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'Where's Landen now?'
'If we tell you,' said Houson in a slow and patronising tone, 'will you promise to go away and never come back?'
She took my silence for assent and continued:
'Swindon Municipal Cemetery – and you're right, our son drowned thirty-eight years ago.'
'Shit!' I cried, my mind racing as I tried to figure out who might be responsible. Houson and Billden took a fearful step back. 'Not you,' I added hastily. 'Goddammit, I'm being blackmailed.'
'You should report that to SpecOps.'
'They wouldn't believe me any more than you—'
I paused and thought for a moment.
'Houson, I know you have a good memory because when Landen did exist you and I were the best of pals. Someone has taken your son and my husband and, believe me, I'll get him back. But listen to me, I'm not crazy, and here's how I can prove it. He's allergic to bananas, has a mole on his neck – and a birthmark the shape of a lobster on his bum. How could I know that
unless—?'
'Oh yes?' said Houson slowly, staring at me with growing interest. 'This birthmark. Which cheek?'.'
'The left.'
'Looking from the front, or looking from the back?'
'Looking from the back,' I said without hesitating.
There was silence for a moment. They looked at each other, then at me, and in that instant, they knew. When Houson spoke it was in a quiet voice, her temper replaced by a sadness all her own.
'How … how would he have turned out?'
She started to cry, large tears that rolled uninhibited down her cheeks, tears of loss, tears for what might have been.
'He was wonderful!' I returned gratefully. 'Witty and generous and tall and clever – you would have been so proud!'
'What did he become?'
'A novelist,' I explained. 'Last year he won the Armitage Shanks Fiction Award for Bad Sofa. He lost a leg in the Crimea. We were married two months ago.'
'Were we there?'
I looked at them both and said nothing Houson had been there, of course, shedding tears of joy for us both – but Billden … well, Billden had swapped his life for Landen's when he returned to the submerged car and ended up in the Swindon Municipal Cemetery instead. We stood for a moment or two, the three of us lamenting the loss of Landen Houson broke the silence.
'I think it would really be better for all concerned if you left now,' she said quietly, 'and please don't come back.'
'Wait!' I said. 'Was there someone there, someone who stopped you from rescuing him?'
'More than one,' replied Billden. 'Five or six – one woman; I was sat upon—'
'Was one a Frenchman? Tall, distinguished looking? Named Lavoisier, perhaps?'
'I don't know,' answered Billden sadly, 'it was a long time ago.'
'You really have to leave now,' repeated Houson in a forthright tone.
I sighed, thanked them, and they shuffled back inside and closed the door.
I walked out through the garden gate and sat in my car, trying to contain the emotion within me so I could think straight. I was breathing heavily and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel my knuckles showed white. How could SpecOps do this to me? Was this Flanker's way of compelling me to talk about my father? I shook my head. Futzing with the timestream was a crime punishable by almost unimaginable brutality. I couldn't imagine Flanker would have risked his career – and his life – on a move so rash.
