“You first. Where have you been all this time?”
“The future.” She winced, expecting disbelief or confusion. Instead, Rachel smiled. “You were in the twenty-first century, right?”
“How did you know that?”
“I’m from that time. A key brought me back here long before you were born, before I even met your father.”
“You mean you’re from the future?”
“I’m guessing it was the bond between us that sent you there. But how did you get back?”
Jessica told her all she could remember. She began explaining about the day she went missing. “It was the steward,” she said suddenly. “That’s where I knew him from. I knew I’d seen him somewhere. He locked me in the linen closet upstairs with that key.”
With that revelation she continued, leaving in the gaps that remained in her memory. When she said how the key came to her, Rachel smiled.
“Someone out there is watching over our family. I was sent a key too, in a manner of speaking.”
“But who sent it to me?”
“I doubt we’ll ever know the answer to that. So the key brought you back here, did it?”
“It did, only when I arrived the steward stole it and I ended up on Kirrin Island.”
She quickly summed up what had happened since, her meeting up with Eddard, their journey back to the castle together. The chase after the steward to prevent him stealing from the tax train.
“He’s clearly a good man,” Rachel said. “You chose your traveling companion well. Yet you look forlorn. You are wondering if you can leave him and return to the future, aren’t you?”
Morag sat up in her chair. “How did you guess?”
“I felt the same, although I was not born in this time as you were. Time is a strange thing, not that people ever really think about it that much. Read a book and you travel through space and time and no one bats an eyelid. Us?
“We really have traveled through time and you have my sympathy as you belong to two times far more than I ever did. My heart always lay here with Cam and his people. You should stay here and be with Eddard.”
“How do you-?”
“Know how you feel about him? Call it a mother’s intuition.”
“Look, even if I wanted to stay here, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Getting up, Morag crossed to the window and looked out at the countryside beyond the castle walls. “There’s a girl I promised to look after. Caroline. I can’t just abandon her.”
“Who is she?” Rachel asked, coming to join her by the window.
“She lived in the apartment block. Her parents beat her up. She kept asking me to take care of her but I couldn’t do much. I can’t leave her to that life.”
“You might not have to. Come over here.”
Rachel walked over to the door and pulled it closed.
“What are you doing?”
“Watch.” She slid the silver key into the lock and turned it. When she opened the door again the corridor outside had gone. Instead it was like looking out from Morag’s old apartment. There were the stairs leading down. There the worn carpet and there sitting alone was Caroline, weeping silently.
“Caroline,” Morag said, walking out through the door and across to her. “What’s wrong.”
“They left a note,” Caroline replied without looking up. “Said they didn’t want me anymore. Told me to hand myself into the police.”
