“Not bad,” Sofia said. She led Jane inside a large room filled with shelves of books.
“A library.” Jane smiled. “Whose is it?”
“The plebs,” Sofia said. “Anyone’s.”
This concept greeted Jane as entirely new. In her own time, a man brought a cart filled with books into the village; one could borrow them for a week. Indoor libraries were private and the domain of the rich. Jane’s brother Edward had inherited a spectacular example from the Knights when he became their heir, and whenever Jane visited, she spent days lost among its shelves, devouring mountains of books. Her brother did not use the library himself. “I am astounded by the number of books in the twenty-first century,” Jane remarked.
A man in rags walked up to them and elbowed Sofia with a withered arm. “I loved you in Doctor Zhivago!” he said. He wore a perfume of old potatoes.
Sofia rolled her eyes at the man. “Though I’m not one to turn down a compliment, that was Julie Christie.”
“She was beautiful in that film. Can I get a selfie?” He put one arm around Sofia to pose and held out his other arm in front of them.
“You don’t have a camera,” Sofia said.
“No,” he replied. He put his arm down. “How about an autograph?”
“You don’t have any paper. Or a pen.”
“That’s true,” he said. He stared into the distance.
Sofia sighed. “We’re off to the information desk. If you find paper in that time, I’ll sign it when we get back. Always nice to meet a fan.” She led Jane away.
“You are a woman of fame,” Jane remarked to her. “I recall other times when people have stared and pointed at you in the street.”
Sofia nodded. “I am an actress, Jane.”
“How wonderful. A poor player that struts and frets her hour upon the stage. Do you play Ophelia? Do you play Electra?”
“I used to,” she said with a smile. “Then I grew famous, and I played ingenues, sexy action sidekicks, and hookers with hearts of gold. Now that I’m the wrong side of thirty-five, I play fishwives and grandmothers.”
“Oh. But you have a profession? You earn an income for this acting?”
“An income? Jane, I have six swimming pools across my various houses. I’ve never even swum in most of them.”
Jane shook her head in disbelief. “I have never met a woman who earned her own income before. Do other women have professions? Or only actresses?”
Sofia shrugged. “Sure. Women are doctors, lawyers, garbage collectors. You can do what you want. You’ll get paid less than a man”—she snorted— “but you’ll get paid.”
Jane’s brother Edward, who picked things from his ear and ate them, had been adopted at age twelve by a childless couple, the Knights, who were cousins of Jane’s father. Jane far exceeded Edward in mathematics, languages, wit, and talent, but Edward had the talent of maleness, the most important talent of all. By the time Edward reached twenty-five, he had inherited three estates, from which he earned a rental income of ten thousand pounds a year. When Jane had reached the same age, she inherited nothing. When one day she’d expressed aloud a desire to earn her own income, Edward pronounced her a prostitute. The last time she had spoken to her brother involved a letter asking him of his recent holiday to Ramsgate. Edward had replied that it was a wonderful tour and she might have joined them, if there had been room in the carriage.
Jane stared at Sofia, her income-earning female friend, feeling gripped with admiration and agitation. How did she feel earning her own way, existing as a burden to no one? What was it like to be beholden to none?
Sofia showed Jane to the back of the room, where a woman sat behind a desk. Sofia greeted her. “Where can we find Persuasion, please?”
The woman squinted at the large steel frame on the desk. “Who is the author?”
Sofia froze. “The author is Jane Austen.”
The woman laughed. “No. Jane Austen never wrote anything by that title.”
Jane balked. She had memorized those six titles in an instant when Sofia showed the novels to her. They had become as precious to her as children’s names.
“Could you check on your computer, please?” Sofia asked the woman.
“Don’t need to. Jane Austen never wrote a novel called that. But to humor you . . .” She operated the frame and turned it to face Sofia. “See?”
Sofia examined it and scowled. “Out of interest, how many novels did Jane Austen write?”
The woman behind the desk shrugged liked it was obvious. “Five.”
Jane shuddered.
Sofia thanked the woman. “Let’s go,” she said to Jane.
Next to the library was a shop selling coffee. Jane’s sister-in-law Eliza had written from Paris of such things, and Henry had tried some once in London. Sofia pointed to a table and chairs. “Sit down, I’ll order us coffee. I need to sober up,” Sofia said. “This is a disaster,” she added. She ordered at the shop’s counter, then returned and sat down next to Jane.
“I understand something is wrong,” Jane said, “but I am unsure exactly what.”
“Jane. Your book has disappeared. You don’t write Persuasion anymore! You once wrote six novels, now you only write five. I was in a time-travel movie once. I played the girl who lived next door to a man called Rob. Rob had the power to move back and forth through different periods in time, from the sixties to today and back again. Every time Rob moved from one era to the next, he inadvertently changed events and outcomes in the other time, to the detriment of everyone. A person he spoke to in the past ended up killing a whole bunch of people in the future, for example, and someone who never met their hairdresser because they were talking to Rob instead received
