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Synopsis
Don't miss the third book in the breathtaking new series from the number one bestselling author Santa Montefiore - coming soon!
One final show.
A love that defies time...
"I started this, but truly, I have no idea how to end it without breaking my heart."
When Pixie Tate is sent to solve a mystery at the old Aphrodite Theatre in Cornwall, she expects to find another restless spirit waiting behind the velvet curtain.
But when she discovers the theatre is just a few miles down the coastline from where she met the love of her life, Cavill Pengower, she realises that it is no coincidence.
As she slips back one hundred years, Pixie knows she must not only unveil what happened to the woman whose spirit haunts the stage today, but somehow sever this powerful connection with Cavill once and for all.
Yet, as she embarks on this final journey to settle the soul and save the theatre's production of Macbeth, she fears that this time, it might just break her forever...
Readers love Santa Montefiore's Timeslider series...
'Hurry up Santa and write another!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Just WOW...' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Santa Montefiore's books are amazing!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Lots of twists and turns, I couldn't put it down' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Brought tears to my eyes' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'A treasure you will want to read over and over' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Release date: July 16, 2026
Publisher: Orion
Print pages: 320
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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The Last Encore
Santa Montefiore
I will find a way …
Pixie was in turmoil. She leaned back against the gnarled trunk of the tree and pressed a hand to her chest, but nothing could ease the pain beneath it where her heart ached with a searing longing and a terrible emptiness. Nothing could bring back a moment that had been snatched from her one-hundered-and-two years ago. With all the will in the world she, a proficient timeslider, could not slip back to a precise instant. Metaphysics was not an exact science, it was capricious. That moment was gone forever, like a pearl lost in the ocean.
Pixie, as Constance, had been due to meet Cavill here, on Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, but Constance had been murdered and Pixie had returned to her own time. She would never know what he had wanted to tell her, and he would never know what she had planned to tell him.
How could she possibly go on living in a world without Cavill?
She pictured his gravestone in the long grasses outside the church at St Sidwell Manor, and the sight of it, so cold and still, brought her up short. Those dates, branded on her memory, were so final. So dead. 1857–1943. It was now September 2014. He had been gone one hundred and seventy-one years. But Pixie had seen him yesterday, in 1912. He had held her hand. He had unbuttoned her glove and brought it to his lips where he had kissed the naked skin on her wrist. And she was sure he had recognised her, Pixie, behind Constance’s eyes, even though he didn’t know it. Even though he couldn’t possibly know it. But he had, on a subliminal level. She knew he had. The realisation that he loved her had dawned on his face like a beautiful sunrise and revealed itself in his unfettered smile. In his unrestrained joy. After all he had been through – the disappearance of his nephew Felix, the deaths of his sister-in-law Cordelia and his wife Hermione – did he not deserve to be happy?
Yes, he deserved to be happy, but his happiness had once again been snatched from him with Constance’s death.
Pixie shuddered as she realised how close she had come to telling him the truth. She was going to meet him on those steps and explain everything. She was going to break the cardinal rule of timesliding by telling him who she really was. But for what purpose? For whose benefit? Certainly not for his. Why would he believe such a thing? How could that knowledge possibly make him happy? She grew uncomfortably hot as the memory sharpened. What had she been thinking? But it had felt so right at the time. She realised now that she had been blinkered by her own selfish longing. Blinded by a burning need to be loved for herself. Not as Hermione, not as Constance, but as her, Pixie Tate. She had needed him to recognise her behind the eyes, but how was that even feasible?
She closed her eyes and let the tears squeeze between her lashes and trickle down her cheeks. What was the point of loving Cavill, she thought miserably, if she could never stay long enough to be with him? Was there a point, or was it simply the fact that her heart, like a magnet, had pulled him to it – would it continue to pull him to it slide after slide? A force greater than the two of them with an unrelenting attraction. Would she ever be free of him? Or were they connected now, doomed to meet for fleeting moments in the past; a love that could never be fulfilled? Was she fated to endure this agony over and over again? In which case she had to put a stop to it, for her sake as well as his. If she had somehow tied her destiny to his, she had to work out a way to untie it.
The sun found a gap in the leaves and shone a golden beam onto her face. It was warm and gentle, and she was immediately reminded of that final carriage ride around Manhattan with Cavill. She pictured him and the knife twisted deeper into her heart. She was seated beside him, and he was gazing at her, his cornflower eyes full of tenderness and recognition. She could almost feel him next to her. She could almost reach out and touch him. She didn’t want to open her eyes and lose this blissful feeling. Then a thought slithered into her consciousness like a serpent with the whispering voice of temptation. Couldn’t she hold on to that feeling and slide through the veil?
Would her love for Cavill take her back to him?
She could try …
Her heart began to accelerate with anticipation. There was no harm in giving it a go. She had no object to link her to Cavill – his sketchbook that she had stolen from St Sidwell Manor was in the hotel – and she had nothing tangible to link her to 1912, but she did have the park. She was right here where she wanted to be, a short distance from the Bethesda terrace – surely, she could project herself back to April 21st 1912. If she focused on the park and the meeting they’d arranged for midday, wouldn’t the Law of Attraction see to it that her desire was fulfilled? She wouldn’t be Constance, of course, for she was dead. She’d be someone else. But maybe she wouldn’t need to possess a body at all. She could slip out of her own body and transport herself back, as she had spontaneously done on many occasions as a child when her parents’ fighting in the kitchen below had got too much. Back then, she had consistently arrived in a meadow, believing it to be heaven. It was years later that she realised it wasn’t heaven at all, that she had actually slipped through time and was in the very same place, only long before her house had been built. Could she not, in the same way, transport herself back to 1912 and simply observe, as herself. She wouldn’t be able to stay for long, admittedly – that was the drawback of timesliding without acquiring a body, but it wouldn’t matter. She’d see him again, and that would be enough – even though he wouldn’t be able to see her. To him she’d be even less perceptible than a breeze. Could she bear it?
She could.
With mounting excitement, she took a series of deep breaths, focusing on the rise and fall of her ribcage and the sensation of air entering and leaving her nostrils. Shortly, she felt the familiar heaviness in her limbs and the dizzying feel of her finer, etheric body loosening from her physical body and slowly detaching. She thought of Cavill, and her yearning seemed to lift her up so that she was hovering in the branches of the tree, a wisp of wind, a ray of sunshine. Then she was slipping through the veil.
I open my eyes. I am not me, observing, but someone else. I have slid into the body of a young woman, and I’m freezing cold.
My scuffed black boots are embedded in snow. It’s thick and twinkling like tiny diamonds. I look down at my dress. It’s long and black and very plain. My eyes catch sight of my hands. I spread my fingers wide and am horrified at the rawness of the red skin and the dry, ragged nails. They’re the hands of a scullery maid, or someone whose job it is to scrub with water and harsh soap. No Fairy Liquid for these hands, or rubber gloves. I gaze about me. I believe I’m still in Central Park, but it’s very different. The trees around me are young and spindly, beyond them I see a wide track upon which horse-drawn sleighs glide over the snow. Elegant women walk side by side in long cloaks and hats, their hands buried in fur muffs. A man pulls a child on a wooden sled. The child is giggling happily. A dog trots behind, then gets distracted by a pleasant smell and cocks its leg on a lamppost. My breath fogs on the air. Above me the sky is a pale, duck-egg blue. I see no skyscrapers, only trees, shivering in the cold as I am.
I walk through the snow, trying to work out where I am – if, indeed, I’m in New York at all. I don’t have a muff, only some sort of hat. I’m freezing. As I emerge over a mound I see on the other side of it a large, frozen lake. Dozens of people are ice skating: boys in breeches and caps; men in frock coats and hats; women, arms linked, moving slowly over the ice in their long skirts, short jackets and bonnets. Beyond them an enormous, yellow stone building with three pointed gables stands alone. It looks vaguely familiar, but I have no idea what it is.
It’s then that I spot a newspaper discarded on a wooden bench. I seize it. It’s The Evening World. To my disappointment I read, New York, Saturday December 7, 1889.
Join the Nellie Bly Guessing Match
And You May Take
That Free Trip to Europe
I have no idea what that means. I do know, however, that in 1889 Cavill is in England. Why has the Law of Attraction brought me here if he is in St Sidwell?
I sit down in frustration. It’s clear to me that I cannot engineer my slides. I don’t know whether that’s because I don’t know how to, or because I’m not meant to, or because I don’t have something of Cavill’s to link me to him. Perhaps I’ve been overthinking and Cavill’s presence on the Titanic was nothing more than a wonderful coincidence. One which won’t be repeated. I slump over the newspaper in despair. How will I ever see him again? I cannot accept that I won’t. That I can’t.
‘Mary! Mary Connor … !’ I lift my eyes to see a young woman with a red face glaring at me. She’s wearing the same sort of dress as I am, and she’s shivering too. ‘Would you come now please!’ she exclaims crossly in an Irish accent. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
There’s no point staying another minute in this time and place. Besides, I’m numb with cold.
I close my eyes and will myself home.
‘You’re crazy!’ Ulysses exclaimed. ‘And you waited until now to tell me?’
It was dusk. A blood orange sun was dropping slowly behind the buildings, plunging the street below into purple shadow. Pixie and Ulysses sat on the terrace outside their apartment in Little Venice, wrapped in coats and hats for it was now mid-October, and November was edging closer with its cold winds and shorter days. They’d been back in London for three weeks. They both missed New York, but for entirely different reasons. Pixie pined for Cavill; Ulysses yearned for Henry. While Pixie’s pining was futile, Ulysses’ yearning was productive – he seemed to be constantly texting and FaceTiming, and laughing out loud at jokes to which Pixie was not privy. She found it annoying. Ulysses, who claimed not to be interested in love, was clearly smitten with Henry Stirling whom he’d wasted no time in seducing at the Aldershoff Hotel. Pixie, who wanted only to be loved by Cavill Pengower, was still coming to terms with the fact that she could never have him. Ever. It seemed so unfair that Ulysses should be rewarded for his carelessness, while Pixie should suffer for her honest heart.
It was over a glass of wine on this copper-coloured evening that Pixie confessed to her friend that she had tried to timeslide back to 1912, without Ulysses there to protect her. ‘Can you imagine if someone had disturbed you! What would you have done then? Would they have known what to do when you began to writhe around on the floor in a fit?’
Pixie shook her head and shrugged. ‘You’re so dramatic, Ulysses. I was in trance for a minute, no more. No one came near me.’
‘I’m not dramatic, I’m passionate,’ he exclaimed, his Brazilian accent giving the word ‘passionate’ a sensuality it didn’t have in English. He grinned, his teeth white against his olive skin, the green of his eyes accentuated by the last rays of sunshine that caused them to shine like tourmaline. His smile was winning, as were his indecently good looks, and Pixie couldn’t help but smile back.
‘It’s all right for you. You have Mr Stirling – Henry – on the phone whenever you want him. I can’t call Cavill, ever.’
‘Give it up, Pixie,’ said Ulysses seriously. ‘You’re wasting your life on a man who doesn’t even exist. You might as well love a movie star.’
She took a sip of wine. ‘I thought I could slide back to a specific time and place. I just wanted to see him one more time. It was worth trying …’
‘Not without me,’ he cut in crossly.
She glanced at him slyly. ‘I knew you’d try to persuade me not to.’
‘So you went behind my back?’
‘Yes.’
‘You little devil.’
She laughed, but her joy turned quickly to worry. ‘Okay, so it was foolish, but at that point I was desperate. I thought I’d never see him again. I thought I’d lost him forever. But what if I haven’t lost him at all? What if I’ve actually started something that I don’t know how to get out of?’
Ulysses frowned. Pixie often seemed to speak a language he didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean? Started what?’
‘I mean, what if in falling in love with Cavill I’ve somehow tied our destinies together? Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that I met him on the Titanic, after all. What was he doing on the Titanic, for goodness’ sake? What if I drew him there? Me. What if I draw him to me on every slide?’
‘That’s impossible. If you slide back to, say, mid-nineteenth century, he won’t have been born.’
‘But that’s the thing, am I destined to always slide back to his time? Will the Law of Attraction assign me jobs that take me there. Is this going to go on and on and on … ?’
‘Isn’t that what you want? You said you wanted to see him one last time. Well, maybe your prayer has been answered.’
She shook her head and her brow creased into small furrows. The truth was she wasn’t really sure what she wanted. She wanted Cavill in her own time, as Pixie, but only magic could make that happen, and she didn’t believe in magic. She sighed heavily. ‘I don’t want to meet him again as someone else. I can’t do that to him. I possessed Hermione and he fell in love with her and married her. She died. I possessed Constance and he fell in love with her, and she died. Poor man – the women he loves, leave him. I leave him. Is that fair on him, just to satisfy my own longing?’
‘Are you suggesting that he’s going to fall in love with you every time you slide into his world? That every woman you take over is going to become the object of his desire? It’s only happened twice. Maybe the third time you’ll take over someone who isn’t his type!’ He grinned triumphantly as if he’d solved the problem.
‘It’s not about how she looks, it’s about me,’ she insisted, frustrated suddenly that he wasn’t keeping up. ‘It’s about who she is on the inside. Don’t you get it? It’s a soul connection. It’s me that he loves! At least, I hope that it is.’
‘It’s far-fetched if you ask me.’
‘The point is, it’s not fair on him to put him in that position time and again, nor me for that matter. I can’t return to the past as another woman and hope that he’ll eventually see through her eyes into my soul. I have to put an end to it.’
Ulysses raised his glass. ‘Now you’re talking sense, Pixie.’
‘So, how do I do that?’
‘Well, if you are somehow drawing him into your slides, perhaps you shouldn’t timeslide at all.’
She cocked her head. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s my job. I have to timeslide.’
‘Get another job. There are a thousand things you could do.’
‘Like what? Sit in an office in front of a laptop? You know I can’t do that. This is the only thing I know how to do. And I’m good at it. Besides, I feel a responsibility towards those earthbound spirits I help. It gives me pleasure seeing them letting go of their misery and heading off into the light. They need me.’
‘Then take on jobs that don’t require timesliding. At least for the moment. Give yourself a rest. Perhaps, if you get over Cavill, you’ll stop drawing him into your slides. Maybe you’re right, the person responsible for his participation in your slides is you and your dogged pining.’
She thought about that for a moment. Then she said, ‘You know, I feel there’s more to it. That there’s a reason we keep meeting. Like it’s destiny. There’s something important I need to learn from him, and he from me. Like life – only played out in a different time. On another level. It’s still life, isn’t it? Maybe we learn from our dreams too.’
He chuckled and drained his glass. ‘You’re reading way too much into it, if you ask me. You slid back to 1895 and fell in love. That’s not so crazy. Why wouldn’t you fall in love? It’s just a shame he’s dead now. But there’s nothing significant about it. It’s just unlucky. You’d be better off falling in love with someone in your own time.’
His phone buzzed with a call. He lifted it off the little table between them and grinned happily. ‘Sorry, Pix. New York calls.’ He put it to his ear. ‘Hey you,’ he said, getting off his chair and wandering inside. Pixie felt herself bristle with resentment. Why couldn’t she find a man who called her and said, ‘Hey you’?
The sun dipped behind a building, and she was plunged into shadow and cold. She went inside, closing the glass door behind her. She could hear Ulysses’ laughter from his bedroom. His happiness made her heart heavy. She wasn’t sure whether that was because she was jealous he was in love, or because she felt excluded. Ulysses always had a man on the go, but Henry Stirling felt different. Ulysses’ laughter sounded different too. It resonated with an intimacy she hadn’t heard before.
She went into her bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed. Still in her coat and bobble hat she felt cold, and lonely. She felt terribly lonely. She rubbed her hands together to warm them and glanced warily at the drawer of her bedside table. Her stomach tightened with anxiety just thinking about what lay inside it. But like the tongue that craves the aching tooth, she reached out to open it. Inside was a pile of letters. On her return from America, she had stopped throwing away her mother’s attempts at communication. Instead, she now kept them in a drawer, unopened. She hadn’t read a single one. She knew what they contained, and she didn’t want to hear it. The postmark was Manchester. Fortunately, that was quite a long way away. She didn’t think her mother would suddenly turn up on her doorstep. If Pixie ignored the letters, her mother might stop writing them and disappear.
At that thought she felt her throat tighten with anguish. She’d like to have a mother, only not her mother. Not a mother capable of plunging a knife into her husband’s chest, a mother who was so selfish as to deny Pixie a father. No, she wished she had a mother like other people’s mothers. A mother who was soft and gentle and loving. Her eyes stung with tears. She closed the drawer, hiding the letters in darkness.
She did not want her mother.
The following morning Ulysses received a call from the College of Psychic Studies in South Kensington. ‘There’s an earthbound spirit in a house in Battersea that needs to be removed. A simple job for Pixie,’ said the receptionist brightly. ‘Do you think you can head up there today?’
Ulysses was a journalist by trade and worked at home, in the flat in Little Venice that he and Pixie had shared since leaving university six years before. Accompanying Pixie on her visits was something he was able to juggle between assignments. As it happened, he’d just submitted an article for The Sunday Times about public demonstrations in his home country, Brazil, and was free. He took down the address then texted Pixie, who had gone out to buy groceries.
Pixie received his message in the vegetable aisle. She read it with interest. Secretly, she hoped she’d be required to timeslide, but recently her jobs had been far too easy for that. Simple souls who were keen to be shown the way home, not Linguinis, as she and Ulysses called the ones who were too traumatised to leave, or simply didn’t want to go. Those spirits very often didn’t know they were dead. She hoped and feared in equal measure that she’d slide back to Cavill, that her theory about having tied their destinies together was true. If only to see him one last time.
Pixie and Ulysses arrived at an ordinary terraced house in Battersea just before midday. It was an overcast, windy morning. After having rained in the night the pavements were littered with sodden leaves, the branches of the trees wet and glistening. It was cold. Winter seemed to have come early. Pixie, in her customary bobble hat and grey coat, shivered on the doorstep as Ulysses, handsome in a black beanie and peacoat, pressed the bell.
Shortly, a young woman opened it. ‘Thank God!,’ she exclaimed in what sounded like a German accent, and invited them in. ‘My son’s been complaining of a man in his bedroom cupboard. He won’t sleep in there anymore. We’re at the end of our tether. I hope you can sort it out.’
The woman introduced herself as Adelaide Bauer. She was petite with long blonde hair tied in a low ponytail, sharp cheekbones, and pretty hazel eyes that gazed at Pixie with hope. She wasn’t at all surprised by Pixie’s pink hair. She was, however, surprised by Ulysses’ extraordinarily handsome face. When she settled her gaze on him she blinked a few times in quick succession, then turned away sharply. Pixie was used to people’s strange reactions on seeing him. Sometimes, he was just too dazzling to look at.
Adelaide offered them coffee, but they declined. Ulysses was very picky about coffee. Coming from Brazil he liked it strong, and it had to be exceedingly good coffee, certainly not instant, and definitely not from a capsule. Pixie drank tea but preferred not to drink while she worked. If she was required to timeslide, she couldn’t be interrupted by needing the loo. ‘Can you show us the wardrobe,’ she asked, and followed Adelaide up the narrow staircase.
The house smelt pleasantly of baking bread and was decorated in fashionable pale grey, taupe and cream. The carpet was seagrass, and black-and-white photographs of glossy, smiling children hung on the walls. Adelaide seemed to have a happy family life. Conversely, the energy in the house was negative, giving it a hard feel, which Pixie picked up immediately. Ulysses, who was insensitive to vibration in spite of having explored metaphysics and the paranormal with Pixie and a group of like-minded people at university, felt nothing but the warmth of a heated home.
Pixie didn’t need Adelaide to show her the bedroom. She knew instantly where the spirit resided. Adelaide opened the door and walked in and folded her arms. It was chilly and the energy was off. There was a child’s bed covered with soft toys, a chest of drawers beneath a sash window, and, against the wall, the antique wardrobe in which the child claimed to have seen the ghost. Pixie nodded. ‘Your son’s right,’ she said. ‘There is a spirit in there. The spirit of a man.’
Adelaide looked horrified. ‘You can see him?’ she exclaimed.
‘I can. But you needn’t be afraid. He’s more frightened of you than you are of him.’
‘Why won’t he go away?’
‘Because he’s stuck.’
‘Stuck in the cupboard?’
‘No, stuck in limbo. He’s hiding in the cupboard because he’s afraid of us.’
‘Good Lord. Can you get rid of him?’
Pixie nodded again. ‘I think I can. Why don’t you go downstairs and make yourself a cup of coffee. Ulysses can go with you. I can do this on my own.’
Adelaide looked panicked. Pixie wasn’t sure which terrified her more, the ghost in the cupboard, or handsome Ulysses standing beside her.
Ulysses smiled, which startled Adelaide all the more. His smile was stunning. ‘Might I have a cup of tea?’ he asked. ‘Pixie won’t be long. Spirits in cupboards are usually easy to move on.’
Adelaide laughed nervously. ‘Do you get many spirits in cupboards?’ she asked.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Ulysses replied.
The two of them left the room. Adelaide closed the door behind them.
Pixie sat on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths. She centred herself, allowing the material world around her to gradually recede, and connected to her inner world and her psychic sense.
She tuned in to the man, who was now standing outside the cupboard. Old and bewildered, he was trembling with fear. He looked as if he was wearing a dressing gown and slippers.
Can you hear me? she asked in her mind.
You’re English, he said, his voice thick with relief. Have they gone?
Who?
The Germans.
The Germans? Pixie suddenly understood what had happened, and she realised too, with a sinking heart, that she wasn’t going to have to slide. There was no mystery here. What year is it? she asked, pushing the thought of Cavill from her mind and focusing on the job.
February 1941, he answered without hesitation.
And the Germans are bombing London, Pixie cut in.
They’re in the house, he said anxiously. They’re here in the house. He meant Adelaide and her family, of course.
What’s your name? Pixie asked.
Alfie Hancock.
Listen Alfie, she began gently. She was going to have to tell the poor man that he was dead. He obviously had no clue. Most likely the house had been hit by a bomb and he’d been killed so quickly, he hadn’t registered that he’d died. Do you know how long you’ve been in that cupboard?
I don’t know, he answered vaguely.
You’ve been in that cupboard for a very long time. You’ve been in this house for a very long time. Do you know how long it’s been since you left the house?
He thought about it. When he eventually spoke, his voice quivered with fear. I think I’ve lost my mind. I don’t know when I last left the house. I don’t know when I last had a bite to eat.
But you’re not hungry, are you?
No. No, I’m not hungry.
There was no easy way to break it to him. Alfie, you haven’t lost your mind. You have nothing to be afraid of. The Germans who are living in this house are friends. The war ended nearly seventy years ago. It’s 2014 now and we’re allies with Germany.
I don’t understand.
You’re no longer living as you were before. You must have lost your life in the Blitz. I imagine this house was hit by a bomb that killed you.
He looked at his hands in astonishment. How can I be dead if I can see my body? I couldn’t see my body if I was dead, surely.
You’re in your spirit body, Alfie, she told him kindly. It was always a challenge to tell someone they were ‘dead’, when they felt very much alive. It’s time to go home. Your loved ones are waiting to welcome you. They’ve been waiting a long time, I suspect. Don’t you think you should go to them?
So this is death, is it? I don’t know what to make of it. I do remember a loud blast, a bomb … His voice trailed off. I hid in the cupboard.
You can leave the cupboard now, Alfie. There’s nothing to fear.
Pixie focused then on her chest where her heart centre was now glowing with an expanding light. Out of that light she created a door. Can you see a door of light, Alfie? Not for a moment did she take her attention off it but held it steady and bright with her mind.
Yes, yes I can. Well, I’ll be damned. Has that always been there?
Light has always been there, Alfie. It’s been trying to find you. But you haven’t been able to see it because of your fear. You need to walk through that door now, into the light.
Marjorie!
Pixie noticed then the figure of a woman, hovering in the doorway. She had a kind face and a wide smile, and glowed brightly, like a lightbulb. She held out her hands. Come on, Alfie. Goodness me, you’re a stubborn old man, aren’t you?
Marjorie. Dearest …
With that, Alfie Hancock moved seamlessly into spirit.
Pixie was moved. She opened her eyes and rested there a while on the bed, as the world around her grew solid again. It was always gratifying when a lost soul found its way home. She’d hoped she might be required to timeslide, but it hadn’t taken much to move Alfie on. He’d wanted to go, once he realised he was dead. Most did. It was only in unusual cases where spirits lingered.
She got up and took a deep breath. The room felt different now. The energy was soft and warm. She knew the child would be happy to sleep here again. She’d done her job well and was satisfied.
She was, however, disappointed it had been so easy. She thought of Cavill again and felt forlorn suddenly. She knew she should leave him alone and not desire to slide back to see him, but the craving. . .
Pixie was in turmoil. She leaned back against the gnarled trunk of the tree and pressed a hand to her chest, but nothing could ease the pain beneath it where her heart ached with a searing longing and a terrible emptiness. Nothing could bring back a moment that had been snatched from her one-hundered-and-two years ago. With all the will in the world she, a proficient timeslider, could not slip back to a precise instant. Metaphysics was not an exact science, it was capricious. That moment was gone forever, like a pearl lost in the ocean.
Pixie, as Constance, had been due to meet Cavill here, on Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, but Constance had been murdered and Pixie had returned to her own time. She would never know what he had wanted to tell her, and he would never know what she had planned to tell him.
How could she possibly go on living in a world without Cavill?
She pictured his gravestone in the long grasses outside the church at St Sidwell Manor, and the sight of it, so cold and still, brought her up short. Those dates, branded on her memory, were so final. So dead. 1857–1943. It was now September 2014. He had been gone one hundred and seventy-one years. But Pixie had seen him yesterday, in 1912. He had held her hand. He had unbuttoned her glove and brought it to his lips where he had kissed the naked skin on her wrist. And she was sure he had recognised her, Pixie, behind Constance’s eyes, even though he didn’t know it. Even though he couldn’t possibly know it. But he had, on a subliminal level. She knew he had. The realisation that he loved her had dawned on his face like a beautiful sunrise and revealed itself in his unfettered smile. In his unrestrained joy. After all he had been through – the disappearance of his nephew Felix, the deaths of his sister-in-law Cordelia and his wife Hermione – did he not deserve to be happy?
Yes, he deserved to be happy, but his happiness had once again been snatched from him with Constance’s death.
Pixie shuddered as she realised how close she had come to telling him the truth. She was going to meet him on those steps and explain everything. She was going to break the cardinal rule of timesliding by telling him who she really was. But for what purpose? For whose benefit? Certainly not for his. Why would he believe such a thing? How could that knowledge possibly make him happy? She grew uncomfortably hot as the memory sharpened. What had she been thinking? But it had felt so right at the time. She realised now that she had been blinkered by her own selfish longing. Blinded by a burning need to be loved for herself. Not as Hermione, not as Constance, but as her, Pixie Tate. She had needed him to recognise her behind the eyes, but how was that even feasible?
She closed her eyes and let the tears squeeze between her lashes and trickle down her cheeks. What was the point of loving Cavill, she thought miserably, if she could never stay long enough to be with him? Was there a point, or was it simply the fact that her heart, like a magnet, had pulled him to it – would it continue to pull him to it slide after slide? A force greater than the two of them with an unrelenting attraction. Would she ever be free of him? Or were they connected now, doomed to meet for fleeting moments in the past; a love that could never be fulfilled? Was she fated to endure this agony over and over again? In which case she had to put a stop to it, for her sake as well as his. If she had somehow tied her destiny to his, she had to work out a way to untie it.
The sun found a gap in the leaves and shone a golden beam onto her face. It was warm and gentle, and she was immediately reminded of that final carriage ride around Manhattan with Cavill. She pictured him and the knife twisted deeper into her heart. She was seated beside him, and he was gazing at her, his cornflower eyes full of tenderness and recognition. She could almost feel him next to her. She could almost reach out and touch him. She didn’t want to open her eyes and lose this blissful feeling. Then a thought slithered into her consciousness like a serpent with the whispering voice of temptation. Couldn’t she hold on to that feeling and slide through the veil?
Would her love for Cavill take her back to him?
She could try …
Her heart began to accelerate with anticipation. There was no harm in giving it a go. She had no object to link her to Cavill – his sketchbook that she had stolen from St Sidwell Manor was in the hotel – and she had nothing tangible to link her to 1912, but she did have the park. She was right here where she wanted to be, a short distance from the Bethesda terrace – surely, she could project herself back to April 21st 1912. If she focused on the park and the meeting they’d arranged for midday, wouldn’t the Law of Attraction see to it that her desire was fulfilled? She wouldn’t be Constance, of course, for she was dead. She’d be someone else. But maybe she wouldn’t need to possess a body at all. She could slip out of her own body and transport herself back, as she had spontaneously done on many occasions as a child when her parents’ fighting in the kitchen below had got too much. Back then, she had consistently arrived in a meadow, believing it to be heaven. It was years later that she realised it wasn’t heaven at all, that she had actually slipped through time and was in the very same place, only long before her house had been built. Could she not, in the same way, transport herself back to 1912 and simply observe, as herself. She wouldn’t be able to stay for long, admittedly – that was the drawback of timesliding without acquiring a body, but it wouldn’t matter. She’d see him again, and that would be enough – even though he wouldn’t be able to see her. To him she’d be even less perceptible than a breeze. Could she bear it?
She could.
With mounting excitement, she took a series of deep breaths, focusing on the rise and fall of her ribcage and the sensation of air entering and leaving her nostrils. Shortly, she felt the familiar heaviness in her limbs and the dizzying feel of her finer, etheric body loosening from her physical body and slowly detaching. She thought of Cavill, and her yearning seemed to lift her up so that she was hovering in the branches of the tree, a wisp of wind, a ray of sunshine. Then she was slipping through the veil.
I open my eyes. I am not me, observing, but someone else. I have slid into the body of a young woman, and I’m freezing cold.
My scuffed black boots are embedded in snow. It’s thick and twinkling like tiny diamonds. I look down at my dress. It’s long and black and very plain. My eyes catch sight of my hands. I spread my fingers wide and am horrified at the rawness of the red skin and the dry, ragged nails. They’re the hands of a scullery maid, or someone whose job it is to scrub with water and harsh soap. No Fairy Liquid for these hands, or rubber gloves. I gaze about me. I believe I’m still in Central Park, but it’s very different. The trees around me are young and spindly, beyond them I see a wide track upon which horse-drawn sleighs glide over the snow. Elegant women walk side by side in long cloaks and hats, their hands buried in fur muffs. A man pulls a child on a wooden sled. The child is giggling happily. A dog trots behind, then gets distracted by a pleasant smell and cocks its leg on a lamppost. My breath fogs on the air. Above me the sky is a pale, duck-egg blue. I see no skyscrapers, only trees, shivering in the cold as I am.
I walk through the snow, trying to work out where I am – if, indeed, I’m in New York at all. I don’t have a muff, only some sort of hat. I’m freezing. As I emerge over a mound I see on the other side of it a large, frozen lake. Dozens of people are ice skating: boys in breeches and caps; men in frock coats and hats; women, arms linked, moving slowly over the ice in their long skirts, short jackets and bonnets. Beyond them an enormous, yellow stone building with three pointed gables stands alone. It looks vaguely familiar, but I have no idea what it is.
It’s then that I spot a newspaper discarded on a wooden bench. I seize it. It’s The Evening World. To my disappointment I read, New York, Saturday December 7, 1889.
Join the Nellie Bly Guessing Match
And You May Take
That Free Trip to Europe
I have no idea what that means. I do know, however, that in 1889 Cavill is in England. Why has the Law of Attraction brought me here if he is in St Sidwell?
I sit down in frustration. It’s clear to me that I cannot engineer my slides. I don’t know whether that’s because I don’t know how to, or because I’m not meant to, or because I don’t have something of Cavill’s to link me to him. Perhaps I’ve been overthinking and Cavill’s presence on the Titanic was nothing more than a wonderful coincidence. One which won’t be repeated. I slump over the newspaper in despair. How will I ever see him again? I cannot accept that I won’t. That I can’t.
‘Mary! Mary Connor … !’ I lift my eyes to see a young woman with a red face glaring at me. She’s wearing the same sort of dress as I am, and she’s shivering too. ‘Would you come now please!’ she exclaims crossly in an Irish accent. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
There’s no point staying another minute in this time and place. Besides, I’m numb with cold.
I close my eyes and will myself home.
‘You’re crazy!’ Ulysses exclaimed. ‘And you waited until now to tell me?’
It was dusk. A blood orange sun was dropping slowly behind the buildings, plunging the street below into purple shadow. Pixie and Ulysses sat on the terrace outside their apartment in Little Venice, wrapped in coats and hats for it was now mid-October, and November was edging closer with its cold winds and shorter days. They’d been back in London for three weeks. They both missed New York, but for entirely different reasons. Pixie pined for Cavill; Ulysses yearned for Henry. While Pixie’s pining was futile, Ulysses’ yearning was productive – he seemed to be constantly texting and FaceTiming, and laughing out loud at jokes to which Pixie was not privy. She found it annoying. Ulysses, who claimed not to be interested in love, was clearly smitten with Henry Stirling whom he’d wasted no time in seducing at the Aldershoff Hotel. Pixie, who wanted only to be loved by Cavill Pengower, was still coming to terms with the fact that she could never have him. Ever. It seemed so unfair that Ulysses should be rewarded for his carelessness, while Pixie should suffer for her honest heart.
It was over a glass of wine on this copper-coloured evening that Pixie confessed to her friend that she had tried to timeslide back to 1912, without Ulysses there to protect her. ‘Can you imagine if someone had disturbed you! What would you have done then? Would they have known what to do when you began to writhe around on the floor in a fit?’
Pixie shook her head and shrugged. ‘You’re so dramatic, Ulysses. I was in trance for a minute, no more. No one came near me.’
‘I’m not dramatic, I’m passionate,’ he exclaimed, his Brazilian accent giving the word ‘passionate’ a sensuality it didn’t have in English. He grinned, his teeth white against his olive skin, the green of his eyes accentuated by the last rays of sunshine that caused them to shine like tourmaline. His smile was winning, as were his indecently good looks, and Pixie couldn’t help but smile back.
‘It’s all right for you. You have Mr Stirling – Henry – on the phone whenever you want him. I can’t call Cavill, ever.’
‘Give it up, Pixie,’ said Ulysses seriously. ‘You’re wasting your life on a man who doesn’t even exist. You might as well love a movie star.’
She took a sip of wine. ‘I thought I could slide back to a specific time and place. I just wanted to see him one more time. It was worth trying …’
‘Not without me,’ he cut in crossly.
She glanced at him slyly. ‘I knew you’d try to persuade me not to.’
‘So you went behind my back?’
‘Yes.’
‘You little devil.’
She laughed, but her joy turned quickly to worry. ‘Okay, so it was foolish, but at that point I was desperate. I thought I’d never see him again. I thought I’d lost him forever. But what if I haven’t lost him at all? What if I’ve actually started something that I don’t know how to get out of?’
Ulysses frowned. Pixie often seemed to speak a language he didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean? Started what?’
‘I mean, what if in falling in love with Cavill I’ve somehow tied our destinies together? Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that I met him on the Titanic, after all. What was he doing on the Titanic, for goodness’ sake? What if I drew him there? Me. What if I draw him to me on every slide?’
‘That’s impossible. If you slide back to, say, mid-nineteenth century, he won’t have been born.’
‘But that’s the thing, am I destined to always slide back to his time? Will the Law of Attraction assign me jobs that take me there. Is this going to go on and on and on … ?’
‘Isn’t that what you want? You said you wanted to see him one last time. Well, maybe your prayer has been answered.’
She shook her head and her brow creased into small furrows. The truth was she wasn’t really sure what she wanted. She wanted Cavill in her own time, as Pixie, but only magic could make that happen, and she didn’t believe in magic. She sighed heavily. ‘I don’t want to meet him again as someone else. I can’t do that to him. I possessed Hermione and he fell in love with her and married her. She died. I possessed Constance and he fell in love with her, and she died. Poor man – the women he loves, leave him. I leave him. Is that fair on him, just to satisfy my own longing?’
‘Are you suggesting that he’s going to fall in love with you every time you slide into his world? That every woman you take over is going to become the object of his desire? It’s only happened twice. Maybe the third time you’ll take over someone who isn’t his type!’ He grinned triumphantly as if he’d solved the problem.
‘It’s not about how she looks, it’s about me,’ she insisted, frustrated suddenly that he wasn’t keeping up. ‘It’s about who she is on the inside. Don’t you get it? It’s a soul connection. It’s me that he loves! At least, I hope that it is.’
‘It’s far-fetched if you ask me.’
‘The point is, it’s not fair on him to put him in that position time and again, nor me for that matter. I can’t return to the past as another woman and hope that he’ll eventually see through her eyes into my soul. I have to put an end to it.’
Ulysses raised his glass. ‘Now you’re talking sense, Pixie.’
‘So, how do I do that?’
‘Well, if you are somehow drawing him into your slides, perhaps you shouldn’t timeslide at all.’
She cocked her head. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s my job. I have to timeslide.’
‘Get another job. There are a thousand things you could do.’
‘Like what? Sit in an office in front of a laptop? You know I can’t do that. This is the only thing I know how to do. And I’m good at it. Besides, I feel a responsibility towards those earthbound spirits I help. It gives me pleasure seeing them letting go of their misery and heading off into the light. They need me.’
‘Then take on jobs that don’t require timesliding. At least for the moment. Give yourself a rest. Perhaps, if you get over Cavill, you’ll stop drawing him into your slides. Maybe you’re right, the person responsible for his participation in your slides is you and your dogged pining.’
She thought about that for a moment. Then she said, ‘You know, I feel there’s more to it. That there’s a reason we keep meeting. Like it’s destiny. There’s something important I need to learn from him, and he from me. Like life – only played out in a different time. On another level. It’s still life, isn’t it? Maybe we learn from our dreams too.’
He chuckled and drained his glass. ‘You’re reading way too much into it, if you ask me. You slid back to 1895 and fell in love. That’s not so crazy. Why wouldn’t you fall in love? It’s just a shame he’s dead now. But there’s nothing significant about it. It’s just unlucky. You’d be better off falling in love with someone in your own time.’
His phone buzzed with a call. He lifted it off the little table between them and grinned happily. ‘Sorry, Pix. New York calls.’ He put it to his ear. ‘Hey you,’ he said, getting off his chair and wandering inside. Pixie felt herself bristle with resentment. Why couldn’t she find a man who called her and said, ‘Hey you’?
The sun dipped behind a building, and she was plunged into shadow and cold. She went inside, closing the glass door behind her. She could hear Ulysses’ laughter from his bedroom. His happiness made her heart heavy. She wasn’t sure whether that was because she was jealous he was in love, or because she felt excluded. Ulysses always had a man on the go, but Henry Stirling felt different. Ulysses’ laughter sounded different too. It resonated with an intimacy she hadn’t heard before.
She went into her bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed. Still in her coat and bobble hat she felt cold, and lonely. She felt terribly lonely. She rubbed her hands together to warm them and glanced warily at the drawer of her bedside table. Her stomach tightened with anxiety just thinking about what lay inside it. But like the tongue that craves the aching tooth, she reached out to open it. Inside was a pile of letters. On her return from America, she had stopped throwing away her mother’s attempts at communication. Instead, she now kept them in a drawer, unopened. She hadn’t read a single one. She knew what they contained, and she didn’t want to hear it. The postmark was Manchester. Fortunately, that was quite a long way away. She didn’t think her mother would suddenly turn up on her doorstep. If Pixie ignored the letters, her mother might stop writing them and disappear.
At that thought she felt her throat tighten with anguish. She’d like to have a mother, only not her mother. Not a mother capable of plunging a knife into her husband’s chest, a mother who was so selfish as to deny Pixie a father. No, she wished she had a mother like other people’s mothers. A mother who was soft and gentle and loving. Her eyes stung with tears. She closed the drawer, hiding the letters in darkness.
She did not want her mother.
The following morning Ulysses received a call from the College of Psychic Studies in South Kensington. ‘There’s an earthbound spirit in a house in Battersea that needs to be removed. A simple job for Pixie,’ said the receptionist brightly. ‘Do you think you can head up there today?’
Ulysses was a journalist by trade and worked at home, in the flat in Little Venice that he and Pixie had shared since leaving university six years before. Accompanying Pixie on her visits was something he was able to juggle between assignments. As it happened, he’d just submitted an article for The Sunday Times about public demonstrations in his home country, Brazil, and was free. He took down the address then texted Pixie, who had gone out to buy groceries.
Pixie received his message in the vegetable aisle. She read it with interest. Secretly, she hoped she’d be required to timeslide, but recently her jobs had been far too easy for that. Simple souls who were keen to be shown the way home, not Linguinis, as she and Ulysses called the ones who were too traumatised to leave, or simply didn’t want to go. Those spirits very often didn’t know they were dead. She hoped and feared in equal measure that she’d slide back to Cavill, that her theory about having tied their destinies together was true. If only to see him one last time.
Pixie and Ulysses arrived at an ordinary terraced house in Battersea just before midday. It was an overcast, windy morning. After having rained in the night the pavements were littered with sodden leaves, the branches of the trees wet and glistening. It was cold. Winter seemed to have come early. Pixie, in her customary bobble hat and grey coat, shivered on the doorstep as Ulysses, handsome in a black beanie and peacoat, pressed the bell.
Shortly, a young woman opened it. ‘Thank God!,’ she exclaimed in what sounded like a German accent, and invited them in. ‘My son’s been complaining of a man in his bedroom cupboard. He won’t sleep in there anymore. We’re at the end of our tether. I hope you can sort it out.’
The woman introduced herself as Adelaide Bauer. She was petite with long blonde hair tied in a low ponytail, sharp cheekbones, and pretty hazel eyes that gazed at Pixie with hope. She wasn’t at all surprised by Pixie’s pink hair. She was, however, surprised by Ulysses’ extraordinarily handsome face. When she settled her gaze on him she blinked a few times in quick succession, then turned away sharply. Pixie was used to people’s strange reactions on seeing him. Sometimes, he was just too dazzling to look at.
Adelaide offered them coffee, but they declined. Ulysses was very picky about coffee. Coming from Brazil he liked it strong, and it had to be exceedingly good coffee, certainly not instant, and definitely not from a capsule. Pixie drank tea but preferred not to drink while she worked. If she was required to timeslide, she couldn’t be interrupted by needing the loo. ‘Can you show us the wardrobe,’ she asked, and followed Adelaide up the narrow staircase.
The house smelt pleasantly of baking bread and was decorated in fashionable pale grey, taupe and cream. The carpet was seagrass, and black-and-white photographs of glossy, smiling children hung on the walls. Adelaide seemed to have a happy family life. Conversely, the energy in the house was negative, giving it a hard feel, which Pixie picked up immediately. Ulysses, who was insensitive to vibration in spite of having explored metaphysics and the paranormal with Pixie and a group of like-minded people at university, felt nothing but the warmth of a heated home.
Pixie didn’t need Adelaide to show her the bedroom. She knew instantly where the spirit resided. Adelaide opened the door and walked in and folded her arms. It was chilly and the energy was off. There was a child’s bed covered with soft toys, a chest of drawers beneath a sash window, and, against the wall, the antique wardrobe in which the child claimed to have seen the ghost. Pixie nodded. ‘Your son’s right,’ she said. ‘There is a spirit in there. The spirit of a man.’
Adelaide looked horrified. ‘You can see him?’ she exclaimed.
‘I can. But you needn’t be afraid. He’s more frightened of you than you are of him.’
‘Why won’t he go away?’
‘Because he’s stuck.’
‘Stuck in the cupboard?’
‘No, stuck in limbo. He’s hiding in the cupboard because he’s afraid of us.’
‘Good Lord. Can you get rid of him?’
Pixie nodded again. ‘I think I can. Why don’t you go downstairs and make yourself a cup of coffee. Ulysses can go with you. I can do this on my own.’
Adelaide looked panicked. Pixie wasn’t sure which terrified her more, the ghost in the cupboard, or handsome Ulysses standing beside her.
Ulysses smiled, which startled Adelaide all the more. His smile was stunning. ‘Might I have a cup of tea?’ he asked. ‘Pixie won’t be long. Spirits in cupboards are usually easy to move on.’
Adelaide laughed nervously. ‘Do you get many spirits in cupboards?’ she asked.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Ulysses replied.
The two of them left the room. Adelaide closed the door behind them.
Pixie sat on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths. She centred herself, allowing the material world around her to gradually recede, and connected to her inner world and her psychic sense.
She tuned in to the man, who was now standing outside the cupboard. Old and bewildered, he was trembling with fear. He looked as if he was wearing a dressing gown and slippers.
Can you hear me? she asked in her mind.
You’re English, he said, his voice thick with relief. Have they gone?
Who?
The Germans.
The Germans? Pixie suddenly understood what had happened, and she realised too, with a sinking heart, that she wasn’t going to have to slide. There was no mystery here. What year is it? she asked, pushing the thought of Cavill from her mind and focusing on the job.
February 1941, he answered without hesitation.
And the Germans are bombing London, Pixie cut in.
They’re in the house, he said anxiously. They’re here in the house. He meant Adelaide and her family, of course.
What’s your name? Pixie asked.
Alfie Hancock.
Listen Alfie, she began gently. She was going to have to tell the poor man that he was dead. He obviously had no clue. Most likely the house had been hit by a bomb and he’d been killed so quickly, he hadn’t registered that he’d died. Do you know how long you’ve been in that cupboard?
I don’t know, he answered vaguely.
You’ve been in that cupboard for a very long time. You’ve been in this house for a very long time. Do you know how long it’s been since you left the house?
He thought about it. When he eventually spoke, his voice quivered with fear. I think I’ve lost my mind. I don’t know when I last left the house. I don’t know when I last had a bite to eat.
But you’re not hungry, are you?
No. No, I’m not hungry.
There was no easy way to break it to him. Alfie, you haven’t lost your mind. You have nothing to be afraid of. The Germans who are living in this house are friends. The war ended nearly seventy years ago. It’s 2014 now and we’re allies with Germany.
I don’t understand.
You’re no longer living as you were before. You must have lost your life in the Blitz. I imagine this house was hit by a bomb that killed you.
He looked at his hands in astonishment. How can I be dead if I can see my body? I couldn’t see my body if I was dead, surely.
You’re in your spirit body, Alfie, she told him kindly. It was always a challenge to tell someone they were ‘dead’, when they felt very much alive. It’s time to go home. Your loved ones are waiting to welcome you. They’ve been waiting a long time, I suspect. Don’t you think you should go to them?
So this is death, is it? I don’t know what to make of it. I do remember a loud blast, a bomb … His voice trailed off. I hid in the cupboard.
You can leave the cupboard now, Alfie. There’s nothing to fear.
Pixie focused then on her chest where her heart centre was now glowing with an expanding light. Out of that light she created a door. Can you see a door of light, Alfie? Not for a moment did she take her attention off it but held it steady and bright with her mind.
Yes, yes I can. Well, I’ll be damned. Has that always been there?
Light has always been there, Alfie. It’s been trying to find you. But you haven’t been able to see it because of your fear. You need to walk through that door now, into the light.
Marjorie!
Pixie noticed then the figure of a woman, hovering in the doorway. She had a kind face and a wide smile, and glowed brightly, like a lightbulb. She held out her hands. Come on, Alfie. Goodness me, you’re a stubborn old man, aren’t you?
Marjorie. Dearest …
With that, Alfie Hancock moved seamlessly into spirit.
Pixie was moved. She opened her eyes and rested there a while on the bed, as the world around her grew solid again. It was always gratifying when a lost soul found its way home. She’d hoped she might be required to timeslide, but it hadn’t taken much to move Alfie on. He’d wanted to go, once he realised he was dead. Most did. It was only in unusual cases where spirits lingered.
She got up and took a deep breath. The room felt different now. The energy was soft and warm. She knew the child would be happy to sleep here again. She’d done her job well and was satisfied.
She was, however, disappointed it had been so easy. She thought of Cavill again and felt forlorn suddenly. She knew she should leave him alone and not desire to slide back to see him, but the craving. . .
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