She is relieved not to be having to explain her actions to anyone. She is aware how unformed her ideas are. How unfounded her theories. She is acting only on a hunch, and has no real notion of where it will lead her. Or even what it is she is hoping to find. Last night she sat in front of the fire in the snug sitting room of Ty Gwyn, sipping a glass of daftly expensive wine from the local shop, with Thistle stretched out on the hearth rug, and tried to pull together what she knew. Or at least, what she thought she knew. Her flashbacks–or waking nightmares as she had come to think of them–of the moment of Mat’s death are not new. She has been having them for over a year now. But recently they do seem to be more vivid, more horribly, cruelly real in every heartbreaking detail. And then there are the electrics in the cottage. Bob found nothing wrong, yet the fuse box continues to trip out so frequently that Tilda has given up resetting the thing. She and the dog muddle along without electric light or the computer or any other plug-in appliances. The solid fuel range in the kitchen means she can continue to boil a kettle or cook the few food items she has left. And it heats the water to lukewarm, too. The open fire in the sitting room stops the house from becoming uncomfortably cold, even if upstairs is getting increasingly bleak as the temperature outside drops. Tilda is certain that it was her own proximity to the professor’s clock that caused it to stop, so she cannot pretend that the wiring at the cottage is faulty. It makes no real sense, but the fact is, she is the common factor in both cases.

Sitting next to Thistle, gazing into the flames, Tilda had tried to recall what she had seen—or thought she had seen—at the lake. Three people in a boat. Two men, one woman, rowing for the shore. Dressed outlandishly. Or rather, outdatedly.

By several hundred years.