The Next Together

by Lauren James

  “I won’t. I’m just going to get some of my gran’s cake. I miss home cooking,” Kate joked.

  He nodded, letting her onto the bus. “Safe travels.”

  She stuck a toothpaste tablet in her mouth, enjoying the fizz as it cleaned her teeth.

  When she arrived, her gran opened the door with flour-covered hands. “Kate! What are you doing here? I thought you’d be too busy partying to visit until at least the third week of term.” She kissed Kate on the cheek, before pulling her inside.

  “I’m homesick,” Kate replied, breathing in the smell of her grandparents’ house. She’d spent half her childhood there, after school when her parents were still at work. “But don’t tell Mum and Dad I came round. I haven’t been to visit them yet.”

  “Making the most of your freedom, are you? Come in. I’m just making bread. Your nana is still in bed.”

  Her gran turned to the stairs and shouted for her wife. “NANCY! KATE’S HERE!”

  There was a long silence, and then a reluctant reply came. “I’m up. I’m up. This had better not be another lie to get me out of bed!”

  Her gran shook her head, before walking into the kitchen. Kate followed, grinning to herself. She hadn’t realized how stressful she had been finding university life until she came home, and suddenly she felt completely relaxed. Growing up and leaving home was great, but sometimes you just wanted a good hug from your grandmother.

  “Tea?” her gran asked.

  “Sure,” Kate said. She sat down at the table, pressing her fingerprint to the on-screen scanner to log in. She pulled up the article she’d found the night before, enlarging the picture of the Galloways. Her gran was telling her an anecdote about their latest poker night. “… and Anthony said he’d let Nancy win back her money if—”

  “Gran?” Kate interrupted her.

  “Yes, sweet pea?”

  “Do you know who this is?” Kate asked.

  Her gran turned to look at the screen. All of the colour drained from her face. Her nana wandered into the kitchen in a dressing gown. She headed straight for the coffee pot.

  “Morning, Kate,” she said and then stopped as she took in their pale faces, the abandoned teacups. “Flo…?” When she saw the screen, she let out a short sob. “Kate!”

  Kate looked between her grandmothers. For the first time they looked old to her – old and tired.

  “Who are they?” Kate asked, suddenly scared.

  “That’s our daughter.” Nancy took Flo’s hand.

  “Daughter? But … I thought Dad was your only child.”

  “We had a daughter too. Katherine.”

  “She died,” Flo said, voice almost inaudible. “A long time ago.”

  “I … I read an article about them. Her and her husband, Matthew.” Kate was suddenly, violently, regretting coming here and asking questions about this. She hadn’t meant to hurt her grandparents. “It said they were scientists and terrorists.”

  Nancy closed her eyes.

  “Why? Why would they do that?” Kate asked.

  Neither replied.

  Then Flo sighed. “Sit down. I suppose you’re old enough to hear about it now.”

  “I’ll make tea,” Nancy said, squeezing Flo’s hand.

  Flo quietly went upstairs, and Kate sat at the kitchen table, feeling very young. She minimized the photo. She should never have done this.

  Nancy put a plate of cake and a cup of tea in front of her.

  “I’m sorry, Nana,” Kate said, voice small.

  “Oh, darling. It’s all right. We’ve had a long time to come to terms with what happened.”

  Kate picked at the cake, nudging a slice of apple until it pulled away from the crumb.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you found that picture?” her nana asked.

  Kate hesitated. What could she say? It was all for a boy, Nana. Sorry to bring up your dead terrorist daughter.

  “I was investigating. There’s a boy in my class who has the same name as Katherine’s husband. He looks similar too.”

  “Oh.” There was a long silence. When Kate looked up next, Flo was back, holding a folder.

  “I haven’t looked at any of this since it happened,” she said. “Nancy has, but I – I couldn’t.”

  “Do you want to now?” Kate asked, looking down at the yellowing papers apprehensively.

  “Yes. You should know the truth.”

  Kate opened the folder and then spread the sheets out. There were letters, photographs and some other more official-looking documents, including a marriage certificate. It announced that Katherine Finchley and Matthew Galloway were legally bound in the eyes of the law, giving a date of only a few months before the war had begun in 2019. There were several postcards too – the bright pictures showing vivid scenes of exotic locations. On the back, their foreign stamps curled away from the dried paper.

  Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-59

  Kate turned to the photographs. The printed pictures were a treat for her, as even before the war they had been going out of fashion, and now they were a rare, unnecessary luxury. Most of them were of Katherine and Matthew’s wedding, but there were a few holiday snaps mixed in. Kate ran her fingers over the smooth, glossy paper, taking in the old-fashioned clothing.

  Katherine Galloway was radiant in a lace wedding dress, eyes caught on her husband. The man looked so much like Matt that Kate could hardly take her eyes off him either.

  “I hadn’t realized how much you look like her,” Flo said. “You’ve grown up so fast. I was really pleased when your parents named you Katherine, although I was surprised too.”

  “What was she like? Katherine, I mean.”

  “She had gorgeous, shining red hair, just like you,” Nancy said. Kate automatically brought up a hand to her hair, flattening the wayward curls. “She was really vain about it. She was very funny too, like you. She was always so kind and patient with everyone, which is why it was such a shock to the family when she was accused of being a terrorist.

  “The wedding was only a few months before the war started. Everyone was ecstatic at Katherine’s choice of partner. Matthew was very charming and intelligent – a research scientist, like her. It was like a fairy tale. They looked so beautiful together.”

  Nancy paused, looking down into her tea. Flo rested a hand on hers, and took up the story. “They must have been very good at concealment, because no one had a clue that anything was going on. We were so proud to have a scientist in the family, someone working at the cutting-edge of genetic modification.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I never really understood what she was saying when she explained it,” Nancy added.

  “Me neither. I liked looking at the pictures of bacteria, though. They were always so colourful.”

  “I think they add in the colours with a computer afterwards, love,” Nancy said.

  “Do they? Well. Anyway. We were both very proud of her. But then, just before the war began, everything changed. She hadn’t rung us for weeks, and she wasn’t answering any calls. Not from us, or from your dad. At first we just assumed they were caught up with work. But then when they missed Nancy’s birthday, we began to get concerned. We went to their house and found it ransacked, papers everywhere. It was a complete mess. Katherine and Matthew were nowhere to be found.”

  “We were frantic,” Nancy added.

  “We had no idea what had happened or how to get hold of them – whether there’d been a break-in or if they’d been kidnapped or what. I tried calling their lab,” Flo said, “but I was told that there was an emergency situation and the place had been quarantined. We told the police they were missing.” Flo’s hand trembled as she lifted her mug and sipped distractedly at her drink.

  “That evening two soldiers came round,” Flo continued. “They were enormous – huge, serious, dangerous men. It was frightening. They told us that Katherine – our little girl – had been caught making a biological weapon that she and Matthew were going to release in London.
”

  “Obviously we didn’t believe them,” Nancy interjected. “They didn’t even tell us what terrorist organization they were supposed to have been working for. We asked to see her, and they said she’d been killed, along with her husband, at CSL. Katherine and Matthew had been stealing research. They had attacked the security guards who were trying to stop them. One of the guards fired – in defence, they said – and … and…” Nancy stopped to clear her throat.

  Her voice was rough when she spoke again. “It was such a shock and so confusing. We didn’t know what to do. We just … we let them go.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I should have tried harder, to fight for my Katherine, but I knew it was beyond me. I could scarcely handle her death, let alone try and fight to find out what exactly had happened.”

  “We did the best we could,” Flo reassured her. “We couldn’t have done any more for them.”

  “Could you not have tried to tell someone?” Kate asked, quietly horrified that they had never found out what had happened. “Was there no one who could help?”

  Flo shook her head. “It would have been too dangerous for us to mention to anyone that our daughter had been accused of being a terrorist, not with the war looming.”

  “We had to trust that we knew our daughter, and that she wouldn’t have been involved in something bad. She was a good person. I’ve never stopped believing that ever since.”

  Kate let out a choked-off sob, and launched herself at her grandmothers, pulling them tightly into a hug. “I’m so sorry, Nana, Gran. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you relive such painful memories.”

  Flo patted her back and then stroked her hair. “It’s OK, dear. You had to find out sometime.”

  “Most of the time I think that they couldn’t possibly have done it,” Nancy said, when Kate sat back down. “They were both so lovely. But it was all such confusion at the time, with the war and then the stalemate. We spent every day terrified that someone would drop a nuclear bomb and destroy the world. I don’t know how we could have found out the truth, in the middle of all of that.”

  “I – I saw her blog,” Kate said. “She seemed so… She didn’t sound like a terrorist. She was complaining about missing a TV show.”

  Her grandparents shared a wry glance. “Katherine was a good person,” Nancy said.

  “Did… Do you think that her husband made her do it?”

  “Matthew?” Flo said in surprise. “Oh, no. He was a darling. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly.”

  “Katherine was always the one forcing him into stuff,” Nancy agreed. “Do you remember when she made him go abseiling, Flo?” Nancy let out a laugh. “He hated it. In all the pictures he had this absolutely pained expression on his face, like he would rather have been anywhere else in the world.”

  “And Katherine was there, grinning away, completely oblivious.”

  “But he did it, for her. They were such a sweet couple.”

  Kate drank her tea, gulping down the cooling liquid. She felt exhausted. “I’m so sorry.”

  “We know, sweet pea. We know.”

  Folios/v1/Time-landscape-1745/MS-2

  File note:

  Part of a notice posted in Carlisle town square as the city prepared for the siege by the Jacobite forces during the 1745 uprising

  Carlisle, England, 1745

  Katherine had spent hours thinking about the conversation she’d overheard between Matthew and Anise, and she could only come to one conclusion: they were spies for the Rebels, and were planning to help the invasion if the Rebels reached Carlisle. Katherine couldn’t just sit by and watch that happen, not when there was a risk that her family and her home could be attacked. She needed to stop Matthew and Anise. She would have to find a way to prove what they were doing and have them arrested.

  She was supposed to be socializing with the other guests at a dinner party. They were all discussing the uprising too and panicking over the siege at Edinburgh. She let the conversation go on around her as she plotted how to reveal Matthew and Anise as traitors. She was drawing a blank, apart from pretending she was a Rebel too.

  Then she realized how ridiculous she was being. She decided to just talk to Matthew. Now was the perfect opportunity: he was waiting for them outside by the carriage. He wouldn’t be able to leave or avoid her questions. She stood up from the card table.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the other guests. “I need some air.”

  She left the party, ignoring her aunt’s disapproving look from the fireside. Then she walked outside and scanned the driveway for Matthew.

  He was lying on the roof of the carriage, staring at the stars and singing quietly to himself. Katherine stood with her arms crossed, listening to him in a futile attempt to decipher the words of the song, but his accent was so thickly Scottish that they sounded like nonsense. He seemed so harmless, sprawled out like that. It was hard to imagine that sweet, gentle Matthew could betray Carlisle – but she was convinced that his conversation with Anise hadn’t been entirely innocent.

  She loudly cleared her throat. Matthew quickly sat up and looked down at her. He was slightly dishevelled and sheepish with embarrassment at having been caught singing.

  “Katherine!” He dropped to the ground, avoiding her gaze. He began fiddling with the mare’s bridle, while his embarrassment faded.

  She set a hand on her hip and said, in as coy a voice as she could manage, “Does my aunt know you use her carriage as your own personal theatre?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re very witty, Katherine. In fact, I would say that your humour has no match. To what do I owe the unequalled pleasure of your company?”

  She couldn’t help but grin. He might be a traitor, but he was a very charismatic one. His lips spread into an answering smile.

  “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Mr Galloway. Can you take me home, please?” she asked.

  He looked towards the house in surprise. “Is the party over already? Where’s your aunt?”

  “She’s still inside. You can return for her later, but I want to leave now.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” Was she that obvious? She couldn’t bear to think of him as a Rebel. A traitor.

  He came towards her, frowning.

  “I’m perfectly well, just feeling a little out of sorts. Could you take me home, please?”

  He stared at her for a moment before nodding resignedly. “If you’re sure.”

  Katherine realized how close they were standing. If anyone had been watching they would have thought he was about to kiss her. She twisted away, feeling her stomach flip over with something like fear at the thought.

  He opened the door to the carriage, but she shook her head. She had to use the journey home as an opportunity to talk to him. “I think I’ll sit with you tonight. I need some fresh air.”

  She couldn’t read his expression, but she suspected that he was annoyed with her.

  He silently closed the door and gestured to the driver’s seat. Katherine began to climb up, thinking he was too angry to lend a hand, but after a moment she felt his arms around her waist as he guided her into the high seat. She smiled to herself as she watched him arrange the horses’ reins around her.

  Once he was seated beside her, she understood his annoyance for what it was: embarrassment. The seat was uncomfortably small for two adults and she was pressed closely against him. Through her thick skirts, she could feel the muscles in his leg move against her as he shifted position. She flushed. Perhaps she should have waited until their arrival at her aunt’s to speak to him.

  The carriage made its way down the narrow streets and through the square, with its towering cross, then past the quiet cathedral. The only sound was the clip-clop of horseshoes on the cobblestones. After several minutes, Matthew cleared his throat, his breath clouding the cold air. “What happened this evening?”

  She didn’t reply immediately. She was wondering how she could introduce the subject of the rebellion. Eventually she
realized she had been silent for too long and said shortly, “I can’t stop thinking about the uprising.” She was getting a headache from all of this intrigue. She wasn’t suited to being devious.

  He turned to look at her questioningly. It took her a moment to focus her attention away from the fall of his hair, the startling hazel of his eyes.

  “I think that we should do something to protect Carlisle, in case the uprising reaches the city,” she said finally. “We can’t just sit here and wait for them to attack us.”

  “Ah,” Matthew said after a long pause. “Well, the town leaders are trying. They’ve raised a militia and tomorrow they are recruiting volunteers from the city to help improve the castle’s defences – repairing broken walls, reinforcing the gates, deepening the moat, fixing broken cannons, that sort of thing. They need all the help they can get. I’m – I’m actually going to offer my services. I’m not working.”

  She tried to hide her surprise. He was going to help protect the city? Was he lying, to try to reassure her that he had no Jacobite leanings? “That’s very charitable of you,” she murmured.

  He looked pleased, although he tried to hide it. She realized suddenly that he had been trying to impress her. It was flattering. If she hadn’t overheard his conversation with Anise, she would have liked him all the more for his loyalty to the city. Then another thought occurred to her. Perhaps he was planning to destroy the cannons, to completely ruin all the weapons without anyone even realizing. Could she charm him into letting her join him at the castle, and then stay close enough to stop him doing anything treacherous?

  “I wish I could help too,” she said. There was a short silence. Katherine took a deep breath. “Matthew…?” she ventured.

  “Yes?” He sounded resigned, like he knew what she was going to say.

  “Do you think I would be able to help?”

  Matthew didn’t laugh like she had been expecting. “Katherine, I understand why you would want to. But you are a woman. Not only a woman, but a member of the gentry! It would be a scandal.”