Was there anything she could find out in the past that shecould utilise to make a difference to her present or the future? The angelhadn’t said anything about that. As far as Kay was concerned, the future wasstill a blank page yet to be written and she alone had the ability to changeit. She couldn’t see that the angel could have any objection, having alreadystated that she had come to help her get out of the rut she was in.
So what could Kay do in the past to help herself? Whatsecrets could she uncover that might enable her to alter her circumstancesgoing forward?
She thought back to some of the great unsolved mysteries ofthe past. What if she could go back to Whitechapel in the 1880s and unmask Jackthe Ripper? Even if she could, would anyone in the present believe her? Orwould it just be dismissed as another crackpot theory to add to the dozens thathad gone before it.
What about financial gain? Could she go back to 1945 andfind out where Hitler’s legendary gold train really ended up at the end of thewar? Or indeed if it even existed. It would be a pretty tall order to find allthis out in one day in the middle of a war zone.
These were mere flights of fancy and she quickly realisedthat she could not do either of these things. She could only revisit dayswithin her own lifetime, so anything before the mid-1970s was completelyoff-limits to her. In fact, anything before about 1990 would be pretty uselesswhen she thought about it. She would not be able to achieve much as a childwith little money or freedom.
There were other cases, more recent, that she couldpotentially investigate, but where would they get her? She thought back oversome high-profile cases of the past few decades. There were children who hadvanished in mysterious circumstances, never to be seen again. Then there werethe high-profile deaths of people in the public eye, many of them murdered withthe perpetrators never found. Who really had killed them?
All the details of where and when these incidents had takenplace were well documented. It would certainly be possible for her to be at thescene of the crime, particularly those that had taken place in the UK.
But was it really worth it? She could go back to the exactdate and time of a major crime and solve it, but what then? Go to the policefifteen years later claiming she knew who had done it, with no physicalevidence to back up what she was doing? At best she would not be believed orlabelled as a crank. At worst, the real killers could get wind of what she wasdoing and decide to make her the next target.
And other than the slim prospect of some reward money ifanyone did take any notice of her, what was in it for her? No, she was going tohave to abandon this line of thinking for the moment. It wasn’t going anywhere.
It seemed that she wasn’t making much progress with herplans, so she decided to put them on hold for the time being and concentrate onthe day in hand. Already the plane was beginning its descent into Helsinki, soshe needed to get her act together and sort out the next leg of the journey.
It was gone midday local time when the plane touched down.Clearing passport control was no problem, but when she got to the baggagecarousel, there was no sign of any activity. This was going to hold her upfurther – or was it?
No, it wasn’t. As she stood waiting by the stationarycarousel, she suddenly realised that she didn’t need the rucksack. She remindedherself that she was here for a day, not for the whole three months. So whatneed did she have to cart around three months of clothes and several heavyguidebooks all day?
All she needed was what was in her handbag and her duty-freebag containing the two bottles she had bought at Heathrow. By the time herrucksack made it onto the carousel, she would be long gone. It could travelround and round to its heart’s content. Every time she flew, there alwaysseemed to be one sad little piece of luggage nobody wanted left behind. Today,it might as well be hers.
Leaving the rucksack proved to be a wise choice. She sailedthrough Customs and back out into the main part of the airport. She headedstraight for the check-in desks to investigate the availability of domesticflights.
She was in luck. There was a flight to Rovaniemi at 3.55pmand there were seats available. She had been pretty confident that there wouldbe. After all, the angel had said the trip was achievable, suggesting she musthave known about this flight. Kay had plenty of time. So she could haveretrieved her rucksack after all, but it didn’t matter. She would travel muchlighter without it.
Everything went smoothly with the second flight. Just after6pm she emerged from Rovaniemi Airport into the bright evening sunshine. Shehad made it with nearly six hours to spare!
She had expected it to be cold this far north but it wassurprisingly warm, like a pleasant early summer’s day in England. The sun waslow in the sky, as if sunset was not far away, but she knew that not to be thecase. She remembered from watching speeded-up film on the television that closeto the Poles in summer the sun stayed close to the horizon, doing a completecircle of the skyline over the course of a day.
She took a taxi into the town, wondering how to make themost of the hours ahead. She was very hungry and made finding some food herfirst priority. She soon found a lovely, old-fashioned-looking café overlookingthe river and decided to stop for a bite to eat.
The proprietors did not speak any English and her Finnishdictionary was back in Helsinki in her rucksack. So she took pot luck orderingfrom the menu and chose something called lihapullat which turned out to be adelicious dish of traditional Finnish meatballs in gravy.
Later she walked around the town, finding a lively barpacked with young people. Remembering that she was now
