The seconds pass by agonisingly. Tick…tock…tick…tock. My bouncing leg is shaking the table, making (what appears to be) water leap out of the cup. The noise in the room is deafening. As Thomas would say, “Dat Avicci doe.” The noise made by the abundance of teenagers would put Woodstock and all its rock ‘n’ roll to shame. The brazen gyrating on display in front of me makes bile rise in my throat. I can almost hear the pantsuits of feminists everywhere, ruffling as they turn over in their graves. This is appalling. How could Thomas have brought me to this perverse house filled with nefarious behaviours? He should know that where I really wish to be is in the time of Jane Austen, the time of parties in Bath, the time of grandeur and splendour. The time of romance.

I close my eyes and try to transport myself to an elegant ballroom, made warm by the light from the candles and the refined bodies floating through the Regency-era dance steps. The room is seeping with culture and intelligence as I weave my way through the mass of guests, careful not to ruin the hem of my dress. Just as I am about to tap the shoulder of the most handsome man in the room, someone in reality decides to ruin my fantasy by bumping the back of my chair. So much for trying to abate the horror ensuing in front of me.

I look around trying to find an anchor, some form of sanity to hold on to, but alas the clustered kitchen does not want to give me any. Instead of seeing intelligent men talking animatedly about society and politics, I see Carey Fletcher vomiting into a potted fern. Looking down at the table I hope to see the mythical round table, the one around which King Arthur united Camelot. But that is left to legend as my hands run along the grain of a worn wooden table. Mozart’s melodious Die Zauberflöte tries tickling my eardrums, and envelops my head in pure, unadulterated beauty. But no sooner have I settled into the majestic orchestral strings, when the bass from Dark Horse assaults me, Katy Perry’s voice scratching in the background.

I can’t take much more of this. Either a time machine needs to materialise at once, or else I need to get home to my historical cove. The latter seems like the most feasible option, although not the more desirable one. I comb the house, trying to find Tom but there are too many people, and I feel like I’m in a suit of armour with the amount of sweat being rubbed on me. I know Thomas found his friends earlier, having eventually stopped checking in on me, leaving me to my thoughts. He must be distracted, watching Jim fail in picking up the new girl, with her chiming laugh and golden locks. Or he’s coaching Andrew as he waits in the shadows ready to catch the remnants as they fall from Jim’s grip. I send a mental goodbye to him as I head for the door, the call of Joan of Ark, Julius Caesar, and many others from beyond the grave too loud and alluring to resist. Thomas will understand; he always does.


Fifty pages into my favourite autobiography on Emily Murphy, I hear a faint knock at the door. I walk up the stairs with trepidation, my white nightgown billowing around me. I wonder who would be at the door at 1 o’clock in the morning when I see Thomas’s unreadable face through the door’s square window. When he see’s me his eyes become stormy, reminding me that he is the Napoleon to my Josephine – before the ugly divorce.

I open the door and a breeze of cool air cuts through the thin fabric of my gown. “Hi sweetie, what are you doing here? I thought you would have just gone home after the party.”

Thomas whips his head up, the storm in his eyes turning into an uncontrollable gale force. “Great, I’m glad you thought of me,” Thomas says, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “How about you? Where were you? I thought that I could take you to the party, you would hang out with my friends, spend a little time together. Instead you space out, sit at the table and talk to no one!”

“Sorry, I don’t understand why you’re mad. I always do that.” I try to search his face.

“That is exactly my point.” The disappointment in Thomas’s eyes reaches in, squeezing my heart. “I know all of the presidents from Washington to Obama. I can tell you all the names of King Henry VIII’s wives. I have every fable from every society memorized. The entire biography of Laura Secord is permanently etched into my skull and the rise and fall of the Mesopotamian empires will forever circle my brain. But the thing is, I don’t care about any of those things. I care about you and that is why I indulged into your fantasies and learned about what you love. I would have preferred hanging out with friends, or playing video games, but I wasn’t. I was listening to you and your intellectual dribble.”

His words echo through my head, creating a hollow space in my chest. “I though you wanted to do those things, listen to my ‘intellectual dribble’…I thought spending time with me was why you did it.”

“I love spending time with you, and learning about what you love is fun – to a certain extent.” He looks at me, pleading with his eyes, his voice desperate, resigned. “But you never do anything for me. It’s not fair. I do all the give, and you do the entirety of the take. I want to be able to hang out with my friends and let them see you for the person you are, but you won’t let that happen. You never live in the present. Instead you sit and romanticize of times that you will never be in. ” His golden brown hair flops into his eyes as his head collapses. “I’ve tried to be your person, listening to how smart Benjamin Franklin was and the fierceness of Queen Elizabeth. But how much do you know about me?”

“What are you talking about? I know so much about you…why are you doing this?” My voice barely comes out as a whisper.

“Fine. Here’s a question that I know everyone in my life already knows. Andrew and I even talked about it less than an hour ago. What do I want to do with my life?”

I can feel him reaching, imploring me to answer correctly and give him a glimmer of hope. “I don’t know.”

Any light left in his eyes is lost, being washed over by the grey of his irises. “And that is why.”

Thomas turns to leave, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

Reaching for the doorknob, he hesitates. He turns his head ever so slightly to look at me through the corner of his eyes. Almost inaudibly he says, “The answer used to be that I wanted to go away with you, take you to every castle there has ever been so that you can have your dream. So that you could be every princess, every dame, every revolutionary leader that you wanted to be. But now…” With one final shake of his head he is gone into the night, and I am left with the ghost of our relationship looking upon me with shame.