The Albino's Dancer
Page 11
‘She could be dead because of us.’
Emily stood up, turning to hold his gaze.
‘We can’t change it, Honoré,’ she said, simply. ‘Time settles how time wants to. We’re nothing, in all of that.’
Honoré looked at her for a moment, but said nothing.
‘One day it will be me, you know,’ Emily continued. Or you, she didn’t say. ‘And there won’t be anything you can do about it. You won’t know when, but it’ll happen. One day.’
Honoré looked at her.
‘When I was here,’ he said, turning to look out across the scar of dirty earth, rather than keep Emily’s eye. ‘When I thought you were dead. I knew what I had to do. I had two wallets. One was clean, and one was bloody. I knew exactly what had happened to them. Exactly. And when I went back and saw Leiter dying... I knew what I had to do.’
Emily looked up at Honoré. He had a strange expression on his face, like... like nothing she had seen before.
He fixed her with a look.
‘One was clean, one was bloody. I knew I had to drop the clean one, and it would all work out.’ Honoré looked at her. His eyes were deep, and swallowed her up. ‘I dropped the bloody one, Emily. And we’re still here.’
Emily looked at him, but she didn’t speak.
The silence seemed to hold them forever, and then Emily held out her arm for Honoré to take.
‘Goodbye, Little Emily,’ he said, over the makeshift grave.
Then he took her arm, while Emily smiled.
‘Little Emily?’
Honoré looked sheepish.
‘It’s something I called the belt,’ he explained, awkwardly avoiding her amusement. ‘It did the same thing you did, so... It’s pretty dumb, isn’t it?’
Emily grinned.
‘It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,’ she said, emphatically. She grinned so broadly it hurt, and Honoré had no choice but to join her.
‘Come on,’ he said, leading her away from the building site. ‘Let’s find someone who lives to see 1951 and get home. I’m just about ready for bed.’
Emily nodded, and let herself be led away.
Author’s Note
You’ve just read this book in the order I think it works best, so I hope you enjoyed it. However, with this kind of story it’s always a matter of debate what the ‘correct’ order actually is. You could read it in chronological order, guided by the date/time indicators at the start of each section. Alternatively, by following the table below, you could read it from the point of view of each of the major characters – Emily (E), Honoré (H), Catherine/Kate (K), the Albino/Burgess (A) – or even from the point of view of Little Honoré (LH) or Little Emily (LE). So, for instance, looking down the column for Honoré – H – the first events he experiences are those in 1A (Chapter One, first date/time section), the second are those in 2C (Chapter Two, third date/time section), the third are those in 3A (Chapter Three, first date/time section), and so on. Please note, where more than one number appears (for example, 2/14) this means that the character views these events twice over the course of the book.
CHAPTER
H
E
K
A
LH
LE
PROLOGUE
19
16
0
0
0
11
1A
1
0
13
0
0
0
1B
0
4
0
7
8/20
0
1C
0
0
6
0
0
0
2A
6
5
0
8
9/21
0
2B
0
0
7
0
0
0
2C
2
7
0
9
0
0
3A
3
2
0
0
6
0
3B
7
6
0
10
11/23
0
3C
4
3
8
6
7
0
4A
5
0
10
0
0
12
4B
0
8
1
1/11
1/12/24
1
4C
0
0
11
0
0
13
5A
8
0
12
0
10/22
14
5B
9
0
9
0
0
15
5C
0
9
2
2/12
2/14
2
6A
10
0
14
0
0
16
6B
11
0
15
0
0
17
6C
0
10
0
13
3/13/25
3
7A
12
0
3
3
0
5
7B
0
10
16
14
15
18
7C
0
11
17
15
16
19
8A
13
0
4
4
0
6
8B
0
12
18
0
17
20
8C
0
0
19
0
0
21
9A
14
0
5
5
0
7
9B
0
13
0
16
18
0
9C
0
0
20
0
0
0
10A
15
0
0
0
4
4
10B
16
1
0
0
5
8
10C
17
14
0
17
19
9
Epilogue
18
15
0
0
0
10
About The Author
Dale Smith’s past work is detailed on his website, www.dalesmithonline.com. There’s really not much left that isn’t on the website. Hang on, he’ll have a think.
Dale Smith knows a really good joke about two racehorses and a greyhound. But it’s too long to go into here. He nearly spoke to Russell T Davies in a newsagents in Chorlton. But didn’t. He got confused about how to introduce himself.
Oh! And he’s always lied about what his first professionally published work was: when he was in junior school, he had a poem published in the local newspaper about American Indians. The poem was, not the newspaper. He grew up in Leicester: how weird would it be to have a newspaper about American Indians in Leicester?
He has now learnt to call American Indians, Native Americans.
The Time Hunter Series