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approaching and the trees in the square were thick with songbirds which trilled and warbled in the rapidly fading light. A blackbird perched, sentry-like, on a tall, wrought iron gate that graced the frontage of an imposing house to the west ofLincoln’s Inn Fields. The sweet birdsong drifted into Sir Richard Picard’s first-floor drawing room, carried in on wafts of air made fragrant by the honeysuckle that scrambled beneath the open window. Inside the room were to be found Parson Ledbury and two children from the twenty-first century, although their appearance gave no clue as to the century they called their own – except that, under closer scrutiny, their shoes seemed better suited to a modern-day sports field than the elegance of an eighteenth-century drawing room. Kate Dyer lay stretched out on her belly, on a couch beneath the window, her red hair vivid against her sprigged green dress. She supported her chin in one cupped hand whilst with the other she tugged absent-mindedly at the sleeve of a discarded jacket draped over the back of a chair. The boy it belonged to, Peter Schock, was sitting at a circular table in front of a chessboard. Opposite him, white wig awry, sat a portly man of the cloth who emptied a glass of claret in one gulp and set it back on the table with a bang that jolted Kate temporarily out of her reverie.
    In the middle of setting out the chess pieces for a return match with the redoubtable Parson Ledbury, the young Peter Schock glanced over at his friend, a white knight suspended in mid-air between finger and thumb. Kate’s eyelids kept sliding shut but as soon as they closed she would jerk them open again through sheer effort of will. Another day spent searching for the Tar Man – and, hopefully, the duplicate anti-gravity machine which Kate’s father and the scientist, Dr Pirretti, had built – had left Peter frustrated and anxious. But Kate was utterly wrung out and exhausted – as, it seemed to Peter, she so often was. Gideon and Sir Richard had been keen to continue the search but when they noticed Kate’s white face, they had insisted that the Parson take the children home to rest.
    ‘Go to bed, Kate, before we have to carry you up,’ Peter said.
    Kate shook her head and pushed herself up. ‘No. I want to see Parson Ledbury thrash you first.’
    Peter stuck out his tongue at her.
    ‘Now if
you
were to challenge me, Mistress Kate, it would be a different matter entirely,’ said the Parson.
    ‘All right,’ she replied. ‘I will. Afterwards.’
    Kate laughed and slumped back onto the overstuffed sofa, pulling out the flounces of her dress that were badly spattered, she noticed, with mud and other unmentionable substances from the gutters of Covent Garden. She should really get changed, but not yet . . . not just yet. Perhaps when she had rested for a little longer. The familiar, piercing cry of swallows made her turn her head to look through the open window. As her eyes followed the birds swooping and diving through the air in search of midges she felt a pang of homesickness. How often had she and her brothers and sisters stood in their Derbyshire farmyard and watched swallows build their nests under the eaves. Kate wondered if she would ever do so again but instantly scolded herself for even doubting it. So she forced herself to look out at the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, whose silhouette, rising up into the golden evening sky beyond Lincoln’s Inn Fields, spoke to her so powerfully of hope. She sighed heavily and another strand of hair tumbled down over her face.
    The Parson beat Peter in three moves but by then Kate was fast asleep and even his victory cry did not wake her. The two players looked first at Kate and then at each other.
    ‘I don’t think Kate likes being alone right now,’ whispered Peter.
    ‘I do not think it is a question of her being alone,’ said the Parson, endeavouring to lower his booming voice a few notches. ‘Rather, it seems to me that