Page 52 of Never Tear Us Apart

Chapter Fifty

When I return to the half-house, Sal is sitting at the kitchen table, picking at a single fillet of fish. Another is sitting in a pan. Going to the stove, I collect the fish, slide it onto a plate and sit down opposite him.

‘You did not come when the raid began,’ he says almost accusingly. There is a sheen of sweat on his tanned forehead. His eyes are lowered.

‘Vittoria.’ I make myself say her name. ‘She was . . . dying. None of us could bear to leave her in her last minutes.’

Now, he looks up at me, and I am startled to see tears in his eyes.

‘She’s gone?’

I nod. I’d almost forgotten how much the professor liked his young student. I should have been more careful with my words.

‘I watched her grow up, so full of hope and promise, and how quickly the world brought her to this.’ He shakes his head.

‘Sometimes, I just feel the weight of it all. Of being where I am not meant to be. Of having lost my future, my love, my child. And the war, and the violence that falls from the sky, and in the middle of it all, a young woman driven to an act that has killed her. Much of the time, I am able to shoulder it, but not today. When you did not come back when the sirens sounded, I was afraid I’d lost you, too. ’

‘Sal, I’m so sorry,’ I tell him, reaching a hand across the table to cover his. ‘We’re trying to make sense of something that has no rhyme or reason.’

We sit in silence for a long moment.

‘If you could, would you want to go back? To find your wife, your child, to try to begin again?’

Sal shrugs. ‘I am sure she has moved on. What could I do but hurt and shock her?’

‘I want to be here , Sal,’ I tell him. ‘Here right now and for the rest of my life.’

Sal looks up at me.

‘My very long life,’ I tell him with a bravado that I don’t feel just in this moment.

‘Maia, are you sure? You would be safer if you . . .’

‘I wasn’t safe, Sal,’ I tell him. ‘Back there, I put myself in harm’s way all the time, not because I was brave, but because I was afraid – afraid to be alive in a world that didn’t feel like mine. I don’t feel like that here.’

‘This could simply be love talking,’ Sal says. ‘I see the look in your eyes after a day with Flight Lieutenant Beauchamp. It’s easy for the young to get swept away. But for you, it’s a matter of life and death.’

‘I won’t pretend that doesn’t come into it,’ I say. ‘But so what if it does? Isn’t love the best – no, the only reason to cross universes? Love and one incredible chance to save someone who truly deserves to be saved?’

‘Stella,’ Sal says.

‘My grandmother,’ I agree. ‘But before that, before I build a life here, I need to find a way to go back to 2025 on my terms,’ I tell Sal, and the room, the sky at large, as if I might have the ear of the universe.

‘I want to explain, to say goodbye to the people I’m leaving behind, but I also need more information.

I won’t be able to save Stella without it. ’

‘If wishing was enough to ride time as if it were a bus, I would have been gone a long time ago.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I was thinking about one of the stories that Kathryn told me. And I have an idea. Will you take me to the ? al Saflieni Hypogeum?’