‘But none of you resisted going in beforehand?’
‘Have you never done something that you knew would go wrong from the start?’ Grace asked.
‘Yes,’ Ruby said, thinking of Ginger.
‘There you are then.’
‘It’s not the same. Normally there’s some upside to ignoring the warning signs.’
‘There was an upside,’ Grace insisted. ‘You can’t know, because you don’t time travel. But if you’ve heard about an incident for years, actually experiencing it feels like a release. We call it—’
‘Completing,’ Ruby said, remembering Sushila Pardesi’s phrasebook.
Grace nodded, surprised.
Ruby looked again at the faint tip of the scar, curving out from Grace’s dress, and touched it.
‘Does it hurt?’ she whispered.
Grace shook her head. Her blue eyes had deepened to indigo in the semi-dark. Ruby could hear faint piano-playing.
‘Shostakovich,’ Grace said.
‘I thought I might be imagining it.’
‘No. He’s one of Angharad’s favourites. She must be in the ballroom.’
‘There’s a ballroom?’
They left the time machine, and the hall, to find the source of the music. It grew louder as they turned down corridors, this way and that, until they entered a gallery overlooking a gilded chamber. There were only two dancers below: ballerinas, with hands linked.
‘My God,’ Ruby said. ‘They’re twins.’
‘No,’ Grace corrected. ‘Both of them are Angharad.’
The women wore one pointe shoe each, and were dressed in identical unitards of sunset orange. They pirouetted from opposite sides of the room, twisting their way to the centre – so nearly touching – before jerking back like one south magnet from another. Grace and Ruby watched the dancers close their fists and splay their fingers, twitch their torsos to the left, extend their arms jitteringly into the air until Ruby lost her breath in sympathy. The performers leant into an embrace. One turned and dipped into a low arabesque, with her hip supported by her twin’s hand. Ruby looked at Grace, whose shoulder was a hair’s breadth from her own. The small gold figures flickered across Grace’s irises. She turned to face Ruby fully and touched Ruby’s waist. For a second Ruby thought they, too, were going to dance. But instead Grace kissed her. Her mouth was warm and alcoholic. Her skin smelt of jasmine. Ruby never asked what scent she wore, but for the next month she would spend her lunch hours at perfume counters inhaling swatches of paper, before she finally stood transfixed by a spray of Givenchy. It evoked Grace in an instant. Ruby could have drunk the bottle.
39
SEPTEMBER 2018
Odette
The sun was setting, and the streets were thick with people finishing their working day. Odette kept pace with Fay, but without the certainty of knowing their destination. Fay talked continuously.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said.
A worrying question, for someone working under false pretences.
‘I want to be a detective,’ Odette began cautiously.
‘Let me stop you there,’ Fay mimed zipping her mouth. ‘Tell me about you. Your actual life. Where are you from?’
Always that question.
‘Seychelles,’ Odette said hesitantly. ‘We moved here when I was still a child.’
‘I grew up in Tring.’ Fay stopped at the kerb as a passing lorry filled the air with dust and exhaust fumes. ‘In fact I’m growing up there at the moment. I was born in 2011.’
‘Do you visit often?’ Odette asked.
‘Yes. Not so much in this particular year. My sister was born in 2018 and my parents are flipping knackered. Do you have brothers or sisters?’
‘I have a sister,’ said Odette. ‘But she’s a lot older. My parents gave me almost as much attention as an only child.’
‘Did that get on your nerves?’
‘Not exactly. I felt special, I suppose.’ Still, it had come with pressures. Nothing distracted Odette’s parents from her academic performance. Maman had been able to keep an even closer eye on her because she was a teacher at Odette’s school.
‘And are you single?’ Fay asked.
‘Relationships aren’t a priority right now.’ Odette had had the same boyfriend through most of school. They’d broken up on A-level results day because she couldn’t abide his sulking when she got a better grade than him in Chemistry. His mother still tried to convince her to give him another chance whenever they crossed paths. She’d acquired her next boyfriend in Freshers’ Week. They’d gone out for two years. Sometimes she’d had the uneasy sense she was a novelty for him, and she wasn’t terribly surprised when he left her for a horsey girl called Timandra. After that Odette focused on revision. Revision, and the corpse.
‘I’ve been married for ever,’ Fay said.
‘To someone at the Conclave?’
‘No. We worked in the same chambers, before I started time travelling. I suppose I was lucky to meet him then rather than later. The Conclave has a big impact on people’s love lives.’
‘Work stress?’
Odette had to wait for an answer; a queue of French students divided her from Fay, before they fell back into step.
‘The job is stressful of course,’ Fay said. ‘But it’s more that time travellers’ relationships feel prearranged. Most time travellers check in advance who their partners will be. They know the outcome before they necessarily know the person.’
‘They still choose who to be with, don’t they?’
‘Sure. It just doesn’t feel that way. Like, you meet someone, and you think, I end up attracted to this person? What was my silver-me thinking?’
Odette wasn’t sure whether Fay was making general observations, or drawing on personal experience of relationships outside her marriage. Nor was Odette familiar with the phrase silver-me, though she could guess its meaning from the context.
‘Are you excited about seeing your future?’ Fay asked.
‘I don’t know. I really haven’t thought about it.’ She’d been so focused on investigating the death in the museum, she’d barely considered that she’d see how her life unfolded.
‘Probably best to have few expectations. That way there won’t be many big shocks.’ Fay stopped outside a café, with tables and folding chairs on the pavement. ‘This is the place.’
They sat down, and Fay asked the waitress for two coffees. Odette was still perplexed at why they’d come. Surely they might have drunk coffee in the Conclave.
For the duration of their walk, Fay had been carrying the large brown envelope that contained Odette’s contract. She opened the envelope again. This time, she took out a piece of paper with a photo attached, though Odette only glimpsed the image. Her stomach twisted as she recalled the threatening post the Conclave sent to Zach.
‘What’s that picture of?’ she asked.
‘You’ll need it for the ritual.’
‘What ritual?’
Fay passed her the paper and photo in lieu of explanation. Odette almost smiled with relief. The photo wasn’t a mortuary photo; it wasn’t anyone in her family. It showed a girl, alive and laughing, aged seven or eight with a tow-coloured ponytail. Her name was written along the bottom: Olivia Montgomery. Odette read the typed page of information. Mother killed in a road traffic collision outside Café Roberta. There was a time and today’s date, as well as a small map plotting the exact spot of the woman’s death. Odette looked at the laminated drinks menu, at the side of the table. Café Roberta was emblazoned across the top.
‘Explain to me what this means,’ Odette said.
Fay leant forward, her voice too low for anyone to overhear. ‘You’re going to tell Olivia her mother’s about to die. It’s the Angel of Death ritual. Do it, and you’ll be one of us.’
‘Angel of Death?’
‘Speak quietly, for heaven’s sake. It’s an initiation rite.’
‘But you said this was training.’ Odette couldn’t believe Fay had wasted her time on false pretences.