How to Stop Time

by Matt Haig

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

After that first meeting with Dr Hutchinson I slipped into a state beyond my usual grief and restlessness and anxiety and despair – one of not feeling anything at all. And when I felt nothing I almost became nostalgic for the grief; at least when you felt pain you knew you were still alive.

As then, she seems wholly herself. It takes a lot to be unique in a species of so many. She has style. I don’t mean in what she is wearing (corduroy blazer, jeans, glasses), though that is perfectly fine. I mean in the easeful way in which she places the book down beside her on the bench and stares around at the park. In the way she puffs out her cheeks a little and blows and closes her eyes and tilts her head up to invite the sun. I look away.

Fragile, but also tough and stubborn. I never knew how many of her oddities had sprung from grief and how many from her own inherent nature.

‘Life is life. So long as I can hear music and so long as I can still enjoy oysters and champagne . . .’

‘Are you someone who watches life, or someone who participates?’

Time, I realise, is a weapon these days. Nothing weakens people like having to wait.

Just sitting there, in the comfortable silence of a couple. I haven’t wanted such a thing for centuries.

She has the kind of face that makes you want to speak, to tell things to. It is a dangerous face.

I said nothing. I was angry, yes, but as was so often the case with anger, it was really just fear projecting outwards.

She laughs. It is the simplest, purest joy on earth, I realise, to make someone you care about laugh.

‘Everything is going to be all right. Or, if not, everything is going to be, so let’s not worry.’