The Next Together

by Lauren James

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  In memory of Aisha Ahmad 1991–2011

  You deserved so much more than life gave you.

  They will come back – come back again,

  as long as the red Earth rolls.

  He never wasted a leaf or a tree.

  Do you think He would squander souls?

  – Rudyard Kipling, “The Sack of the Gods”

  PROLOGUE

  The last time they were together, it was late evening and they were being followed.

  “It’s happening again,” Katherine said, and immediately regretted it. Matthew didn’t reply, only squeezed her hand a little tighter. She knew what it meant. They were going to die.

  They ran. Katherine tried to be quiet, but her breathing was dangerously loud in the silence. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Matthew pressed a palm against the small of her back, urging her on.

  She could hear footsteps behind them, growing faster and faster, gaining on them.

  They turned a corner and ducked into a room. Matthew locked the door behind them with trembling fingers. They stared at each other, listening for the sound of their pursuers. For a moment there was silence. They had a few minutes, but that was all. They were going to be found. It was just a matter of whether they could finish their task first.

  “Next time, we’re moving somewhere hot and quiet before any of this happens,” Katherine declared breathlessly.

  “I like Spain,” Matthew said and pulled her into one last, desperate kiss.

  CHAPTER 1

  Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-112

  UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM CAMPUS, ENGLAND, 2039

  Kate poured glycerol into a beaker, measuring out what she would need for that afternoon’s experiment. She wasn’t really in the mood for labs today, but it was only her second session of biology practicals since university had started and she couldn’t miss it. It didn’t help that she was the only person without a lab partner, so she had to do double the work of the other first-years. Not that she minded the extra work particularly. She’d just enjoy having someone to gossip with, which – judging by the crowd gathered by the ice machine – was all the other students were doing.

  She was opening up her lab book on her tablet when a harried-looking supervisor tapped her on the shoulder. She dropped her stylus and turned around. At the same time, she stuck her hand into her pocket, fingers catching on the locket she’d stuffed in there last week when it had annoyed her while she was working at a fume cupboard.

  The supervisor gestured to the boy standing beside her. “Here’s your new lab partner. He’s just transferred from chemistry. You can get him settled, can’t you?”

  Then the supervisor disappeared in a flurry of stress and steamed-up goggles to deal with another fresher, who had just managed to drop a beaker of something foul on the floor and then stand in it.

  Kate stared at the boy.

  “Hi,” she said dubiously. She fished out the locket and put it back on.

  He stared back at her, his expression indecipherable. Then he nodded hello. He was wearing a tweed waistcoat, of all things, over a ratty band T-shirt. His light-brown hair hung over his eyes in a retro fringe that seemed to be based on something from the late noughties. She was delighted to note that despite his doubtful fashion choices he was exactly her type.

  “Welcome to my lair. Make yourself at home.” Kate gestured to the lab, which was filling with the soft scent of rotting manure. Near by, a cluster of the Ice-Machine Gossipers, lab coat sleeves over their noses, were gathered around the spillage, offering advice to the flustered supervisor.

  Kate turned back to the boy, who’d dropped his lab coat onto the bench like he’d been waiting for her permission. The coat was sparkling new, and he’d apparently been using it as a kind of satchel, as he pulled out an assortment of notebooks and what looked like his lunch (in a biology lab; did he have no survival instincts at all?) from its depths. As he rescued an apple from where it had bounced across the floor, she found her gaze lingering on the way his hair curled over the back of his collar.

  He actually blushed when he noticed her watching him – a vivid pink staining cheekbones that she was frankly jealous of. Bone structure like that was wasted on a chemist. Kate pulled off her goggles to cover up the fact that she’d been caught watching him. She fought for a moment to free them from their determined grip in her tangled red hair.

  He had blushed? She wasn’t sure what to do with that, actually. Was it a good thing, a guy blushing when you looked at him? He might as well have a name tag saying, “Hi, I’m a shy, socially awkward scientist. Please don’t look me directly in the eye or I might faint.” Kate was just imagining him introducing himself as “a socially awkward scientist”, his Scottish lilt skipping quickly over the words, when he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “I didn’t actually download a copy of the lab book. What experiment are we doing today?”

  That was a bit odd. He sounded exactly as she had imagined he would: the same soft Scottish brogue. She frowned. Why had she assumed he would be Scottish?

  “Cleaning up horse muck, by the look of it,” she joked, glancing over at the students still gathered around the spillage.

  He dimpled a smile at her, and relaxed a little as he pulled on his lab coat.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, looking her up and down. His eyes lingered on her lab-coat collar, which was decorated with badges and beads, but he didn’t mention it. Which was good. He was hardly one to judge her for accessorizing her lab coat – there was half a ham sandwich poking out of his pocket. It should have been strange, but it wasn’t.

  “Kate Finchley,” she said brightly, trying to convey a more normal aura.

  His eyebrows rose in what looked like surprise at her answer. She wasn’t sure why her name would be surprising.

  “Matt,” he replied. “Matt Galloway.”

  “Hi, Matt, nice to meet you. Welcome to biology, etc., etc. I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?” Or instead of being normal she could just act like his own personal stalker. That worked too.

  “We haven’t met before. I would have remembered.” He blushed again and then stammered, “I mean, I haven’t even been to this country before. I moved here for university.”

  She eyed him speculatively. He must be particularly intelligent to have got permission to study abroad. Since Scotland had gained independence from England after the last world war, almost twenty years ago, it had been practically impossible to get permits to study internationally.

  Hmm. He didn’t seem like he was lying. Where did she know him from?

  She should probably get back to work and give him a week or so to settle in before she began to torment him more by chatting to h
im any further, or doing something equally terrifying like nodding to him in the corridor. It was obvious he was completely overwhelmed by her raw sexuality – or that was what she was telling herself, anyway, and no one could prove otherwise. But she couldn’t look away. There was something … familiar about him.

  He made no attempt to say anything else, just looked at her, nonplussed. Kate was afraid to continue any line of conversation in case he actually died from the blood rushing to his face, but the silence was awkward, so eventually she said, “Why are you transferring over to biology, anyway?”

  “There weren’t as many explosions as I was hoping for in chemistry.” It sounded like a prepared response; he’d probably been asked that question a lot recently.

  “Well, there aren’t nearly as many giant octopuses as you’d want in biology either, sorry.”

  He grinned. “Shame. How’s the physics department here?”

  She could sense him eyeing her, and she tried not to feel uncomfortable. Her grandmother had once described her as a perfect Pre-Raphaelite beauty, which she took to mean that her figure was a little too soft around the edges to conform to twenty-first-century perceptions of beauty, and her hair was a vivid shock of red. Sometimes people at school had teased her for being ginger, but she’d always loved her hair too much for it to bother her. Either way, she was secure in her body image a lot of the time, but it didn’t stop her feeling self-conscious when there was a cute boy looking at her like she was the most interesting thing he’d seen all day.

  “I’d give the physics lot six out of ten. There aren’t enough brunets,” she said. There’d been a disappointing mixers event in freshers’ week.

  He grinned again, and Kate smiled back. Then she said, “But I hear their MRI research rivals Cambridge’s.”

  “I’ll look into that, then. If the octopi don’t work out.”

  “I’m sure they will. No sea monsters today, though. We’re testing fertilizer effects on the development rates of bacteria cultures.”

  “Sounds a lot easier than chemistry labs. I had to bring an acid to boil. On my first day.”

  “Ouch. Well, I’ll look after you today.” She handed him a pair of latex gloves. Their hands touched, just slightly.

  > First contact established in time-landscape 2039

  Kate shuddered, closing her eyes for a moment. She felt a little strange.

  Carlisle, England, 1745

  Katherine stared vacantly out of the carriage window, taking in the bustling streets of her new town. It was raining heavily, thick droplets momentarily cleaning the dirty cobblestones. They pulled to a stop with an abrupt clatter of horseshoes, and the coachman came around to hand her down. He smiled gently at her as she held tightly to his hand for balance.

  > First contact established in time-landscape 1745

  Katherine could feel herself relaxing in response to his touch and her expression softened, although she couldn’t muster up a smile. She hadn’t smiled properly in several weeks now.

  “We must have the dressmaker sew you a new dress first,” her aunt Elizabeth said, climbing out of the carriage behind her. “You simply can’t wear that old thing when you’re introduced into Carlisle society.”

  Katherine nodded vaguely. Elizabeth was so excited about taking her to parties and lunches, as if it hadn’t been barely a week since Katherine’s whole life had changed.

  The coachman escorted them to the dressmaker’s below a wide umbrella. Before leaving them, he confirmed that he would collect them later in the afternoon. He had a Scottish accent. In an attempt to cheer her up, the housekeeper at her grandmother’s house had told Katherine stories of mysterious and dangerous Scottish savages while they were packing up her belongings. It hadn’t worked. She’d been too distracted – her home was being disassembled around her and her grandmother was dead.

  As they entered the dressmaker’s, Katherine put her hand into her pocket to feel for the advertisement for the sale of her old home – the only home she’d ever known. It was to be sold, along with all the furniture.

  Folios/v1/Time-landscape-1745/MS-1

  File note: Clipping from The Times classified advertisements

  In the dressmaker’s, Elizabeth settled on a light-green silk with pink braiding, and Katherine stood still while the dress was adjusted to her measurements. Katherine took care to express her gratitude to her aunt, but she felt awkward in the close-fitting, expensive clothing. She hadn’t worn anything this fine when her grandmother was alive.

  Katherine had a small circle of acquaintances, having spent the last few years looking after her grandmother. She didn’t regret it, but now that she had to face the rest of the world she realized how introverted she had become. She was nearly eighteen and it was time to grow up. She shifted in the new clothing, suddenly feeling ready to start a new life with her aunt, uncle and cousin.

  Folios/v3/Time-landscape-1854/MS-2

  File note: Clipping from The Times classified advertisements

  Southampton Harbour, England, 1854

  Katy glanced up from The Times advertisement that was clutched in her hand. She felt displaced and self-conscious amid the crowd of red-coated soldiers boarding the steamer. She was suddenly aware of the boys’ clothing – the dull-brown breeches, shirt and jacket that she’d been wearing for years without worry. It had been a long time since she’d met new people. She’d grown complacent about her ability to pass as male. It was easy to keep up the act of being a pre-adolescent servant boy when people already believed it. It was entirely different to persuade new people. What if the journalist took one look at her and laughed her away, saying he’d wanted a man, not a skinny little girl?

  Katy knew that her features were quite feminine, but with cropped hair and male clothing she hoped she would easily pass for an undernourished fourteen-year-old boy, instead of a girl of sixteen years. If she hadn’t been so proud of herself for her achievement, she might have been a little offended by it.

  She squared her shoulders and berated herself for being stupid. Then she went to find her new employer, weaving her way through the crowd of tearful families waving off the soldiers. Near by, a horse was being led reluctantly up the ramp to the ship. It paused every few feet to stare at the waves below as they crashed against the dock.

  Katy climbed onto a crate of supplies waiting to be loaded onto the ship and looked out over the crowd. She spotted the journalist straight away. He was reading a newspaper with bags of luggage at his feet. He wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but she knew instinctively that it was him. He looked completely out of place in his crumpled shirt and waistcoat amongst the crisply dressed soldiers.

  He was young, only a few years older than her, and almost as thin. He was a mess of scruffy hair and spectacles and looked barely strong enough to withstand the sea breeze that swept through the harbour, let alone a war. She suddenly felt a lot more confident. There was hardly anything to him!

  “Mr Galloway?” she asked. The man looked up from his newspaper and smiled at her. He had high cheekbones that defined his face and – oh! – dimples. Those were definitely dimples. Oh.

  “You must be Christopher Russell! Matthew Galloway. Pleased to meet you.”

  “I— Hello.” She mentally shook herself. She sounded like a fool. She was all flustered, just because he was quite striking, in a posh sort of way, if – if you liked that sort of thing. She swallowed.

  She took his proffered hand a little distractedly.

  > First contact established in time-landscape 1854

  CHAPTER 2

  Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-113

  UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM CAMPUS, ENGLAND, 2039

  Kate sat at the desk in her room and stared blankly at the painted concrete wall. It was covered in pictures of her family that she’d stuck up the week before to try and make the university accommodation feel more like home. Her stomach was in knots. She felt like something hugely important had happened, but she wasn’t sure what.

 
; When her hand had touched Matt’s earlier, she could have sworn something… There had been something. She blinked and tried to remember exactly what had happened. She had felt strange, like she’d suddenly relived the previous night’s dream, one she’d completely forgotten.

  Who was this guy? He seemed so familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. She didn’t think she’d met him before.

  Matt Galloway had come into her life and left her brain in uproar, and she didn’t even know anything about him.

  She touched her desk, waking up the computer screen in the table. She had to find out more about him, and the best way to do that was by “stalking” him on the Internet. Everyone did it, and she just wanted to find out what he was like – nothing weird. That was perfectly reasonable.

  She found his university profile in seconds, but annoyingly it was set to private. The only thing she could access was the picture. It looked like it had been taken before a school prom – Matt, awkward in a suit and bow tie, seemed moments away from making an escape, the arm of someone who was perhaps an older brother slung over his shoulder, trying to stop him moving.

  Kate looked at the picture and smiled. Matt really was cute. She hovered her finger over the SEND FRIEND REQUEST button, but didn’t tap. Instead she did an Internet search for him. He must have some other social-networking accounts that were more accessible.

  All of the websites were over twenty years old, from before World War III had even begun. They clearly weren’t about her lab partner, although coincidentally this other Matthew Galloway guy was married to someone called Katherine. Kate grinned. She and Matt were clearly meant to be.

  Kate clicked on the first link. It was the website for an old science laboratory and the article outlined its research into crop fertilizers. She skimmed it, looking for the first mention of Matthew Galloway.

  Recently two of our biologists Matthew and Katherine Galloway (pictured below) have been working on the development of a bacterial fertilizer for use in agriculture. They have found that they can make the fertilizer safer and reduce the hazard to local wildlife by varying the bacteria used.