The Light Between Us

by Katie Khan

  ‘Maybe phones don’t work when somebody’s time travelling,’ Urvisha reasons. ‘Like on an aeroplane.’

  Thea’s brain lags with the weight of the inference, and she’d like to take a moment to contemplate the science behind Urvisha’s suggestion, but she knows the others will be looking to her for direction.

  She didn’t expect Rosy to be gone so long. She feels nauseous as she hears the grandfather clock strike the hour, marking an extension of the time Rosy has been absent.

  ‘All right,’ Thea says, her voice rallying, ‘let’s make a plan.’

  ‘Yes. Very good,’ Ayo says.

  ‘Urvisha and I have been up all night, which isn’t helping.’ She can already feel the skittishness of exhaustion mixing with the edges of her concern. ‘I think we need to get some sleep. Ayo, would you mind waiting for Rosy?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Thea says gratefully, rubbing the heaviness from her eyes. ‘When we’re tired we make mistakes. I’m going to take a quick nap, and after that I’m going to go and examine the setup out in the barn, to see if it will provide any clues about why Rosy’s been gone so long.’

  ‘It has been a long time,’ Ayo says cautiously.

  ‘I know.’ Thea looks at them both in turn. ‘But Rosy’s smart. And kind. She’ll turn up here and be very upset she’s made us this worried.’

  Urvisha nods. That does sound like the Rosalind they know.

  Thea reaches for their hands. ‘And when Rosy comes back – it won’t matter that we’re catching some sleep upstairs, or examining the barn, instead of waiting on the exact spot for her to return.’ Thea gives a tentative smile. ‘It’s 2018. She’ll be able to call us.’

  On cue, Thea’s phone beeps.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Ayo jumps, her nerves frayed.

  Thea takes out the phone and looks at the screen. ‘Sorry. It’s Isaac – he just got out of the airport.’

  After the whoosh of adrenalin, Ayo’s voice is quiet. ‘For a minute, I thought it was …’

  ‘I think we all did.’ Thea switches her phone to silent. ‘So we’re agreed on the plan? Ayo will wait for Rosy, and Urvisha and I will catch a quick rest.’

  Urvisha shrugs. ‘And if she doesn’t show up?’

  ‘She will.’ Her phone vibrates and, looking at it, Thea shakes her head in case they again think it might be Rosy. ‘If she’s not standing here when we wake up, affectionately holding a bunch of flowers, then I’ll eat my words. But she’ll be here. She will.’

  When Thea wakes, a few hours later, the atmosphere is different. More anxious, and even more concerned. Throughout, the grandfather clock in the hall keeps ticking, marking every passing second in sober fashion.

  The truth is settling in.

  Rosy is gone, lost in the dark of the night like a locket slipping from a neck into the gutter.

  ‘I feel sick,’ Ayo says in the kitchen, and Urvisha agrees.

  ‘Me too. This is all our fault.’

  Thea is discovering she had been so focused on whether someone could jump back in time, it never crossed her mind that people would be standing here, worrying, waiting for them to return. The aftershock hits her in a fresh wave of anxiety, the dread and guilt rushing over her skin and giving her goosebumps. ‘We’ll form a search party,’ Thea says as she quickly eats a piece of toast. ‘Maybe we sent Rosy back only a tiny amount of time, but a vast amount of space. She’s ended up somewhere far away from here – we’ll need to spread out to look for her.’

  ‘That’s a good point. Maybe she’s knackered, somewhere, and has lost her phone,’ Urvisha suggests.

  ‘Totally possible.’ Thea takes out her pad and scratches down a note to physically pin their phone numbers to the coat of anyone else who jumps, whenever or whoever that may be. ‘First thing’s first, we’ll look for her in all the places that mean something to her: Oxford – the library, her house … Where else?’

  ‘Maybe we should contact her family?’ Ayo says.

  ‘Rosy’s dad is terrifying,’ Thea confides.

  ‘Lord de Glanville? Why am I not surprised.’ Urvisha makes a face.

  ‘We shouldn’t say she’s missing,’ Ayo says. ‘We don’t want to alarm anyone just yet. Do we?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Let’s just say we heard she was heading home,’ Ayo advises.

  ‘Didn’t she say she was doing research at the Bodleian? We should check if they’ve seen her there.’ Thea jots down the note. ‘Actually, that could also be our cover – we could tell the family she mentioned she might head home to finish her thesis in the de Glanville family library, and we’re checking how she’s getting on.’ Thea tries out the white lie, and find it sounds authentic.

  Ayo nods. ‘Is she dating anyone?’

  Thea frowns. ‘Not that I know of – not recently, at least.’

  ‘The night we broke into the Beecroft, she referred to somebody as “The Boy”, remember?’ Urvisha says to Thea.

  ‘Oh, yes. Let’s try and find out who that is.’ Thea draws a table with three columns across two pages of her notebook. Quickly she scrawls each of their names at the top. ‘Ayo, I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to your little one. Would you mind looking for Rosy in Oxford?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ayo says. ‘I can head back shortly.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Thea writes Oxford under Ayo’s column, then adds Bodleian, Rosy’s house and Boyfriend? as subheadings.

  ‘And Urvisha, you’ll pay a visit to the de Glanville estate?’

  ‘What could go wrong?’ Urvisha murmurs.

  Thea dutifully writes Cotswolds in Urvisha’s column, then adds Rosy’s family – any leads? beneath.

  ‘And you’re going to stay here?’ Ayo asks, and Thea nods.

  ‘I’ll keep my eyes on the barn and the house, in case she comes back here,’ she says. ‘And I’ll carry on looking into the experiment – see if I can figure out where Rosy might have jumped to.’

  Urvisha looks troubled. ‘In my opinion we need more than the three of us out searching for her.’

  Thea bites her lip. ‘Not yet—’

  ‘This could be huge. We should be looking everywhere she’s ever been, talking to everyone Rosy knows, asking everybody if they’ve seen her.’ Urvisha agitates as she talks.

  Ayo considers. ‘Perhaps after twenty-four hours. It hasn’t been a day, yet – we wouldn’t want to make anyone even more worried—’

  ‘And we should consider calling the police and filing a missing persons report.’

  ‘Not yet!’ Thea exclaims. ‘It’s too soon – we’ve got to give her time to get back to us.’

  Even Ayo sets down her tumbler of water on the table. ‘And how long is that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thea says, feeling sick too. ‘This is already long past the outliers of any calculations I’ve made.’ She gazes at the chart she’s drawn, speaking aloud as the thought comes to her. ‘And what do we do if Rosy can’t get back to us?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What if she’s stuck … somewhere …’ In time, she doesn’t say, but as soon as she starts the sentence she knows they’re thinking it too.

  ‘We need help,’ Urvisha says again, stubbornly.

  ‘We need to keep this between us, for now.’

  ‘When it gets to twenty-four hours, I’m filing a missing persons report.’

  ‘You’re wearing this guilt very heavily, Visha,’ Thea says. ‘Something on your mind?’

  ‘You have trust issues.’ Urvisha stands, her chair scraping behind her and making them jump. ‘Rosy is missing and you’re so busy worrying about keeping your precious theory secret, you’re not focusing on finding her. There has to be somebody else who could help us?’

  ‘That’s not true at all. I’m completely focused on finding her.’

  ‘We need more manpower,’ Urvisha says. ‘People to help look.’

  ‘There’s nobody,’ Thea says quietly. ‘Excluding Rosy,
everybody I trust is standing in this room.’

  ‘Then you need more friends,’ Urvisha says. ‘I—’

  She’s cut short by the ring of the doorbell, the farm’s ancient pull-cord making the clanger hit the bell more times than necessary.

  ‘Rosy?’ Urvisha and Ayo say at the same time, as the echoing of the bell peters out.

  The three women look at each other for only a fraction of a second before they’re almost climbing over each other to get to the front door. Ayo winces as Urvisha barges past, while Thea jogs to the hall, pulling the door open—

  ‘Shit, all the locks are done.’

  ‘Hurry!’

  Thea fumbles with the chain, unlatching it quickly, then reaches down to the iron key sticking out of the weathered oak front door. She turns it once clockwise, then anti-clockwise—

  ‘What? You just unlocked and locked it again.’

  ‘Sorry – nervous habit.’ She unlocks it once more – three turns, her lucky number – and finally pulls open the door.

  ‘You make quite the welcoming committee,’ Isaac says on the doorstep, a box of cold New York pizza balanced in one hand, grease stains marking the crumpled cardboard.

  Urvisha groans.

  ‘What? I know it’s a bit cold, but I got delayed at Heathrow …’ He trails off as he takes in their expressions and the palpable tension on the doorstep. ‘Surprise,’ he says weakly. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m not who you expected?’

  ‘Hi.’ Thea takes the pizza from him, handing it without looking to a disgusted Urvisha.

  It’s been a year since they last saw each other properly, a year in which they’ve said many things they didn’t mean, and some things they did. Without thinking too much about it she steps forward and puts her arms around Isaac, hugging him for a second.

  ‘Hello, friend,’ he says into her ear, clearly a little surprised, though he hugs her back.

  ‘Hello.’

  He steps back. ‘When Rosy called, she said you needed—’

  ‘Rosy?’ Urvisha shouts. ‘When did you speak to her? What did she say?’

  The three gabble at once, a staccato barrage of questions, and Isaac looks concerned.

  ‘Last week,’ he says. ‘When we spoke about Thea coming out to the farm, Rosy said you’d need a team around you.’ He looks at the three standing on the doorstep, and they physically droop at his words.

  ‘Last week,’ Ayo repeats, with some sadness.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he says. ‘I’ve just got off the redeye, I’m knackered, and it’s bloody freezing up here.’

  ‘Welcome to Lancashire,’ Urvisha says.

  ‘The true middle of the land,’ Thea says, as she pulls his suitcase in and shuts the heavy door against the autumnal chill.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he whispers to Thea, as the others lead the way into the only warm room in the house. ‘You guys seem wired. Is everything okay?’

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ Thea says, nodding towards a ladder-back kitchen chair, the raffia seat worn but comfortable. ‘This is going to take quite some explaining.’

  ‘If it’s got anything to do with science, I am going to need coffee. Really strong coffee,’ he says, ‘the kind that makes your heart tremor. My body clock is running five hours behind and I am feeling it.’ It takes a moment for it to register he’s talking about his flight across the Atlantic: the basic concept of time zones makes every long-haul passenger a time traveller.

  Thea watches him look round the oak-beamed kitchen and at its anxious occupants. ‘You’re starting to scare me. What’s up?’ He looks around once more. ‘Hey, where’s Rosy?’

  ‘We should take him out to the barn,’ Urvisha says, not looking at the others.

  ‘Why, what’s in the barn?’ Isaac says. ‘Is Rosy out there?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Ayo says, distinctly unsure.

  ‘Maybe he can help.’

  ‘He’s—’

  ‘Can you stop talking about me like I’m not here?’ He taps his chest, then taps the table. ‘I’m here. What’s going on? Thea?’ When she doesn’t answer, he appeals to the others. ‘Visha? Ayo? Anyone?’

  Thea cuts them all short from answering as she sighs, her loud exhalation joining the bubbling of the coffee pot as it percolates on the hob, steam hissing from the spout. ‘We’ll explain everything,’ she says, speaking over the hiss, her voice full of air. She finally meets his eyes. ‘I just have to figure out where to start.’

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ Isaac wisely advises, and Urvisha rolls her eyes.

  ‘Oh, brother. The genius is back.’

  ‘Relax, Angry Spice,’ he says, taking in Urvisha’s face.

  ‘Listen, I can take the piss out of us. But that doesn’t mean you can. Got it?’

  He nods. ‘Got it. No jokes.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Urvisha says, connecting the camera to the laptop and preparing to hit play on the video. ‘Only good jokes.’

  ‘Before you show that, Visha –’ Thea indicates the laptop – ‘let me tell him a bit more about the theory.’ She turns to Isaac. ‘So you know what you’re watching.’

  ‘Get on with it, will you?’

  Thea sighs again. ‘I’m going to need you to get the hang of two scientific principles, Isaac. Just two. The first you know about – the speed of light.’

  ‘Right,’ he says, ‘we’re back to your favourite then, are we? The whole “If you were to travel faster than the speed of light, you could theoretically arrive somewhere before you left” bit?’

  ‘A-plus,’ Thea says, impressed. ‘So you were listening all those times I mentioned it.’

  ‘Being able to parrot something back doesn’t imply intelligence,’ Urvisha says grumpily.

  ‘I was,’ Isaac says, ignoring her and answering Thea. ‘So …?’

  ‘I want to slow down the speed of light. It’s not that crazy an idea – there are places in the universe where the speed of light varies. Even Einstein was on board with the concept of the variable speed of light.’

  ‘Okay …’ Isaac says cautiously.

  ‘And the place where I want to slow the speed of light is inside a prism.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ he says, accepting a steaming mug of black coffee from Ayo. ‘I think.’

  ‘The second scientific principle is borrowed from the theory of time crystals. They’re not real crystals, like my prisms; they were – are – a theoretical type of four-dimensional structure that exists in spacetime.’

  ‘Nope. You lost me.’ Isaac grimaces. ‘Lost at the first sentence … this bodes well.’

  ‘No, that’s my bad – let’s try that again.’ She pauses, finding the way back in, taking one of her ubiquitous glass prisms from her pocket. ‘If you shine a light through a prism, the light refracts, like a rainbow.’

  He nods. ‘Oh – like the Pink Floyd album cover.’

  Urvisha is surprised. ‘Yep, kinda exactly like that.’

  ‘The white light is dispersed into its component colours, and they bend at different angles, which is why you see a rainbow.’

  ‘I’m still with you,’ Isaac says.

  ‘The light wave is slowed by the density of the glass,’ Thea continues, moving the prism in her hand so it catches the light. ‘When light passes through a transparent material, like water or glass, it’s slowed slightly, and it bends. Good so far?’

  Isaac looks suspicious. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re dumbing this down for me?’

  ‘You’re not going to want to talk about spontaneous translation symmetry breaking inside time crystals with your jetlag. So I’m finding a way round it.’

  ‘You’re doing a good job,’ Ayo interjects, her eyes on her watch.

  ‘Thank you. Anyway, if the inside of the glass prism is cut like a crystal – not a woo-woo “magic” crystal; I’m talking about a highly organized solid crystalline structure – then the light wave can be trapped in there for a bit, bouncing around, stuck inside rather than coming out as a refr
acted rainbow.’

  Isaac nods, and Thea can’t help but smile as he immediately looks more cheerful – he’s seen Thea’s collection of crystals and prisms. They seem much easier to understand than a complicated theory, because they’re tangible. You can hold them in your hand.

  She flicks the prism so Isaac can see the light catching the facets inside. ‘The delay is minimal – I’m not talking about the light wave being stuck in there for hours. It’s a fraction of a millisecond.’

  ‘Right …’ Isaac says, blowing over the top of the scalding hot coffee.

  ‘But the longer you trap something, the more powerful it can become. Because light usually travels so fast, it doesn’t interact much with matter. The benefit of slow light and trapped rainbows is we can make these interactions stronger.’ Thea pulls her notebook towards her, opening it to a complicated page of maths equations. ‘This is the part I’ve borrowed from the theory of time crystals, so bear with me, okay?’

  Isaac nods.

  ‘The light wave is momentarily stuck inside that crystalline structure, bouncing back and forth, oscillating like a pendulum. Have you ever looked at a pendulum?’

  Isaac looks around at the others. ‘Is she kidding?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Urvisha says.

  ‘We could look at the grandfather clock in the hall. Or …’ Thea examines her friends, searching for something she needs. ‘Ayo, can I borrow your necklace for a moment?’

  Ayo touches the silver cross with her hand. ‘This?’

  ‘Please. Thank you.’ She takes the delicate chain in one hand and steadies the cross. Slowly, she starts it swinging, keeping her hand still, so the necklace acts like a pendulum.

  ‘Tick-tock,’ Urvisha says pointedly.

  ‘I’m going as fast as I can. Now, Isaac, watch the swing. Do you see how it accelerates as it falls towards the centre, then decelerates as it swings up towards the top?’

  Isaac’s forehead knits in concentration as he stares at the necklace. ‘Yuh huh. I think so.’

  Thea waits until her makeshift pendulum is at the slowest part of its swing, then reaches out and snatches it with her other hand. The movement is so sudden it makes Isaac jump.

  ‘Imagine the light wave inside the crystalline prism bouncing back and forth like a pendulum. If you catch it at the precise moment it slows …’