But as he went to get the smaller of his bags in which he kept the laptop hidden in a book, she stopped him.
‘No, Hugh,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen inside that bag, remember? Show me what’s in the bigger bag. If you love me, show me that.’
And so Stanton took his keys and opened the larger of his two bags and inside were a number of strange-looking guns and packages. And also, broken into three parts, were the unmistakable components of a telescopically sighted sniper’s rifle.
Bernadette stared at the gun for a long time in silence.
‘I believe you, Hugh,’ she whispered, holding out her arms. ‘Thank you. Thank you for telling me everything. You told me because you love me and I listened because I love you. And now I know. There’s two of us now, Hugh. Two people in the world who truly know you.’
And he went to her and lay down on the bed in her arms.
‘So shall we be together?’ he asked. ‘Will you help me begin again? Share your life with me? Help me build one for myself?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll begin tomorrow.’
‘I have one last thing I need to do,’ he told her. ‘One last duty to the Companions of Chronos. I’ve decided I have to go back. Back to where I emerged into this century and leave a letter. A letter that describes the history I prevented. The Great War that I stopped. Because it’s just possible that a hundred and eleven years from now another traveller will go to that cellar in Istanbul about to embark on a mission to adjust the history of this century. Maybe somehow in this loop of time the cellar will still be locked in 2025 and they’ll find my warning, a warning of how much worse things could be. A warning to think twice before it’s too late. It’s a long shot but then everything in my life is … not least meeting you.’
‘Shhh,’ she said, ‘shh. That’s enough now. You’ve told me everything. It’s time to sleep.’
Her voice was so musical. He loved it so.
He closed his eyes.
An immense burden lifted from his shoulders. He laid his head against her naked breasts and listened to her heart beat. He was no longer alone.
And in her arms he slept.
And she held him close and he drifted in and out of sleep and when he woke she held him closer and kissed him and she put her cigarette between his lips and he smiled and once more he slept. At peace for the first time since the day of the hit-and-run in Primrose Hill that took away his life.
A deep and contented sleep.
When he woke next it was dawn and there was light coming through the open window.
He felt cold.
And he was alone.
Bernadette was not in the bed.
38
SHE WAS NOT in the room.
His head ached. He glanced at the bottle on the bedside table. It was empty. They’d drunk it all. No. He’d drunk it all. He looked across at Bernadette’s side of the bed. The glass he’d poured her, the one he’d filled as he had begun to tell his story, was scarcely touched.
He was out of bed in an instant.
He’d told her. He’d told her everything.
And she’d said she believed it.
And she had believed part of it. A very small part.
The part about him having killed the Kaiser.
Of course she hadn’t believed the rest. Was he crazy? How could she have believed the rest? Would he have done? He’d doubted it even with the entire establishment of Cambridge University presenting the case. He never would have believed the story if she had been on his side of the bed and he on hers. Nobody would. Nobody ever could.
He was dressing now. And as he did so his eye ranged round the room. What should he take? What was essential? Nothing that wasn’t already in his bags. For a moment he thought he’d left his wallet on the table but it was Bernadette’s purse. She favoured mannish accessories; it was part of her political identity.
He looked at his bags. They were where they had been the night before. She hadn’t touched them. If only he’d shown her his computer. The photographs, the history archive. Would she have believed him even then?
That he was a time traveller?
No, she would have thought he was a magician, an illusionist, or else had drugged her or hypnotized her.
But she would not have believed that he was from the future and that an entire alternative twentieth century, in which she herself had lived and died, had already happened.
He looked out of the window. It was early dawn and the street below was empty. Above him was a terraced rooftop which ran the length of the street. There was a pretty stout drainpipe offering a possible means of ascent.
He put on a leather jerkin he’d bought on his first day in Berlin, loading its pockets with the papers for the other identities Chronos had supplied him with. One German and one Austrian. If he had to run, which he was absolutely convinced he must, Hugh Stanton would no longer be of any use to him.
Next he took the larger of his two bags and emptied out the sniper’s rifle, which was the heaviest item in it. It had served his purpose, and since Bernadette had seen it there was no point in further concealment. He also pulled out all but a single change of clothes and any books and other clutter he’d collected in the present century. Then he took the smaller of the bags, which contained his computer, his spare pistol, his smart phone with its precious photo album and his money, and emptied it all into the big bag. If he was truly on the run then one bag was definitely better than two.
One last glance around.
Now he was ready.
It was time to go.
Not that he cared whether he survived for himself. He felt at that moment that he’d be perfectly happy to die in a hail of police bullets. Chronos had drained the life from him. First it had taken away the love of his life and now in a way it was depriving him of a second chance to love. For he had loved Bernadette. He still loved her.
But he had a plan and he knew he must see it through. He still wanted to warn the new future about the old future. To leave an account of history as it had been before he changed it. He wanted to return to Constantinople.
He picked up his bag and took a step towards the door.
Before he could reach it the handle turned.
By the time it had revolved sufficiently for the door to be opened, Stanton was pointing his pistol at it.
The door opened and Bernadette entered.
Stanton smelt hot, freshly baked bread. There was a loaf under her arm.
‘Goodness,’ Bernadette said. ‘Why are you pointing a gun?’
‘You were gone,’ he said quietly, from behind the pistol. ‘It isn’t yet five. Why were you gone?’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘How would you expect me too? Lying beside a man from another world. It wasn’t enough that you made me fall in love with you, then you had to turn out to be a time traveller?’
She was smiling as she said it. That beautiful smile he’d first loved on the train from Zagreb. But the smile was fading.
‘You’re still pointing that gun, Hugh. Why are you pointing a gun at me? Why are you dressed with a bag in your hand … you’re leaving?’
He lowered his gun. Relief or at least the tentative hope of relief springing within him.
‘I … I woke up and you weren’t there. I thought …’
A shadow of sadness passed across her face.
‘You thought I hadn’t believed you?’
‘You were gone, I …’
‘And were you going too, Hugh? If I’d spent five more minutes in the queue for hot bread, would I have returned to find you gone?’ She glanced at the table and at the bed they’d shared. ‘And not a note? Not a bloody note to say goodbye? Is that what was going to happen? You were just going to simply disappear? You said you loved me!’