“Is that enough?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man who has come to rescue you from a life of quiet desperation and regret.” He smiled again. “Come, my boy. Let’s sit down over a cup of coffee and discuss the matter like gentlemen. I’ve gone to a very great deal of trouble to find you. At the very least, you could spare me a few minutes out of your busy life.”
Kit hesitated.
“Cup of coffee-thirty minutes. What could it hurt?”
Trepidation and curiosity wrestled one another for a moment. Curiosity won. “Okay,” he relented. “Twenty minutes.”
The two started walking toward the street. “I’ve got to call my girlfriend and tell her I’ll be a little late,” Kit said, pulling out his phone. He flipped it open and pressed the speed-dial key for Mina’s number. When nothing happened, he glanced at the screen to see the “Network Not Connected” message blinking at him. He waved the phone in the air, then looked again. Still no tiny bars indicating a signal.
“Not working?” asked the older man, watching him with a bemused expression.
“Must be the buildings,” mumbled Kit, indicating the close brick walls on either hand. “Blocking the signal.”
“No doubt.”
They continued on, and upon approaching the end of the alley, Kit thought he heard a sound at once so familiar, and yet so strange, it took him a full two seconds to place it. Children laughing? No, not children. Seagulls.
He had little time to wonder about this, for at that moment they stepped from the dim alleyway and into the most dazzling and unusual landscape Kit had ever seen.
CHAPTER 2
In Which Lines Are Drawn, and Crossed
Before his bewildered eyes spread a scene he had only ever glimpsed in movies: a busy wharf with a three- masted schooner moored to the dock and, beyond it, the grand sweep of a sparkling, blue-green bay. The brilliant, sun-washed air was loud with the cackle of seagulls hovering and diving for scraps of fish and refuse as fishermen in the smaller boats hefted wicker baskets full of silver fish to women in blue bonnets and grey shawls over long calico dresses. Broad black headlands rose on either side of the wide scoop of the bay and, between these craggy promontories, a tidy town of small white houses climbed the slopes. Stocky men in short, baggy trousers and droopy shirts, with straw hats on their heads, pushed handcarts and drove mule teams along the seafront, helping to unload hessian-wrapped bundles from the tall ship.
Gone was King's Cross with its towering office blocks and narrow Regency roads clogged with cars and double-decker buses, with its innumerable coffee shops and takeaways, betting parlours, and news agents, the Betjeman Arms, the post office, the community college. No more the world-beating urban sprawl of metropolitan London with its dense clusters of neighbourhoods and shopping districts connected with traffic-bound streets and four-lane highways.
Everything familiar that Kit had known with the solid certainty of concrete had vanished utterly-and with it his own concrete certainty in bricks-and-mortar reality. It had all been replaced with a seaside vista at once so charming, so evocative, so quaint and winsome it could have been a painting in the National Gallery. And then the stench hit him-a stringent pong of fish guts, rotting vegetables, and tar. He felt woozy, and his stomach squirmed with a queasy feeling.
Turning hastily back to the alleyway, he saw that it was still there, still straight and narrow, its length deeply shadowed as if to shield a dreadful secret. “Where…?” he said, gulping air. “Where are we?”
“No need to speak until you’re ready.”
Kit turned his wondering eyes to the bustling panorama before him-the tall ship, the muscled stevedores, the fishermen in their floppy felt hats, the fishwives in their wooden clogs and head scarves-and tried to make sense of what he was seeing and remain calm in the face of what he considered a shocking dislocation. “What happened to King's Cross?”
“All in good time, dear boy. Can you walk? Perhaps we can forget the coffee-have a drink instead. Fancy a pint?”
Kit nodded.
“It isn’t far,” the old gentleman informed him. “This way.”
Dragging his rattled self together, Kit followed his guide out onto the waterfront. It felt as if he were walking on borrowed legs. The boardwalk seemed to lurch and shift with every awkward step.
“You are doing marvellously well. When it first happened to me, I couldn’t even stand up.”
They passed along a row of tiny shops and boathouses and simple dwellings, Kit’s mind reeling as he tried to take in everything at once. Away from the fetid alley, the air was cleaner, though still filled with the scent of the sea: fish and seaweed, wet hemp, salt, and rocks.
“In answer to your previous question,” the old man said, “this place is called Sefton-on-Sea.”
Judging from what he could observe, the town appeared to be one of those forgotten coastal villages that had been frozen in time by a local council intent on capitalising on the tourist trade; a settlement that time forgot. Sefton-on-Sea was more authentically old-fashioned and picturesque than any West Coast fishing village Kit had ever seen. As a reenactment theme park, the place put all others in the shade.
“Here we are,” said the elder man. “Come in. We’ll have a drink and get to know one another better.”
Kit looked around to see that they were standing at the door of a substantial brick house with a painted wooden sign that said OLD SHIP INN. He allowed himself to be led through the door and stepped into a dark room with low ceilings, a few tables and benches, and a tin-topped bar. A few snugs lined the perimeter of the pub, which was presided over by a broad-beamed young woman convincingly costumed in a cap of plain linen and a long white ale-stained apron. She greeted them with a smile. There was no one else in the place.
“Two pints of your best, Molly,” called the old man, leading his docile companion to a stool in the corner. “Sit yourself down, my boy. We’ll get some ale in you and you’ll begin to feel more yourself.”
“You come here often?” Kit asked, trying to force some lightness into his voice.
“Whenever I’m in the neighbourhood, so to speak.”
“Which is where, exactly? Cornwall? Pembrokeshire?”
“So to speak.”
The waitress appeared bearing two overflowing pewter tankards that she deposited on the table. “Thank you, Molly,” said the old man. “Do you have anything to eat? A little bread and cheese, perhaps?”
“There’s cheese in t’back, an’ I can go down t’bakery for a loaf if you like.”
“Would you, please? There will be an extra penny in it for you. There’s a good girl.”
The young lady shuffled off, and the white-haired gentleman took up his tankard, saying, “Here’s to dodgy adventures with disreputable relatives!”
Kit failed to see the humour of that sentiment but was glad for the drink. He took a deep draught, allowing the flowery sweet ale to fill his mouth and slide down his throat. The taste was reassuringly familiar, and after another swallow he felt better for it.
“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” said the old man, putting down his tankard. “Now then.” He drew an invisible square on the tabletop with his forefingers. “What do you know about the Old Straight Track?”
“I think I’d know one if I saw one.”
“Good,” replied his great-grandfather. “Perhaps your education wasn’t entirely wasted.” He redrew the square. “These trackways form what might be called intersections between worlds, and as such-”
“Hold on,” interrupted Kit. “Intersections between worlds… We are talking about trains?”
“Trains!” The old man reared back. “Great heavens, it’s nothing to do with those smoke-belching monstrosities.”
“Oh.”
