Page 34 of Only a Monster

‘Yes,’ Joan said. Her eyes returned to the piece of sky where the London Eye should have been. ‘No.’

The world felt infinite. She could go anywhere. Anywhen. She could travel back to the Regency. To the Restoration. To the Roman Empire. She could see Pompeii before it fell. She could see— Then she remembered how they’d gotten here. She shuddered. No, she could never do that.

Tourists strolled around them. Girls and boys snuck Aaron a second look. Even with his hair all messed up, he was good-looking enough to turn heads. If these people only knew what he was, what Joan was—what she’d just fantasised about doing—they’d run screaming from them both.

Joan took a step toward the road, and then realised that she’d started for the Tube, to get to Gran’s house in Kensington. She stopped, disoriented.

Gran moved every year. Here, in this time, Joan had no idea where the Hunt family lived. She had no idea where anyone was. When she’d imagined going back in time, she’d imagined going back a few days to warn everyone. Now she was decades in the past, before she was even born.

She wished suddenly that she could go home—not to Gran’s. Home home, to Dad’s, in Milton Keynes. She’d tell him everything, and he’d make a big pot of rice porridge with lots of ginger, like he did when she was sick. They’d scoop it into the little bowls from the top of the cupboard. Dad would crack an egg into Joan’s bowl, and he’d tell her that everything would be okay.

But there was no home in this time. Right now, Dad was still living in Malaysia—he hadn’t moved to England yet. If Joan went home to Milton Keynes, a stranger would answer the door.

‘Are you about to lose it?’ Aaron sounded more curious than concerned.

‘No,’ Joan said.

‘Because you look like you’re freaking out.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m not,’ Joan said. It came out as embarrassingly emphatic.

She expected Aaron to mock her, but his eyes turned back to the clumps of tourists. ‘We can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘We just appeared out of thin air. Someone might have noticed.’

No one was even looking at them. Around them, people were either following the marching guards or peeling away. But of the two of them, Aaron knew this world. Aaron knew people here. Joan needed him. She hated that she needed him.

Aaron turned toward St James’s Park. The relieved guards were marching back down the long red stretch of the Mall. Thinning streams of tourists followed them, still taking photos with those big boxy cameras.

‘Wait,’ Joan said, and only realised she’d spoken when Aaron turned back to her. ‘Where are we going?’ she said. ‘We can’t go to your family.’

Aaron was silent for so long that Joan thought he wasn’t going to answer at all.

‘I know,’ he said finally. His expression was closed off. Joan waited for him to elaborate. But instead he started again toward the park.

Joan stared at his back for a long moment before following.

It was a sunnier day than the one they’d left. St James’s Park was a patchwork of picnic blankets and deck chairs, and people eating sandwiches and soft serves.

Conversation blended with kids shrieking and a tinny cricket match streaming from someone’s—Joan blinked. Coming from a silver box the size of a bread bin.

This wasn’t her London, she remembered again.

After that, all she could see were differences. The drape of people’s clothes, the haircuts. Even the air smelled different in this time—like cigarettes and tar. The cars sounded different. When Joan closed her eyes, she could have been in a different city.

And something inside her was drawn to it—just as she’d been drawn to Holland House. She wanted to keep travelling, to see London grow stranger and stranger until there wasn’t even a London here anymore. And then to keep going beyond that. To see the Iron Age, the Bronze Age.

Or to travel forward. To see wonders. Time travel is in your blood, Aaron had said.

‘Hey!’ Aaron’s hand clamped over her arm.

Joan blinked at him, feeling weirdly muzzy. His grip hurt, but in the same distant way that her arm had hurt the time she’d broken it and Dr de Witt had prescribed a wildly strong painkiller that had made her head float.

Aaron’s face was right up close then, eyes wide. ‘Joan?’ His voice sounded far away, as though he were speaking through a long pipe. ‘Hey, stay with me.’

‘Shouldn’t,’ she mumbled. ‘Your family tried to kill me.’

At school, Mr Larch had said that there were once elephants and camels in St James’s Park. And crocodiles. King Charles II had played French croquet here. And before that, it had been a hunting ground. Wild deer and ducks for the king’s table.

‘Joan.’ The suddenness of Aaron’s voice jolted her again. ‘Are you with me? Can you hear anything?’

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