– and he would have to trail to the hospital to report that his brain had absolutely buggered itself this time. If he had to say it aloud, that a man he recognised from epilepsy hallucinations had come to find him from ninety-five years ago, it had the ring of obvious madness.
Or maybe it wasn’t, and some accidental conversation at the Eilean Mòr gate had changed the world overnight, and George and Bee might vanish as thoroughly as Alice and Toby before he even reached the station.
He had to swallow a rock of gritty panic. ‘Quick, now. We’re going on a train, won’t that be fun?’
They both gave him a look that said they had noticed he was imminently hysterical, but they were willing to bear with him for now.
They let him bundle them into clothes and coats, sat helpfully still while he laced up their shoes, and then stayed on either side of him, one to each hand, as he ran out into the road to hail an early cab.
52
King’s Cross, 1903
Horrors went through his head on the way to the station. Kite wouldn’t be there; or after everything, he, Joe, would disappear, and perhaps there would be a tingling a few seconds before it happened and he would know it – or worse, he would see Beatrix and George go to dust in front of him.
And even if everything was all right, even if he wasn’t insane and this was all real, Kite had not signed up for two children along with the crazed mess that was hardly anything more to him than an unnatural thing stitched together from the remnants of his friend.
It was too early for the commuter rush. The station was eerie, and where the trains sat breathing steam at the platforms, they loomed spectral. Joe walked as fast as the twins could go across what felt like the acres of concourse to platform three. He could feel his own pulse banging at the bones deep inside his ears. He knew what he was going to find. No Kite, no one waiting. The man from the sea would be imaginary. Yesterday, the party, life before, would be an epilepsy dream.
There was a man with red hair reading a newspaper, leaning back against one of the brick pillars. He was barely more than an outline in the vapour.
Joe had to get close to him before he was sure.
Bee lit up and hurried ahead of him. Kite must not have been able to hear very well at all now, because Bee tugged at his hand before he noticed them.
‘Hello,’ Joe managed, and thought he was doing very well not to cry. ‘I’m sorry about the children. I – I had to bring them. I’m sorry. Things have – changed overnight.’
Kite was watching him with well-controlled alarm, but alarm all the same. ‘Where’s their mother? Does she know they’re here?’
‘She’s dead. I woke up in an empty house. They’ve been dead for a year. Alice and Toby, they … but you met them, right? Yesterday, at the …’
‘I did. I did – Joe, you’re all right.’ Kite grasped his shoulders and gave him a shake, only light. ‘You’re not mad. You can just see things changing.’
‘Yes,’ Joe managed. He looked helplessly at the twins. ‘I think these two are mine now.’
‘Good. Right, let’s go then,’ Kite said, as if the unexpected addition of a pair of toddlers was not a thing that could possibly worry anyone. He lifted up Beatrix and asked her how she was, like he would have asked an adult.
‘Very well, thank you,’ she said, and Joe stared at her, because he had never heard her do that. She gave him a pointed look that made it clear she had only been waiting for someone who would listen.
It took until well after midnight to reach the Eilean Mòr gate. Even though Joe had brought enough money to get them all there in the relative comfort of first class, he had dreaded it, anticipated tears and God knew what, but George had been immaculately behaved for the entire journey. Joe suspected that he was trying to impress Kite. On the way out to the gate over a black sea, something in Joe’s chest screwed tighter. He’d forgotten how far out it was. An hour in which they could still just disappear. He had to bite his lip the whole way, ordering himself not to weep with the useless terror of the journey.