Life on Mars: A Fistful of Knuckles. Tom Graham

       CHAPTER ONE: WORLD OF SPORT

      Sam Tyler stood alone on the high roof of the CID building, the uncaring wind roaring in from across the city and battering him.

      That’s where I’m going to die, he thought. Right down there.

      Inching forward, he peered over.

       An eight storey drop. The cold air rushing over me as I fall. Glimpses of sky, of glass, of buildings out there on the horizon, flashing by as I fall – and then the shattering impact as I slam into the concrete.

      Sam found himself edging his feet further over the brink, as if the abyss was drawing him into itself.

       Thirty-three years from now, I’ll run across this rooftop … and jump from this very spot … and die, right there … right down there.

      A pair of uniformed coppers strolled casually across the exact spot Sam was looking at, their voices just audible;

      ‘What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

      ‘I dunno. What do you say to a bird with two black eyes?’

      ‘You shouldn’t have to say nuffing, you’ve told her twice already.’

      As the coppers’ coarse laughter reached him, Sam leant forward, teetering, almost daring himself to fall. His thoughts were reeling.

       The year is 1973, but I remember 2006 … the future is also the past … I can recall my own death, leaping from this rooftop, and yet here I am, more alive than I’ve ever been …

      Sam shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind of the turmoil. He focused on the here and now, on the physical reality of where he was; he felt the bite of the Manchester wind as it cut through his jacket, the sharp sting of the early autumnal cold already hinting at the harsh winter to come, the roar of his blood as it pounded through his ears, the steady beating of his own heart. These things were real. The world he was in was real. That was all that mattered.

       Annie’s real too. And she is what matters most of all.

      He had stood here before, on this very brink, back when he’d first arrived in this strange time and place. Looking for a way home, he had believed he would find it here. His plan had been to jump, to jolt himself back into 2006, and escape the alien planet of 1973 upon which he was marooned.

      But as he had stood there, nerving himself for the plunge, Annie had suddenly appeared, her hair blowing across her anxious face as she reached out her hand to him.

      ‘We all feel like jumping sometimes, Sam,’ she had said. ‘Only we don’t, me and you – coz we’re not cowards.’

      ‘No – we’re not,’ he said to himself now, bracing his body against the anger of the wind. ‘We’re many things, but we’re not that.’

      And so, that time around, he had not jumped. He had saved that jump for the future. But it would not be cowardice that would drive him to hurl himself from this precipice, nor would it be despair. He would jump for a reason. He would jump so that he could escape the emptiness of existence in 2006 and return here, to the strange, maddening, exhilarating world of ‘73. He would jump so he could be with Annie.

      I was right to come back here, he told himself. I belong here. 1973 is my home. No doubts – no regrets – I made the right choice to come back.

      If he had made the right choice to come back here, why did he feel, deep inside, that there would be no happily ever after for him and Annie? Why did he fear that what lay ahead was not life but darkness and death – and maybe something worse than death?

      He knew the source of his fear. It came from her, the blank-faced brat who had floated out of his TV screen whispering words of doom and despair ever