Harri looked at Elliot and saw, from the surprise on his face, that Ben’s assertion was true.

‘Part physics, part biology, tapping into the coding of the universe,’ Ben went on. ‘The language and data sets that give the cosmos order can be rearranged, just like a computer program. I know you can already see that. You’re not like other people. You perceive time differently. It is not a chain of events; it is a simultaneous moment, all occurring now, all having occurred, all to occur. It is a happening and the potential to happen and, with the right key, one can move between moments. Would you even be thinking that way if your parents were still around? Our love drives us to do incredible things.’

‘No!’ Elliot said. ‘I don’t want this. I want them back.’

On screen, Ben smiled softly.

‘You’ll see them again, Elliot. When you come back from Australia, twenty-one years ago. Or eleven years from your current age. You’ll see them again and share their lives as a friend and you’ll save her. You’ll tread my path and then you’ll know you had no choice. You save Beth. You save our mother.’

Elliot trembled. His whole body shook as he struggled to absorb a new and troubling reality. Harri reached out a soothing hand and rubbed him gently on the back.

‘Time travel?’ she said to the screen. ‘The world needs to know—’

Ben cut her off. ‘And what would the world do with this technology? What do people do with anything of true value? Nations would go to war for it. It must stay secret. How much evil would be committed in the name of setting things right?’

On screen, Ben, or the older Elliot as Harri had started to think of him, hesitated. ‘If you could travel in time, what would you do? What better purpose than to save a life?’

‘Sabih’s life?’ Harri asked. ‘Or was he not worth saving?’

Ben looked pained. ‘I’ve been back to that moment countless times. I can never save him.’ He looked at Elliot, and Harri wondered where Ben really was. How could he see them and respond to what they were saying? ‘Those research trips, when I left you with Mrs Hughes, I was trying to undo my one great regret. No matter what I try, Sabih Khan always dies that night. No matter how hard I try, there is no way out for him. Just like the rest of us, his path is set.’

Ben fell silent, and for a moment the three of them said nothing. Harri saw Elliot struggling for composure. She was finding this difficult, but she couldn’t imagine what it was like for the young man who was coming to terms with what was expected of him. There were differences in the two men, but now she knew the truth, the resemblance was too profound to ignore.

A resemblance Ben could have used in other ways.

‘The cliff at Arthog,’ Harri remarked. ‘That wasn’t David Asha, was it?’