Epilogue

She drove away from the town centre with a smile on her face. The doctor had given her a thorough examination the week before, and the results of the blood tests he had taken then had confirmed that she was in perfect health. She held her hand to her head and said aloud, ‘Touch wood.’

The supermarket car park was crowded with the cars of summer visitors, and the roadside salt vendors had their usual colourful displays. She turned off onto the side road and enjoyed the sense that the island was alive with activity. The sound of grasshoppers coming through the Polo’s open windows was intense, and with the air-con off the heat was fierce. She loved it.

She arrived at the village. There were lots of people around, most of them locals, and the bunting was already up. People smiled and waved. She pulled into the short driveway and almost jumped out of the car. Ronnie met her in the doorway.

‘Well?’
‘All clear!’ She grinned at him. ‘No problems, no pre-cancerous cells in the bloodstream. Come back in a year, he said.’

‘Fantastic!’ They hugged and kissed. ‘Come and see,’ he said, pulling the door to and leading her around the fence and down the road. At the corner, high on the wall, the new sign was swinging in the gentle breeze. Made locally, it was a CNC cut steel silhouette of a baker pushing a loaf into an oven. The name of the restaurant was next to it, in black steel letters against the white wall: Les Deux Miels. She laughed.

‘No wonder you wouldn’t tell us what you were planning to call it! Has she seen it yet?’
‘Yeah, she watched him put it up.’
‘The Two Honeys? But which two?’
‘Aha! That would be telling.’

They went in through the open gate cut into the wall. What had been a derelict house had been converted into a large atrium, filled with tables and chairs. Around the edges, the covered section had some seating, but one wall of it was set aside for a bar. The far wall was the business end, consisting of two wood-fired ovens, and a thick-walled walk-in storage area where they kept their refrigerators and wine in the dark. Photovoltaic panels supplied most of the power needed, and the food preparation area in front of the ovens was polished stainless steel. A range of colour-coded chopping boards and knife handles were lined up ready for the opening later that evening. The kitchen was already very active, as Mel and Nathalie were busy preparing fillings and toppings for later, so that pizzas and quiches could be thrown together quickly. One of the ovens was already working, too, being used to blind-bake pastry cases.

They had a fair idea of how many people were expected that evening, since the whole village was invited. Tonight, all the food would be free, and most villagers were expected to bring a bottle. Les Deux Miels (or The Two Mels, as Ronnie privately called it) would open to the public on the following evening.

Melody immediately rolled up her sleeves, washed her hands, and pitched into the preparation, and Ronnie went back to the cottage to finish printing and laminating the menus. ‘How did it go?’ asked Mel.

‘All clear,’ said Melody. They’d been worried about the possible long-term consequences of her trip through the wormhole, especially after the next volunteer had been killed outright.

Melody had spoken passionately at CERN against risking another trip back, pointing out how irrational it was to expect that one person could change the whole course of human impact on the environment. There was no one single thing that could be done do alter human habits, but there was always a risk that some unforeseen consequence could create an even worse disaster.

But with the world in crisis as the USA and much of Europe accused the Chinese and the Indians of attempting to manipulate weather patterns, the inner circle at CERN had insisted that something had to be done. Almost 100 years on from the Great War, there were fears of a global catastrophe that could destroy civilisation. Melody had handed in her resignation and walked away from the meeting in tears of frustration.

Melody’s former team leader had contacted her afterwards to tell her what happened. She’d been right to object, he admitted. The news channels were full of stories about the latest expensive failure of the LHC, and several prominent scientists had been forced to resign. The new time travel volunteer, a twenty-five year old PhD candidate, had been prepared methodically and supplied with lead-lined protective clothing that the team thought would mitigate against the effects of wormhole radiation. In the event, as the volunteer had stepped forward into the shimmering absence created by the wormhole, he had been engulfed in bright white light and vaporised on the spot. All that remained, after all power had been shut down and the area scanned by geiger counters, was a heap of melted gold and lead.

The Large Hadron Collider was now shut down and its continued existence was under review.

Melody often wondered why she hadn’t been killed in the same way. Was it that the lead protection itself caused a problem? Or did the LHC itself decide these things?

She had emptied her flat, sold her Swiss-registered car, and arranged a lift to Ronchamp. Ronnie drove over to pick her up in the car park of the Le Corbusier chapel, which she’d wanted to see for herself before she left the East. Ronnie had spent the previous week alone, working through the night and sleeping through the day, so he had driven through the night and crashed through the next day. With Melody back in his bed, he had gradually been able to adjust his sleep patterns back to normal.

Mel came over for Christmas, and they’d finalised their plans for the restaurant. The owners of the derelict building were contacted, and had readily agreed to the sale. The local mayor had undertaken to clear the planning permission, and work had commenced as soon as spring came. They had planned to open as the summer season began on Noirmoutier, at the beginning of July. This Friday night opening was for the village; Saturday the 4th of July was for the rest of the island and its tourists.

The concept was simple. The two Mels had come up with the idea of selling Mel’s shares and buying another property in the village to open a restaurant. All of them could cook, and Ronnie was already famous locally for his bread and pizza. Pizzerias were common enough, said Ronnie, even those that cooked them in a wood-burning oven. But the ovens could be used for much more than bread and pizza, and another local, Nathalie, was celebrated for her quiches. There was another villager who kept pigs for bacon, and several more who had hens.

They’d already placed advertisements around the island, and had a web site with an online booking system. The tables were almost all fully booked for the opening weekend, and after that they trusted that word of mouth would spread. They intended to open at weekends only, firing up the ovens from Friday to Sunday evening.

Melody chopped red and green peppers, placing the slices in a bowl which she would cover with cling-film and refrigerate. Mel was slicing onions, a bandana over her nose. Nathalie was busy at the oven, ensuring that the quiche cases didn’t get overdone. When Ronnie had finished laminating, he brought the menus out and arranged them on the table near the entrance. A couple of local students, home for the holidays, would be waiting tables later on.

In the corner of the courtyard, there was a pair of microphone stands, a small mixer, a couple of mini PA speakers, and Ronnie’s treasured acoustic guitar on its stand. It hadn’t been his idea, but both Mels had insisted that he get back on the stage. ‘If you don’t like it you can give it up again,’ said Mel.

Melody looked over at Ronnie as he arranged the menus on the table. She knew he’d enjoy himself, once he was back in the saddle. Everything was going to be perfect.

Chapter 36: Monday November 4 2013

Melody left, as planned, on Friday morning, and Ronnie and Mel spent the next two days deep in discussion with Nathalie and a few of the neighbours about their plans. There was a generally positive response to their ideas, and aside from the logistics of identifying the property owner or owners, most people saw the project as being of potential benefit to the whole community.
On Saturday afternoon, Melody phoned to let them know she’d arrived safely, and had been airing her flat, sorting through her mail, and writing longhand versions of the speech she planned to make at the meeting with her team leader at CERN. She sounded tired and depressed, but it was good to hear her voice. She promised to contact them immediately as soon as she knew anything.
On Sunday morning, Ronnie drove Mel to Nantes to catch the TGV to Paris, and they spent most of the journey in contemplative silence. Ronnie worried that they’d been so caught up in making plans that they’d not spent enough time getting to know one another again. Eventually he said so, and she took his hand.
“First of all,” she said, “being around each other is enough at this stage. What strikes me about you is that you haven’t really changed at all, which is a good thing. You’re exactly the same, you take everything in your stride and you keep an open mind, which is quite trick to learn. And from my own point of view, I’ve now got to go through a month of marking student essays, which is a thing I hate to do, but now I can do it knowing it’s the last time I’ll be doing it, and I’ve got something to look forward to. You let me know as soon as you need access to some cash for a deposit, or whatever.”
Ronnie kissed her goodbye at the station, and they lingered in a hug. “I’ll be back soon, I promise,” she whispered, and left.
Ronnie drove home thinking about the past couple of weeks. Everything he’d planned to do had come to pass. He’d obtained the tapes; he’d reconnected with Mel, he’d caught up with Melody and unravelled a mystery. He’d even spoken briefly to his old friend Dave Cooper.
Cooper had once said to him that your past could hang around you like a bad smell, and that for a politician to succeed, they had to be born running for office. Ronnie appreciated how the decisions he’d made at twenty had set him on a life course that had led him to this island, alone, at this time of his life. He wondered about that other universe, the one in which Melody hadn’t arrived in 1983 with a phone full of spoilers and tried to enlist his help.

Would his band have been successful? Would they have released records that got played on radio? He imagined that if they had, he’d have had a shorter career. Eventually he’d have been tempted to reform the band and go on tour again, to take advantage of the live nostalgia trend that had happened at the turn of the new century. On the whole, he was glad not to have been involved in that. He had a few regrets, but in the end he was where he wanted to be. He hoped Mel felt the same. She’d had a successful career, and was keen to take some time to write some books. There didn’t seem to be much bitterness in her. The one bad taste about the whole affair he associated with the UK, which was a place he never intended to visit again, even for supermarket tea.

Back at his house, he was immediately disturbed by the emptiness and quiet. He plugged his iPod into his speaker system and played music loud enough to be heard throughout the building. He did some laundry, then did an inventory of his store cupboards. He had one and a half sacks of strong white bread flour left, and various lesser quantities of the other flours he used, so he made plans to drive to his supplier the next day.

Later in the afternoon, he went for a long walk on the beach, picking up plenty of driftwood to use for kindling. He’d been away for a few days, so some would have accumulated anyway, but there was also more than usual because of the recent storm. As well as broken bits of pallet, there were plastic crates, buoys, and other interesting-looking detritus.
Back at the house, he piled his driftwood harvest in a dry place and went inside to fix something to eat. He rarely cooked anything fancy when he was alone, and this evening settled for scrambled eggs and toasted bread. He sat watching the TV news, noting that the French government had announced there would be some power rationing going forward, as the country’s nuclear power stations would not be able to keep up with expected demand. It seemed that the weather forecasters were predicting a cold winter, having noted changes in the both the gulf stream and the jet stream, both of which phenomena went some way to explaining the recent hurricane that had his the UK mainland. The French broadcasters missed no opportunity to show library scenes of the flooding and storm damage in the UK, with a portentous voice over intoning the latest estimates of the damage.

Ronnie went around the house switching off electrical items. Because the village was fairly self-sufficient in power, he didn’t usually concern himself with the equipment in the studio. Most of it was switched off between sessions, but he did tend to leave the computer running. He shut it down and locked up. He wasn’t in the mood for music.
It got late. He was alone in the house for the first time since Melody had turned up in the middle of October. He was restless and jumpy. He turned out the light and lay in the darkness, but found it disturbing. He switched on the bedside light. This made the dark beyond the light seem even more intense and overbearing. He realised he was alone in the dark for the first time since his night in the cell underneath the British Museum. He got up and paced around the house, checking that the front and back doors were locked, something he didn’t normally worry about. He looked out of an upstairs window. The night was dark, moonless. There were no stars, because of the dense cloud cover. It had threatened rain for days, but nothing had ever come in from the sea. There were no streetlights in the village: this was both a power-saving measure, and an agreement reached in consultation with local amateur astronomers, who wanted to minimise light pollution. For the same reasons, though people had security lights that were activated by anything larger than a fox, nobody had an outside light that stayed on. It had been agreed that outside lights made it harder for pedestrians to see their way in the dark, as it prevented their eyes rom adjusting to the dark.
While it wasn’t as pitch dark as it had been in that room underground, Ronnie still found it unsettling. He kept glimpsing something in the corner of his peripheral vision. Back in his bedroom, he returned to bed, leaving the curtains open and the bedside light off. He lay listening to the night sounds of the village: the wind in the pine trees; the distant sound of the surf; a dog barking; a motorcycle engine somewhere in the distance. Sleep refused to come.
He switched on the light again and tried to read. He always kept a Le Carré at his bedside, because these made his eyes heavy and helped him sleep. The restless feeling continued. He looked at the clock. It was two in the morning. He picked up his phone from beside the bed and dialled Melody’s number.
She picked up after three rings.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t sleep.”
“I can’t either,” she said. “I’m so worried about tomorrow. And I miss you. What are you doing?”
“I’ve been reading, but that doesn’t work. I can’t stand being here on my own.”
“Too quiet?”
“There are sounds. It’s the darkness. I can’t stand being in the dark.”
“Is this because of last week?”
“Probably.”
“Do you think it’ll pass?”
“I don’t know.”
They talked a while longer. She went over with him what she was planning to say at work. He offered suggestions. Eventually, the phone call had to end. It was two-thirty. He sat on the edge of the bed. I’m afraid of the dark, he thought. He got up and walked around the house again, just to prove that he could. He turned on lights, then felt guilty and turned some of them off. He picked up his acoustic guitar from its stand and played his scales. He considered trying to write a song, but didn’t want to end up with a song that reminded him of this night. If he could just get through this night, things would seem better in the morning.
At four o’clock he wrote a menu, complete with starters, main meals desserts.
At dawn, he was asleep, slumped over his dining table, resting his head on his arm. His phone rang. It was upstairs in the bedroom, but the sound woke him. He was disoriented for a moment, but then ran up the stairs to grab the phone before it switched to voicemail. It was Melody.
“Did you sleep?”
“I’ve been asleep at the kitchen table. I don’t know how long. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock. You should sleep today, in daylight. I’m on my way into work. I wanted to call you, because I remembered something. It’s the fourth of November. It’s thirty years to the day since we first spoke. Do you remember? In the car park?”
Ronnie recalled a vague memory of following Melody up the street and into a car park. “Yes, I think so,” he said.
“For me, it’s much more recent of course, but it still feels strange. This is my second fourth of November in a couple of months! It feels slightly weird.”
They chatted while she walked to work, and then when she reached the security barrier, she said goodbye and he wished her good luck.
He slumped onto the bed and slept while the sun crept across the room.

Chapter 35: Thursday 31 October 2013

The outer edges of the hurricane had touched the island, and a few branches had fallen, but most of the damage in the village was superficial. The offshore wind turbines were in working order, and none of the photovoltaic tiles on the village rooftops had blown away. Still, a village meeting had been called to discuss the dangers posed by North Atlantic hurricanes, if they were to be a feature of future seasons.

Ronnie and the two Mels had caught the Eurostar on Wednesday morning. The speed had been limited through Kent, and in the Tunnel itself, but once back in France, all had returned to normal, and they made TGV speed all the way to Gare du Nord and thence to Nantes, where they were able to pick up Melody’s slightly filthy car.

Ronnie had theatrically got down on his hands and knees to kiss the ground when they arrived back at the cottage. He picked up the mail from the floor and left it on the kitchen table. Meanwhile, Melody helped Mel in with her bag, the only bag she’d bothered to pack. The University was still closed for the cleanup operation, so she didn’t have to be back till the following Monday. She planned to see out the semester, then take her scheduled six-month sabbatical while giving notice to the University that she was going to quit and not return for the following academic year.

On the train, they’d discussed Ronnie’s meeting at the record company, which seemed to be both a long time ago and vanishingly trivial in the big scheme of things. Melody asked him why he’d walked out of the meeting so quickly.

“The guy was a total tosser. I knew within 30 seconds that I was never going to sign anything he put in front of me. Not only that, but he just didn’t get it at all. He put us in the same category as the 80s nostalgia acts. Very few people would feel nostalgia for us.”

Mel asked what he was now planning to do with the recordings. “I’ll just stick them online. I’m beyond caring now. Maybe I’ll think of something else when I’ve forgotten all the shit of the past couple of days. I’m currently associating the recordings with being locked in a darkened room for 24 hours.”

They discussed their personal situations, too. It was clear from what Cooper had said that there was no security alert against any of them, other than that created by Oliver Wilson in his game of fantasy revenge scenario. Cooper had been true to his word and had emailed Mel some photos of his kids, now in their twenties: one of them the spitting image of Sukhjeev, if she’d been a boy.

Cooper also mentioned in his email that Wilson was facing a disciplinary panel, and knew that the likely outcome was to be asked to resign, or face a humiliating demotion by several pay grades. Wilson had already handed in his letter of resignation. He finished his email by enclosing the details Ronnie would need to lodge an official complaint and claim compensation. Ronnie doubted that he’d bother, if such action would involve him on a return trip to the UK.

It felt odd, said Ronnie, to actually have the choice of using the name he was born with, after all this time. Melody pointed out that he’d been Ronnie Collins for longer than he’d been anything else, and he decided against the complication of getting yet another passport.

On Wednesday evening, the house was slightly damp and cold after several days without the heating being on, or indeed a fire, so the first thing Ronnie did was pile some kindling in the stove and light it. Melody showed Mel around, and he could hear them whispering about the sleeping arrangements upstairs. Ronnie stood sorting through his post, noting that he’d received a couple more royalty cheques, and a letter from his old bandmate, Steve, which finished with his blessing for Ronnie doing whatever he wanted with the recordings, now that they were recovered.

They switched on the BBC and sat together in the small living room watching the news from London, which was still mostly concerned with the aftermath of the hurricane, with questions being asked in Parliament about the nation’s flood defences, and conspiracy theories popping up all over the place. But now that he felt no pressing need to ever return to England, Ronnie wondered why he had tuned in. He looked around him at the small room, wondering what could be done to make it more comfortable for three people. Mel had expressed an interest in looking round the village for properties up for sale. Ronnie considered the land opposite, and then remembered that he’d heard something not long before about a derelict property on the corner of the lane. There was a large plot of overgrown wilderness attached to it, a wilderness that had impinged occasionally on the rear wall of his own courtyard.

They switched off the BBC and turned the channel to TF1, which was showing one of its seemingly endless run of TV movie thrillers. A troubled female cop was juggling and adulterous affair with crime-fighting. The three of them sat and laughed at it for a while and then drifted into conversation. Melody said she would return to CERN on Friday, to see what was happening there.

“I’ll email my boss in the morning and let him know I’m on my way. If they decide they don’t want me around, I’ll just grab the rest of my things from Geneva, give notice to my landlady, and come back.”

Mel went online to book a train back on Sunday morning. Then Ronnie checked his email, which he had only glanced at during the stay in London. There was nothing particularly pressing, just one message from Lucy Baker with the news that she’d be posting a review of the old Ronnie Collins Experience album on The Guardian web site for Friday’s Film and Music section. She asked Ronnie for a URL that people could use to listen to samples. Ronnie replied with the news that he’d make the whole album available for free download, with remixable tracks to follow.

That night, Melody stayed in Ronnie’s bed and Mel slept in the spare room.

On Thursday morning, they all woke before sunrise and set about their chores. Ronnie started to upload higher-quality versions of his songs to the blog he’d started; while that was happening, he split some wood. The two Mels sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and making plans. After half an hour, a sense of excitement overtook them and they called Ronnie inside. He put his axe away, piled the logs in the basket, and went in. He stood washing his hands at the kitchen sink while they filled him in with their idea.
In his turn, he told them about the wilderness to the side of the house and the derelict property attached to it. They needed supplies from town, so they drove in Melody’s Peugeot to Super U, and when they’d spent an hour or so in there, they drove into the town, parked on the market square, and went to speak to some estate agents. When they’d found one who was willing to investigate some options, they drove back to La Madeleine to make some lunch.

Melody needed to pack her things and plan her route, so Ronnie took Mel for the traditional walk on the beach. The North Atlantic was violent this morning, throwing huge waves against the rocks and filling the air with spray. The sky was dark grey and threatening more rain; there was already rain to be seen out at sea. They were both wearing fleeces and hats. When they reached the top of the dune, they stood looking at the raging sea for a while before stepping down onto the sand, still damp from the last rain, and walking down the beach. Ronnie stuffed his hands in his pockets against the cold, not in the mood to pick up driftwood. In spite of the grey cloud and thundering breakers, there was something magical about the light.

“It’s very Local Hero,” said Mel, raising her voice against the background noise. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find you’d built a shack out of an upturned boat.”
“I’ve thought about it,” he said, “but it’s not really so far to walk.”

“Fantastic place.” She linked her left arm through his right, still in his jeans pocket. They walked on. “This is a good place to end up.”
“And are you? Going to end up here?”
“What do you think? Will you have me as a neighbour?”
“Neighbour, lover, I don’t mind which.”

“You’ve got something with Melody. I’d stick with that if I were you. To her, you’re someone she’s had an unbroken relationship with. You and I have this 30-year gap to negotiate. I’d love to be here with you, but I don’t need to be your lover.”

“Fair enough.” He kicked at a dead crab, noticing a beached wooden pallet he could collect later to break up for kindling. “So you’ll head back to Nottingham on Sunday, teach until when?”

“Semester ends at the end of January, but I’ll have a whole month at Christmas, if you don’t mind having a guest for that long.”

“That would be fantastic. I’ve been starting to dread Monday morning, when I’ll have to go back to being here on my own again. I couldn’t go back to that permanently.”
“She’ll be back soon. She didn’t save her father, but she closed the book on him, which means she’ll not be driven to remain at CERN. Can the two of you live on what you earn in royalties?”

“Probably.”
“I’m going to cash the shares in, and we’ll split it.”
“We’ll use it in a joint venture, you mean.”
“You think that will really happen?”
“We’ll have a conversation tonight with Nathalie, and we’ll know more.”

After a half-hour or so, they turned around to walk home, feeling thoroughly cleansed by the wind and spray. Ronnie stopped at the pallet he’d seen and saw it had a short length of wet orange rope attached to it, which he used to drag it along behind him, leaving a wide trail in the sand behind. “They do this on all the posh beaches round here,” he said.

Ronnie made a celery and potato soup for lunch, which they ate with some of the bread from his freezer. Melody had heard from her boss and was looking tense.
“They’re making noises like they’re going to plan another trip,” she said. “The hurricane has them all panicked. They think the risk might be worth taking, if they can go back and influence some change. Which means they’ll have to recruit someone even younger to go back.”

“The thing is,” said Ronnie, “if I understand this right, that is, they’ll never know if they succeeded, will they?”
“No, they probably won’t,” said Melody. “And the other problem is that the wormhole won’t send them back far enough to make any difference. The damage we’ve done to the environment started with the steam engine and then the internal combustion engine.”

“People will never change, either,” said Mel, sounding depressed. “We can’t be persuaded to do without all our rechargeables, can we? So they’ll be sending some young person back to speak to people who don’t yet realise there’s even a problem, and won’t even start truly believing there’s a problem until their roofs start blowing off in the annual hurricane or monsoon season.”

“I really need to get back there and make these arguments, as forcefully as I can,” said Melody.
“And if they won’t listen?”
“I don’t know. Come back here and hope that we still exist in the same reality next week.”

Ronnie spent the afternoon reacquainting himself with his instruments, while Mel drafted her letter of resignation to the University and Melody went for a walk alone on the beach.

At six, they left the house and walked down to the village church, which was the venue for the meeting about the recent weather. Ronnie and the two Mels sat at the back, trying to follow as best they could the discussion about extra measures people might take for winter. Luckily, the mayor had printed a leaflet with the main suggestions printed on it. Ronnie could at least follow that. Some of the advice included making sure that there weren’t any lightweight loose objects left outside and unsecured, lest they be blown into neighbours’ windows; and doing a maintenance check on roof tiles, drainpipes, and guttering in time for any further deluges.

When the meeting broke up, Ronnie attracted the attention of Nathalie, his neighbourhood friend who had a way with a quiche. They invited her and her husband round for a glass of wine and a chat, so she could hear their proposal.

Chapter 34: Ronnie

Ronnie slept. In spite of the discomfort, sleeping was better than being awake, because he was hungry, thirsty, and hallucinating when he was awake.

When he woke, he noted no change in the quality of the darkness. He lay still for a little while, trying to estimate the time he’d been held there. It had been around eleven in the morning when the car had stopped suddenly in front of him. The drive from Covent Garden to wherever they’d parked had been no more than fifteen minutes. The fingerprinting process took another fifteen. He guessed he’d waited and slept for five or six hours or so before Wilson arrived to interview him. The interview had been no more than half an hour. He’d then kicked around in the cell (as he’d come to think of it) for about an hour before settling down to sleep again.

He felt now as if he’d had a normal night’s sleep, but supposed it might just have been four hours or so. Conservatively, then, he reckoned he’d been locked up for about ten hours, so it would now be nine in the evening.

But there was no change in the quality of the darkness. If he stared into space long enough, he started to see what appeared to be insects, buzzing around his head. The buzzing insects were even accompanied by a sound effect. Ronnie wondered if there really was a fly in the room, or if the whole thing was an hallucination.

What if it was longer? What if he’d estimated the time wrong? What if he had, in fact, slept a full night? Could it now be the next day, Tuesday?

He didn’t think so, but realised that his ability to estimate time had been dealt a severe blow in the absence of external cues like changing light. If Wilson was working typical civil service hours, he’d surely be home, and there was little chance of another visit before morning, unless it already was morning.

Ronnie pissed into the bucket for the third time and then went to make some noise at the door, sitting in a chair next to it and kicking his leg against it. Now and then, he called out that he needed water. Nobody came. After a while, he gave up, and tried lying on the table, to see if it was more comfortable than the floor. He found he couldn’t fall asleep on the table, because he was too worried about rolling off onto the floor. He sat up. He realised he probably couldn’t sleep again so soon, but the buzzing insects were driving him mad. He kept waving his hand in front of his face, feeling the breeze from his passing fingers, but never once connecting with an actual physical insect.

The door opened and the lights came on. Ronnie leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, giving them time to adjust to the sudden change. He heard the guard enter, collect the bucket, and leave the room. Ronnie opened his eyes. Wilson walked in and sat down in his chair at the table. He placed a bottle of mineral water on the table. Ronnie went over and grabbed it, noting as he twisted the top that the seal was unbroken. This didn’t necessarily mean the water was unadulterated, of course, but at this point he didn’t care. Which is what they’re counting on, of course, was his final thought before drinking the entire bottle. There were no ill-effects; no immediate ones, anyway. He sat down.

“About fucking time, you wanker,” he said to Wilson.

“What were you planning to do in the UK on this visit?” Wilson began. Ronnie opened his mouth to say kipper again, but stopped himself when the door opened and instead of the guard returning with the bucket, another figure appeared, carrying in one hand a brown paper sack.

“Get out, Wilson,” said a familiar voice. “I’ll deal with you later.”

Wilson said, “We’re in the middle of an interrogation here,” but then looked round and saw who it was. He immediately got up to leave the room without another word of protest. Dave Cooper came in and took Wilson’s seat, leaving the door open and placing the brown paper bag in the centre of the table. Unlike Wilson, who had not aged gracefully, Cooper looked more or less as he had thirty years before. Less hair, but it was more or less the same colour, and the same Zapata moustache. He wore similar glasses, thick frames with large lenses, offering plenty of peripheral vision.

Cooper reached into a jacket pocket and retrieved Ronnie’s phone and his wallet, passing them over the table. He gave the brown bag a shove. “Here, McDonald’s. I gather you haven’t been fed.” Ronnie opened the bag, noting that the contents included a filet-o-fish , large fries, and some kind of drink. He started eating.

“Good to see you again, Dave, but what the fuck is going on?”

“I’m afraid Ollie Wilson has come unhinged and gone a little off piste. An entirely unauthorised, unaccounted for, operation, using resources he had no business using. Just a personal vendetta, of course, because you’ve done absolutely nothing to warrant this kind of treatment.”

“Frankly, I don’t think anybody has, Dave. Last time I looked, torture was supposed to be illegal.”

Cooper tapped his fingernails on the table.

“When you’ve eaten,” he said after a few moments, “I can have you taken anywhere you need to go. There’s no reception down here, but you’ll be able to phone your friend as soon as you get to the surface.”

“So that’s it?”

“I don’t know what to say. The little shit has survived this long because his dad works somewhere in Whitehall. He won’t survive now, and pater is about to retire, I believe. He had some computer flag set up to watch for your name — which was obviously never going to do him much good, because Smith is a common name — and the name Midwinter, which I thought had all been forgotten when the guy was murdered. His role has been reassessed since his death, anyway. He had communist connections, back in the seventies, but he was spot-on about the environmental problems he saw coming. You’re with his daughter?”

Ronnie had finished his food, but chose not to answer that question. It had been years since he ate a Filet, and he was impressed that Cooper had remembered his taste for them from all those years ago. On the other hand, he could be falling victim to the old bad-cop good-cop routine.

“Can we walk and talk?” asked Ronnie. “I’ve got to phone my friends.”

“Sure.” Cooper stood up and then stepped aside to let Ronnie walk ahead. “Turn right,” he said. Ronnie walked down the corridor, which was the familiar type of the London Underground, complete with tiled walls, and old-style signs saying British Museum.
“So what’s your role in all this?” asked Ronnie.

“I’m a grade or two above Wilson. I don’t usually come in here — nobody does these days. I received a phone call from your old girlfriend, Mel, yesterday afternoon. She and I have exchanged Christmas cards for years. She said that a car had snatched you off the street and wanted to know what the hell we were playing at. I told her it was nothing to do with us, because I didn’t believe it could possibly have anything to do with us. Then I got a phone call early in the evening from a police detective inspector, asking in not so many words whether we’d been conducting an anti-terror operation in Covent Garden involving switching off the surveillance cameras. She wondered if we might perhaps, on the off-chance, check to see whether we’d picked up an innocent bystander by the name Ronnie Collins. She hinted at the scandal suffered by the Met a few years ago when they shot an innocent guy on the Tube.”

They’d reached a security doorway. Cooper punched in a six-number code, and Ronnie noted that a code was required to leave now, as well as enter, which he didn’t think was the case thirty years before. They emerged onto the wide concourse of the Holborn Underground station. Cooper pointed to the up escalator, with a question in his eyes. Ronnie decided that up and out was where he wanted to go.

“So now two people had mentioned it?” he prompted, as they joined the upward flow of people.

“Okay, now I started to suspect something had gone very wrong. There were no official operations — we would always inform the police as a matter of courtesy — so I suspected someone was involved in a side project or a training exercise which had turned into some kind of catastrophe. I contacted Mel again yesterday evening and let her know I was on it. It took me all night to track you down. I’d forgotten this place was here. They never did start using it again after the computers failed. Some programmer or other had sabotaged them, and they decided that keeping all the data in one place was a fairly stupid idea. I finally found the guy who’d turned off the security cameras — there are only about three people who can do that — and he informed me that Ollie Wilson was in charge of some undercover sting operation.”

“So what time is it?” Now they were reaching the surface, Ronnie switched on his phone, which would soon update with the day and time.

“It’s about 26 hours after you were pulled from the street, about lunchtime. Your friend Melody is staying in the Novotel on Euston Road.”

They reached street level and Ronnie made for daylight, amazed that his sense of time had been so far out, mentally adding the twelve hours or so that he’d missed when estimating how long he’d been captive. They stood on the pavement outside the station. “You want a lift?” asked Cooper.

“I think I’ll walk.”

“Okay. Where are you living these days?”

“I’m between addresses at the moment,” lied Ronnie. Cooper accepted this answer at face value. “So who is it you’re working for, Dave?”

Cooper looked at him and smiled. “I’m working for the people, same as I ever was. I’ve always been a reform-from-within kind of guy, you know that. Beyond disappearing without giving notice, as far as I know you were just a regular type of guy. Wilson, on the other hand, is a deranged fool.” He held out his hand, and Ronnie took it to shake.
“Take care,” said Cooper, and turned to walk back in. Ronnie called him back.
“Dave,” he said. Cooper turned around. Ronnie walked over to him. “I wanted to ask, what became of Sukhjeev? You had a bit of a thing for her, I seem to remember.”
Cooper looked suddenly devastated. He pressed his lips together. “She died about twenty years ago, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I had no idea. Sorry.”

“Lupus,” said Cooper. “Not diagnosed till quite late on, and she struggled on for about ten years with it.”

“Sorry if I’ve brought back a bad memory.”

“It’s okay. I remarried, and the kids are fine. I’ll send a photo over to Mel and she can pass it on to you.” He held out his hand again. This time Ronnie let him walk away.
He crossed the road and headed down Southampton Row towards Euston Road. He called Melody’s number. She answered immediately.

“Where are you?”

“Walking down towards your hotel. I’ll be there in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“I’m coming to meet you. Mel’s here. What street are you on?’

He told her, and walked on, his heart lifted and his overnight ordeal forgotten. He tested his breath and noted the smell of filet. He popped into a small shop and bought some gum.

They eventually met at Tavistock Square. Melody ran to him and threw herself into his arms. They both burst into tears. Mel approached more cautiously, but displayed no less emotion.

“Thank god for Dave Cooper,” said Mel.

Ronnie grinned. “Okay. First order of business, I need a shower and a change of clothes. Then I think I want to get the hell out of Dodge.”

They turned to walk back to the hotel.

Chapter 33: Melody

The female detective, DI Robinson, had been more sympathetic, though not as openly apologetic as she might have been. Still, she seemed to hint that she felt her male colleague was a useless sack of shit. She sat with Melody for an hour, going over some of the same ground as DS Holdcroft, but seeming to take her more seriously than he had, and asking more pertinent questions.

Melody explained that she and Ronnie had been good friends for a couple of months, but that she had always been a great fan of his songwriting and musicianship. This seemed to satisfy Robinson as to the status of their relationship.

Robinson brought a landline handset into the room, plugged the base station into the wall, and made several phone calls in front of Melody, as if to prove that she had nothing to hide. She phoned the traffic police, the AA, the RAC, and various other people who might have CCTV cameras in the vicinity of Maiden Lane. She was getting frustrated at all the dead ends she was encountering. Finally, she sat back in her seat, exasperated.

“Right. We’re clearly getting nowhere here. I’ll be frank with you. I suspect we’re dealing with an agency who has a lot more power than the police have, which implies its one of the groups put together in time for the Olympics last year — some of them are still hanging around like a bad smell. Sometimes people are too good at hiding their tracks, you know? If I discover a crime scene has had every surface wiped clean, I immediately start to get suspicious that something major has taken place. These people have just been too effective at covering their tracks. They’ve left the area too clean, if you know what I mean. I’ve got some uniforms out canvassing the area, to see if we can find another witness.”

“What else can we do? It’s been hours now.”

“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know. We don’t know what we’ll be walking into. Can I ask an odd question?”

“Go ahead.”

“Your friend, this Ronnie, you said he’s a musician, and he’s been writing songs in the States for twenty-odd years. That all checks out, obviously, and the record company confirms this. But was he ever involved in anything when he was younger, do you know?”

“I haven’t really known him long enough to get into the whole life story thing, I’m afraid.”

“No, well. Probably nothing.” She stood up. “I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll call you if we hear anything. Where will you be?”

Melody gave the address of the hotel that Mel had texted her. Robinson wrote it down and escorted her to the front entrance.

Melody stood on the street for several minutes, trying to remember where they’d parked the car. Her brain felt burned out, and she wished she didn’t have to find it, but their bags were in the car. Finally, she got out her phone and used the application to remind her. She headed for the Charing Cross tube station, and took the Northern Line to Tottenham Court Road, and then the Central back to Marble Arch. At the car, she grabbed the bags, checked for any of their other belongings, and then used the phone to cancel the remaining the time on the rental. When she’d completed the transaction and paid the balance, it occurred to her that the rental of the car might have been the trigger for Ronnie’s abduction. Shit.

She reversed her tube journey and when she reached Euston, walked down the road towards the Novotel, a tall, four-star establishment full of conference attendees and several of the more well-heeled people made homeless by the hurricane. Hotels all over the South were full of such refugees, and Melody was glad that Mel had had the presence of mind to book the room earlier in the day.

After checking in, she went up to her room and flopped down onto the bed. Why didn’t they snatch me? Why Ronnie? She fell asleep thinking about him.

She was woken by her phone, insistently ringing from inside her coat pocket. It was dark in the room. She felt for the phone and reached for the light switch by the side of the bed. Holding her hand over her eyes against the dazzle, she said, “Hello?”

“It’s me,” said Mel.

“Oh, hi. I’m in the hotel, thanks for booking it. I’ve been sleeping. What time is it?”

“Nearly nine. Listen, I’m down in the lobby. Can I come up?”

Melody, containing her surprise, told her the room number, and got up to straighten her clothes and brush her teeth. In the bathroom mirror, she looked washed out, tense, sickly. She still surprised herself every time she saw her reflection because she was unused to the white hair.

There was a tap on the door, and she opened it to admit Mel, who was carrying a small suitcase. “As soon as I heard the trains were running again, I got the next one and came down,” she said. “Have you heard anything?”

Melody told her about the meeting she’d had with DI Robinson, and they discussed the chances of anything resulting from a police investigation.

“They won’t do anything,” said Mel. “They’ll come up against the Department and be warned off, and they’ll put it on the back burner. Interesting that the other one tried to get you to sign a form. It’s amazing how far people will go to try to keep up appearances.”

“This country is—shit,” said Melody. “It gets worse every time I come here. There are too many fucking rules, and signs everywhere, and cameras everywhere, and you can’t fucking trust anybody. Sorry,” she said, meaning to apologise for the swearing.

“No, you’re right,” said Mel. “It was bad enough, wasn’t it, back in the day? But things have grown steadily worse since 2001. They tell us they won’t give in to terrorists, and then immediately make wholesale changes to our way of life. But the worst thing for me is the way the British people go along with it, and start poking around in each other’s lives, judging people for the way they look, for what they drive, for how they eat, for how much exercise they do, for how much packaging they use. If it’s not the police it’s your neighbours, the thought police.”

“Yes, Switzerland is a bit like that, people poking their noses in. But we all started with concerns about the environment, the atmosphere, and now it seems impossible to get everyone to pull together,” said Melody.

“There are too many distractions, and too many people using one thing as a pretext for another. Everything becomes yet another excuse for someone to poke their nose into your business. Microchips in bins, cameras everywhere. Cameras that you get hassled for trying to photograph, should you want to make a point about excessive surveillance. Fuck it. It’s time to get out of here. Why would anybody want to live here? Have you eaten?”

Mel sat down on the bed, and Melody went to take a shower and change her clothes. It had been around ten hours since Ronnie had been taken.

When Mel was dressed, they went down to street level, and walked along looking for somewhere decent to eat, settling eventually on an Italian restaurant that looked busy enough to be worth it. While they were waiting for a table, Mel updated Melody on attempts she’d been making, through old contacts, to find out something, anything about Ronnie.

“You still know people from your old job?”

“I stayed in touch with a couple of people. I wasn’t like Ronnie, I only moved to the County Court — so I could still keep tabs on people.”

“And do they still work there? In the Department?”

“It’s hard to say. I’m not even sure the Department exists in its old form. There have been a lot of new agencies created in the past ten years or so. Some people are career civil servants, others are good at knowing which way the wind is blowing.”

“Do you know anybody who would really try to help?”

Mel shrugged. “Well, you never know until you try, do you?”

At their table, they ordered drinks and a starter and sat in silence for a few minutes. Melody nervously broached a subject she’d been wanting to raise since the weekend.

“So,” she said, “did you and Ronnie talk while I was out getting the car?”

“We did.”

“And what did you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. I’m clear on one thing. Although this is awful, and worrying, it’s made me determined to leave this country. I don’t suppose there’s really much more freedom elsewhere in the world, but I really do think the lights are going out in this country.”

“There’s a school of thought thinks you should stay and fight.”

“What would you be fighting, though? Are we being governed by a totalitarian state, or are the people who live in this country just interfering busybodies? Does all this shit come from the top, or is it being demanded from somewhere in the middle? I look at the newspapers who still maintain high enough paper circulations to still exist and they’re the ones dripping poison and vitriol from every page. It’s not just that I hate my government. I don’t like the idea of living next door to someone who thinks it’s okay to weigh my wheelie bin. I stand in the supermarket and see people checking out the contents of my trolley at the checkout, and I want to smack them in the face with a six pack of beer. I don’t want to share space with anyone who would ever say, If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“So you want to leave. Where will you live? Did Ronnie extend an invitation?”

“I’m hoping that Ronnie won’t end up being a moot point, of course. I’m just not sure how I feel about ending up in some kind of ménage… It seems a bit eccentric.”

“It depends on how you see these living arrangements. It’s not necessarily about sex is it? Not in the long term. What matters is whether you feel you can exist without some arsehole measuring the CO2 content of your breath. Ronnie lives in a pretty sorted village, where instead of climbing on each others’ backs or trying to rip each other off, they’ve collaborated on installing a geothermal heating system, plus wind and solar. And they have a barter economy going, where they give time, or goods, in return for things they want or need. When I turned up at his cottage, he had a house full of people baking bread and enjoying each others’ company. And not a camera in sight.”

“And I suppose they’ve got broadband?” Mel smiled ruefully, unable to imagine life without it.

“Of course.”

“And will you be there? Not that I don’t want you to be,” she added hastily.

“The truth is, Mel, I don’t know what’s going to happen for me. We don’t even know what it was made me so sick. No geiger counter could measure any radiation, but I showed all the symptoms. And then there’s this.” She tugged at her hair. “I’ll probably spend some time back at CERN — even if it’s not full-time, even if it’s just to wind things up. I’m also concerned that they’ll try to use the technology again. They might even be using it now.”

Mel’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She quickly pulled it out and muted it, enduring the annoyed stares of other diners. It was a text. She tapped in a quick reply, saying, “There’s a prime example of the kind of thing I’m talking about. They don’t know who I am, or why I’m receiving a text. I could be a doctor on call, or someone with a sick relative, or a missing child — or friend in this case. And they all fucking do it, too, the hypocrites, but the British never miss an opportunity to give the stink-eye to someone for just going about their business. It makes me so angry.”

Melody reached across the table and took her hand. “Me too,” she said. “And once you start thinking about it, you can’t stop noticing it. Was the text about Ronnie?”

“Yes. Things might be looking up.”

Chapter 32: Ronnie

Ronnie was sitting in the dark. Within minutes of getting him in the car, his still unknown assailants had pulled a bag over his head, possibly a black pillowcase. They had gone through all his pockets, removing his phone and wallet. He had forced himself to relax, stop struggling, trying to avoid injury so he’d be in a fit state to escape if an opportunity presented itself.

He knew the car had gone down a level, into some kind of underground car park. He could hear water splashing under the wheels, and his feet inside his boots got wet as he was led, still blinded by the sack, into an entrance and a lift. His stomach told him the lift had taken them down. Firm hands gripped each of his arms. He was led from the lift and after walking some distance, was taken into a room and forced down into a hard plastic chair. Someone grabbed him and a second person rolled something wet across the fingers of his right hand. Then his hand was pushed forcefully down onto a piece of paper. A strong hand rolled each of his fingers in turn. Then his left hand received the same treatment. Fingerprinting. The sack was pulled from his head, but all he had time to see before the door closed was the light from the hallway outside. He was not tied to the chair, so was able to get up and feel his way around his surroundings. In the absence of any source of light, he was careful where he stepped. The room seemed to be more or less square, with hard, plastered walls. There was a small table and two of the plastic chairs. He felt all over the walls but was unable to find a light switch. He did feel, low to the floor, an air intake.

After thoroughly exploring the space, he sat down again, not sure if it was in the same chair. He stared into the darkness, noting the ways in which his eyes tricked him into seeing patterns of light where there were none. He started to wonder about his situation. Was he about to be interrogated? Was this darkness, this sensory deprivation, part of the process? Was this torture? Or was it just carelessness on the part of the people who had led him here?

Ronnie had a pretty good idea where he was. The car hadn’t driven for long enough to take him out of London. The sense that he was underground was very strong. He assumed he was in the same general area of the old Department data centre, The OBALD, or some similar location. London, he assumed, was full of such underground installations.

He suddenly felt tired. He felt his way around the table again and found the second chair. He manipulated it around the edges of the table and arranged it in front of the chair he’d been sitting in. He then stretched out between the two chairs and closed his eyes. There was no difference in what he could perceive, but it felt somehow better. He soon fell asleep.

When he woke, Ronnie couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and in the absence of his phone had no way of telling the time. He felt rested, but could easily have felt so after just half an hour, or two. The two chairs weren’t very uncomfortable, and he didn’t feel too much constriction in his neck muscles, so he guessed he’d not been asleep for longer than two hours. He stood up to stretch, and stepped away from the chairs to pace the room, from one side to the other, to stretch his legs.

More time passed. He wondered what Melody was up to. She may have seen him leave the record company’s office. If not, how long would she have waited before trying to contact him? He hoped they’d switched his phone off, so as not to be aware of Melody trying to get through.

If he was in The OBALD, did that mean that he was in the hands of the Department, or someone else? Why had they taken him? What information did he have that they might try to get? How had they identified him? He thought about all the different security cameras he’d seen around the streets of London. Presumably something had flagged up from one of these electronic eyes. It was still a puzzle, though, because his Ronnie Collins identity had held true for as long as he’d used it, never giving him any reason to suspect that he might be insecure.

He sat down again, trying not to notice the visual hallucinations of different coloured lights. He could hear music, or thought he could, somewhere outside the room.

More time passed.

Ronnie started to count of seconds in his mind, then forced himself to stop. He decided to sing instead, and went through some of his back catalogue, singing at the top of his warm, throaty voice. He knew that if they were keeping him in the dark deliberately it was because they thought it would make him susceptible under questioning. He started making rules. He would say nothing about Mel, or Melody, he would give them nothing. Thinking about Mel, he found himself trying out the suspicion that it had been she who had alerted the Department to his presence in Britain. Then he shook his head, forcing the thought away. That was impossible. He hadn’t seen her for thirty years, but she would never do anything so out of character. No, he was certain that if Mel and Melody had any idea of his predicament, then the two of them would be doing everything they could to track him down.

The advantage he had was that he probably knew more about The OBALD than his captors thought he did. He knew that there would be exits on both sides of the old British Museum station, if that’s where he was. If he managed to run, he could find his way to either Tottenham Court Road or Holborn. He started to plan possible escape routes. He didn’t know London well, but felt that Tottenham Court Road would offer the best opportunities to disappear into a crowd. Then again, he needed to get away from public places with too many cameras.

More time passed.

He went to the corner of the room, removed his jacket to use as a pillow, and lay down on the floor. He experimented with various positions, trying to find the most comfortable. His hips dug into the floor if he tried to lie on his side, so he stayed on his back and closed his eyes, trying to trance himself into another sleep. At least it would pass the time. He could still hear music, but suspected it wasn’t real. He went, in his mind, back to the island, and walked along the beach with Melody, or was it Mel, picking up driftwood.

He was on the ring road again, on his bicycle in the rain. He rode around the town square, through the lights and up the hill. There was a pedestrian footbridge, and he went beneath it, finding himself on the road out of town, but heading in the wrong direction. He exited the ring road and went around the town square again.

Ronnie opened his eyes. The music had stopped, but now he was convinced there was someone in the room with him. He didn’t move, stopped breathing, listening for a second heartbeat, a second set of lungs. He remembered the dream about the ring road. Years since he’d had that one: probably the return to England had prompted it.

He needed to pee. He stood up, and felt his way to each of the corners of the room, thinking he would piss into the air grate if he could aim right. In one corner, he found a plastic bucket. It hadn’t been there before, he was sure. He picked it up to test its weight. It was empty. He opened his fly and pissed experimentally, bending his legs to get closer to the ground, using the sound of the bucket to guide him.

He found his way back to the chair, wondering if the contents of the bucket could be used as a weapon. He would love to throw it in the face of the first person to walk through the door.

Almost as he thought this, the door opened, and the lights in the room came on, too bright. Ronnie stood up. There was no direct overhead lighting, but some kind of LED lighting system around the top edges of the white-painted walls. The light was super-bright, intensely blue-white. Ronnie squinted against the pain in his eyes. A figure silhouetted in the light of the doorway entered the room followed by a uniformed officer. The lead figure gestured towards the bucket in the corner, and the security guard — so he appeared to be — went to remove it from the room. Ronnie was blinking against the light, fighting the persistent blooms of light even under his eyelids. The door closed behind the guard as he left. The lights stayed on. Ronnie’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he remained on his feet. He looked around the walls. They had been white, but were no covered with black handprints left by him as he felt his way around. The fingerprint ink seemed to have come off on every surface, including the backs of the chairs and his own clothing.

“Sit down,” said the man who’d entered, indicating a chair, and throwing a folder down onto the desk. He was averagely tall, chubby, with thin black hair and strangely hooded eyes. He didn’t appear to be able to open them fully, and always seemed to be looking up from them.

Ronnie didn’t move. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, belligerently.

“Don’t you recognise me, Simon?”

Ronnie looked at him. The face, that fat figure, didn’t look familiar. He said nothing, remembering the promise made to himself in the dark, that he would say as little as possible to these people, whoever they were.

“All right, then, remain standing, I don’t care.” The man pulled the seat from where Ronnie had left it, gathering some black ink on his own hands in the process, and set it down on the door side of the square table. He sat down and joined his hands together at the table. When he noticed the ink, he tsked and pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket to wipe them. After he’d done this, he flipped open the folder on the desk. “You are Simon Smith, formerly of 2a Willow Terrace, Luton, Beds, and more recently domiciled in the USA under the pseudonym Ronnie Collins.” Ronnie said nothing, and remained standing. He stepped forward, thinking to slap this guy in the face, but the man held up a hand. “You will not touch me. The proceedings in this room are being observed, and any aggression on your part will be met with force.”

Ronnie suddenly knew who this was. He continued his movement forward, kicked the remaining chair to one side and sat down on it, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest. He looked at his own fingers for the first time. All that remained of the fingerprint ink had the appearance of ingrained grime.
“You’ll be wondering how we finally tracked you down, Smith. Well, it was that old name, your old pal, Midwinter. The name flagged up on a car rental transaction, and when the numberplate of said car passed into the London congestion zone, we were able to track it and its occupants quite easily. We then activated the Special Operations Division, who picked you up on the street like the common criminal you are.”

Ronnie looked at him, betraying nothing of the adrenaline and hatred flooding through his blood.
“Can you smell fish?” was all he said.

Oliver Wilson instantly reacted to that, but tried to hide it. He bristled, gritted his teeth in his jowly jaw. “You are being held under the Domestic Extremist Act of 2012, and will be questioned in connection with your connections to various criminal subversives. You do not have the right to remain silent.”
“Fuck off, you pompous shitting kipper.”

Wilson controlled himself. “When did you return to the UK?”

“Kipper.” Wilson asked a series of questions, pausing only briefly between them for an answer he knew would not be coming.

“Where did you obtain your false passport? …Where is Miss Melody Midwinter at the moment? …Who is Miss Midwinter seeing while in London. …Which of her associates has offered you accommodations? …Who else have you contacted while you have been in the UK? …Are you aware that using weather engineering technology is illegal under a European Directive? …You have been in Nottingham, and in London — where in the UK were you before that?”

And so on. The more questions that were asked, the clearer it became to Ronnie that Wilson had very little to go on, unless he was dissembling. It interesting that the house in France was never mentioned. Could it be that the French bureaucracy were so inefficient that the papers had not yet been filed? Ronnie thanked the patron saint of useless French public servants, if that was so. Wilson droned on, finally shooting Ronnie a look of complete contempt and standing up.

Ronnie said, “Kipper Wilson. What a prick you turned out to be.”

Before Wilson reached the door, it opened, and the security guard from before came in with the bucket. Ronnie pursed his lips and looked down. The door closed, and the lights went out.

More time passed.

Chapter 31: Melody

Melody saw Ronnie step out onto the street. He’d only been inside for about twenty minutes, and she was surprised to see him out so soon. She assumed this either meant the meeting had gone extraordinarily well, or equally badly. She had barely had time to queue and order her coffee and panini, and was just getting around to eating the too-hot sandwich when Ronnie emerged from the record company’s doorway.

He was a rangy, skinny figure, wearing black coffee coloured faded jeans and a brown jacket.
Everything seemed to happen at once. A huge black car thundered to a halt in front of him, blocking most of her view, and then two suited figures converged from where they’d been standing and shoved Ronnie violently into the car. He disappeared from view and the car drove rapidly away. A couple of people were looking around them with bewildered expressions, but in moments it was as if nothing had happened. Melody found she was standing up, the contents of her panini dripping out of the sandwich, which was still in her left hand.

Christ. She threw the panini down and ran from the shop, stopping on the street when she realised the car was already gone. She pulled the phone from her pocket and called Mel’s number. She picked up on the third ring.

“Mel? It’s Melody. Ronnie’s just been— abducted on the street.”
“What? Wait— Why?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I can only assume it’s something to do with— but why him? He really wasn’t invol— I mean, I told him to get out of town, but that was really just because we felt they were closing in on all of us.”
“Why would they still be interested in Ronnie?”
“It doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t even— oh, but he was in London on the night we sabotaged the database. But they couldn’t possibly know that.”
“What do you mean he was in London?” asked Mel.
“Yeah, he followed us down that night, but lost us when we went through the entrance?” Melody didn’t explain over the phone precisely which entrance she was talking about.
“Where do you think they’ve taken him?”
“Who knows. Could it be underground?”
“But according to the news there are floods everywhere on the lower levels… I’ll call you back.”

Mel hung up, clearly planning to do more research. Melody stood on the street for a few moments more, and decided that the thing to do was to report Ronnie’s abduction to the police. The regular police might not be involved, and might get irritated at the idea of some kind of security branch running around the streets of London. Then again, there was always the chance that Ronnie had been taken by somebody else with a completely unknown agenda.

She checked the map on her phone and located the nearest police station and set off on foot towards Charing Cross. The police station was on Agar Street. She approached the huge white building within five minutes, but then hesitated outside, not sure what to say. The entrance was imposing and intimidating, the steps to the entrance flanked by four classical pillars. At least I exist in this time line, she thought. This would be awkward if it had happened in 1983. Finally, still not knowing what else she could possibly do, she went up the steps and through the doors.

At the busy reception, she waited her turn to speak to the desk sergeant. When he finally got around to her, she said she wanted to report an abduction. He looked at her sceptically and told her to take a seat in the waiting area. She sat down gingerly, noting the low lifes and societal dregs surrounding her. Her heart was thumping in her chest and her hands were clammy. By the time thirty minutes had passed, her nerves had calmed somewhat, only to be replaced with annoyance at being kept waiting so long. At last, a shabby-looking detective emerged from a back room and spoke her name.

“Ms… Midwinter?”
Melody stood up. She was shaking with nerves, fighting against her deep-seated hatred of authority. “That’s me,” she said.
“And you’re here to report an…” he looked at a piece of paper in his hand, rather theatrically, Melody thought. “Abduction?”
“Yes,” she said, trying to sound as determined as possible.
“Come with me, then.” He led her through the security doors and into a small meeting room. Closing the door behind them, he introduced himself and held out his hand for her to shake. “DS Holdcroft. Sit down. Coffee?”
“No thank you.”
“What happened then? In your own time.” He sat opposite and flipped open a note pad, holding a pencil poised above the blank page.

“I came to London today with my friend, Ronnie Collins. He’s a musician, and had a meeting with a record company on Maiden Lane. I was sitting in the Caffè Nero at the end of the street, waiting for him. He came out of the meeting onto the street, and a car came out of nowhere, and two people who were standing around there just shoved him in and drove off.”

“This happened when?”
“About an hour ago.”
“And you were where?”
“I was sitting in Caffè Nero, by the window, looking down the street.”
“That’s a one-way street, isn’t it? Which way was the car driving?”
“Away from me.”
“Away from the Café and down Maiden Lane?”
“Yes.”
“Against the one-way system, then. Did you make a note of the numberplate?”
“No. There wasn’t time. I was too shocked to take it in.”
“Hmm. What colour was the car?”
“Black, dark at least.”
“Make? Model?”
“Possibly an Audi. I don’t know. A Jaguar, possibly. I’m not great at spotting cars.”
“And your name is,” he looked at the paper again, “Melody Midwinter?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you from, Melody?”
“Originally Luton, and around North London. But I’ve been living in Switzerland, and before that Germany.”
“Why’s that, then?”
“I’m a physicist. I work at the Nuclear Research Centre in Geneva.”
“Boyfriends?”
“Not really, too busy.”
“Ronnie a boyfriend?”
“Sort of. Possibly. We were working on it.”
“How long have you known him?”
She had to think for a couple of moments. “A couple of months.”
“So you met, where?”
“France. He lives over there.”
“And what does he do?”
“He’s a musician, songwriter.”
“Have I heard of him?”
“No. Probably not. He’s been working in the States for a long time.”
“Not famous, though?”
“No.”
“So he’s living in France? He have girlfriends?”
“No. He’s divorced.” She was getting exasperated at this line of questioning. “Why are you asking all this?”

“I’m trying to establish a picture of who I’m dealing with. Trying to work out if there are any people with a motive for pulling your… friend off the street. How long ago was he divorced?”
“Several years ago. He’s been living in France for a year.”
“And you live in Geneva, so how did you meet?”
“I was visiting a famous church.”
“Where?”
“Christ. It’s a chapel built by Le Corbusier in Ronchamp, in the East of France, not far from Switzerland. Ronnie was there. We started talking.”
“And two months later you’re on a visit to London with him? As boyfriend girlfriend? How did you get here?”
“Is it so hard to believe?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I’m just trying to draw a picture. He’s living where? This Ron-champ?”
“Ronchamp. No. He lives on the West coast. We corresponded through Facebook, I arranged to visit. We decided to come to London together.”
“And you said you came to London today,” he said, referring to his notes. “So where did you come from today?”
“We drove down from Nottingham.”
“In your own car?”
“A hire.”
“Where did you hire the car?”
“Picked it up in Nottingham.”
“Back up a little bit, please. You both live on the continent, so how did you end up in Nottingham? How did you get there?”
“We came over by train at the end of last week.”
“During the storm?”
“During the storm.”
“Quite an adventure. So, why the side trip to Nottingham?”
“An old friend lives there.”
“An old friend of yours? His?”
“Bo— of his.”
“An old friend of— his? Name?”
“Professor Me— L Roberts, works at the university there.”
“This old friend of his, male or female?”
“Female.”
“An old girlfriend? You hesitated, almost said she was a friend of both of you, but you said you’d only known him two months.”
“He knew her thirty years ago. Obviously I wasn’t around for that.”
“Obviously. How old are you, may I ask?”
“Thirty.”
“And your friend?”
“Around fifty.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Quite an age difference. He rich?”

“No. I don’t know. It’s not like that.” She felt her face burning with embarrassment and anger.
“So there’s this guy you’ve known two months, jumps into a car on a street and leaves you in the lurch, he’s got an ex-wife, an old girlfriend in Nottingham, he’s some kind of musician, the not-famous kind, and you’re surprised because?”

“He did not get into the car voluntarily,” she said, slowly, trying to maintain her calm.
“So you say. You’re sure this ex-girlfriend isn’t playing games?”
“She’s not the type.”
“You know that after how much acquaintance?”
“F—” she bit back the curse word. “Sometimes you can just tell.”
“What’s the name of this record company?” he asked, changing tack, apparently satisfied at having riled her anger.

Melody gave him the details, and suggested he find some CCTV footage of the street if he didn’t believe her. He said nothing and left the room, leaving the door ajar.

She sat waiting, alone, fighting the impulse to jump up and run out of the station, going over the conversation in her mind. She had known it was going to be difficult, but had no idea how many banana skins and stumbling blocks she would run into. Nothing made any sense if you didn’t explain the time travel aspect.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Mel. Melody answered, sotto voiced.
“Where are you?” asked Mel.
“Charing Cross police station. I couldn’t think what else to do.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“Predictably crap, questions that make me feel insignificant and stupid, and each explanation making the whole thing sound more bizarre.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“I’ll book you a hotel room, it’ll be on Euston Road, so you’re close to the train stations. If you need to, you can come back here, or you’ll be able to get back to France. I’ll text you with the details.”

She rung off. Melody was relieved that at least Mel was thinking clearly. But then she’s so much more mature and experienced than me now, she thought. She looked up. DS Holdcroft was standing in the doorway of the room, waiting for her to finish her call.

“Who was that?” he asked, walking in and taking his seat again.
“Ronnie’s friend in Nottingham. She was the first one I called, when I was walking here.”
“I see. So you’ve been fairly clear in your own mind all along that she had nothing to do with your friend’s disappearance?”

“Yes.”
“Well, okay. I’ve phoned,” he consulted his notes, “Mr Edwards at the record company, and he seemed to think your friend Ronnie was behaving rather bizarrely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, arranged a meeting, came all the way from France, through the hurricane, turned up in the office, and walked out after ten minutes, without saying a word to anyone.”
“He was in there twenty minutes, at least.”

Holdcroft looked at his notes again. “Probably. I suppose they weren’t counting the time they’d kept him waiting before the meeting started. Is your friend by nature impatient? Impulsive?”
“No. Placid and thoughtful is how I’d describe him. But he doesn’t suffer fools gladly after thirty years in the music business.”
“Mr Edwards didn’t strike me as a fool.”
“I’m sure Ronnie had his reasons for walking out.”
“Perhaps his reasons had to do with the car that picked him up.”
“No. I keep telling you, those people threw him into the back of that car. Haven’t you checked the CCTV footage? You must have some — it’s all over the place.”

Holdcroft paused thoughtfully, as if deciding whether to tell her something. “Well, that’s the strange thing,” he said at last. “For some reason the closed circuit in that part of town was down for essential maintenance at the time you say this happened.”

“At the time I say? In other words, you still don’t believe me, even though somebody conveniently switched off the cameras?”
“For scheduled repairs.”
“Yeah, right,” she said, suddenly needing to get out of there. “Quite clearly you’re not willing to look into this, so I’ll stop wasting my time.” She stood up to leave.
“By all means leave,” he said, “but you’ll need to sign this form indicating that you’re withdrawing the complaint.” He held out a form he’d clearly brought in with him.
“I’m not signing anything,” she said, looking him in the eye, letting him know she was wise to the game. “I’m not withdrawing the complaint, and if you refuse the investigate, I’ll be making a complaint about you.”

“What is there to investigate?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, warming to her theme. “Your incompetence? Your patronising tone, your rudeness and arrogance? Is this how you treat anyone who dares to ask you to do your job? Interfering with your routine is it, to have to investigate an actual crime?” She stopped, wondering if she’d really said what she just said. “My friend has been kidnapped off the street not far from here, and you spend half an hour trying to trick me into admitting that I made the whole thing up. And when you start to suspect that something really did happen, because someone conveniently switched off the Big Brother surveillance cameras so that it could happen, you try to get me to sign some form absolving you of any involvement. You worried you might be in over your head? Did you pick up that form as soon as you realised the cameras had been switched off?”

Holdcroft looked at the blank form in his hand. Melody continued,

“Who do you think you’re dealing with here? Some naive young girl in off the street had her iPod stolen? I’m a fucking PhD, and if you don’t think I’ll follow through with a complaint about you after you’ve put me through this, well, guess what? I’ll have your badge number, for a start, please.” She took out her phone and brought up the note-taking application. Her hands were shaking with rage, and she hoped it wasn’t noticeable. Holdcroft still said nothing. He reached into his jacket pocket with one hand and brought out his warrant card, held it up so she could read it. She made a note of the details.

“Wait there,” he said. “I’ll get someone else.”
Melody sat down to wait.

Chapter 30: Monday 30 October 2013

After some difficulty, Melody had succeeded in finding a hybrid car, a Honda, using an application on her phone. The software had tried to insist on a series of electric vehicles, each with a range of about 200 miles, which might get them to London, but which limited their options from there on. It was difficult to persuade the application to exclude such cars from its search and hit list. Knowing that they might need to drive further than the set range in one day — and be unable to charge it up — Melody had persisted, finally finding a brightly painted hybrid parked on a street some distance from the town centre. The car had, by chance, escaped the worst of the flooding, and narrowly avoided being crushed by falling trees. It was covered in leaves and a sandy deposit that seemed to have fallen with the rain. Melody was able to reserve it for three days and then send the command for its doors to unlock from her phone. She returned to Mel’s flat in the car, somewhat frazzled but triumphant.

Very early on Monday morning, they said goodbye to Mel and walked down into town to pick the car up. The floodwaters had subsided, though news reports still talked of several towns further South being under water. Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire had suffered its third inundation in recent years; flood defences had failed in market towns all along the M4 corridor; the Thames barrier had been closed, but the previous year’s Olympic village was flooded, with damage reckoned in the billions of pounds. A caller to the radio station suggested that insurance companies should pay for improved flood defences, as every pound spent would save them at least ten in future claims. The insurance industry spokesperson being interviewed blustered at the suggestion, but didn’t really have a response.

They drove out of town along the main dual carriageway, and then onto the motorway south. The main street lighting was still out and the road was more or less clear, but frequent police patrols were rigorously enforcing the national 50 mph speed limit, so progress was slow. The country was waking up from the storm and getting back to business. As they approached London, the record company guy, Sam Edwards, had phoned Ronnie to confirm the meeting was still on. As they approached the congestion charge zone, Melody arranged payment of the toll, so that as they passed through the numberplate scanning cameras, their payment was already registered.

All the underground parking was closed, but the city was still quiet after the storm, so they managed to find some street parking, and phoned the number to pay the meter by credit card. Some underground lines were closed, but the Northern and Central Lines were open, so they were able to catch a train at Marble Arch to Holborn, and then walk to Covent Garden, where the record company’s offices were. Melody agreed to wait for Ronnie in a Caffè Nero on the street corner, and Ronnie pushed the buzzer on the entrance door. An indistinct voice responded. Ronnie hated these things. He could never hear what was said and never knew what button to push, or when. He pushed a likely button and spoke his name into the speaker, looking up at the building’s security camera as he did so. The door buzzed, and he pushed it open and climbed the narrow staircase to the first floor.

The staircase and hallway was dingy, which didn’t make a good impression, but the offices, once he entered, seemed clean and modern. The logo of the record company was on the wall behind the male receptionist, who asked him to sit down on one of the generic waiting room chairs. There were various music magazines lying around on low tables, and the walls were festooned with gold, platinum, and silver discs. Ronnie waited, flicking through an old Mojo. Sam Edwards would be a few minutes, the receptionist had said. Ronnie had been about five minutes early; he’d never been late to a meeting in his life. After ten minutes, a tall, balding man wearing a faded polo shirt and chinos came into the waiting area.

What was left of his hair was white, and Ronnie put his age at somewhere between 50 and 60, just a few years older than himself. He said, “Ronnie!” in a hearty manner, and grabbed Ronnie’s hand to squeeze it, too hard. “Sam Edwards! Delighted to meet you!” Ronnie noticed that Edwards failed to make eye contact as they shook hands. He was immediately on his guard — more so than he had already been — and was creepingly certain that no contracts would be signed today.
Edwards asked the receptionist to bring coffee, and led Ronnie into a conference room, inviting him to sit down at one end of a long table. Ronnie sat upright, feeling uncomfortable. He hadn’t sat in a job interview for over 30 years, but he was immediately taken back to the awful day he’d landed the job in the Department. He couldn’t have been less suitable for his old civil service post, and he felt similarly unsuitable now. Edwards’ body language was languid, relaxed, confident to the point of arrogance. He sat close to Ronnie, turned his chair slightly sideways, crossed his legs, leaned back in the chair, and pointedly looked at the ground, at the walls— anywhere but into Ronnie’s eyes as they talked.

“So I was very excited to read the Guardian article, and to think about the possibilities of doing something with your tapes. Very impressed with your songwriting CV, we had a look at ASCAP and BMI and everything the Guardian said was true. You’ve got an impressive track record, and we think we can get the ear of some of the TV talent show producers. So how are things going with the tapes?”

Ronnie patted his laptop, not that Edwards could see the gesture. “All done. Probably needs another set of ears on the mixes, but all transferred to digital and mixed down.”

“Got it with you? Can you leave a CD, or burn one?”

Ronnie’s suspicions were raised, for some reason. “I can play you the files from the computer.” He said nothing more. Edwards pursed his lips in thought. Ronnie hated the idea of leaving any copies of anything in the offices. He was legally protected, of course, but couldn’t help thinking that his guy was looking for some kind of angle.

“We’ll get some speakers sent in in a minute. What we’re looking to do is capitalise on the renewed interest in your band, and other criminally overlooked talents. We’re planning a coordinated effort, hoping to get some synergy with cross-media links and promotional activities. You’ll be reuniting the band tour the album, I assume? And we can put you in a package with two or three other eighties acts. Big money there. You could be supporting Kajagoogoo, ABC, possibly Culture Club.”

Ronnie heard a half-dozen assumptions, with which he could not ever agree. There was no question of reuniting the band — even if the others were into the idea, he wouldn’t be. While he’d been busy digging up his past, it had never entered his mind to put the band back together. Those days were properly over. As for touring, that too was out of the question, as was any involvement with talent shows. He’d rather starve to death than lower himself to that kind of low-grade entertainment.

The receptionist entered with some coffee on a tray. Edwards asked him to get some portable speakers, and then excused himself for a few minutes, telling Ronnie to help himself to coffee and get his laptop ready. Ronnie didn’t like the tone, the assumption that he’d follow instructions like a hungry little wannabe pop star. With the room empty, he decided abruptly to cut the meeting short, to put himself out of his misery. He got up, walked out of the meeting room, through the reception, and out through the main office door without seeing anyone who might question him. A sense of relief flooded him as he took the stairs down to street level, two at a time. He took a deep breath of fresh air as he paused on the street outside, clear in his mind that the record company route was a dead end. He now felt positive he’d be uploading the music to some online service, possibly giving it away, if selling it meant dealing with the likes of Sam Edwards.

He turned to walk across to the Caffè Nero on the corner, but before he could reach the kerbside, a black car pulled up in front of him, and he was grabbed roughly from behind. The rear door of the car opened, and a hand grabbed the top of his head, pulling painfully at his hair, and shoved him roughly into the back seat. A body forced him through onto the far side of the seat and squeezed in next to him. Ronnie tried to turn to see what was going on, but a large hand held his face down in the upholstery. He struggled to get up and groped for the door handle to get out of the car, but though he found it with his fingers, the locks had snapped shut as the car started moving and the lock refused to disengage.

He was trapped.

Chapter 29: Friday 25 October 2013

They shared their stories over the next few hours. Strangely, Mel had no problems believing Melody’s story about travelling in time. When Ronnie asked her why, she pulled a share dividend certificate out of her locked desk drawer and showed it to him. The Apple shares her father had bought on the Frankfurt stock exchange in early 1984 had been split three times since; she now had 4000 shares, worth well over £750,000. “I believe her because there’s no other way to explain this,” she said. She’d not ever touched the original shares, but had enjoyed the dividends over the years, and had to fill in a tax return each year to declare the income from these, and other, shares.

“The names on the list Melody gave me were Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Google. You couldn’t even buy Microsoft shares till 1986, and nobody had heard of Google until late in the 90s. I knew she had some kind of information from the future. I’ve probably been assuming Melody was a time traveller for about twenty-five years. At least. Possibly more.”

Ronnie just stared at her in astonishment.

The storm continued late into the night (the power went out around one in the morning) and when the rain stopped and the wind finally calmed, the three of them were dozing in various uncomfortable positions on the softer seats in the departmental student lounge. They woke with the dawn. Ronnie and Melody found their driest clothes and put them on in Mel’s office, and then they all made their way to the flooded car park, where Mel’s car had clearly not escaped water damage. There was a tide mark up to its waist, and a nasty smell in the air. Here and there, brown water gushed upwards from manhole covers and drains. Mel unlocked the driver’s side door, and they could see puddles of water in the footwells.

She told them her house was within walking distance, anyway, and they made their way across the wrecked campus, walking around the fallen trees and avoiding the worst of the flood waters by climbing up banks, tiptoeing along walls, or walking in the middle of the road. The streets were almost deserted, and there was every sign that most people had followed the official advice and stayed at home. The only shop open was an ethnic supermarket they passed on the way. The owner was sluicing water out of the front of his shop with a broom. They went in and bought two six-packs of mineral water, the ones on the highest shelf, 18 litres in total. Mel carried their overnight bags, while Melody and Ronnie carried the water, with frequent stops to rest their arms.

For some people, staying at home had been no protection, and there were many visible signs of structural damage: collapsed chimneys, missing roof tiles, and fallen trees poking through bedroom windows.

“It’s like the Great Storm of ‘87,” said Mel. Neither Ronnie nor Melody had witnessed that, but Mel was growing increasingly worried as they approached her house. Luckily, there were no bodies of water near her home, which was a flat in an enormous converted house at the top of the area known as The Park, looking down on the town. The roof of the old house seemed intact, and the water still flowing down the gutters was all heading to lower altitudes. Trees in the local area had lost branches, but not actually toppled over, sheltered as they were by the three-story town houses surrounding them. The whole of the city would need to be under water before the water rose to this level. Mel entered her code in the doorway, and they all removed their wet shoes in the shared hallway, a large open lobby area, complete with bicycles and letter boxes.

Mel led them upstairs to her first floor flat. She had the whole floor, which consisted of a large central living room with a kitchenette, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. The power was still out. She dug an old battery transistor radio out of a cupboard and tuned in to BBC Radio Five Live, still on AM for emergencies such as this, reporting from Manchester on the devastation that had hit the country. Only the far North of Scotland had remained unaffected by the hurricane, which had spawned in an area of the Atlantic not known for such phenomena. Speculation was already rife that some unknown foreign power had been using weather engineering to create tropical storms in non-tropical areas, applying the theories on hurricane control in reverse. Some callers and texters to the station were already accusing the Chinese, though an environmental pressure group spokesperson pointed out that there were many other nations with more direct reasons for wanting to visit the consequences of global warming on greedy industrialised economies.

Elsewhere, there were reports of widespread looting, though the three of them had seen no sign of it going on in the city. Some politicians were calling for the introduction of martial law for the duration of the emergency, which seemed like just the pretext a government might be looking for.

Mel had some camping equipment, including a hand-cranked LED lamp, as well as a camping gas stove. They set up camp in the kitchen and made tea and breakfast. Ronnie sat down to crank the generator on the LED lamp in preparation for when it got dark, skinning his knuckles a couple of time and swearing loudly. There was no running water Mel, and most of callers to the radio station, were already worried about the contents of their freezers, but power was eventually restored — after twelve hours out — at one in the afternoon.

They discussed their plans. Ronnie had a record company meeting on Monday, which might yet be cancelled. Mel wasn’t sure what would happen to teaching at the University, given the extensive damage to the infrastructure on the campus. They discussed Ronnie’s options with his restored 1983 album, and Ronnie allowed Mel to rip a copy onto her laptop’s hard drive. They didn’t discuss the possibly consequences to Ronnie and Mel of coming out of hiding. It didn’t bear thinking about, but there was also a sense that even talking about it might be unlucky.

Ronnie and Melody stayed the weekend, sleeping in the spare room when it was time to sleep, but spending a long time watching the news of the aftermath, and discussing various options. The discussions didn’t really seem to go anywhere, however, and both Melody and Ronnie realised that Mel had things to say that she couldn’t say in front of Melody. On Saturday afternoon, after a whispered consultation, Melody volunteered to go for a walk into town to see if she could hire a car to take them South. Mel asked if she wanted them all to go down, to keep her company, and Mel took her to one side and whispered to her.

When the door had closed, and they heard Melody’s boots thumping down the stairs, Mel stood very still looking at the door, her face pale. Ronnie, from the couch in the living room, asked, “What did she say?”

“I can’t,” she said, finally looking at him.
“Come and sit down.”
“If I start to say— well, anything, I’ll lose it, I know I will.”
“So lose it. Only us here.” He spread his arms.
She came over and sat on the easy chair opposite the couch. They looked at each other.
“Well, here were are,” he said. “Alone at last.”
“Don’t joke. I know you’re together, no matter what she says. You’re at the can’t-keep-your-hands-off-each-other stage.”
“We are. But fate has thrown us together, and there are some strong emotions in the air. People can be forgiven for acting on them. We can be forgiven, surely?”

“It’s just that it’s been such a long time, and it’s a situation I wasn’t expecting at all, not in my wildest imaginings.”
“For some of us longer than others. For Melody, it’s been a couple of months. You ask me, it must freak you out to see someone age thirty years in a couple of weeks.”
“You’re right. It’s actually fairly undisturbing to see someone not age much in 30 years. Leaving aside the white hair, I mean.”
“You’re doing pretty well yourself.”
“Makes you realise how much our society expects us to try to hold back the ageing process. Here I am, respected academic in charge of a whole department, and I still get my hair bleached once a month on a Thursday afternoon. I feel a bit pathetic, actually.”
“We all carry our vanities. I spend a lot of time staring into the mirror, like anyone else. So tell me what else you’re thinking.”
“About what?”

“About this,” he said. “It’s a question I might never have asked you when we first met, but I realise now that you’ve always been a bit of an intellectual. Look at me, I’m a duffer who left school at 18, and you’re a PhD, and so is Melody.”
“So we know what kind of women you like.”
“Absolutely. Smart is the new sexy. Or it always was the old sexy, at any rate.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Well, I’m glad to see you. I thought about you a lot, over the years. One thing I kicked myself for was not sneaking a look at your getting-out-of-town papers to clock your new identity. I might have tracked you down sooner. I’ve been having a good nose at your work as a songwriter, anyway. You should be proud of yourself, you’ve written some amazing songs.”
“Thanks. I’ve been lucky. I really mean that. A lot of good people to work with over the years.”
“So you were married?”
“Yeah. You?”
“No. A few near misses. Lived with someone for a few years, but then he made an arse of himself over a female research student and I kicked him out.” She sighed. “What about you, since Marianne?”
“There was a thing that lasted about a year, and a few more things that lasted a lot less than that, but I feel like I’ve been on my own for about ten years.”
“Are you good on your own?” She relaxed a little, leaned back in the chair.
“I don’t think so. I don’t get suicidal or self-destructive, but I bore the shit out of myself.”
She laughed, recognising the symptoms. “Oh Christ, yes,” she said. “Own company is such a drag. Thank god for the box set.”
“So what did Melody say to you?”
“She said she was probably going to die anyway, and that she didn’t mind, whatever happens, as long as the two of us were happy.”
“What does that mean?”
Mel answered the question with a question. “Why does she think she’s going to die?”
“Radiation, or something, caused by the wormhole. She got pretty sick. She’s doing amazingly well, considering.”
“Oh. And what do you want to do about all this?”

“She’s on a six month break or something. They wanted her out of the way. I want her to be able to stay with me if she wants. I don’t know. I’m not making assumptions or anything, that’s not why we came. We came because we both wanted to see you. I didn’t come to pick up where we left off, but I’ve been wanting to see you. What do you want?” Ronnie felt they were skirting the issue, trying to approach it from different directions. He wasn’t thinking about love, or sex, but of missed opportunities and lost time. He wanted something to change, something good to come of all this, finally, but they didn’t seem to be able to get to the point.

Suddenly, Mel gave an exclamation of frustration and jumped up from the couch. “Aaagh! I want what I’ve wanted all along, what I’ve always wanted, what I’d never dare admit out loud that I wanted, I don’t know!”

“Start from the beginning. What did you want on the day you taped that, that escape envelope to my electric cupboard?”
“I wanted to go with you.”
“Simple as that?”
“It’s corny, but you were by far the nicest guy I’d ever met. Probably for most 17-year-olds, the fact that you were so decent would have been a bit, well, dull, but most 17-year-olds didn’t have Paul for a boyfriend. Not many of them would have had to give up work to help pay the mortgage because their mum had died. I’m not complaining. But being with you was special to me. To own that idea of normal was really precious. I’ve never lost that feeling about you. Perhaps that’s naive. I’ve been with other men since, obviously, and it’s not that I’m measuring them against you, but I’ve never found that sense of peace and calm that I got with you. Most men make a point of being, you know, grrr! In some ways. I’m obviously going out with the wrong guys, I can tell what you’re thinking. But where are they? These sensitive songwriter types are so hard to find.”

Ronnie laughed. “Insensitive songwriter types, on the other hand…”

“My heart stopped when I read that Guardian article. It was like I’d been half- holding my breath for all these years. God knows, nothing can live up to those expectations. But I have to say, I’m still jealous of you and Melody. It’s like 30 years go by and here she is, still making my life hell —not least because she’s so decent and brave and honest, and appears to have sacrificed so much to try to make the world a better place. What do you think is going to happen?”

“What, with Melody, or the LHC?”
“Either. Both.”
“I can’t believe that someone won’t dress themselves in a lead-lined radiation suit and try to go back to do something.”
“In which case, this reality, this now might cease to exist.”
“I don’t know.”
“But if it’s a possibility, let’s cash in and work something out. I’ve got over a million quid in shares. It was Melody’s money, I consider it to be all of our money. Let’s just disappear. Again,” she added.

Chapter 28: Mel’s Story

When I agreed to help Melody to infiltrate the Bloomsbury data centre, I had to deal with a lot of complex emotions. There was no doubt in my mind as to which side I was on, not after going to that first meeting, but I was also fighting my own jealousy of Melody, and wondering how much of a threat she was in terms of my relationship with Ronnie. Apart from that, in order to help her, I had to phone Paul and pretend all over again that I wanted to be back with him. In other words, I had to simulate affection for a man I disliked in order to help someone I saw as a threat.

Things got worse. I wanted to be in two places at once. I also wanted to do something about quitting my job, because it suddenly felt wrong. A few years later, I spoke to someone who had once worked in a factory making bullets. One lunchtime, he said, he couldn’t stand it any more, so he just walked out and never went back. That kind of principled stand seems like nothing very much when you just say it, but the consequences for an individual for making such a simple decision are far-reaching and long-lasting. To walk away from the Department, I would have to give up an important source of income, my free day-release at college and the chance to further my education, not to mention my pension. My actions would have consequences for my father, as well as for myself. In the climate of 1983, when unemployment was sky high, to give up a good job for no reason would disqualify you from claiming benefits.

Then again, I might continue to prove useful to Melody and her father, if I could work within the Department, to pass them information, or to help give them access. I tried to think of a way we could sabotage the computer without alerting Paul that it was anything to do with us.

Melody and I talked in the train, an honest exchange of views. She admitted that she’d been tempted to steal Ronnie away from me, and then asked me to deliver a package to his basement, explaining that she’d already sent the signal to him to make himself scarce. She apologised for sending him away, but said it was safest, that some of the people we were dealing with were both ruthless and dangerous. She also said she’d be leaving, though not with Ronnie, not in the same direction at all; and gave me an envelope full of cash, saying it was all she had left from the gold she’d sold in Switzerland, and she wouldn’t need it anymore. She’d scribbled on the back of an envelope some advice on what to do with it — some names of companies worth investing in. She said to absolutely not worry when the stock market went down, or crashed.

When we travelled into London that night, the only thought in my mind was that Paul should somehow end up blaming himself for any data failure on the computers, so when I got to his office, Melody hid in a corridor and I persuaded him to come out with me for half an hour to talk about our relationship. I managed to convince him that I wanted to get back together, that I was even in the mood for sex. He agreed, and took me to another exit, and we walked down the tunnel in the opposite direction to the one Melody and I had entered, towards Tottenham Court Road. At surface level, we walked down Oxford Street and turned off to find a pub. We probably walked for fifteen minutes, meaning that even if we turned around and went back straight away, Melody would have half an hour. As it was, we stayed in the pub for about another half hour.

Christ knows what we talked about. I told him he made me feel small, insignificant, that he was too controlling, and that if we were to give it another go, he had to give me more space. He got uptight, defensive, demanded to know exactly what it was he’d been doing that was so wrong. So I told him, which gave me an opportunity to keep him a bit longer.

Eventually he stormed out. I wished I had a way of letting Melody know he was on the way, but trusted that she’d have done her work and be long gone by now.

I walked to the train station, not wanting to get on the tube ever again. When I got back to Luton, I had an errand to run for Melody: to tape Ronnie’s travel papers to the electricity cupboard in his basement. I took a taxi and asked it to wait. I was tempted to leave a note for Ronnie, to ask him to contact me as soon as he possibly could, but I really wasn’t sure where I’d be.

I didn’t go home that night. I got the taxi to drop me in the centre of town, and used some of Melody’s money to check into the hotel on the town square. I felt so young, so vulnerable, in there, terrified they’d ask for some kind of identification, to prove my age. I was still only seventeen. In the room, I counted the money. There was something over two thousand pounds. It was enough to get away for a while. I didn’t know what to do with it. I was scared to put it in the bank, in case someone looked at my financial records.

I didn’t go home in the morning. It was Thursday, the day Ronnie would get the message to leave town. I stayed in the hotel room until checkout time, around noon, then walked home, sneaked into the house, and went straight to bed. I hadn’t slept much the year before. On Friday morning, I got up and risked going into the office. My Dad looked at me a bit funny, but didn’t ask where I’d been.

In the office, I knew Melody had succeeded to some extent when they announced the computer system was down, an that we’d just have to do some filing until it was back up again. Everybody sat around drinking tea, doing little bits and pieces, matched up posts with files and got them in piles ready to deal with when the computer system was back up. I assumed there would be backup systems, but it got to four in the afternoon, and they announced that there would be no computers that day, and to all go home.

A lot of us waited till opening time and went to the pub. I didn’t want to go home to face my Dad, and possibly a phone call from Paul. I wondered if he’d put two and two together. I sat with Dave Cooper and Sukhjeev in the pub, going over the events of the day, and trying not to look like I knew anything. Cooper expressed the opinion that the government were probably stupid and incompetent enough not to have an off-site backup system. ‘Too insecure, they’d think,’ he said. ‘They’d worry about keeping data secure in two locations, so they’ll have them both on the same site.’

Maybe he was right. We stayed in the pub a couple of hours, and then went home. My Dad mentioned that several people had called. He never took names, the idiot, so I was never sure whether Ronnie had phoned. He said someone whose voice he didn’t recognise had been after me the day before. It might have been Ronnie, or it might have been someone connected with Paul.

Dad also said Paul had been on, several times, both the day before and the night before that, the Wednesday we’d done the deed. I didn’t phone him back, but went up to my room to lie on my bed and worry. Eventually, I decided to give the money to Dad, because I’d have to give up my job, and tell him where to invest it. I wondered how Melody had got all these names, but didn’t question it. She and her father seemed to know things other people didn’t.

The phone rang about ten o’clock that night. It was Paul. My Dad called me down. I was terrified. Paul sounded frantic, breathing heavily, panicked. ‘Mel,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to disappear. I don’t know what I did, but I fucked up badly. I shouldn’t have left the data centre that night, and when I was gone, something wiped all the tapes, and all the backup tapes. I’m screwed. They’ll kill me if they find me. I’ll call you when I can.’

And he hung up. I never heard from him again. I often wonder. Did they find him and kill him? Did he disappear as thoroughly as Ronnie? But it seemed as if he’d taken the blame for what we did, and didn’t question my involvement. I crept around all weekend, afraid to disturb the air, afraid that someone would notice I was free, read my mind and put me away. I kept twitching the upstairs curtains, to see if there were any strange cars on the street. I gave Dad the money, told him I’d been doing an extra job on the side. Gave him the names of companies to invest in, and dates. He said he’d put the money somewhere for me, something for me to draw on when I was 21. I didn’t think, then, that I’d live to 21.

I risked going to work again on the Monday. There was some disturbance about Ronnie not turning up for work. Still no computer systems. People who’d been there a long time said it was like going back ten years. There was a hushed atmosphere, nobody knew what to say. Eventually, they held a meeting in the afternoon. In the meantime, someone had cleared Ronnie’s desk, taken all his files, and was going through them looking for some reason why he’d disappeared. As far as I know, they found nothing, and could never connect him to the data loss.

At the meeting, the chief inspector, Mr Toft, announced that the computer difficulties were more extensive and harder to fix than they’d first thought. It was a fact that there would be less work in the Department until the computer system was back up and running. In the meantime, some of us would be redeployed to other government departments, on the same grade level. They offered me a clerical job in the County Court. I was happy to get out of there.

The CC was across town, in a smaller building on the other side of the square. There was a different pub that everyone else went to, and eventually they made my transfer permanent. I never found out if they’d got the OBALD up and running again.

I continued to do day release at college on Thursdays. Eventually, when I was 19, I got my ‘A’ levels, two Cs. I didn’t know what to do then. I stayed in the County Court, went through a promotion or two. I never quite got around to having boyfriends again. My Dad was true to his word, and had invested Melody’s money in a fruit company called Apple, as Forest Gump put it. In 1986, he split it in two and invested in Microsoft. In 1987, when I was 21, he signed everything over to me. He died in 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down. I was on my own then, and after a year or so decided to go back to college. So I went to night classes, and did another ‘A’ level in a year, and at the same time applied to University. That was in 1992. I got in to Nottingham Trent, and studied Media and Film and then did an MA in Film Studies and finally got my PhD in ‘99, ten years after my Dad died.

My first job was at the University in Luton, teaching in their Film and Media department. Then in 2003, I moved up here, and became Head of Department around four or five years ago. Four.

I never heard from Paul, but I made sure he wouldn’t be able to find me easily. So I’ve never joined anything online under my real name, and I won’t let the University use my first name on anything, online or printed. All my publishers just use my initials. Even my colleagues call me M, which is ironic. A name like a spy for someone who’s trying to stay hidden.