‘Jahulla! Maddy! Just tell me!’
‘Liam and Foster… they’re the same.’
She pulled a face. ‘What?’
‘The same. They’re the exact same person.’
Sal turned to look out of the window. There was a market outside: grocers, fishmongers and milling customers. They could have sat outside the cafe; it was certainly warm enough this Monday afternoon, but, with the market going on, far too noisy for their need to talk in hushed whispers.
‘The same?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Foster was once Liam.’
Sal’s mouth hung open. Catching flies, an expression her mom used to use.
Maddy nodded. ‘That’s right… give it a moment to sink in, Sal. It totally fried my head when Foster first told me.’
‘But what?… So that means…?’ Sal stopped, cocked her head and frowned, then tried again. ‘Are you saying Foster was young like Liam?’
‘Exactly like Liam.’
‘Foster’s been working for the agency since he was sixteen?’
‘Ahh, yeah, I guess… well, kind of.’
Sal chewed the top of her straw, nibbling ferociously at it. She stopped. ‘So this means Foster was once on the Titanic?’
Maddy nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘And he was recruited like Liam was?’
‘I guess.’
‘So then who recruited Foster?’
‘I don’t know… I don’t know!’ She looked down at her hands, playing with the handle of her teaspoon, stirring the frothy coffee unnecessarily. ‘Maybe another Foster?’
‘ Another Foster?’ Sal looked up at her. ‘Like it’s a loop or something? Like our archway field, but bigger? Looping round and round? Does that mean there are other us? Other you s and me s?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I’m still trying to figure how this all works. Perhaps it was someone else who recruited Foster.’ She hesitated. ‘Waldstein even?’
‘This is so chutiya! This is really scaring me, Maddy. I don’t know what to believe, what to think.’ She laughed. ‘It’s a chutiya — crazy idea.’
‘What is?’
Sal shrugged.
‘Come on, Sal. What?’
‘Those two jackets? Liam being Foster?’ She looked up at Maddy. ‘Maybe… this is so totally chutiya, but maybe we’ve all been here before.’ A nervous, jittery half-smile flickered on to her face. ‘Maddy, the team that came before us. Do you remember Foster saying there was that team that died?’
Maddy’s coffee was midway between the table and her mouth. It stayed there. ‘Oh my God! You think that was us?’
Sal shrugged. ‘My diary… you know my diary?’
‘That notebook you’re always scribbling in, yeah.’
‘There were pages ripped out when I found it.’
‘I thought you bought it?’
‘No, I found it in the arch.’ She played with her straw. ‘I found it tucked in my bunk.’
‘And?’ Maddy shook her head. ‘These ripped-out pages…?’
‘I think it might have been me writing in the diary before.’
‘Oh…’ was all she could say. Then, ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of this.’
‘Me neither.’
The pair of them stared at each other. ‘We don’t know anything for sure, do we?’ said Sal finally. ‘We’re like little test rats in a lab.’
Maddy nodded. ‘Feels like that sometimes.’
She looked out of the window at the street outside. Not for the first time she wished she could just walk away from all of this; trade places with just about anyone out there on the street.
‘All I know is… I trust you, Sal. And I trust Liam too. As long as we’re honest with each other.’
Sal turned to her. ‘But you did keep things from us. The note from San Francisco with that Pandora message. And now this, Liam being Foster. You’ve lied to us! So how can — ’
‘I… you’re right.’ Maddy’s eyes dropped guiltily. ‘But I’m done with all the secrets. You know everything I know now.’
‘And you said that before too.’
‘Well, this time I mean it, Sal. Seriously. No more secrets. You know what I know.’ She reached out for Sal’s hand, but she pulled it away. ‘Sal?’
‘You seem to have picked up this job, though, Maddy… I mean really easily. Like maybe you’ve done it before or something. Like maybe — ’
‘ Easy? You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding. You think it’s been easy for me? Sheesh…’ Maddy could hear her voice wobbling with emotion. She shut up before that wobble became tears. Pressed her lips and took a deep breath.
Don’t you dare cry, Maddy. Don’t you dare go girly.
She sipped at her coffee, not even wanting it any more. They sat in silence for a while, both watching the market outside for something to do other than look at each other.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sal eventually.
‘OK.’
‘I was just saying…’
Maddy waved her hand. ‘Forget it. I trust you, Sal. And I trust Liam. We’ve put our lives in each other’s hands, haven’t we? Quite a few times now.’
Sal nodded.
‘And that’s all the three of us have got. Each other. If I don’t even get to have that… then I don’t want to go on doing this. I can’t go on doing this.’
Sal reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Maddy.’
Maddy puffed her cheeks. ‘’s OK.’ Tainted with guilt, though. There was one more secret she hadn’t shared and maybe now was the time for it to come out.
‘There’s more, Sal. There’s more I need to tell you.’
Sal looked like she didn’t want to hear any more right now. But the proverbial cat was halfway out of the bag. Maddy decided she needed to hear this. ‘Foster’s old, right, Sal? Old. How old do you reckon he is?’
‘I don’t know.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘ Really old.’
‘Come on, give me a number.’
‘Seventy? Eighty?’
‘Try twenty-seven.’
The smoothie almost slipped out of Sal’s hands. ‘ What? ’
‘He’s twenty-seven years old.’ Maddy sipped her coffee. ‘So I suppose we can presume from that that he’s been a TimeRider for ten years. The field office, our archway, this agency… has been doing its thing for about ten years’ worth of two-day loop-time.’
That felt about right. The archway had — from day one — felt as if it had been lived in already. Certainly not brand spanking new. Freshly set up. But that wasn’t the thing she needed to tell Sal now.
‘Thing is… the time displacement aged Foster. Every time he went back in time to fix history it was corrupting him, ageing him before his time. And now the same is happening to Liam.’
Sal stared out of the window for a moment. Maddy suspected she already had half an idea something like that was happening to him. ‘His hair?’ she said after a while. ‘That bit of his hair?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Yup… that was a huge jump for Liam. Sixty-five million years. He took a big hit on that one. I hate to think how much of a bite that took out of the time he’s got.’
‘Chuddah,’ Sal whispered. ‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’
‘Before us… yes… quite probably.’
‘And then?’
Maddy didn’t know what happened then. Perhaps she would one day soon find herself opening a portal on the Titanic, wading through freezing water looking for a young steward called Liam O’Connor.
‘I think it’s also hitting you and me,’ she said. ‘Ageing us too.’ She reached a hand up and traced the faintest lines in her skin beside her left eye. She sure as heck wasn’t going to call them ‘crow’s feet’. Old people had those… but that’s what those faint lines were going to become one day. ‘I’ve done a couple of jumps back, Sal… and I know that it’s affecting me. But I think the archway field that loops us round the two days also has an effect.’
Sal’s eyes were still on the marketplace outside. ‘I thought…’ She turned back to Maddy. ‘I thought we were changing. You and me. I just… I just wasn’t sure if it was my eyes playing tricks on me.’
‘Don’t tell me I’m lookin’ older. I’ll tip my coffee on you,’ said Maddy. She was trying to be funny. It came out sounding lame.