“Will!” she cried in a rough Essex accent, which suggestedthat she perhaps wasn’t as posh as she looked. “It’s a burglar!”
He heard the sound of a man leaping off the bed and runningtowards the bedroom door. Josh had been in scrapes like this before and had nodesire to get a beating at the hands of a man under the impression he wasbreaking into his home. He turned and ran in the direction of where he hopedthe stairs would still be.
“Come here, you!” shouted a gruff voice behind him, whichJosh vaguely recognised. When Josh looked back, he caught a glimpse of a big,beefy man, exactly the sort of person you didn’t want to come after you. Thenhe realised who he was.
That explained the rugby memorabilia. The man was WilliamParker, a local lad who had been one of the stars of the England team in the2040s. It seemed he was now living in the pub.
As Josh reached the bottom of the stairs, he discovered thatit wasn’t even a pub anymore. The whole building had been converted into aluxury pad, presumably by William and his trophy wife.
He headed for where the front door used to be, praying itwasn’t locked. It wasn’t and he managed to scramble out just before William wasable to catch up. Fortunately, the rugby star was only in his underwear,bringing an end to the pursuit. It was also fortunate that he was past hisplaying days, as Josh doubted he would have made it to the door if William hadstill been in his prime.
“Don’t think you’ve got away with this!” shouted William.“It’ll all be on the CCTV.”
That meant the police would be after him now as well, butthat was the least of his worries with Vanessa still on the rampage. He ran upthe reassuringly normal street, wondering where on earth he was going to go.
He knew all too well from past experience how quicklyuniverses could diversify after even relatively minor changes. You didn’t haveto assassinate Hitler or save Kennedy to drastically alter things. Even theremoval of people who might not seem important in any shape or form could sendout ripples of change that could swiftly turn into tsunamis.
He would have to go home, wherever that was. He pulled outhis wallet to find his driving licence, but he didn’t seem to have one anymore.Perhaps he hadn’t learned to drive in this timeline; he had left it long enoughin his original one.
So now he had no idea where home was, what his job was, oranything at all about what role he now played in this altered world. He decidedto go back to Oxford. At least there was the university there, assuming hestill had anything to do with it.
On the train heading south he felt a growing sense ofdespair gnawing at him from inside. He had been in tight spots before, but hehad always had friends he could call on, even when trapped in the past. Nowthere was no one left to turn to. Vanessa had seen to that.
He had other friends, of course, but he didn’t want to riskinvolving anyone else. With the way Vanessa was carrying on, he’d be as good assigning their death warrants. He had to accept that he was on his own and theodds were stacked against him. Vanessa was holding all the aces.
She had the technology and resources to run rings aroundhim, as she had already amply demonstrated. With each friend she had takenaway, his hand had become weaker and he had no idea how he was going to be ableto regain control of the situation.
He knew it was likely that he would soon encounter heragain, but it was unlikely she was going to give him the opportunity tooverpower her and take back the tachyometer. She was way too smart for that.
He would have to find some other way. At least he knew whather motivation was. Could he play along and lull her into a false sense ofsecurity, then wait for an opportunity to strike when her guard was down? Thatwas all he had really.
Reasoning with her or attempting to appeal to her betternature probably wasn’t going to get him anywhere. She didn’t have a betternature and trying to reason with someone who was clearly deranged was unlikelyto get him anywhere.
He had no idea what to expect when the time came but was prettysure she hadn’t gone to all this effort just to punish him for spurning heradvances. She had made her intentions clear and was surely going to makeanother play for him soon.
As the train rolled on towards Oxford, he decided to look athis phone to see if he could figure out anything about his life. As he did so,it buzzed as a message came in.
It was from an unknown number and simply read Homefollowed by an address, followed by the words from a friend.
What was strange was that the address was his old one wherehe and Alice had lived before her disappearance. Why would that now be his homeagain? It didn’t make any sense, unless maybe he was getting help fromelsewhere. Perhaps another Josh from another universe had come to help him sortthings out? If he had, he would be most welcome.
Arriving back at Oxford train station, he disembarked andwalked the mile or two to the home he had until recently shared with Alice inthe north of the city.
The exterior of the house still looked more or less the same,but he didn’t want a repetition of what had happened earlier with William atthe pub, so as a precaution, he walked up to the door and pressed the doorbell.
Behind the frosted glass of the diamond-shaped panels on thefront door, he saw the shape of someone
