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‘This is the place Gran kept coming back to?’ Joan didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been a construction site in the most touristy part of Covent Garden.
‘Maybe it wasn’t under renovation a year ago,’ Nick said.
Joan stepped closer and cupped her hands against a window. The glass had a reflective coating, but she made out the vague shape of tables and chairs. ‘Looks like a café. Maybe Gran met someone here.’
Jamie barely paused. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Our records have her coming here alone. This place has been under scaffolding for nearly two years.’
Joan found herself doing a double take. ‘Well, that’s … creepy that you know that.’
‘That’s the Liu records for you,’ Tom said. ‘Creepy and useful.’
‘Where does the information even come from?’ Joan asked.
Jamie shrugged. ‘Phone records, CCTV, social media posts, drone photos. Anything that’s in any database eventually makes its way to us. And then—’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘The storage is here.’
‘Like a hive mind,’ Nick said, looking intrigued.
‘Maybe a hive memory,’ Jamie said.
‘Hmm.’ Ruth slipped a soft black cloth from her pocket. ‘There goes the fantasy that we can ever avoid cameras.’
‘You’re going to pick the lock?’ Nick sounded faintly scandalised.
The door popped open. ‘Wrong tense,’ Ruth said. ‘I have picked the lock.’ She walked in. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s exactly as you’d expect.’
Joan followed her, ducking under a low metal beam. Inside, the room was sunny with big windows along parallel walls. The space had been gutted, but the bones of a café were still here: a line of built-in booths ran beside the windows, and there was a counter at the front where the check-out would have been.
An unloved print hung on a wall behind the counter—a cartoonish map of London showing Buckingham Palace as a little castle and the zoo as a cluster of elephants and a giraffe. It was easy to imagine the place bustling with tourists, sun shining in on them from the windows. This had once been an American-style diner, Joan guessed.
Déjà vu rolled over her then—stronger than the moment at the opera house. It was accompanied by a rush of unease. I know this place, she thought. I’ve been here before.
‘Maybe your grandmother did meet someone here,’ Nick said. ‘She could have travelled after she walked inside—to a time when it wasn’t a construction site.’
That made sense. Maybe there was a bathroom in here—Gran could have travelled without anyone seeing her. As Joan looked around, though, she was struck with a feeling that Gran hadn’t come here to meet anyone. That she’d come here for something else.
‘Look out,’ Jamie said. Joan followed his finger to two heavy security cameras at the ceiling corners. She felt another jolt of combined recognition and disquiet, as if this moment too had happened before.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tom said in a reassuring rumble. ‘Those cameras are old—like magnetic-tape old. Don’t think they could be in working order.’ He looked around. ‘No sigils. No future technology. This isn’t a monster place.’ Frankie wriggled in his arms, and he bent to let her down. She nosed at his shoes, pulling at the laces. ‘Frankie,’ he said mildly, and she shuffled over to sniff at Nick’s trouser cuffs.
Ruth reappeared from a door behind the counter. ‘There’s nothing in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Nothing in the bathroom. What do you want to do?’
‘Why did your grandmother come here?’ Nick wondered.
Some instinct made Joan turn to him. He stood in a sunbeam. In the golden light, his dark hair was more brown than black. Beyond him, a window showed office workers on their way home. And then Joan knew.
She had been here before—in the previous timeline, when it had been a bustling café, serving all-day breakfasts to tourists. She pictured herself finding the sunniest booth. And then she pictured Nick sliding into the bench opposite hers.
‘Joan?’ Nick said now. ‘What is it?’
Joan blinked, barely seeing him.
Last time, he’d grabbed her wrists. I can’t let you touch me.
And Joan had asked him the question that had been gnawing at her since the massacre. Did you know they were my family before you had them killed?
No.
Would you have killed them if you’d known?
