A week ago, a wormhole opened up, in the centre of town.  At first, the local council thought it was just a pothole, and went about filling it in with old books: telephone directories, little-black-books, grimoires…

Didn’t work of course, and like every little thing left to fester; it just got worse.

***

“You were a long time,” my boyfriend says, when I return home with shop-bought apple pie.  I knew somewhere, inside, (probably the underside of his thumbnail, where he stores his deep emotions) he is disappointed. He expects me to be carrying armfuls of bags: flour, eggs, blocks of butter, sugar, bottles of vanilla extract… apples so shiny they look like they’re from a fairytale. 

An apple so red it could poison someone.

He knows he didn’t sign up for domestic goddess with me…. He knows. He was sat in the shared university kitchen, all-those-years-ago, when I had to order pizza because I’d messed-up frying an egg.  I threw the burnt spatula in the bin—he missed that part—too busy retreating to his room, to drool over raven-haired, lipstick-mouthed, tv chefs. 

“Other girls are really good cooks…” He would say.

“Get them to f… feed you, then.” (Is what I’d wanted to say). Of course, nobody has that kind of confidence at eighteen, right? Some lack it even, at twenty-five, (when your suddenly-developed prefrontal cortex is meant to help you out). Instead, at eighteen, I bought a student cookbook from a charity shop, and burnt three more eggs.

He knows I’m no domestic goddess… but there are some days where I swear all he wants… all he wants…

***

I presented him with shop-bought apple pie on graduation day—I told him I made it myself.  He quite literally, ate that up. We washed it down with Prosecco, miraculously without getting drunk.  I tell him, as I laugh, and bubbles fill my nose, that “the dose makes the poison.”

As we finished off the last mouthfuls of pie, I’m sure he fell in love with me, in that moment.  Properly fell in love… until he found the receipt in the bin.  Every Christmas after that, I got the same present: Cookery Book, Cookery Book, Cookery Book.

Other girls got diamond rings. 

I always, always got a cookery book.

***

“There was a line at the shop,” I tell him.

There was a line… but I walked straight by it, trying to find the apple pie.  Not the apple pie crust, not a tin of apples—the actual pie, ready-to-go.

There was also a young girl crying because she was lost.  There was another kid, wide-eyed and hopeful in the candy aisle… because at that age, copious amounts of sugar can solve every problem you have. There was a cashier who knew when to smile.

There was no apple pie.

***

The wormhole in town, is now person-sized. Now it’s more door-in-the-wall, than hole-in-the-floor; and people use it to get about quicker… like a metaphysics metro. People line up to use it, like they’re waiting for a bus. Someone behind me speculates that the local council will start charging for this—hiking up the price of a ticket, like they did with the parking, in the centre of town.

***

I wondered where it would take me, the wormhole. I wondered if it would take me back to my uni days. I wonder if it can stop me from drinking too much vodka, so I don’t throw up in the bathroom, so I don’t bump into my boyfriend on the way out—and instead kept talking to that tall guy in the checked shirt. 

***

In the future, the shop is huge and brightly lit, like heaven.  Newspapers fill the stands, but people say you can’t take them too seriously: one day a lottery winner is front page news; next there’s a world war; next a woman has murdered her husband.  People say the only good thing in a newspaper is an advert, anyway.  Take the thing back to your own timeline, and it’ll combust en route... at least that’s the chatter I hear from the queue, just before I board the wormhole.

***

In the future, there is a whole aisle dedicated to apple pie.  There is intricate lattice work on top of each one and an accompanying aisle of whipped cream and cinnamon.

I wonder if I will see my boyfriend in this store, (a future version of him).  I wonder if he will get mad, because, for all the cookery books at home, the pie still isn’t home-made. I wonder if he’ll get violent, in this new plane of existence, as if the gravity in our reality is barely keeping his rage contained.

But in the future, my boyfriend is not in the store.

Instead, I see a guy in a checked shirt.

Tall. 

Tall. 

I wonder if a few years spent with him, a few years with someone who could probably pick apples straight from the tree, without so much as a stretch—like it was nothing, no big deal—I wonder how good my cooking would have been, then.

In the future, I take the apple pie into my arms, a can of the whipped cream, the cinnamon to sprinkle over.

Nobody judges me.  People (maybe they are from the future, maybe they are traveling from my timeline), put canned goods into their shopping trollies along with fresh fruit, dried pulses.  There is no judgment here.

In the future, there is air in the store. 

Maybe some employee left the back doors open.  

In the future, I breathe in, and it doesn’t feel like drowning.