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Chapter Twenty-One

The Aldershoff Hotel

Pixie opened her eyes.

‘Did you do it?’ It took her a second to recognise Ulysses.

To register where she was. He took off his headphones and frowned.

‘You all right, Pix?’ He shut his laptop and got up off the chair and stretched, letting out a loud groan.

He’d been sitting in the same position for too long.

‘You look weird. You’re not going to freak out again, are you? ’

Pixie was aware suddenly that she was not going to meet Cavill in the park, and her heart suffered a sharp pang of disappointment.

It felt as if it dropped like a stone into her belly.

She put a hand to her chest. She had lost him all over again and the pain was devastating.

Her mind flew to their meeting. The meeting that would now never happen.

What was he going to talk to her about? What was he going to say?

She’d never know. It was 2014– Cavill had been dead seventy years.

It was as if she had awoken from an exceptionally vivid dream – the feelings were still with her, the sensation of falling still reverberating in her consciousness.

She took a deep breath and looked around, trying to settle back into this reality.

Trying to shake off the feeling of being Constance Fleet, and of experiencing her death.

But those energies still clung to her and she hovered uncertainly between the past and the present.

She remembered with a shiver Glover untying the golden thread on the stairs to cover his tracks.

The Japanese golden thread that he had stolen from Alice’s lady’s maid for the purpose of murdering Constance.

But why go to such lengths, and risk imprisonment and even death, to kill a woman who was no threat to him?

Or had she been a threat?

Ulysses was staring at Pixie with concern. ‘You’re weirding me out, Pix. Are you okay?’

‘I need to speak to Lester on my own, Ulysses,’ she told him firmly.

Ulysses dropped his shoulders with relief. ‘Gotcha. I’ll leave you to it. How did it go, by the way? Was it fun? Did you fall in love again?’ He grinned in that infectious way of his, but Pixie couldn’t begin to tell him what she’d been through.

‘How long was I gone for?’ she asked.

He looked at his watch. ‘Three hours. God, I need to pee.’ He made for the door. ‘Did you find the diamond?’

‘Diamond?’ For a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about.

Then it registered. The Potemkin Diamond.

‘No. No, I didn’t find the diamond.’ Guilt stabbed her conscience.

She didn’t want to let Mrs Aldershoff down, but the last thing on her mind right now was the Potemkin Diamond.

She’d just been murdered for God’s sake!

‘Alma Aldershoff will be very disappointed.’ He pulled a sad face and chuckled. ‘See you in a while. Need a drink? A glass of water?’

She could have done with some vodka.

‘Nothing,’ she replied, standing up with resolve. ‘I need to finish this.’

After Ulysses had gone, Pixie marched around the room, stretching her arms and shaking her hands.

She’d been frozen in the same position for three hours and her body ached with stiffness.

The nightmare she had lived through had felt very real.

She’d experienced death and it wasn’t anything like she’d thought it would be.

She had barely felt the bang to the head.

It had been more like a sound and a thumping sensation rather than a pain.

She had scarcely been aware of her body falling down the stairs, so quickly had she slipped out of it.

And Constance had slipped out of it, too.

She had been there in spirit as well, watching her own death from a safe place above.

Pixie doubted she had felt anything either.

Did that mean that many who appear to suffer as they’re dying have actually already departed, and that what is being seen is simply the mechanics of the physical body breaking down?

Perhaps the soul is protected from suffering.

That would be a comfort to many people if they knew it.

Pixie replayed the scene in her mind of Constance walking into the light with Hermione.

It had been beautiful and she wanted to hold on to it.

Hermione had tried to warn Constance of her imminent murder, but it had been no good.

Was that because it had been Constance’s destiny to be murdered?

If that was so, then it shed a new light onto Pixie’s timesliding.

In spite of Pixie possessing her body, Constance had fulfilled that destiny.

It implied that when a destiny had to follow its course, Pixie was less able to alter its direction than she had previously thought.

The current that propelled that destiny towards its resolution was too strong.

Did that mean then that Pixie had not necessarily tampered with Cavill’s course, but maybe enabled it to change, because that was what was meant to happen?

She gathered her thoughts with rising excitement and began to articulate them out loud to better understand them.

‘If there is no past, present or future, only a continuous now, then time as we understand it is not linear,’ she said as she paced the floor.

‘In which case, there is no cause and effect. We only perceive there to be cause and effect in this three-dimensional material world, because otherwise it would be too complicated and we’d all lose our minds.

Is it then part of my destiny to alter and influence Cavill’s?

If it wasn’t, would I be able to do it?’ In the same way that Constance’s destiny was to die, Pixie possessing her body had been unable to alter it.

Whatever Pixie had chosen to do that night, she would have tripped on that golden thread. It had been unavoidable.

Pixie had thought she’d been playing with time, like a schoolchild breaking the rules.

But perhaps she wasn’t playing with it at all.

Perhaps she was simply acting out a greater plan.

A plan she knew nothing about. A plan devised by a superior intelligence.

Maybe she and Cavill had a destiny to fulfil, only not in this life, but in the past. What was the difference?

From the soul’s point of view, there wasn’t one.

This time, another time – they were the same.

It was all happening now. In which case she would see him again.

She sighed heavily. It was a lot to take in and she had no one to discuss it with, because no one but she understood.

But that flame of hope sputtered in her chest and grew bigger.

Might she see him again?

Back to the business of settling Lester’s soul.

She ran her eyes over the room. This was the room where Constance had given her seance.

How different it was now. There were no bookcases, no rich crimson curtains, only the fireplace remained with the same marble mantlepiece and the mock Tudor ceiling with the rose, which was no longer red and white, but simply white.

Her experience had not solved the mystery of why Lester’s soul was stuck. It had only raised more questions. She had to confront him now and get him to tell her what happened after Constance was killed. And what part he had to play in her murder.

She sat down again and folded her hands in her lap.

She listened to her breath and focused her attention on the gentle rise and fall of her chest, and the air entering and leaving her nostrils – cold as it went in, warm as it came out.

Little by little her pulse rate slowed, her thoughts evaporated, and she felt that blissful sense of expansion with which she was so familiar.

She became no one, just awareness. Her true, eternal self that had no definition, but was beyond form and was part of everything.

In that dimension her vibration was suitably raised to make contact with Lester, who was stuck between worlds, in a dark limbo of his own making. But to get him to communicate with her, she needed to gain his trust.

Lester, please come forward, I need to speak to you. She didn’t say the words out loud, but in her mind, which was now acutely focused on her mission.

She felt the temperature drop. It started around her ankles and built, swirling about her thighs, her stomach and arms, until her ears and nose felt the cold as if an icy breeze were brushing her face. She knew he was present.

Lester. Are you here? I want to help you move into the light.

No response.

I know you can hear me, Lester, because I can feel your energy. It’s cold and unhappy. You don’t want to be here, do you, yet you don’t know how to release yourself. I imagine you’re bewildered as to why there are strangers in Walter-Wyatt and Alice Aldershoff’s house.

Still no response, but the energy seemed to intensify.

Lester. I know you’re here. You can’t hide from me. I want to help you.

Still, he remained in the shadows. But she wasn’t going to give up so easily.

She hadn’t gone through all that drama in the past to forsake him now.

She hadn’t wanted to be so blunt – her approach was always more softly-softly – but she had no choice.

Lester had to come through and she had to speak with him.

She couldn’t let him down, nor could she let Mr Stirling down.

This had to work. So, she used the information she had gleaned on the Titanic and at the Aldershoffs’ mansion to get his attention.

I know you loved Glover, and I know Glover murdered Constance.

I’m not here to judge you, Lester, but to help you find your way home.

At last, his voice responded weakly in her mind, as if he was very far away.

I’m here.