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‘I just want to add that the Aldershoffs were quite unusual. Immensely wealthy, of course, and upwardly mobile like they all were. But what sets the Aldershoffs apart from other Gilded Age families, is their lack of charity,’ she said.

Pixie noticed the yellow flecks in her washed-denim-coloured eyes and was reminded of a wolf.

‘While Carnegie, Rockefeller and Astor gave to the city in a big way, the Aldershoffs hoarded their wealth. It was as if they were afraid of losing it.’

Tanya chuckled. ‘But they lost it in the end all the same,’ she said.

‘They didn’t lose only their money,’ Lara continued.

‘Alice Aldershoff, Alma’s mother, had many miscarriages after her daughter Esme was born, which is why there are twenty-two years between Esme and her younger sister, Alma.

Some people are just unlucky, I suppose.

I read that Alma’s great-grandson recently died of an inoperable brain tumour. ’

‘That’s awful,’ said Pixie with feeling.

‘Luck is something money can’t buy,’ said Lara philosophically.

‘Well, William Aldershoff clearly had luck when it came to making his fortune and building his palace – not to mention the mansion in Newport and the Potemkin Diamond,’ said Tanya.

‘As so often happens, it’s the subsequent generations that squander the wealth.

Perhaps they lack the appreciation that comes from having worked hard to make it. ’

‘Very true,’ said Pixie, wondering about the Potemkin Diamond and whether it was hidden somewhere in the hotel.

The captain’s voice sounded over the speaker, announcing take-off. Lara sat down and fastened her seatbelt.

‘Well, enjoy your flight, Pixie,’ Tanya said, draining her glass then pulling a silk eye mask and neck pillow from the enormous bag at her feet. ‘I’ll leave you alone now, but it was lovely talking to you.’

‘And to you both,’ Pixie replied, smiling at Lara, too.

‘Oh, and I find a good podcast is just the ticket if you’re feeling nervous about flying. It’s the perfect distraction, that and a couple of glasses of something strong,’ Tanya added, with a wink.

Pixie laughed and fastened her seatbelt.

She noticed that Ulysses still hadn’t returned.

She twisted her head round and spotted him in front of the curtain dividing business class from economy.

As expected, he was with the air steward from earlier, who was now looking decidedly happier, his cheeks flushed as he flirted with Ulysses.

As usual, Ulysses basked in the attention, flicking his hair and seeing how far his charm could get him.

From the eager expression on the steward’s face, and his obvious delight in Ulysses’ pleasure, it would get him very far indeed.

Pixie watched as Ulysses brushed a fleck of invisible lint from his uniform, leaving his hand lingering on his chest a touch too long.

She knew that he had the steward in the palm of his hand and had no doubt that the poor man would now make it his personal mission on this flight to ensure that Ulysses was as comfortable as possible, as if he were a Hollywood star.

Ulysses was the last to return to his seat. He plonked himself down with a satisfied sigh and grinned at Pixie. ‘Miss me?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been making friends of my own.’

He reached across the aisle and gave her his hand. She took it. ‘You’re going to be fine,’ he said firmly. ‘We’re going to have a very pleasant flight.’

Pixie squeezed his hand as the plane’s engines roared and then propelled them up the runway.

With a rapid lift the wheels left the tarmac and the plane soared into the sky.

Pixie concentrated on her breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, until the plane eventually levelled out and the overhead signs were switched off.

Feeling calmer, she let go of Ulysses’ hand and rolled her eyes as he pretended to nurse it.

She pulled out her headphones and tried to follow Tanya’s advice by listening to a podcast. But she couldn’t concentrate for long – her mind was whirring with everything that Tanya had told her about the Aldershoff Hotel – and so eventually, she gave up the struggle and switched to music instead.

Yet, in recent weeks, whenever she allowed her mind to wander, she ended up following it into the past, and, inevitably, to Cavill.

She’d never forget the first time she saw him, the jaunty way he had skipped down the stairs, in a blue morning coat and shiny leather boots, toying idly with a black top hat.

His brown hair had been tousled, his handsome face softened by a confident smile and his cornflower-blue eyes had twinkled with amusement.

Beside her, she heard Ulysses snort slightly as he fell asleep.

In a way, it was a relief to be alone with her thoughts for a while, no matter how painful they were.

She had fallen in love. That had never happened before and it had knocked her for six.

She knew that Ulysses didn’t understand her feelings for Cavill Pengower.

How could he possibly understand? The man who had so totally and completely conquered her heart had died in 1943, seventy-one years ago.

To Pixie, though, it was as if he had been gone merely months, not decades, and she still pined for him – absurd though it was, her heart ached for him as if it had suffered a deep and searing wound that would never heal.

In a strange way Pixie didn’t want it to – that pain connected her to him and made him feel real to her, when her head insisted on trying to convince her that it had simply been a dream.

Only Ulysses and Avril Merivale, her teacher and mentor from the College of Psychic Studies, knew that she had a unique gift – not only was she a gifted psychic, but she was a timeslider.

She was able to slip through time and possess the body of another person.

Her last slide had taken her back to Victorian Cornwall and into the body of a beautiful young governess called Hermione Swift.

It had been when she’d been Hermione that she had met and fallen in love with Cavill Pengower.

Cavill, in turn, had fallen in love with Hermione not knowing that it was she , Pixie, who’d looked at him through Hermione’s eyes, and that it was her heart that had loved him.

Even now she was tormented by the question of whether Cavill had noticed a difference in Hermione when Pixie had left and returned to her own time.

Did he love Hermione still? Or had the part of her that he had loved disappeared with Pixie. Pixie would never know.

Even though she had explained timesliding to Ulysses, she knew that he would never fully get his head around it.

She could explain the paradox of time, but she couldn’t make him comprehend it.

She could tell him that time did not exist, that there was only ever the Now, which meant that, technically, everything was happening all at once – no past, no future, only ever this moment , but, having no experience of it, he could only take her word for it.

Pixie had been a small child when she’d first slipped out of her body.

She’d heard her parents fighting in the kitchen downstairs, their sharp voices cutting each other to shreds.

She’d curled into a ball beneath the covers at the bottom of the bed, squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to be somewhere else.

And, just like that, she had risen out of her body and found herself in a peaceful meadow where she’d been all alone.

Where no one could hurt her. There’d been only flowers and bees and sunshine there.

Distracted by the beauty around her, she had basked in the serenity of this secret place that had become hers and hers alone, whenever she’d needed it.

Only later had she learnt that she hadn’t travelled to another place, that she was, in reality, in exactly the same place, only decades prior, before her house had been built, when it had simply been a field.

When she’d realised what it was, she’d coined a word for it: timesliding.

She had her parents to thank for that. Without their vitriol, she would never have had to find a way of escaping.

The fact that they had always made up – until they didn’t – was irrelevant.

Their fights used to terrify the life out of her.

In those days she had travelled as herself, but without a body she had only been able to observe the goings on, and for a brief space of time.

Later, with the help of Avril Merivale, she had discovered that by linking into a person’s energy via an object and making clear her intention, she had been able to possess the body of someone else and live for a longer duration in the past. At that point things had got more interesting and she had discovered a use for it: helping settle lost souls stuck between worlds to move into Spirit.

There were, however, unwritten rules that made her task more complicated.

A timeslider carried an enormous amount of responsibility.

It was paramount that she tampered as little as possible with time to avoid altering the future.

What might seem a small change could possibly result in something massive later down the line.

It was known as the Butterfly Effect – one small flutter of a butterfly’s wing on one side of the world could cause a hurricane on the other side.

Pixie knew that when she’d met Cavill, she’d broken that cardinal rule: to leave the past how you’d found it.

She had interfered. She had fallen in love and altered the course of his life, and his heart. Who knew what she had set off?

As she lay listening to music with her eyes closed, she wondered yet again whether he had noticed a change in Hermione when Pixie had ceased to possess her.

Had he found her lacking? Or had he loved her as much.

How deep had his love been? These questions troubled her, but they were futile and a total waste of energy, because she would never learn the truth.

And what did the truth matter, anyway? She would never see Cavill again. It might as well have been a dream.