‘And this book?’ She leaned over the edge of the bed and reached for her coat, which had been discarded on the floor. She pulled a copy of Happiness: A New Way of Life out of her pocket. ‘The thing that got me started.’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

She put it on my bedside table.

‘Why this place?’ she asked. ‘Why this time?’

‘I had to take myself out of the equation,’ I replied. ‘The temptation to intervene in a timeline is intense, so I brought myself to a time when I couldn’t meddle. You used the last transit getting here and the technology hasn’t been developed yet that would enable me to build more. This time is sufficiently familiar so as not to be completely alien to us. And as for this place . . . well, it’s beautiful.’

‘That’s true,’ she said. She kissed me again and got out of bed. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

She went into the en suite bathroom, and I turned to gaze at the breakers cresting beyond the edge of the cliff. As I watched the sea rolling and swelling, I noticed the book she’d brought with her. Happiness: A New Way of Life. She’d left it on a notepad I kept by the bed to capture any poetry that strikes me in the lucid dreams I have between sleep and waking.

I smiled, wondering what a book could teach me about happiness. I had everything I’d ever dreamed of. I might not be with them, but my parents were safe and I was with the woman I loved. I picked it up and flicked through it absently.

I saw something that set my heart racing, and immediately went back to the offending page.

‘Where did you get this book?’ I called to her.

‘It was in the used section of Nantwich Bookshop,’ she replied.

‘Did you see anyone else there when you bought it?’ I asked.

I found the page I’d been looking for and saw the words

I want to live

Help

He’s trying to kill me

I picked up my pen and wrote on my pad.

‘Yes,’ Harri replied through the door. ‘There was an old man there.’

I looked down at my words. The handwriting was a perfect match for what had been written in the book.

The handwriting in the book was mine.

I’d written the message in the book that had started Harri’s investigation.

‘We spoke,’ Harri said.

I had a terrible feeling of dread and had to resist the urge to cry out.

‘It was very sad. He’d lost his wife. She’d died suddenly,’ she added.

I was consumed by fury at the fates. I was trapped in this time without the tools or technology to build another device. I knew the old man was me, and the wife he’d spoken of was Harri. I looked at the book, at the breaking waves, at the closed bathroom door, and felt nothing but despair.