CHANGING GRACE
Terror clung to her soul as she stared at the portrait.
“How did you know, Harry?”
“How did I know what?”
“That his wife wasn’t from his time?”
The ageing man lifted the bottle of whisky and spun the metal lid off the glass top. She could smell the heady fumes of liquor as he lifted the open bottle to his mouth.
“Look closely at the portrait, Grace. Look at her wrist.”
She scanned the image, fighting the rising panic inside her.
“It’s my watch,” she whispered.
Harry put out his arm and dangled the bottle in front of her.
“Here, have some of this.”
Grace shook her head, wrinkling her nose at the smell.
“I don’t drink spirits.”
“It’s time you started then girl,” he said, lifting the bottle to his mouth again and taking a large sip.
“Harry I don’t understand. How could I have come to be in this portrait?”
“That is the mystery we must solve.”
“That portrait must be almost four hundred years old. That’s not a mystery in my book. It’s weird.”
He nodded, taking another sip from the bottle.
“Can’t argue with you there, girl.”
“What am I going to do, Harry?”
“Well you’re not going to panic, for starters.”
“How can I not panic? I’m sitting here on the floor of a pub, in a city I’ve only been in a week, looking at a portrait of myself that was painted nearly four hundred years ago.”
“I can’t tell you how this painting came into being, but Grace, you can’t deny its existence.”
She reached out and took the bottle of whisky from him. She ran her fingers absently over the label on the glass.
“What if it’s just a relative? That would make sense,” she said turning to face Harry with hopeful eyes. The elderly man shook his head.
“No, Grace.”
“Why? It happens. Genetics are a funny thing. There are people whose looks can throw back hundreds of years.”
“And the watch?”
“Ok, so that is weird. Someone could have painted it on. It wouldn’t be the first time a genuine painting has been tampered with.”
“I found this twenty years ago. The watch was there then and no one has touched it since.”
“Twenty years ago I didn’t have this watch. I was only a young girl.”
“But your future self four hundred years ago did.”
Grace lifted the bottle to her mouth and took a tentative sip, gasping and coughing as the fiery liquid slipped down the back of her throat. Harry laughed and took the bottle from her.
“You were right, girl. Stick to wine,” he said helping himself to another swig from the bottle.
Grace smiled and rested her hand on Harry’s knee.
“You have been a good friend to me, Harry.”
“Careful, you’ll have me blushing,” he replied patting her hand gently.
“Would you mind taking that portrait down?”
“I think that would be a good idea. Now that you are here, we don’t want anyone else putting two and two together. Especially Kate. She has a bit of a fixation with your future husband.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Sorry. That was crass of me. But it’s your fate and you will have to come to terms with it at some point.”
“How am I supposed to reply to that? It’s a ridiculous notion. No one travels in time. Einstein’s theory of relativity? Can’t be done, Harry, it can’t be done.”
“But what if he was wrong? What if neutrons could break the speed of light? Just because scientists haven’t seen it done doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done.”
“That would turn the world of physics on its head.”
“It would. But you can’t discount something’s possibility just because it will upset school curriculums.”
“I need a coffee,” Grace said, pushing herself up from the floor. Harry nodded and spun the cap back onto the whisky bottle.
“Bad habit,” he mumbled to himself as his stiff body rose to stand beside Grace.
“You ok, Harry?”
“I’m an old man. Sipping whisky at this time on a Sunday morning isn’t a good
Similar Books
