‘It wasn’t right to cut me out. But I was better off living the life I had.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Margaret sneered. ‘You’re so smug, with your idyllic cottage on the coast, and your dog and your home-spun wisdom. We both know you’re weak.’
‘Strong enough to walk away from you without a backward glance.’
Which is exactly what she did.
Barbara’s perception of time travel had been formed before the Conclave was born or thought of. In those early days, Margaret had been one member of a team where everyone’s input was essential, so her personal qualities didn’t dominate. This meant that the eventual character the Conclave took on came as a shock to Barbara when she tried, at the age of eighty-two, to return. She had the strength to walk away, but she was also glad she’d had the chance to see behind the wizard’s curtain. It meant that when – less than a day later – Barbara died, she could go to her grave without regrets for the life she’d led. She’d loved her family. She was at peace with her health. She’d had years to tend her garden and watch the sea. In another life she’d invented time travel – but that was no longer a glory she needed to revisit.
42
SEPTEMBER 2018
Odette
It was dark when Odette arrived home. Only Maman was in, reading A-level essays at the kitchen table under a crisp circle of lamplight. She took one look at Odette’s face, and put the essay down.
‘You didn’t get it?’ Maman said.
Odette took a seat and undid her shoe straps. ‘The job’s mine. I’ve already signed the contract.’
‘But, Midge, that’s wonderful!’
‘I’m not going back there. The people are terrible.’
Maman tsked, dismissively. ‘Nobody likes their colleagues. Not me, not your father. Do you hear us complaining?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well we still go to work anyway. It might be frightening to leave university but you need to start your career now.’
‘I’m not frightened of leaving university.’
‘What then?’
Odette watched her own reflection in the kitchen window. What was she frightened of? She was comfortable enough with lying, to find out if the time travellers were murderers. But Fay’s ritual had made it clear that blending in might also mean doing unpleasant things to innocent people. This time Odette had resisted. Could she keep resisting, and yet evade detection? Could she keep resisting while earning the time travellers’ trust? Odette feared they might contaminate her. She wasn’t sure you could work in a rotten system and keep your own hands clean.
‘I spoke to lots of time travellers today. And one of them warned me I’d struggle to fit in.’ Odette’s voice trembled. ‘I’m frightened they’ll catch me out as someone who doesn’t belong. And I’m scared that I’ll be compromised – that I’ll end up hating myself – because I’m trying so hard to be accepted. After today I feel so alone.’
To her embarrassment, a tear ran down her cheek. But it made Maman soften. She pulled Odette to her.
‘This was a white time traveller, was it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but… that wasn’t what she was getting at.’
‘It’s always there when a white woman tells a black woman she won’t be accepted – whether or not that’s what she meant,’ Maman said. ‘You’ve shown determination, Midge, going to Cambridge and the Conclave. You must keep being determined. Nobody’s going to hand a black girl anything. But you are not alone. You have me.’
‘I know but—’
‘You’re not alone,’ Maman interrupted. ‘Ou pas tousel.’
The sound of the words in Kreol surprised Odette, and gave her a strange ache in her chest. Maman hadn’t spoken Kreol in years. Odette closed her eyes, and remembered the forgotten language, until they heard Robert’s key in the front door.
43
AUGUST 2017
Ruby
Grace didn’t have to sleep in the Conclave’s dorms. As a founding member, she had the privilege of a private apartment to the rear of the complex, on the thirty-sixth floor. She took Ruby there after they left Angharad to her rehearsals. The rooms were open plan and designed according to 1960s’ Italian principles, which meant the furniture was white and sinuous, and the walls were hung with optical illusions. Grace put the Velvet Underground on the record player. She poured some Steinh?ger into a pair of shot glasses and led Ruby out to the balcony to admire the city view.
On the patio table Ruby saw an arrangement of tiny objects: a matryoshka; a pearlescent pill box; a Swiss army knife; a Japanese coin; a ticket to see the Zombies; a dried sheaf of lavender; a pair of sea-green hurricane glasses; a heart-shaped eraser; a pharmaceutical capsule; an escargot fork…
‘What are these for?’ Ruby asked.
‘My next exhibition. They’re all examples of acausal matter. Or what some physicists call “genies” – because they appear out of nowhere.’
‘What d’you mean, nowhere?’
‘One of my future selves gave these to me, wrapped in a plastic bag. Eventually I’ll give them to a past me. The objects only exist in that loop. They aren’t made by anyone. They just exist.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘No, it isn’t. We don’t fully understand genies, but the laws of quantum mechanics allow for them. A surge of energy can spontaneously create matter from a vacuum. One theory is that the process of time travel creates an excess of energy that generates these objects.’
‘I find that difficult to get my head around.’
‘So do a lot of time travellers, especially the ones who work in support, because they rarely have a physics background. They tend to believe genies have a divine origin.’
‘They’re made by God?’
‘Or a higher power of some sort.’
‘D’you have a lot of them, these genies?’
‘Every time traveller does.’ Grace sipped her Steinh?ger and placed the glass on the table. ‘Not all genies are tangible. A genie can be a cake recipe. A piece of music. A mathematical equation.’
‘A list of names on next year’s payroll?’
‘Yes. Using genies to avoid labour can be dangerous. Doing your own groundwork – like going through a recruitment process – means you can reduce the number of possible outcomes. But there are situations where accepting a genie can be beautiful.’ Grace stroked Ruby’s arm. ‘Let’s say my future self tells me that the Conclave ballroom, on an August evening, is the best place to kiss you. And when I get older I’ll say the same thing to my past self. The idea wasn’t my own. It’s a suggestion that circles between my silver-me, and my green-me.’
‘What does your future self say about women on balconies?’
‘Nothing. We’ll have to experiment without her involvement.’
She kissed Ruby again.
Ruby lifted the paisley dress over Grace’s head. She kissed Grace’s scars, and the border where Grace’s shoulders met her oyster corselette. They made short work of Ruby’s checked pinafore – but the unlooping of every hook in Grace’s satin underwear was a slow pleasure – and then their hands were on each other’s breasts, their hips, their thighs. They fell onto the tiles. Through the speakers Nico crooned, halted in a groove. Eeeese, she breathed, over and over. Eeeese. Eeeese. The world was nothing but the rhythm of her voice, and Grace’s mouth on Ruby’s skin.
*
‘Tell me a secret,’ Grace said afterwards. ‘Something no one else knows.’
‘I didn’t have sex till I was twenty-seven,’ Ruby replied.
‘Is that late?’
‘Don’t you think it is?’
‘Not necessarily. These things can take longer to work out, if you’re a woman who likes women. Is that why you waited?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I didn’t wait deliberately. My favourite theory’s that I had a limited communication repertoire. I grew up in a house where nobody got too emotional, so I kept everything hidden, including attraction. I certainly didn’t flirt.’