"You were young when we died," my mother said, taking my arm and walking with me down the docks of London. "We didn't have much time. There's so much we had left to teach you, darling."

As we walked, each step that we took brought the city to life a little more than the last. The fog began to seep away from us, rising and curling up into the sky until it was nothing but the usual smoggy haze above the buildings of London. London got its bustle back and its people too. I don't know where they came from or who they were, but they brought the previously dead city back to life. It was full of voices and a noise that seems to me to be unique to London. It is like a low, persistent hum that reverberates around the city at all times of the day and night. It's the kind of noise that you only get in a place that truly never sleeps. There are always many things happening at once. Having been in such comparatively quiet places for so long- Port Royal, the Pearl, and the Land of the Dead- the gentle commotion of background noise was noticeable to my ears, but my mother, having grown up and spent most of her life here, didn't even register it. We reached the end of the docks. I glanced around at all the people who were surrounding us, many of them filthy, unwashed and miserable. So very miserable. That was another thing I had forgotten about London. It sucked the happiness right out of a large percentage of its inhabitants. I looked at my mother. "Who are they?" I asked.

"People from the past," she replied. Her eyes fell on an old, bind beggar woman who was being almost trampled to death by passers-by. "I suppose that many of them will be as dead as we are by now."

Not one of them had looked at us once and, as I followed my mother down the streets, I noticed something else that was odd. The crowds around us were a jumble of various different people who were all going to various different places at completely different speeds and levels of urgency. Everyone in London walks with a purpose and they don't particularly care about what anyone else's purpose may be. Everyone seems to be under the impression that whatever their purpose is will be of far greater importance than anyone else's. The crowds jostle and bump into one another. But not one of them touched us. I looked back to my mother for guidance. "Can they see us?" I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper, although I was unsure as to exactly why. It probably had a little bit to do with me not wanting to seem insane if everyone around us could see and hear both of us.

My mother smiled and shook her head, "No, Isabelle, I told you, they're from the past. How could they see someone who hasn't happened yet?"

I frowned, trying to make sense of it. "So…" I said slowly. "This is from before we were born?"

My mother smiled. It was a smile I hadn't seen in so long. It was the one she gave me when I had puzzled over difficult things as a child. Things like long words and spelling, where babies came from and who exactly it was that decided who could be parents and when.

"Before you were born," she told me. "And I… I was a different person."

She stopped there and turned towards a house that looked much like any of the other London townhouses. It looked a lot like the one I had grown up in, in fact, only this one was far closer to the docks. We stood at the gate in silence. The house obviously belonged to people of roughly the same class that my mother and I did… that was, I should add, before I'd turned pirate. It was quiet and from what I could see of inside, it looked still and empty. My mother led me through the gate and round to the back of the house. We'd only been there for a few moments before a door opened and a small, blonde girl of no more than six years old stepped out. She looked around her before she let the door close. I wasn't really sure why we were here. My mother was smiling at the house with a fondness in her eyes that I didn't understand. "You know this place?" I asked.

"I grew up here," she said and then she nodded towards the little girl, "that's me." My gaze shot back immediately to the little girl with the golden curls. Was that really my mother when she was six years old? This was too surreal. My mother laughed. "I looked quite a lot like you did when you were that age, actually… I'd never realised that before."

I smiled because it was true and watched the little girl play alone in the garden. After a moment she stopped and looked up. Something rustling around in the hedge to her left had caught her attention. It took me a while to realise that there was another small person clambering through. "No!" the high-pitched voice of my six-year old mother rang out as she stood up and frowned at the hedge. "You can't be here, it's my garden."

"It's my garden too!" the cross voice of a boy floated through the hedge towards her. My mother's frown deepened.

"It is not!" she protested haughtily, screwing up her face, clenching her fists and putting them firmly on her hips. She still did exactly the same thing when she was angry.

"Is too!" the boy tumbled through the gap in the hedge and landed at her feet. "I live here."

There was a silence as the boy and the girl stared at each other. She wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. "No you don't!"

"I do!" the young boy was getting huffy, but so was my mother.

"Don't!" she said fiercely.

"I do!" the boy folded his arms and sat down on the grass. "My father works here and he works in the garden, so really it's more mine than yours."

The younger version of my mother eyed him suspiciously before she sat down on the grass beside him. Once she'd sat down neither of them looked at each other, they sat side by side ripping up fistfuls of grass. When she eventually looked at him it seemed as if her anger was gone. "We could share it, then," she said. The boy smiled.

"Yeah," he said and brushed the grass from his hands, looking a lot more cheerful. "My name's James," he said, sticking out his tiny little hand for her to shake.

James? Is that where my brother had got his name? I glanced at my mother, but she seemed to be pretty oblivious to me. Her face was alight with a kind of happiness I'd never seen in her eyes before, as she watched her former self take James's hand.

"Emile," my mother's past self was smiling in the same way as my mother. All the anger they had previously had towards each other dissolved instantly into laughter and they sprang into a game in the wordless way that only children can seem to do. Their laughter filled the garden until young Emile tripped and fell. There was a moment of silence while James stared at her. Her eyes filled with tears and she began to howl, pulling her knee round to inspect the blood that was pooling there. James froze and stared at her, not really sure what to do to help her. After a moment of anxious staring, he ran over to one of the pear trees at the bottom of the garden and turned back to look at her.

"Look!" he called. "Emile! Emmy! Look! Look at me!" Still crying, young Emile squinted up at him through her tears. James glanced up at the branches of the pear tree. "Bet you I can climb this."

"No... no, you ca-can't," young Emile said, still quietly sobbing, but the distraction had helped to subside her tears.

"I can," James said defiantly and started to hoist himself up onto the lowest branch. "Look." Young Emile was completely distracted by this and the tears were gone from her eyes. She stood up as he climbed higher up in the tree in order to watch him. He got as far up as he could and then looked down at her. I was instantly worried. He was so high up for such a young boy.

"Careful!" my mother's younger self and I were clearly thinking along the same lines. She seemed to have completely forgotten about her bloody knee.

"I'm fine!" he called, taking his hand from the branch and waving at her. She giggled and waved back. He reached out and plucked a pear from a branch before he began to inch his way back down the tree with the pear still in his hand. "Look. Look at me I'm fine!"

Young Emile clapped her hands together in a childish delight as James's feet touched the ground. He ran over to her and handed her the pear, wiping away the remnants of her tears with his sleeve. Not that young Emile had even remembered that she had any to start with. They sat back down beside one another. After a moment, Emile spoke, "If your father works here, then where is your mother?"

"She's dead," the boy said simply. "Where's yours?"

"Inside," Emile said as casually as James had announced that his mother was dead. "My daddy's inside too, but he's away a lot."

"My father's never away," James said.

"Lucky," Emile sulked.

"Not really," James wrinkled his nose. "He never has time to play with me."

Emile looked at him, confused. "Grownups don't play."

"Father used to, but that was back when he didn't have any work. Now he never has any time," James looked sad. Emile nodded with understanding.

"I have time," she offered, taking his hand. They smiled at each other.

"Why don't your parents play with you?" he asked. She shrugged and drew her knees up to her chin.

"I think it's because they're married," she answered after a moment's thought. "Married people have no fun."

James nodded and then thought for a second. "Unless you marry someone fun." He paused. "You're quite fun... y'know, for a girl."

"You're fun too," Emile's smile widened. "Maybe we should get married."

"Maybe," he agreed. "When we're older?"

"Okay," Emile nodded.

"Okay," James agreed. They sat quite still for a moment. Emile took another bite of the pear.

"Emile! Emile!" a woman's voice called from inside the house. Young Emile frowned and they both turned away from us to look back at the door. It opened and a short, plumb woman stepped out. "Emile! Come here at once. Have you not heard me calling for you?"

"Sorry, Nanny," Emile said quickly. "I was only playing."

Her nanny's eyes had fallen on James. Her lips disappeared into one long, thin line. "And who is this you were playing with?"

James wiped his slightly dirty hands on his trousers. I saw them shake a little as he did so. "Hello. Sorry, miss. My name's James. James Sallow." He extended his hand to my mother's nanny in a very polite way, but she did not take it. She did not even smile.

"You're Mr Sallow's boy, I presume?" she asked.

"Yes," he nodded. James's hand lingered in the air for a moment. Her cold eyes stayed locked on his, she had seen his extended hand, but she still did not shake it.

"I see," she pursed her lips. James lowered his hand and squeezed it into a tight ball by his side. Emile started to frown, sensing that something was wrong by the way that her nanny was acting.

"James got me a pear," she said cheerfully.

"Did he now?" one of my mother's nanny's eyebrows shot up almost as far as her hairline. Everyone could tell that Emile had said the wrong thing.

"Yes," she nodded, trying to sound cheerful, but not wanting to anger her nanny any further. "I feel over and hurt my knee and James got me a pear."

"I see," he nanny said again, sounding even less friendly and far more formidable that before, if that were possible. "Well perhaps your father will have something that you young Master Swallow can do to earn his keep. Perhaps some stable work?"

James bowed his head. "Oh no," Emile sounded massively disappointed. "I did so enjoy having someone to play games with."

"Well maybe he can have Sundays off," she said coldly. "For church." Both children were now looking equally sad. My mother's nanny turned towards the door. "Come along now, Emile."

Emile hesitated for a moment before she turned to James. "Church doesn't go on all Sunday. We'll always have time for fun."

James nodded and the look in his eyes brightened. "Yes," he agreed. "And we'll have a life of fun when we're married."

Emile nodded.

"Emile!" her nanny snapped. Emile jumped at the sudden noise and ran, leaving James standing at the bottom of the garden. He waved at her as she went.

The door shut and the fog descended again, blanketing everything around us. My mother turned to me. She was the only thing I could see in the mist. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes, but I couldn't tell whether they were born out of sadness, or joy, or a mixture of the two. "I saw my James every day after that. My father- your grandfather- made him stable boy and put him to work in the stables. I'd make every excuse in the world to go down there. He wasn't really allowed time off, but when he was busy I'd find a way to sit with him. My father never understood my sudden and keen interest in learning to horse ride, but he was far too busy to take any real notice. Our friendship worked, I think, because he had no free time and I had too much of it. You know what it's like as much as I do, Isabelle. If you didn't have your James, your brother, what would you have done?"

I thought about it for a moment. All those childhood years spent rattling around in a giant house all by myself. That's what it would have been like without James. "I'd have gone mad," I said quietly. My mother nodded.

"As would I. If it hadn't been for my James. And before you ask- yes, this is where your brother got his name," she smiled and looked back at where the fog was beginning to thin again. I saw that now we were standing inside the garden. I could just make out the shape of a tree with two figures sitting underneath it. "He did get Sunday's off," mother said. "Those were always the best days."

She looked at the two figures and her smile became a wide one. It was a lot like young Emile's had been. Happy, innocent and completely naïve. The fog lifted again and the house came back into sight, London sprang back to life and all the noise came crashing back.

They were older now- James and Emile. They were teenagers, perhaps about seventeen, sitting shoulder by shoulder under the same pear tree that James had climbed a few years previously. Emile was sitting with an open book on her lap, tilted towards James. Both of them were laughing, their heads bent together. "No," Emile giggled. "That's not it. Try it again."

James sighed, but he was still smiling. He took the book from her. They'd both changed a lot in the years that we'd skipped. My mother was starting to look a lot less like me and a lot more like her. James was far taller than her. By that, I mean he was a good head or two taller than she was. He might have been the tallest person I'd ever seen. His hands, which took the book from my mother's small and delicate ones, were rough and calloused from years of hard work. One thing that hadn't changed was their smiles.

He squinted at the words on the page. Emile sat back and watched him, resting her head on the trunk of the tree. There was a moment of silence and then James gave another sigh, lowering the book from his face to rest it on his knee. "Emmy… why do I have to do this?"

"James," she rolled her eyes. "We've been over this. Education is valuable."

"Not for a stable boy, Emmy."

There was sadness in his voice that left a seriousness lingering in the air. Emile's smile faltered for a moment as his real meaning knocked her back. "Well," she said brightly. "You never know."

There was a moment of silence. Emile was trying to gloss over it, trying to smile it all away, but James had a point that he wasn't willing to let go of. "We do know, Emile," he said. "We know that I'll never be more than this."

Emile's smile was gone completely. "Not if you don't try, you won't."

"What's the point?" he asked.

Emile's face flushed with anger. "You don't care at all, do you?!"

"I will never be good enough for you. I will never be in a position where your father will accept me. You can try to change me into someone you're proud of all you want. But that will never be who I am. I can't do this. I can't be that man. It's time to grow up, Emile. We're not children anymore."

"Fine." She snatched the book from his knee and snapped it shut. She turned her face away from his and then shifted so that her back was to him. He looked at her, but she didn't turn back. Without saying a word he stood up and swung himself up into the pear tree on strong arms. He picked two and climbed back down before Emile had even had a chance to notice that he'd gone. He waved one under her nose. She looked at it and tried to hold back a smile. She didn't last long. She took the pear from him and turned back around to face him, still trying to look moody. James picked the book up and tried again. Emile watched him, taking a bite of the pear. She reached out and took his hand. He looked up from the pages. "I don't care," she said quietly. "I don't care that you can't read or write all that well. I don't care about money, or what you do, or what my father thinks or anything like that. I just want you, James."

He smiled. "Emile Swallow," he said. "Can you get used to that?"

She grinned. "Of course I can." He put an arm around her and she leant her head on his chest. She glanced at him, looking a little bit concerned. "We'll be alright, won't we?"

"Yeah," he nodded, resting his chin on her head. "Yeah, we'll be fine. We'll get married, start a family."

Emile smiled again. "A family?"

"Yes, yes. First we'll have a little girl."

"What will we call her?" Emile asked.

James didn't hesitate. "Isabelle."

"Isabelle," Emile tried the name out and smiled. "I like it."

James laughed and kissed the top of her head. The sight of them- both so young and happy and in love- filled me with happiness. Their voices faded away as the fog rolled in. I glanced at Emile and my heart sank.

Emile Norrington.

That was her name. Not Emile Swallow. Emile Norrington. My mother. She may have had a girl called Isabelle, but my father's name? Lawrence, not James. Young Emile's life hadn't quite worked out the way that she had wanted it to. She turned to me and all of her smiles were gone.

I didn't think that I was going to like where this story was going.

Thanks for reading :) Please review.