5 February 1960
"I'm sorry," Jen said, a bit lamely. The expletive had just slipped out; nothing about this made any bloody sense, and what Lucien had just told her was the most insane, impossible, improbable, ridiculous load of nonsense she'd ever heard.
"I hadn't even been born in 1960." The house did look straight out of 1960, and so too did Lucien's hair and Charlie's uniform and the nightgown Jen was wearing. But that didn't mean anything, she tried to remind herself; it was entirely possible that this was all some elaborate game, that Lucien - or whoever he was - had orchestrated all of this just for the fun of watching her lose her mind. It was entirely possible that if she only stepped outside the front door she would discover the world exactly as she had left it, and this house no more than some sort of hellish, cosmic joke.
He could dye your hair but he couldn't make the wrinkles on your face, a tiny, terrified voice reminded her. And your hands…
The skin of her hands was thinner now than she had ever seen it, the veins running along beneath it visible and prominent in a way they had never been in her own life. As if someone had hit fast forward on the tape, and re-started it again a decade down the track. That was a terrifying thought; Jen felt herself lost in time, floating, untethered, thrashing about in search of a buoy to guide her.
"When were you born?" Lucien asked her curiously. His face was troubled, still, but the questions kept coming, almost as if he couldn't stop himself.
"1972. In Melbourne." If it was 1960, it would be twelve more years before Jen was born. Her parents had been young in 1960; they hadn't even met yet.
"That's right, you said you work in Melbourne. Have you ever been to Ballarat? Do you perhaps have any family here?"
Jen shook her head, wishing she had another answer to give him. The question made sense, in a way; if she accepted that the premise was true - that she had, somehow, wound up in Ballarat in 1960 - the next order of business would be to find out why. Something must have drawn her here, but she couldn't fathom what it was; her father was Melbourne born and raised, and her mother...well. Jen's mother never liked to talk about the past.
It doesn't matter, she thought, because there is no way in hell I've traveled to 1960.
"I'm just wondering, Jennifer, if you're here, then what on earth has become of Jean?"
That was a good question, too. If this was real, if there was a woman called Jean Beazley who was meant to be in this house and Jen had woken up in her skin, where had Jean gone?
"Do you think she woke up in 2010?" Jen asked. It wasn't that she believed in this time travel nonsense - Nick would love this, she thought, Nick with his bookshelf full of well-thumbed copies of Pratchett and Adams and all the rest - but if this was a game she had resolved to play along, at least for now, to learn as much about Lucien, and this house, and her predicament as she could.
"For her sake, I rather hope not. Jean's a rather...old-fashioned soul. I imagine a lot has changed in the last fifty years."
He smiled at her, a bit weakly. It was, Jen thought, the biggest understatement she'd ever heard. Telephones, televisions, cars, clothes, politics; the very face of the earth had changed in the last fifty years and if this Jean had been old-fashioned in 1960 she would likely be absolutely mortified by Jen's life. But suppose she had been thrust into the future, had woken up in Jen's bed as Jen had woken up in hers. What would she find? An empty house, and no one to help her make sense of her predicament.
Oh shit.
Jen's workday had ended in a shootout on Thursday, and while their entire team had given their official statements before making their way home there was still Internal Affairs to be dealt with. She was meant to be riding a desk in between interminable meetings with the brass, going over every single second leading up to the shooting. What would happen when she didn't turn up for work? Or worse, what would happen if someone went looking for her, and found Jean instead, and thought Jen had gone round the bend? Her career would be over, and then what would become of her? What would she have to come back to?
Get ahold of yourself, she thought angrily. You're not in the past. Something is going on here, but it's going to have a reasonable explanation, you'll see.
"I think it's my turn to ask some questions," Jen said then. Lucien had quizzed her a bit, but she wanted to take control of this little interview. The most important thing, she thought, was that she needed to get out of the house. To do that she'd have to get past him, and he was huge and strong and watching her so carefully that she rather knew it would be wiser to rely on wile than on brute force. She would do her best to earn his trust, to put him at ease, and at the first possible opportunity, she would run.
"Who are you, exactly?"
He smiled.
"Doctor Lucien Blake," he said. "I'm the police surgeon here in Ballarat."
Police surgeon. He's done his homework, at least. That position hadn't existed for years, they all had fancier titles now. But if he was the police surgeon - or wanted her to believe he was - that offered a plausible explanation for his calm demeanor and his curiosity.
"And this is your house? That boy-"
"Charlie."
"Charlie. He called you Doc. I take it he's not your son, then."
"No," Lucien said with a smile. "Charlie is a boarder here. The District Nurse boards with us as well, but she's already out and about this morning. I suppose you'll be seeing her later."
Jen mulled that over for a moment, clasping her hands together on the table. Doctor Blake lived in this house with his housekeeper Mrs. Beazley, with a police officer named Charlie, and the District Nurse. A man, a woman, two young people, living comfortably together. It sounded rather nice, she thought, but as her gaze drifted round the table she happened to glance at her hands, and it was only then that she realized she was wearing a plain gold band on her left ring finger.
Mrs. Beazley, Charlie had called her.
"And what about Mrs. Beazley's husband?" she asked, feeling a little sick at the thought. If this was real, if Mrs. Beazley herself was real, was there a Mr. Beazley out there somewhere, worried about her? And what would happen to Jen if there was?
"He died, a very long time ago," Lucien said, very softly. "Mrs. Beazley and I were both widowed during the war."
If Lucien were orchestrating this whole thing as some sort of psychological experiment, some sort of sick torture for reasons Jen did not yet understand, then he would have to have been the most masterful actor she had ever seen, for there was such a subtle sense of sorrow in him as he spoke those words that her instincts insisted he must surely have been genuine.
"You said this was Christopher's gun," Jen said, gesturing towards it. "Was that his name? Her husband."
"Yes. Jean keeps it for sentimental reasons. Though I must say it's come in handy, she used it to save my life once, not long after we met."
An old-fashioned widow who wasn't afraid to brandish a gun; Jen found herself growing more curious about Mrs. Beazley by the second.
"You do know it's not loaded, don't you? I searched the room for ammunition but I didn't find any."
Lucien barked out a laugh from the other end of the table, and then smoothed his hand over his hair.
"I had no idea," he confessed. "She was very convincing. Clever girl."
His fondness for Mrs. Beazley seemed genuine as well, and Jen didn't quite know what to make of it. What angle was he playing here? What was the point of all this? All these backstories, so well-rehearsed, the decor, his clothes, her clothes, the bloody phone; where did this all end? And why did he seem so earnestly kind? Long years of policework had taught Jen how to gauge people, how to identify manipulation and deceit, and she saw none of that when she looked at him. And there was the matter of her hands, and her face, and oh, she wished like hell she could just close her eyes, and wake up back at home, safe in her own bed.
"So Mrs. Beazley is a widow who lives here and works as your housekeeper. How long has she worked for you?"
Lucien leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms comfortably over his chest.
"Jean came to work for my father not long after the end of the war. I was living abroad, then. My father died a year and a half or so ago, and I came home to settle his affairs and well. I suppose I just never left."
The war. It was the second time he'd said it, easily, casually. Apparently he felt no need to specify which war, spoke as if he assumed his audience had no need for further context, as if everyone knew all about the war, and what it meant, and what it had cost. Of course Jen knew which war he was referring to but she had no personal frame of reference for it, and in fact found the very concept foreign and alarming. A global catastrophe that had claimed so many lives it was almost incomprehensible, and Lucien - and his Jean - had lived through it. Given his apparent age, and the fact that he had been living abroad, she supposed there was every possibility that Lucien himself had fought in the war. She didn't have much experience with soldiers, either. But if this was real, if Lucien had really fought in the war, she imagined he probably had one hell of a story to tell. If.
"None of this makes any sense," Jen muttered, mostly to herself.
"No," Lucien agreed, suddenly somber. "You look like Jean. You sound like her. You're wearing her clothes. I'm assuming you woke up in her bed? Upstairs?"
"The room with the floral wallpaper?"
"Yes, that's hers. Now, if you had told me you'd simply forgotten who you were, I would have thought that Jean might have hurt herself, or suffered some sort of...I don't know, some sort of neurological episode. But you have an entirely new set of memories, and you carry yourself differently, and while you have Jean's voice you certainly don't sound like her, if you take my meaning. Jean has a very particular way of speaking and you are...very different."
Was it the fuck that gave me away? Jen wondered wryly.
"I don't think I've ever read about anything quite like this," Lucien mused.
As police surgeon no doubt he kept up with the medical journals and the latest findings in his field. If this was real, if Jen really had been flung into the past, she supposed she could not hope for a better savior than a doctor. A doctor who was wealthy enough to employ a live-in housekeeper, who owned a home spacious enough to take on boarders, who worked closely with the police. Lucien would be, she thought, the perfect person to help her work her way through this mess. If she could trust him.
"Can I make a suggestion?" Jen asked.
"Please do," he said. He leaned towards her then, rested his forearms on the table and watched her curiously.
"It's...difficult for me to believe that it's really 1960. That I'm not going to walk out that door and find myself in Melbourne in the modern day."
"You want to leave the house," he guessed.
"Yes, please."
He hummed, ran his hand absently over his beard while he thought it over.
"Jean is very well known in the town. For the sake of her reputation, it might be best if you don't speak to anyone else just yet. At least until we know what we're dealing with. But I don't see any reason why we can't go for a drive. You could see the town, and the people, and maybe that would help make this all seem...more real, to you."
"I think it would," Jen said quickly, relieved. Once they were out of the house, her chances of understanding her predicament - or making a break for it - increased dramatically. The house was frozen in time, a protective, vintage bubble that made Jen feel as if she were caught inside a snow globe. Fresh air, and buildings, and more people, would give her a better idea of what she was dealing with. A madman could control the conditions of his own home; he could not control an entire town.
"Right, then. That's settled. But...erm…" he grimaced, but Jen had only a moment to wonder what was bothering him before he found his words again. "Perhaps it's best if you got dressed first, yes?"
It was only then that Jen remembered she was wearing only a very thin pink nightgown. That wouldn't do at all; if nothing else, she needed a sturdy pair of shoes.
"I think you're right," she said, a bit ruefully.
She rose from the table then and Lucien did the same, almost reflexively, as if he always stood when Mrs. Beazley did.
"Why don't you take that pistol and put it back with the rest of Jean's things?" he suggested gently.
It was only then that Jen realized her mistake. She'd told him it wasn't loaded. Damn him. She had been trying to earn his trust but he had earned hers instead, and now he knew that she was unarmed, and unable to defend herself. For a moment she studied him, looking for some sign of triumph or calculating cruelty in him, but she found none. His blue eyes were warm and kind above his neat beard, and he did not approach her, or try in any way to make her feel uncomfortable.
She gathered up the pistol, and made her way out of the room, the weight of his gaze heavy on her back. In the corridor she hesitated; Lucien was still in the kitchen, and the front door was just there. She'd never have a better chance than this one to run. Even barefoot, she had an opportunity, now, to get the fuck out of this house and make a break for freedom.
But what if he's telling the truth? She asked herself. What if it was 1960, and she raced out that door into a world caught in the past, a world she had never known and had no idea how to navigate? Without him to guide her she'd be utterly lost. She had no money, no phone, and she didn't know a damn thing about the geography of Ballarat - if they were, in fact, actually in Ballarat.
"Jennifer?" his voice called out softly from behind her. She hadn't heard him move, but when she glanced over her shoulder she saw him standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her apprehensively. His gaze flickered from her face to the door, and she knew then that he had taken one look at her and seen at once the direction her thoughts had gone.
"I'll be back in a minute," she said, and then she walked away, mounted the stairs with her heart heavy in her chest.