Richard did nothing to save me. He, like Antony Forster, like William Hyde, like all the others, was Robert’s man, bought and paid for. And Robert, of course, was the Queen’s man. He had never been mine, not even in the beginning in Norfolk when we had been young and in love. Elizabeth had always come first, his sun and stars, the centre of his world, his inspiration and his life.

Hope died. I felt the rush of air against my face and the lightness of empty space beneath me. I felt fear, screaming inside my head. Then it was over.

25

Lizzie: Present Day

“I don’t believe it.” Lizzie sat in the kitchen at The High that evening, a cup of tea ignored at her side, and bit hard into an almond croissant. “I don’t believe it,” she repeated with her mouth full. “He can’t just have been visiting the seaside, or seeing a friend, or whatever else he says he’s been doing. It isn’t possible.”

She remembered the conversation she’d had with Arthur about Johnny being in Peru or Scotland. It seemed that Arthur hadn’t been far off the truth after all.

“I know it’s annoying, Lizzie,” Jules sounded irritatingly reasonable to Lizzie’s ears, “and it’s thoughtless of him and he’s caused you a lot of trouble, but you said yourself that Johnny’s just a boy and he’s been through a lot—”

“I know.” Lizzie cut her off shortly. “Sorry, Jules...” She saw her cousin’s expression. “You’re right, of course, and I am glad he’s safe—of course I am—it’s just...” She stopped. She couldn’t articulate to Jules that it wasn’t actually about the problems Johnny had caused her, it was simply that Johnny’s reappearance, as sudden as his disappearance, felt incongruent and wrong.

At first when she had heard the news, she had felt nothing but relief. Johnny was home, he was safe. Arthur, when she had spoken to him, had sounded overjoyed and that had made her even happier. It was only later, when the reality of Johnny’s return had started to sink in, that Lizzie’s feelings had also changed. For a start, she felt an utter fool. At what point had she and Arthur bought into some kind of shared delusion about Johnny’s whereabouts? She was angry, with Johnny, but mostly with herself, for doing exactly what she had accused the police of and building up a case that fitted her version of the facts. It had all been based on no more than conjecture and wild imagination, and it had led her into spinning some kind of supernatural explanation for something that was a great deal simpler. Johnny, grief-stricken and depressed, had wanted some time alone to deal with his feelings. He hadn’t been on any kind of quest. She had imagined the whole thing. Lizzie felt so stupid, so gullible, and in an odd way it felt as though everything that had happened to move her life forward in the intervening two weeks had been cancelled out and she was back where she had started. She’d thought all along that her dependence on psychometry was wrong and something to be ashamed of. Now she saw just how far it had misled her. She’d even started to believe that time travel was possible because Johnny had somehow normalised her gift and encouraged her to believe, and then she had taken it way too far. Perhaps she had seen a vision in the stone when she had touched the stone of Baynard’s Castle, just as she saw visions from other objects. It didn’t mean that she had actually been there and nor had Johnny.