Page 114 of Never a Hero

Joan turned to Aaron again. His beautiful face was ice-cold. ‘What did he say?’ she asked him.

Aaron’s jaw clenched. ‘Nothing repeatable.’ To Jamie and Tom, he said, ‘How much more of this ghastly place must we be forced to traverse?’

‘We’re almost there,’ Jamie said.

The sun re-emerged as they reached Narrow Street, a long road of eclectic buildings. Well-maintained brown brick terraces stood alongside ramshackle wooden structures with drooping balconies and peeling paint.

‘Well, the name is accurate,’ Aaron said.

It was—the street was as narrow as an alleyway but crammed full of people: South and East Asian people, Black people, white people. Joan heard half a dozen languages within a minute. If everyone had been wearing different clothes, this could have been modern London.

‘The Thames used to run farther inland,’ Tom said. ‘This whole street was once a medieval wall to hold the river back.’ He gestured at a gap between buildings, and Joan glimpsed the Thames—as packed with boats as the street was with people. ‘All these buildings face the river on the other side.’

As they walked, loud hammering and sawing sounded. Joan pictured workshops for making rope and repairing sails for the boatyards. The buildings seemed to be a mix of housing and manufacturing and shops. They passed a ship’s-biscuits baker, a mast-maker, and shop after shop with Chinese characters painted on windows and walls—a grocer, a restaurant, another Chinese medicine shop.

Jamie stopped, finally, about halfway up the street, in front of a tea shop, the window display showing wooden tea chests and samples of tea leaves on tiny plates. The man at the counter was Chinese, dressed in a beautiful three-piece suit, his waistcoat embroidered with a phoenix design. He looked up as Jamie pushed open the door.

Jamie said something to him in Mandarin. Joan caught wo bàba—my dad.

The man gestured at a door in the back wall, its edges almost hidden by wooden panelling. If he hadn’t pointed it out, Joan doubted she’d have seen it.

‘He’s in,’ Jamie said.

The door opened into a large courtyard space that reminded Joan of the square complex behind the Liu gallery in 1993. A covered corridor ran around the edges of the courtyard. To the right and the left, there were doors leading to more buildings in the complex. Some of the other shops on the street must have been a facade for the Liu house, Joan realised. Directly opposite, a carved wooden frame provided a picturesque view of the Thames. The courtyard itself had been made garden-like with potted plants and trees.

Ying Liu stood with his back to them in the centre of the courtyard. He was painting the river scene of boats and water with plain black ink. Joan felt a wave of déjà vu. In the other timeline, Ying had talked to her and Aaron in a courtyard like this, among easels and paintings.

The atmosphere here was so serene that Joan almost wished they hadn’t interrupted it. At the sound of their entrance, though, Ying put the brush into a glass of water and wiped his hands on a cloth. He turned, apparently unsurprised to see them, although for a moment his gaze tripped up on Nick.

‘Hi, Dad,’ Jamie said. ‘We need to talk.’

Ying was older than when Joan had last seen him—he’d been in his forties then, and Joan guessed he was around sixty now. Age had peppered his hair and deepened the sad lines of his face into knife-like cuts. Otherwise, he looked much the same: handsome and grave.

Ying dropped his head slightly now, as if under a heavy weight. ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘You’ve spoken to Astrid. You want to stop what’s coming.’

thirty-two

Ying brought over a low table and some wooden chairs that had been stacked under the covered walkway. Jamie ducked back into the tea shop and emerged with a tray: a bronze teapot, a stand, and ceramic cups. The pot was charmingly bird-shaped—the Liu phoenix. Steam drifted from its beak, and its tail swirled up to form a handle.

Jamie set the pot onto a small stand and lit a candle within it to keep the tea warm. The black metal had cut-outs of creatures that came alive with the flickering candle. Phoenixes too—made of fire.

There weren’t enough chairs, so Joan and Aaron sat on the bench overlooking the Thames. There was a steep drop below. This side of the building stood in the river; brown murk swirling around its wooden-stilt legs. Next door, a ladder ran from the balcony to the water—for boat travel and deliveries, Joan guessed.

The river was a highway of tarp-covered barges carrying goods in boxes and bales, rowboats with passengers, little barges with rusty-red sails, and steamships with cylindrical chimneys that belched black smoke. In the distance, one huge ship with billowing sails retreated from sight.

Aaron followed Joan’s gaze. ‘It’s the end of the Age of Sail,’ he observed. ‘There’ll be fewer and fewer sailing ships as the decade progresses, although the barges will last a little longer.’ He nodded at the red-sailed boats.

On the other side of the river, the docks were crowded with ships and people and costermongers. Weird to think that in 150 years, this whole stretch would be terraced housing. Joan craned her neck, trying to see farther west. ‘Can you believe that Tower Bridge is still being built in this time?’ she murmured to Aaron as the others pulled their chairs over and sat. ‘And the Crystal Palace is still standing.’ She’d always wanted to see it.

‘You should go back a few decades,’ Aaron said. ‘If you want to see the Crystal Palace at its height.’

Joan automatically gripped her knee to feel the rough fabric of her skirt, grounding herself in sensory detail. Aaron had taught her how to prevent fade-outs. Except … she didn’t need to do that anymore, she remembered. She was still mired by the tattoo.

With a heavy patter and a thump, Frankie joined them on the bench to sniff at the river air. Joan stroked her soft head and floppy bulldog ears; she felt a wave of melancholy suddenly. Maybe it was the thought of that retreating ship from a vanishing age. Or maybe the possibility that all this might soon be swallowed up by another timeline …

Frankie climbed over Joan to nose at Aaron. Aaron smiled slightly as he focused on her. Then he blinked, as if he hadn’t anticipated his own tender response.

And it was strange … Frankie hadn’t shown any hostility toward Aaron. Everyone else had. Could Frankie remember something of the other timeline? Did she remember Aaron as a friend?

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