Page 83 of Twin Flames
‘We must go to the nearest church. I have no idea what the protocol is for borrowing a priest’s garb, but we’re about to find out. We must not dally.’
York, present day
Cara had lost her bearings; recently, she was flitting back and forth, daily, between the present day and Tudorville. She struggled to keep track of time as she careered between her two lives. Surely this couldn’t go on indefinitely. It was becoming impossible to act appropriately and not give herself away. Five hundred years of cultural change was a great deal to have missed. She was well-schooled in the Tudor and modern eras, but large chunks of the years in between were a blank.
Visions of George in the Tower terrorised her thoughts, and she found it increasingly difficult to focus. What was happening back then? Had Swifty succeeded in returning to Cradle Tower to ready George for their plan? Her body was here, but her head was consumed by the past.
‘Cara, Cara. Are you with me? I was asking what you think.’
‘Oh, yes. My apologies, please excuse me while I grab a glass of water and I’ll be back with you in a moment. Would you like one?’
She had a client meeting this morning and must try to be present, or she’d soon have no business left. She opened the kitchen door and stuck her head out for a blast of fresh air.
She’d been surprised to see that the new lawyer representing one of her client’s agencies, looked almost identical to Sir John in Tudorville. It was uncanny. She wondered how many doppelgangers lived parallel lives and were liable to pop up at any moment to startle her. Returning to wrap up the meeting,she escorted the doppelganger to the door, turned the key in the lock behind him and breathed a sigh of relief.
The hardest thing about her double life was pretending everything was normal and that she was like everyone else. The only person she could fully relax with since George disappeared, was Eddie, and even he gave her blank stares when he lost track of what was going on. Her existence had become a tangled web of lies, and she didn’t like it.
A seed of an idea had been niggling at her. The Angel Gabriel warning had reactivated the thought. What if George was alive after all? What if in the same way she’d disrupted the timeline sufficiently to change the trajectory of her life with Daniel, something similar had occurred with George?
Sitting at her desk, she typed George Cavendish into the search bar of her computer. A plethora of results flicked up. His was a common name, so it was no surprise. She began to click on the links and follow some of the threads. It was a Pandora’s box, and she was about to give up when an image caught her eye. She enlarged the photo, and there he was: George. Her George. Or he looked like George. The image wasn’t clear. Maybe she was mistaken. There was something slightly different about him; he was a little heavier in the face. But no. His brown eyes were the same. She would know them anywhere. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt giddy.
Could it really be him or was this man simply another lookalike? Was it possible that George didn’t die at the Tower even if they hadn’t intervened and saved him? Was he perfectly okay, living another life, oblivious to the life he had missed? Was she about to risk messing things up yet again, by insisting on rescuing him? Perhaps he didn’t need rescuing at all. One question led to another, and her head began to spin.
‘Perhaps he doesn’t need rescuing at all.’ The revelation hung in the air as she said the words aloud. She could barely believe itherself. The implications were huge. If he was living a different life, perhaps he was single. If he was single, they could be together without any of the conflict. If they rescued him, they would reset things to the old timeline.
She’d searched for George online soon after they’d first met, but he wasn’t much of a one for social media, and apart from the standard business listings, there wasn’t much to see. There were a couple of articles about his business background and a mention of his marital status, but that was about it.
When she’d returned to find he wasn’t in the same house with Joanna, she’d jumped to the conclusion he must have died in 1536, and that unless they saved him, it was the end of his lineage. But now it seemed possible she was mistaken.
Her researcher’s analytical brain processed the data in her mental fog. She needed to remove herself from the emotional whirlpool so she could think clearly.
The questions competed for attention in her head. She scanned the newspaper article that accompanied the photo. George Cavendish was on the board of directors of an import-export company, and he had several homes but was said to spend most of his time in Seville, Spain. There was no mention of a wife, although that didn’t mean he wasn’t married. She cautioned herself to slow down and not get her hopes up.
He was alive. It was incredible. She would get the first flight out there and go and see him for herself. It was the only way she could know for sure.
‘Eddie, Eddie?’ She drummed her fingers on the desk with one hand as she hit his name on her phone with the other.
‘Hi. You sound a bit frantic. What’s going on?’
‘I am frantic. I’ve discovered George is alive! We mustn’t save him from the Tower. We would risk messing things up again. He’s alive Eddie!’
‘I see. So we mustn’t save him from the Tower. . .because?’
‘Don’t you see? The timeline has recalibrated itself without our interference. We didn’t have to do anything to make it happen. In Tudorville the scene is set for George to be executed, which is why I thought he wasn’t alive in the present day unless we save him. But now we know he is alive even before we’ve saved him, we risk losing him all over again if we meddle. If our rescue attempt doesn’t work and we’re caught, or if it works, but the future compound effect is one we can’t possibly understand now, we could do more harm than good. Do you see?’ Cara ran out of steam as her words rushed out.
‘Steady on. I don’t think we can know for sure, based on what you’ve said. It’s all supposition. I’d say it’s sixty-seven to thirty-three percent in favour of us messing it up if we rescue him,’ said Eddie.
‘How on earth did you calculate that?’ asked Cara. ‘It seems rather exact.’
‘I am exact, my dear. I’m a quantum physicist. They pay me to be exact.’
‘Ah, yes. Haha. That’s true.’
‘The real question is, are you willing to take a chance on the thirty-three percent? It could quite well be that in another time formation, he’s still only alive today because we did save him from execution. Have you considered the consequences of not saving him?’
‘Yes I have, but I can’t take the chance of losing him again when he’s alive, and he may even be free. Eddie, please try and get back to Tudorville to stop the rescue going ahead. At least until I get in touch and tell you otherwise.’
‘But you know we have no control over our comings and goings. That’s the reason we got into this mess in the first place.’
