by Katie Khan
‘Who wants to have a great time?’ Urvisha shouted from behind them, as the band came back on stage for an encore, playing their most famous single, the crowd surging forwards.
‘I do! We all do.’ Isaac smiled, Machiavellian. ‘So let’s have the best night we can – let’s forget everything until tomorrow. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ Urvisha said.
‘Deal,’ Thea echoed, taking her rings and letting the necklace unfurl down her back as she joined the crowd dancing to the famous song, in the dark marquee filled with warm, sweating bodies.
∞
Thea walks from the fountain to the steps outside the National Gallery. Despite the wet, she sits down and stretches out across a few steps, leaning back to look at the sky.
Isaac follows, feeling the ground before he, too, sits down.
‘Look there.’ Thea points through the falling sleet to the distant lights above. ‘The North Star.’
‘Are you sure?’ Isaac squints. ‘I think that’s Venus.’
‘Isn’t it amazing that the light we’re seeing is millions of years old? Anyone can be a time traveller, simply by looking at the stars.’
He breathes in and out before speaking, putting the exercises from his mindfulness app into practice. ‘I wish I could time travel,’ he says at last. ‘Not just back to the ball – but so we could re-do this past year, as well. I’m sorry we haven’t spoken.’
She’s quiet. ‘Me too.’
‘I spent a year wanting you to be wrong about time travel. Wanting you to give it all up so I could have my friend back. I’m sorry.’
She looks at him, nonplussed. ‘Your friend never went anywhere, Isa. But mine has. I’d do anything to bring Rosy back.’ She focuses on Venus, or the North Star, bright in the London sky. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen – any of it. I wish I could remember what I did. If only I could undo it—’
‘You’ll find her,’ he says. ‘We’ll find her.’
∞
They’d had their last drink at two in the morning, after the band had finished their set, and they’d sat out in deckchairs. Isaac’s tailcoat was around Thea’s shoulders. Urvisha was riding the dodgems and dangerously careening around the course, crashing into everyone she disliked. Thrilled, she’d fist-pumped at Isaac and Thea, making them both laugh.
‘Hi, Thea.’ Ayo Adebamowo from her Physics class stood next to the deckchairs in a striking red dress, and Thea sat up at her greeting.
‘Hi, Ayo – you look lovely. Have you met Isaac?’
Ayo reached out and shook his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Isaac. This is my husband, Lao.’
They both stood to shake Lao’s hand. ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Thea said, as he said precisely the same thing, making them both smile. ‘Though I’m not usually dressed quite so formally.’ Thea indicated her Hepburn dress.
‘Me neither,’ Lao said, casting a rueful glance at his tightly fitted tails. ‘It’s a rental.’
‘Mine too,’ Isaac said easily. ‘Awful things, aren’t they? I feel like an over-dressed penguin. I’ve lost half the bits and pieces of the suit already.’
They chatted for a few minutes, before Ayo touched her husband on the arm. ‘We’d better get back – we said we’d be home by one.’ She grimaced: ‘We’re already late.’
Thea bade them farewell. ‘Easy to lose track of the outside world, here.’
‘It’s nice to meet such a lovely couple,’ Lao said, and Thea blushed.
‘We’re not …’
But they’d already gone, clutching hands, a halcyon image of a young married couple that, amid the hedonism of the night, stood out to both Thea and Isaac as some sort of aspirational bright light.
Breakfast was served at five o’clock – a retro food truck appeared in the quad, serving gourmet bacon and sausage sandwiches. Isaac dutifully queued up beside Thea, taking his roll and handing it to her as she finished hers. ‘Thanks,’ she said, licking brown sauce from the corners of her mouth.
‘Well, we made it,’ Isaac said grandly, gesturing around Trinity’s Garden Quad, as the sand-coloured buildings of the college brightened in the first light of dawn like a damp beach warmed by the sun. Thea watched the unseen sunrise illuminate the party, until at last she could see the details that had been stolen by the dark: the chimneystacks, the stone mullion work on the college’s oldest building – and the fallen students, too drunk or tired to continue till morning, asleep at the edges of the gardens. ‘What do you want to do next?’ he asked, handing Thea his pocket square in place of a napkin. ‘Shall we go home and watch a film?’
She looked at him in confusion. ‘It’s morning.’
‘No,’ Isaac said, leading the way out of Trinity, joining the crowds in white tie on the streets heading back to their own colleges. ‘It’s still night. It’s a really, really long night, the Commem Ball. Biggest night of the year. It isn’t over yet – it doesn’t stop until we go to sleep.’
∞
The National Gallery behind them sounds an intercom, announcing its closing time in five minutes. ‘The thing is, Thea,’ Isaac says, ‘it wasn’t just a kiss – and you’re wrong when you say it didn’t mean anything. There was something there between us.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, as hordes of tourists leave the gallery, pouring past them. A spray of water splashes up with every step. ‘I can’t think about that night too much.’
Isaac waits for the stream of people to become a trickle, until finally the last person passes and, once again, it’s only the two of them. ‘And what about now? I don’t think I’m imagining it, am I?’
‘Now?’
‘Us.’ Isaac looks at her, huddled on the steps in her yellow raincoat. ‘We never talked about it back then, and I’m scared to risk our friendship now …’
She closes her eyes against the last of the tumbling sleet. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Something’s different. Since I came back from New York … and this bizarre adventure we’re on today … there’s a click. But I’m scared – no, I’m terrified – to tell you how I feel.’
‘And how do you feel, Isa?’ Uncertain, she needs him to spell everything out. They can’t get this wrong.
‘There’s something between us, Thea. I know it.’
At that moment – exactly the wrong moment – Thea’s phone rings again, and with an exasperated sigh he indicates she should answer it. ‘Go on,’ Isaac says. ‘Take the call. They’ve tried three times already. And at least we have something concrete to tell them.’
‘That’s true,’ she says, reaching for it. ‘Hi, Ayo.’
‘Thea? You need to come back – we’ve had a breakthrough.’
‘Is it Rosy?’ Thea asks.
‘You need to come home.’
‘It’s not my home,’ Thea says automatically.
‘What’s up?’ Isaac says, questioning.
Thea hears Urvisha snatch the phone from Ayo. ‘Are you guys on the train yet?’
‘Not quite yet,’ Thea says. ‘We have something to tell you—’
‘When are you leaving?’ Urvisha interrupts, and Thea and Isaac glance at each other.
‘What is it?’ Isaac asks loudly. ‘Is Rosy there?’
‘Just get back to this ghost-forsaken farm, will you?’ Urvisha says. ‘Like, right now. Everything is turning batshit crazy.’
Seventeen
Euston station is full of weary commuters stalking heads down to their trains. As Thea is jostled for the eleventh time, she gives up on trying to read the departures board and waits for the announcement instead. ‘Are you sure you want to come back with me?’ she says to Isaac, who has stocked up on ‘train goodies’ – bags of sweets and chocolate he’s fruitlessly trying to stuff into his already full bag. ‘Give them here,’ she says. ‘You’ll never get them in your rucksack.’
‘Did you know “rucksack” is German for “backpack”?’
‘I did not.’ Thea takes the confectionery from him, putting i
t all in her own bag. Whereas usually she’d find some other piece of trivia to answer him with, playing a ping-pong game of Did You Know, instead she’s thinking about the lengthy journey north. ‘You definitely want to come back to Dunsop Bridge; you wouldn’t rather stay here in London?’
‘And miss Ayo and Urvisha’s big reveal? Not a chance,’ he says. ‘I want to know what they know. And I want to see the look on their faces when we tell them about you.’
‘They probably know,’ Thea says softly. ‘If they’ve been looking in detail at the equipment and my notes, they might have spotted that the experiment has been carried out multiple times.’ They’d already begged Ayo to tell them what her breakthrough was, but she’d retorted that she couldn’t tell them, she could only show them – which had had Isaac rolling his eyes, until Thea pointed out he’d said precisely the same.
‘Is it Rosy – is she back?’ Thea had asked desperately, again and again, praying it was true.
‘We have a lead,’ Urvisha had said, and that was all they could get out of them over the phone.
Thea and Isaac board the train to Preston, finding the last two seats together in a busy carriage with people chatting noisily into their phones, the windows fogged with condensation from all the warm bodies. As they settle in they feel the exhaustion hit: they’ve been so busy running around looking for clues, this is the first time they can sit without having to rush somewhere.
‘Tired?’ Isaac asks, offering her a sweet, stating the obvious. Though not the obvious obvious – they’ve hardly spoken since Thea’s phone rang, interrupting the mood.
‘Knackered.’ She leans gently against his shoulder, watching as London falls away, its graffiti and trackside houses threatening to tumble onto the rails. They find an easy silence, like they always have, watching the landscape change into darkened fields dissected by the odd motorway, flashing with headlights. ‘We’re going to get back quite late,’ she says, her voice sleepy.
‘I’ll wake you when it’s time to change.’
She nestles into him, so Isaac lifts his arm around her, creating a nook. ‘Cosy,’ she says as she drifts away into sleep, his cheek resting against her hair, and he follows not long behind.
He wakes to an empty train and the loud, repeated announcement that it’s the end of the line. ‘Thea,’ he says, ‘wake up.’ She groans and he nudges her again. ‘We’re at Preston – we need to make the connection. Unless you want to spend the night finding some dodgy hotel—’ He blushes as he realizes how that sounds.
‘Sounds pretty good to me,’ she says, her eyes still closed, then flying open as she hears the inference in her words. ‘Oh, come on,’ she says, suddenly wide awake. ‘What are you waiting for? We’re going to be late.’
‘Typical,’ Isaac mutters as they run across the platform. Their second train is much less comfortable, a regional line run by a small company, with crisp packets shoved between the seats. The lights are garishly bright and Thea groans again, putting her hood over her face.
‘On second thoughts, maybe a hotel was a good idea.’
‘We’ll be back soon.’
‘There’s another train after this,’ she corrects him, ‘and don’t even think about falling asleep this time or we’ll end up in the depths of the Yorkshire Dales.’
‘How shall we stay awake?’ he says, cringing as everything he says becomes suddenly ripe with double entendre.
‘Did you know,’ she starts, eyes closed, ‘that the milk of a hippo is bright pink?’
He smiles. ‘I did not. Did you know that if you shaved the hair of a leopard, its skin beneath would still be spotty?’
‘I like that one.’ She covers a yawn with her hand. ‘Did you know the polka dot has nothing to do with polka? Purely marketing, because the polka dance craze was so popular they added “polka” onto everything.’
Isaac frowns. ‘What does that have to do with animals?’
‘Spots – dots.’
Isaac rolls his eyes. ‘So lateral. Fine, then; did you know the French navy’s famous Breton shirts have a pattern ratio of two to one, base colour to stripe?’
She sits up. ‘Now that is interesting.’
Isaac smiles, looking out of the window. ‘Give the girl a ratio and she’s fully awake.’
‘What do you think they want to talk to us about?’ Thea says, getting out the postcard of the Unknown Woman from Isaac’s bag.
‘Could be anything,’ he says, as she rummages a bit deeper in his backpack.
‘Oh, Isaac – no wonder your bag is so full.’ She brings out the Barbara Hepworth coffee-table book he bought in the Portrait Gallery shop and wraps her arms around it, taking care not to damage the corners of the dust jacket. ‘You didn’t need to buy this book, it’s expensive.’
‘It meant something to you,’ he says simply, ‘so of course I did.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, her arms still clasped around the book, gazing out of the window at the night whizzing past outside. ‘I got you something, too.’ She reaches down into her own bag, bringing out a pin badge.
‘“I Tweeted A Curator”,’ he reads, taking it from her. He starts to laugh. ‘Thank you! What a wonderful souvenir.’ He pins the round badge bearing the gallery logo and the Twitter bird proudly onto his navy coat lapel.
They get off the train as they arrive in Clitheroe, long after midnight, and Thea yawns widely as they walk to the station car park. ‘I think I should drive,’ Isaac says, and Thea makes a face.
‘Safer with me driving a bit tired than you driving on the wrong side of the road,’ she says, getting in on the driver’s side. ‘We’ll put the windows down; you can talk loudly and keep me awake.’
Isaac huddles down in his seat, trying to remain warm despite the October night air blasting in through the fully open windows. They play another game of Did You Know before moving onto the classic I, Spy, but as they drive into the village, past Puddleducks tearoom, Thea swerves across the road and pulls the car up next to the bridge.
‘Woah!’ Isaac says, then: ‘Sorry, I thought you’d fallen asleep at the wheel and were going to kill us in the ditch.’
She looks cynical. ‘No.’ Her face uncreases as she turns off the engine. ‘I wanted to tell you, before we get back to whatever it is Ayo and Urvisha want to discuss with us, that I’ve had an amazing day with you.’
‘Me too,’ he says.
‘I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived in London this morning. And I want to say thank you.’ She shifts in her seat. ‘I know you can’t stay in the UK indefinitely, and soon you’ll have to go back to New York …’
He doesn’t say anything, not wanting to bring the outside world in quite yet.
‘… But having you here through this insane situation has made a huge difference. You’ve been such a support. Thank you, Isa.’
‘I wanted to help prove you were right,’ he says quietly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw how much it hurt you to consider you might be wrong. So, I thought if I could help prove you were right …’
‘About Rosy?’
‘About time travel.’ He smiles. ‘I will do anything it takes to help prove you are right, Thea. I promise.’
She takes her hand from the gear stick and rests it on his, aware the gesture is small, but that to step any further would be to move irreversibly away from friendship, and she can’t be certain, in this moment, that they’re ready. All she knows is he has her back, no matter what – and she’s not quite sure she’s ever had that before.
‘Come on,’ Isaac says. ‘Let’s face whatever it is – together. If they’ve found out you jumped then we can show them our own evidence, and if they’ve found Rosy …’
‘Then so much the better,’ she says quietly. She drops his hand, gently, switching the engine back on and pulling the car back onto the road; without speaking, they turn at the trees, up the track towards the farm.
Thea pulls up at the turning circle outside the farmho
use and they look at each other in alarm. Every light is on, the farm lit up like a distress beacon. The front door is unlocked – when Thea puts the key in it swings open, and she meets Isaac’s eyes. ‘Go on,’ he urges. ‘Everything will be fine.’
They drop their bags in the hall and Thea calls out, ‘Ayo? Visha? Are you guys here?’
They hear noises from the kitchen so they head that way, but as they open the kitchen door the heat hits them squarely in the face. ‘Oof,’ Thea says, ‘it’s boiling in here.’
Ayo looks up from where she’s sitting at the kitchen table breastfeeding her child. ‘I turned the Aga on full,’ she says. ‘It’s really warmed up the place.’
‘You’re telling me,’ Isaac says, coming through the door, swiftly averting his eyes. Ayo throws a blanket over the baby against her breast and carries on.
‘Visha!’ she calls. ‘Thea and Isaac are back.’
‘So what’s happened? What’s the news?’ Thea says without sitting down.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Ayo says.
‘I’ll make it.’ Isaac walks to the kettle. ‘You all – clearly – need to talk. I’ll listen.’
Ayo shifts her little boy onto the other breast and continues his feed. Thea’s textbooks from Oxford sit in a crate on the corner of the table next to Ayo, her notebooks splayed across the surface. ‘Urvisha, come on,’ Ayo shouts, and they hear thumping from upstairs as the ceiling beams shake, then a thud – thud – thud as Urvisha drags something heavy down the stairs.
‘What the—?’ Isaac moves to the door, looking into the hallway.
‘Hello, Mr Chivalrous,’ Urvisha says drily. ‘No, don’t worry, you don’t have to help with this heavy case – I can quite manage.’
Isaac beams. ‘I wouldn’t want to presume you couldn’t.’
Urvisha pulls an enormous suitcase across the room, scratching the ancient farmhouse flooring. ‘You’re back. About time.’
‘What’s the breakthrough?’ Thea says. ‘And what’s in the case?’
‘You look tired,’ Ayo says. ‘It can probably wait if you want to get some sleep.’
‘NO, IT FUCKING CAN’T,’ Thea says, and everybody turns to stare at her. ‘We’ve travelled five hours from London to talk about exactly this – so, please. Tell us.’