Ross? Could she persuade herself to? She doubted it. She remembered being totally obsessed by Joshua at the time.

So moving a little further in time, to the going away party. She could somehow prevent Ross from telling Emily that he loved her, perhaps by subliminal messages in his sleep. That would stop her thinking that she had anything to come back for, so that would be the end of them. He'd still miss Emily, although not enough to travel to London for her, and he probably wouldn't rush out and find a replacement. That might be the perfect time for the Rachel of 1998 to get dumped by Joshua - all Rachel 2004 had to do was phone Joshua and propose. The Rachel of 1998 would be sympathetic to Ross as he was then, and Ross would by sympathetic to her...

Satisfied, she went to Ross's old apartment and turned the dial.

Of course she had no keys to the apartment, so Rachel had to go around to Phoebe's. Phoebe had accepted unconditionally that she was travelling from the future and lent her the keys.

'Don't lose them in the future okay,' she said with a sunny smile, 'It could be years before I find them.' Rachel, feeling sentimental at the memory of Phoebe's wedding couldn't help kissing her.

'Phoebe, you're a beautiful, wonderful person and there's someone great out there for you.'

'Oh wow,' breathed Phoebe, her eyes shining with excitement. She'd never had a prediction this clear before.

So, after waiting to be sure that Ross and Emily 1998 were out of the apartment, she opened the door.