She wouldn’t tell him until his tour was over.
It would distract him.
Put too much pressure on him.
All he needed was to carry on doing as he had been, andkeep coming back.
‘Anything for me?’ said Clare, who’d returned from breakfast ahead of Iris, and was on her bed, cradling a mug of what smelt like medicinally laced cocoa.
‘Just a bit,’ said Iris, saving her own news for another time – this was Clare’s day, not hers – and moving to hand her the stack of cards she’d collected from her pigeonhole. ‘Ambrose asked me to pass on his felicitations too.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course not,’ said Iris, tapping her on the head with her cards.
‘I’m pretty sure I did change the past,’ I tell Ellen. ‘I think Iris would have fallen if it hadn’t been for me. I reached for your arm … ’
‘So you’ve said.’
‘You don’t remember it?’
‘Vaguely, maybe. It was more than seventy years ago. But if Iris did that … ’
‘She did … ’
‘Then she was always going to have done it.’
‘How can you know?’
‘Because, Claudia, she already did.’
‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that.’
‘No, I can tell.’
We fall silent.
I study her, so still and composed.
She studies me.
She doesn’t check her wristwatch, or consult a notepad.
She hasn’t got a notepad.
This is no therapy session we’re having.
I’d just like to meet,I said to her on Monday, when I called her using the number Mum gave me. I did it whilst I was here in Heaton, on a break from shooting our village scenes. The entire centre was cordoned off, but a lot of locals turned up to watch from behind the barriers, plenty of paps and reporters with them, yelling their intrusive questions between takes. We all ignored them, of course, and the filming went off without a hitch. It was nothing too complex – snippets of dialogue; a couple of atmosphere shots – and I managed not to show myself up again, but I wasn’t remotely fine. I was reeling, cracking from the inside over Nick, and Mum, and Felix too – who really hasn’t been helping – my stitches throbbing, by eyes darting from the church, to the graveyard, to this house on the green.I need to try and understand some things, I told Ellen.I’d be grateful for your time, if you don’t mind.
Not at all,she replied.I’ve been waiting for your call.
‘I’ve been fascinated by your career,’ she says to me now. ‘It’s enthralled me that you’ve chosen to spend your life slipping realities, when you were such an expert at it as a child.’
‘Did you ever suspect whose reality I was slipping to?’
‘Did it occur to me that you might be inhabiting the past life of Iris Winterton?’ She gives me an incredulous look. ‘No, Claudia. You were a confused, quiet and cautious child. I knew Iris as a headstrong, capable, and frankly sometimes rather rash young woman. I never once connected the two of you. And I’m a scientist. In the business of facts. It took me a long time to entertain the possibility that there might be some truth in the things you told me.’
‘But you did entertain it?’
