The Connoisseur

Chapter 18 - A Promenade Through London

In the last week of the year, Sophia vowed to throw herself into her work.  She had essays due in for the first week of the new term, and she rushed to get them done.  A trip to 1894 was the reward.

The first day did not go well. She pored through reams of lab data from her experiments in the previous term, and then lost herself on websites full of pictures of Victorian fashion.  Wrenching herself back, she began to turn the notes into an essay on glycolysis, until she caught herself twenty minutes later wondering where Marie Curie would be in 1894, and she lost herself down the rabbit hole once more.

When evening drew on, she looked at the sum total of her work: 100 words.  Only 2,900 to go.  She turned off her laptop and traipsed downstairs.

“Glyco-what?” said Mum at the dinner table a little later.

“Glycolysis,” said Sophia, once she’d finished her mouthful of shepherd’s pie. “It’s the metabolic pathway that converts glucose into pyruvate.”

“Oh,” said Dad, smiling.  “It makes perfect sense now.”

“Ok, it’s a magic spell that keeps your body going.  It can go 200 times faster in tumour cells, that’s why we’re studying it.”

“So you are curing cancer,” said her brother.  “Knew it.”

Sophia stopped her fork just before her mouth.  “Do you know what?  Just this once, yes, I’m curing cancer.”

The second day’s week was somehow easier: the distractions came less often, the word count climbed, and Sophia remembered that she actually quite enjoyed chemistry.  She was amazed that she’d forgotten that over the past few weeks.  She still thought of the adventure to come, but instead of hindering her it drove her on.  By day, a scientist in training; by night, a time traveller.  Why couldn’t she have the best of both worlds?

A quiet voice told her that Alexander only existed in one of them: she dismissed it and pressed onward.

*

She finished the essay on December 30 in the early evening.  Almost exactly twenty four hours later, her phone rang.  She leapt to the bedroom door, walked straight through into the palace, and answered in person, smiling giddily.

“Hello, Alex.”

He was sat on the chaise longue, his ear to an antique telephone receiver.  He glanced sideways at her.  “Sophia!  Not in a rush, are we, my dear?”

“No.  But all the same, can we go?”  She bounced on the balls of her feet.  “It feels like years since Ctesiphon.  Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

Alexander put down the phone, achingly slowly – and leapt to his feet.  “Come on, then!”

He seized her hand and they ran together towards the two doors that led to their dressing rooms.

Half an hour later, arm in arm, the two of them passed through the great double doors.  They found themselves on a wide boulevard at night, flanked on one side by a park and on the other by high, grand townhouses.  Many hansom cabs rolled past in either direction, quickly vanishing into the fog, but bright gas lamps peered out of the gloom on all sides.

“I love this,” said Sophia.  She wore a dark purple dress beneath a lace-decorated chemisette, with a fur coat to keep out the cold, and her hair was raised up in waves.  “God, I love it.  Whereabouts are we?”

“I should think that will become obvious in a moment,” said the top hat-wearing Alexander, tapping out a walking pace with his brass-tipped cane.