Page 80 of Never a Hero

Joan slid along the seat until she could climb out onto the pavement on Aaron’s side. She took another step and was tugged back so sharply that she nearly fell.

‘I shortened the leash,’ Aaron said coolly. ‘In case you were tempted to run again.’

Keep it together, Joan told herself harshly. If you don’t, you’re going to die. She needed to escape this. She needed to think.

She forced herself to look around. Where was the guard house? They were standing in front of a fenced park. She couldn’t see much of it in the dark. The other side of the street looked big and commercial—cafés and clothes shops and a supermarket, all closed for the night.

Déjà vu hit Joan then—as strong as the feeling in the café, and even more unnerving. The shops themselves weren’t familiar, but the configuration of the park and shops was.

‘This is Holland House,’ she said slowly. Or it had been—the house itself had been in ruins for decades. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘It’s the local guard house,’ Aaron said, seeming bemused by her reaction.

‘But … the house is in ruins,’ Joan said. It was too much of a coincidence—too strange—that Aaron had brought her here. Their families had been killed here; Joan had saved Aaron’s life here; she’d met him and Nick here.

The timeline manipulated situations sometimes—like when it had brought Joan and Nick back together at Joan’s school. Could it have brought Joan back here for a reason too? Joan sought the turning-gears feeling of the timeline manipulating events. And she couldn’t feel that exactly, but around them, the air seemed to stir.

It wasn’t a physical breeze, but a ripple of the timeline. Joan could feel it like an alerted animal. As if their presence here was somehow worthy of its attention.

Aaron frowned slightly; he’d felt it too and couldn’t make sense of it. He answered Joan’s question, though. ‘The guard house isn’t in this century.’

That was all the warning Joan had.

The pang of yearning hit her out of nowhere. Before she could blink, the sky snapped from black to white. Her eyes watered at the sudden brightness. She squinted, trying to adjust her eyes. The air was hot and summery, and it smelled heavy, like smoke and animal dung. The sounds had changed too—the background grind of car engines had vanished, replaced by a cacophony of horses’ hooves and market cries.

As Joan’s vision cleared, she stared down Kensington High Street.

Horses and carriages streamed in chaotic paths down the road—as far as she could see. Ahead of her, a man ran to catch a horse-drawn omnibus, already packed with other people. He was dressed in a grey suit and a bowler hat, and he put a hand up to steady the hat as he ran. A hand-painted ad on the bus said: Cadbury’s cocoa. Absolutely pure therefore best.

A woman cycled by, her long skirt bunched. She stared open-mouthed at Joan as she passed, and Joan was abruptly aware of her own out-of-place clothes: the gold-and-black party dress from the masquerade. The woman herself was in a blousy shirt and tailored jacket.

When was this?

Joan took in the horses and buggies and bicycles and shops with homemade signs. More advertisements—for ice machines, Lipton Tea, Huntley & Palmers biscuits.

She turned back to the park. The gilded wrought-iron gate was still in its place, but the grounds had expanded, swallowing up the Design Museum to the west and the whole row of buildings beyond it.

A footstep sounded, making Joan jump. A man appeared at the Holland Park gate. He wore the formal uniform of a Court Guard: navy serge with gold buttons, a braided cap.

He surveyed Joan and Aaron through the iron bars, taking in their twenty-first-century clothes and the golden lion on Joan’s arm.

‘She’s a fugitive,’ Aaron said. ‘Marked for execution.’

The guard nodded, as if receiving condemned prisoners was an everyday occurrence. ‘Bring her in.’

twenty-three

Aaron’s grip on Joan was still tight as they stepped through the open gate. The path ahead was gloomy under the white sky. Through the trees, Joan glimpsed vast grounds—far bigger than the current park. More like the one she’d known when she’d worked here. Chimney smoke curled up into the sky—the first sign of the house. Joan stared. She’d never actually seen the house chimneys in working order.

She caught Aaron’s head tilt as he peered through the leaves.

‘Does it look familiar?’ she asked him tentatively.

Aaron started to frown automatically, and then he just looked puzzled. ‘Well, of course. I’ve been to the guard house before.’

Not because of that, Joan thought. Because this was your childhood home. That wasn’t true in this timeline, though. A lot of things weren’t true in this timeline … Her chest felt heavy again.

That filth, he’d called her. Where had that word come from? He’d never spoken about her like that. He’d never looked at her like he’d hated her.

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