'So,' Nana said as she came back from the kitchen with a cup of tea, 'you're stuck here then?'

'I think so,' I said, 'maybe.' I took the cup from her and took a sip. 'It's hard to say. I don't think that anomaly'll reopen again anytime soon; it wasn't a natural occurrence.'

'And those other one's, they occurred naturally?'

I nodded. 'We think so.'

'When the electromagnetic energy builds up in a certain time, right, I get it.'

The fireplace was roaring, even though she also had a thousand candles lit– pretty typical for Nana– dried flowers hung from the ceiling and the picture rail, fresh lilies and purple hyacinths stood on the coffee table among books and trinkets, discarded necklaces and rings.

Nana herself looked no different. She was still wearing the same small, round spectacles on the edge of her nose, and still had the same ashy brown bob. Even her finger nails were painted the same shade of red I associated with her, and it matched her lipstick and the stripey jumper she was wearing.

She sat down on the sofa beside me, putting her arm around my shoulders, and dragging a blanket up over both our laps.

'Even if I could find another anomaly, which I won't be able to without a detector then there's no way of knowing where it would lead. And I've done that before– been trapped out there– had to find my way home.'

Nana nodded. 'I know, you know, I can see it in your soul. It's old before its time.'

And I knew what she meant. There had been so much trauma forced through it already that I was sure it was just as aged than hers and probably a lot more wrinkled. I took a sip of tea. 'Yeah,' I agreed meekly, 'and, this isn't like before. I was trying to get home to someone, this time he's here but he's not there anymore.'

'Oh…' the arm around my shoulder pulled me further back against her chest, her hand stroked up and down my arm. 'My darling, no. How cruel.'

The same familiar, debilitating pain crackled through my insides, and holding back the tears because I didn't want to cry anymore today, I exhaled a long and drawn–out breath from beneath my pursed lips. 'Same way.' As though by reflex I looked around the room, hoping to see something among everything there that could distract me because there was so much weird and eclectic stuff in Nana's house that this should have been easy. But almost instantly my eyes went to the mantlepiece, and I saw a photograph there that I recognised all too well. 'His name was Nick and he got shot too,' I explained as I stared at the photograph. 'Same as Will.'

'Oh,' she said again, softly– so softly it was as if she thought a tone any firmer might shatter me completely.

'And I… I lost a baby…'

I couldn't help it. Tears sprung from my eyes and I whipped them off my cheeks with a finger so quickly that they ran instead down my arm. I had to focus on not dropping my tea, a welcome distraction, and instead I lifted the mug to my lips and gulped.

'My darling, I am so sorry.'

'How did you do it?' I pulled myself up, out her arms, so that I could turn and look at her. 'How did you survive when you lost them?'

Nana nodded sadly. She bit the inside of her cheek and I watched the sadness trickle through behind her eyes For a moment I felt guilty for even bringing them up. As though she could sense that, she reached over, taking my hand in hers and sealing the other atop it.

'It was hard, losing my boy like that– seeing Connor so lost without his father– it was you two that got me through it. You were so young, and so kind to each other, and so beautifully comforting I saw what he'd left behind in his child and I knew that Connor would live his whole life growing from his father's influence and it was like he wasn't gone after all. He's the spit of his dad you know.'

I didn't much remember my uncle. I was barely 2 when he died. I didn't get the chance to explain that before Nana continued.

'When I lost my baby girl, that was different. It hurt the same way but the injustice of it made me so angry for so long because she was snatched away from me and there was only one person to blame for that. Then I realised it could have been worse. It would have been so much worse and I'm grateful that it wasn't. That I didn't lose you.'

I thought about my mum again.

Nana was right; it wasn't fair. 'I'm sorry she died.'

'I know,' Nana said. 'And I miss her too. Everyday. And I still talk to them and I think they reply in some many different ways. My dear… the afterlife isn't where they go,' she said, 'it's us who's left behind. And I try to celebrate everything they were, because all we ever are is how we're remembered when we've gone.' Her grip on my hand tightened, like she could tell what I was thinking. 'Don't feel bad now for feeling this way, my love, it's okay to be sad.' She leant in towards me, with the weakest of smiles, and kissed the top of my head. 'The kindest woman in the world is sad. Of course she is.'

'It feels like I can't breathe.'

'You are fire and flames, but the more you shut yourself away, the more you extinguish yourself.' She patted my hand. 'Drink your tea, take your time. I'm here.'

I raised the cup to my lips again and drank. 'You know, it's so good to see you.'

Nana raised an eyebrow. 'Oh god, I'm not dead in the future, am I?'

I managed a brief, breathy laugh. 'No. Don't worry.'

She put a hand back over her heart and sighed dramatically, 'oh, don't scare me like that.'

'Just,' I continued, 'stuff got busy, you know. And Connor and I didn't have as much time. We should come over more. We will– when I get back.' Then I had a realisation. 'If I get back.'

'Well, it's only two years my love,' she said. 'I mean, you could wait.'

I started to shake my head. 'I can't do that. Not with him here. The pain is… debilitating. I want to go to him and touch him, and hold him again… but I can't.' I looked down into my lap to avoid her sorrowful gaze. 'I'm going to have to find another anomaly.'

'But you don't have a … detector, did you call it?'

'I can build one. Connor did it before, we ironed out the kinks together. It should be pretty easy. Do you have a radio?'

Nana nodded. 'Course,' she said, 'it's in the kitchen. It's one of those Walkman's, it's got a clip. I used to use it while I was vacuuming see, but since that trouble started with my hip…' She wafted a hand by way of explanation as she got up off the sofa. 'I've been to the GP, love,' she continued like she could tell I was about to ask about it, 'they just said it was sciatica, that's age for you. And they gave me some painkillers but they didn't work–' I heard her routing around in the draws, searching through years of accumulating stuff, voice barely carrying back through the house to me. 'Oh! Where are my specks? ...Aha! –so I got in touch with that nice man, the one who works at the coffee shop down the road and every week he brings me some of the herbal stuff he grows in his greenhouse. It's a bit expensive, but it does wonders.' She came back into the lounge with her glasses on and handed the radio to me before she sat down on the edge of the armchair beside the sofa.

'Like herbal supplements? Do you make it into tea?'

'No I smoke it.'

My mouth opened, then closed again before any sound could come out. I wasn't going to say anything. I held up the radio. 'Thanks.'

'Oh, you're very welcome, I have absolutely no need for it anyway. But anything else you need, absolutely anything at all you just help yourself love, alright? I'll do whatever it takes to get my baby home.' She kissed the top of my head. 'I'm gonna go up to bed but I'll bring you down some trousers, you look far too chilly like that. Now, the spare room's all made up for you.'

'What?' I asked. 'When did you do that?'

'Oh, this morning love.' She patted my hand. 'Take whatever you want from the fridge as always, but I've got a cake to take to the ladies at mahjong in the tin so don't eat that one. I put some strawberry laces in the jar instead.'

'Thank you.'

'Of course.' She smiled softly at me then leant in to kiss the top of my head again. 'Goodnight, my dear.'

'Goodnight, Nana.'

I opened my eyes and peeled my face off the leather sofa arm at the noise of a high-pitched whirring beside my head. I saw the detector laid beside me on the cushion. The lights on the top were flickering red.

I must have fallen asleep at some point. I'd been around the house dismantling clocks, and lamps, and an old tv I'd found in the garage to try and make some sort of makeshift detector.

The final product looked like it would be much better at detecting ghosts than radio waves but there wasn't that much difference between the two so I wasn't disheartened by it.

And it was the best alarm I'd ever had; it was a good sign that the device was functioning properly. I sat up. The detector kept whirring as I took it from the cushion and extended the aerial. The signal grew stronger, the needle on the gage flicked round to point at the direction the radio waves must have been coming from.

I started to follow them.

The detector led me back into London.

I recognised the roads I was taking; I knew where I'd end up long before I got there.

I wasn't expecting it to be a building site, but of course it was. Nick said when he got back from his second expedition– when everything changed– that we'd moved from the home office months before I got back.

Currently it was just an empty space. A flat section of concrete.

This is where the A.R.C would be built.

I pulled up on the road outside, switched off the engine of the truck, and grabbed the detector from the passenger seat before I got out.

I could see the anomaly glinting in the middle of the site. And as I trekked across the concrete I kept a tight hold of the detector in one hand and reached back with the other for my knife; I had no idea where I was going.

I paused in front of this anomaly for a moment, just to gather all my thoughts as to whether or not this was the right decision because I was safe here. I could stay with Nana, I could live quietly for two years and then just pop back up in that field seconds after I had vanished, and no one would know a thing.

I could go to Nick, pretend I was me from then and talk to him, I could hold his hand again, I could wrap my arms around him–

I shook my head.

I had to get home even if he wasn't there anymore. I had to get back to Connor no matter how long it took. And I knew – as I took a final deep breath– that I would.

I stepped forward, knife raised and ready. The bright blue sky faded, the wind stilled instantly, I stepped through and came out facing a white wall. And there was a deafening loud sound blasting overhead. A familiar sound. A sound that instantly set me on edge because I recognised as the detector alarm.

Huh.

'Anna!'