‘No, because you never realised it until we were talking about it after your first date with Eric the pizza guy.’ Rose leaned forward, her courage rising. ‘Morgan, I’m not crazy. I just have to try and put things back to how they were… and it would be really incredible if you’d help me.’
Morgan’s hands stilled on the table. ‘Rose… look… this is all a bit—’ She stopped and reached for her bag. ‘I’m just going to the bathroom. I just need… a minute.’
Rose almost begged her not to, but quickly reined herself in. ‘Yes, of course. Take all the time you need.’
The time ticked away, and Rose stared miserably at the salad in front of her. She hated salad, but at least she could hardly complain her food was going cold. She glanced over her shoulder: no sign of Morgan. Then she sighed. Why on earth couldn’t she have just asked for Morgan’s help getting into 4 Sydney Place? What had come over her to spill it all here… now… like that?
Rose looked around the room at the other people enjoying varying degrees of pleasant dinner conversation and wondering if Morgan was already halfway to the Royal Crescent… or… worse – the police station. It was as though someone had dropped ice cubes down her back. How could she possibly explain to the rest of the people in this mixed-up world what she’d just blurted out to her friend? It had been meant only for Morgan’s ears… for the friend Rose still believed Morgan could be.
Rose looked at her watch again and, with a heavy heart, she pushed back from the table. There was little point sitting here waiting for someone who wasn’t going to return…
‘Sorry – there was a line.’
Relief rushed through Rose so fiercely as Morgan dropped her bag on the floor and resumed her seat, she almost wept. Instead, she took a slug of her wine and waited.
‘I’m not saying I believe you,’ Morgan said slowly, and Rose felt a flutter of hope. Surely there was a ‘but’ coming? ‘But you’ve definitely got my interest.’
‘Thank you for not leaving.’ Rose’s throat was tight with relief.
The corner of Morgan’s lip rose. ‘Do you know, I’ve never told anyone about what happened with Nicole. But she may have – so I can’t just take your word; do you understand?’
Rose nodded again, and cleared her throat. ‘If you spoke to Jane…’
‘Just… one crazy lady at a time.’ Morgan smiled, taking the sting out of her words, and then stared at her cold plate of enchiladas. ‘Okay, you might not believe me – or maybe you will after what you just told me – but I’m hungry. Let’s order something fresh and while it’s cooking, you can tell me about us and how we got from Harry Potter to…’ She waved a hand towards the window. ‘Bath.’
Two hours later, Rose was finally beginning to believe the next words she said would no longer be the trigger to finally send Morgan running for the door. They were currently trying to work out what, if anything much beyond her friendships with those in the Austen community, Rose included, had changed in Morgan’s life. But so far, almost everything else seemed the same other than her specific job description within her father’s magazine.
All this gave plenty of weight to Rose’s story, because she knew so very much about Morgan’s life – but it was also making Rose feel a little melancholy: wasn’t this simply more evidence, stronger confirmation she really was the only one left who remembered the joy and influence Jane Austen’s writing had brought to the world? It was simply unbearable.
Morgan considered Rose from over the chocolate fudge cake they were sharing. ‘It seems to me that you’re my Jane Austen.’
Rose quickly swallowed the fudgy spoonful in her mouth. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, your version of me seems pretty happy.’
‘You seem happy here – now, as well.’
‘I’m not; not really. Believe it or not, grumpy Dr T is one of the nicest writers I’ve worked with so far. I’m just fact checking for other people’s work. I’m not even sure I know what I would write if I had the opportunity; which I won’t, because my dad doesn’t want it to look like nepotism.’ Morgan stopped, then shook her head. ‘Honestly, I’m feeling a little hopeless.’
There was no missing the catch in Morgan’s voice, and Rose hated that she couldn’t go and hug her as she would have done before now. Then she frowned. ‘But you’re an amazing writer! As soon as anyone reads your first article they’ll know nepotism had nothing to do with it.’
Morgan smiled briefly. ‘I take it this vote of confidence comes from remembering my attempts at fan fiction?’ She let out a breath. ‘That was all about practising, to be honest, at first; I can’t say I ever wrote anything beyond a few long posts extolling the virtues of Sirius Black and how J. K. Rowling would never kill him off.’ Morgan winked. ‘And we all know how well that worked out.’
‘That’s what’s different, then.’ Rose bit her lip, a pang of regret sweeping through her for the lost years of friendship. ‘We wrote loads for the online Austen community. You were such a fan of Jane and Bingley.’ The pang deepened at Morgan’s blank look. ‘Never mind; trust me, you loved them, and you wrote beautiful stories about them. We even had our own archive where we shared our stories with people who became real friends of ours.’
Morgan stared at her in disbelief. ‘We did? How on earth did that ever start?’
‘We were online one night – at least, it was the early hours for me – and I was having a rotten time with my mum, yet again, but it had made me really low, and you wrote me a silly and hilarious story about Anne de— another character in one of Jane’s books to cheer me up. From there – you just never stopped. I – if I think back, it was probably while you were still at university. Maybe it influenced your direction; all I do know is that your confidence in your writing grew and grew, even though you never did get to grips with spelling.’ Rose paused, then smiled ruefully. ‘That’s something you have in common with Jane Austen.’
‘Crazy lady?’ Morgan laughed. ‘Who’d have thought it.’ She met Rose’s anxious gaze, and then shrugged. ‘Okay, what’s this big discovery you made with your nineteenth-century buddy?’ She held up a hand when Rose grinned. ‘I’m still not saying I believe you about her. But… let’s pretend I’m starting to. Catch me up.’
Rose reined in her rising hopes and nodded resolutely. ‘Yes! Well, you’re never going to believe this, but Jane’s sister—’
‘Cassandra Austen.’
‘Yes!’ Rose leaned forward. ‘Cassandra found the necklace – and that in itself is a long story which – yes, I will tell you in a second – no, wait – I’ve started at the wrong end. We found a note to Jane from Cassandra in an old book in the library. It’s a poem, and we think, I mean, we’re pretty certain it’s a message telling Jane she put the necklace back in the safe at the house where they lived at the time.’
‘At 4 Sydney Place?’
‘Yes!’ Rose said triumphantly.
‘There’s a safe at 4 Sydney Place? Where?’
‘It’s black cast iron, and it’s built into the wall in the bedroom… I mean, the back room. It’s probably just another office right now.’
‘Yes – it is.’
‘Well, that’s where it is; right there in the back wall. And this is where I – we – need your help, why you need to be included in this. You’ve met the people in that office, so we thought perhaps you could give me an introduction, I don’t know, something, some way in for us so that Jane can try to open the safe and check if by some miracle the necklace has survived all these years right where it was—’
Morgan’s face had taken a dramatic turn, and Rose felt her stomach drop.
‘What? I swear we wouldn’t take anything else from the safe or take advantage of your friendship in any other way but—’
‘No, it’s not that. Rose, I’m happy to help you get in there, but…’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I’m sure there’s no safe.’
Rose shook her head slightly. ‘Yes – there is – I’ve seen it myself – Jane used it
to correspond with Cassandra – they would send letters and supplies and—’
‘But I was there for two hours and took at least four hundred images – all of which I’ve already sorted and edited to show the Doc. There’s no safe in that room, or anywhere else in the building that I can recall.’
Swallowing quickly, Rose grasped at the remnants of her hopes as they drifted away from her. ‘There must be—’
‘I’m so sorry, sweetie.’
Unable to bear the disappointment, having seemed so close to a resolution, Rose tried to suppress a sudden rush of emotion. It really did seem like they’d come to the end of their leads, the end of any hope – however flimsy – that there was a solution to be found.
There seemed very little more to be said on the subject, and with the hour now so late, the girls agreed it was time to go. Morgan had said she might pass by the library on the following day to put the finishing touches to her research presentation, but Rose had remembered her rota and said she would be at home instead. Despite the hug Morgan gave her as they parted on the corner of Queen Square, Rose watched her friend walk away with a heavy heart.
Now she had poured all that out to Morgan, who was about to leave Bath anyway for Italy, what chance had she for restoring their past friendship? Time had run out on her, and so, finally, had hope.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After a long and restless night, Rose woke un-refreshed but thankful she didn’t have to face yet another day in the library. Helpful as everyone had been to her, despite what must have been seen as odd behaviour, the strain of appearing to be comfortable in an unfamiliar environment was beginning to take its toll.
For a moment, she lay still, her eyes closed as everything that had happened the previous day circled around in her brain. But as much as she wanted to reclaim the hope inspired by Cassandra’s poem, she kept coming back to Morgan’s assertion she had seen no sign of a wall safe during her visit to Sydney Place. ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ Rose whispered. ‘I don’t want to give up.’ Morgan had taken hundreds of photos, hadn’t she, over the four accessible floors of the building? Surely she couldn’t remember in detail every one?
She opened her eyes, blinking at the light filtering through the curtains. Though it had had its fraught moments, she had some comfort to draw from the evening. Her friend’s open-mindedness had surprised her at first, even though she knew it shouldn’t, but somehow, because their friendship wasn’t quite so solid in this world, she’d experienced some doubts as to whether everything else about Morgan would be the same. She’d forgotten her passion for tales of time travel and, whilst her friend was intelligent enough to know that these were just stories, she’d seemed at last to believe that whatever Rose was telling her, she wasn’t mad.
Morgan’s main disappointment was it probably wasn’t something she could include in her story – for who on earth would believe her? Rose had reflected likewise it wasn’t something she could speak of to any other living soul.
What about the Doc? Didn’t you feel that connection with him the other night? No; she could never tell him. That was a foolish girl’s dream, but as thoughts of Aiden swept through her, Rose’s insides did a loop and she rolled over and hugged her pillow.
Crushing on him, a distant unattainable figure, for three years had been a source of painful pleasure, exciting when he came to Bath – an unreachable fantasy but one she’d held onto. Now, something had changed.
Had he felt it, too, that strong connection as they’d talked almost without pause the other evening? Or was she deluding herself? What would he see in quiet, unworldly Rose?
With a sigh, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, still covered in the fluorescent stars she’d put up when she was fourteen. What did any of it matter? Aiden would take Morgan’s research and write a completely fascinating but false article on his findings, and she would possibly never see him again.
A tentative knocking came at the door, clearly not her mother’s sharp rap – thankfully, Mrs Wallace was still away visiting her friends – and Rose leapt from the bed to open the door.
‘Good morning.’ Jane was already dressed and held Cassandra’s note in her hand. Rose wondered whether perhaps she’d held it all night long, so attached did she seem to it.
‘I know you think it’s pointless, but did you have any bright ideas – you know, how we’re going to get into Sydney Place?’ By the time Rose had returned home the previous evening, Jane had gone to bed; she didn’t have the heart to tell her Morgan’s belief of there being no safe.
Jane shook her head. ‘I have taken part in some home theatricals but am no actress – as you have seen.’
‘You do really well. I am not sure I’d be able to pass myself off credibly if I suddenly found myself in the early nineteenth century.’
‘Some things were simpler – and some are not so much.’ She glanced around the room, her gaze landing on Rose’s computer. ‘There has been progress in many ways, but I find human nature remains the same.’ She smiled at Rose then. ‘It amuses me greatly.’
‘I’m sure it does.’ Rose gestured at her nightdress. ‘I’ll get ready and join you downstairs, shall I? We can talk over breakfast about what we’re going to do next.’
‘As you wish.’ Jane turned away, but then she looked back over her shoulder. ‘Do not forget you are a master confectioner.’
Rose paled as she closed her bedroom door and turned around to lean against it. The cake for Liz and Tina! Everything that had happened lately had swept it from her mind.
Half an hour later, after a quick breakfast, Rose made a thorough inspection of her mother’s pantry which revealed a surprising array of baking things, not only a wide range of flavourings and decorative items, but also piping bags and nozzles, cookie cutters in various shapes and sizes and a stack of shiny baking tins and trays. Clearly, in this life Rose took her baking seriously.
Despite this, the one recipe she had copied at the library the previous day required a couple of missing ingredients and soon they were walking to the local shop.
Jane had been silent as they walked; since the discovery of Cassandra’s note, she had withdrawn into herself, and it was only as they were making their way around the narrow aisles in the shops as Rose looked for vanilla essence and a box of eggs that she roused herself to take any interest in her surroundings.
‘I am not familiar with this type of purveyor; has he no specialism? I am used to a baker’s, a confectioner’s, a milliner’s or a haberdashery, not a shop with a small selection of all these things and more. What can its purpose be?’
Rose spied the vanilla essence and tossed it into her basket. ‘These local shops try to stock a little of everything so that if you’ve forgotten something in town you don’t have to go all the way back to get it. You can find almost anything in them, they’re amazing.’ Seeing a stand holding various items of stationery, Rose added a couple of packs of Post-it notes to her basket. ‘They tend to be known as “convenience stores”.’
Jane poked a finger at a roll of plastic bin bags, then eyed up some cards of assorted buttons next to colourful rolls of cotton. Beyond that was a large display with sunglasses, sunhats and sun lotion – all on sale, due to the time of year – and then a small fridge stocked with fresh meat, cold cuts, cheeses and beyond it a shelf filled with balls of string, boxes of nails and tubes of glue.
‘Pray, how is this a convenience store? One can barely turn about, ’tis so narrow, and there is no logic to the produce on display. I find naught of convenience about it.’
Rose shrugged; it was an argument she couldn’t win, and she picked up a box of eggs and headed for the till, trying not to laugh as Jane continued to stare around at the variety of items filling every shelf.
As they walked back to the house, however, Rose began to feel anxious. Perhaps it was because she was now wide awake and in Jane’s company again, once more facing the uncertainty of each day, but she was being visited by doubts ov
er the wisdom of her confession to Morgan.
What had she done? If there was no safe in Sydney Place, then this really was the life Rose was going to have to live. And she’d just admitted to the one person she had hoped to reclaim as a close friend that not only did she believe in time travel but that she presently had a time-travelling woman living with her – not only a once-famous woman, but the very person Morgan had come to Bath to research. How would Morgan feel in the cold light of day? Would she avoid her like the plague; and even if she didn’t, would her manner towards Rose have changed? How could it not? After all, what would Rose’s reaction have been had the circumstances been reversed…?
With her eyes fixed on the ground and a silent Jane at her side, Rose sighed. Well, the first thing she was going to do, if she was stuck here, was move out of her mum’s house. She had no idea what working at the library paid her – she hadn’t even checked her bank accounts to see if she was solvent, let alone that she still had savings – but somehow, even if she ended up in a garret, she was leaving as soon as…
‘I stopped by and when you weren’t home, I figured I’d wait for you. I hope you don’t mind.’
Rose looked up to see Morgan leaning against the gatepost outside the house, her coat and bags on the ground by her feet. Her relief jostling with uncertainty, Rose gave her an uncertain smile. Please don’t let her have come to say goodbye!
‘Ah, the Revolutionary.’ Jane inclined her head towards Morgan in her typical fashion, but instead of her usual eye-roll or smirk in Rose’s direction, Morgan simply stared at Jane and said nothing.
Rose gathered her courage, waiting with bated breath as Morgan gathered her things from the floor. ‘Of course I don’t mind. I’m… glad to see you. I was worried that maybe, in the light of day, you might…’ Rose raised both hands in a helpless gesture.
‘That I’d run away with my hands over my ears?’
‘Something like that.’
The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen Page 20