## Chapter 500 — Somewhere to Come Back To

For several breaths after the Lifegiver disappeared, Lethira did nothing.

The house had been quiet before. It had been quiet on mornings when Ian was elsewhere, on afternoons when rain kept even the birds close to shelter, and late at night after they had finished whatever small work had survived the day. This quiet felt different only because six voices had occupied the room so recently.

One of the cups still held half an inch of cold tea. Lethira carried it and two others into the kitchen, set them beside the basin and came back for the plates which had collected near the end of the table. There was no urgency to the work. Caswick's pudding bowl had dried enough that the berry streak would need soaking. A crumb of toasted bread had somehow reached the floor beneath Aelira's chair. The Waykeeper had left nothing behind except the memory of her staff leaning against the wall and several remarks Lethira suspected would become more irritating when remembered tomorrow.

She crouched, picked up the crumb and ate it. “Still good.”

Four empty chairs crowded the table. Lethira put both hands on the back of Mirelen's usual chair, intending to return it to the wall. She moved it perhaps a handspan before stopping.

The room had looked slightly ridiculous when they first brought all six chairs in. Too much furniture around a table which normally belonged to two people. Then Mirelen had arrived, and Aelira after her, and somehow by the time the gods were sitting down nobody had seemed to be occupying an extra place.

Lethira left the chair where it was. She collected the bread cloth instead and shook the last crumbs into her palm.

“I thought I would be more relieved when they all left. I am relieved. Six people are louder than two, and two of them being gods did not make them less capable of producing dishes.” She folded the cloth once, then again, and set it on the kitchen counter. “But I liked it.”

Her gaze travelled across the room: the scarred table, the mismatched signs of repair, the blue-glazed bowl still where it had been moved before dinner, the chairs which had held people from several parts of her life that had once seemed unlikely to occupy the same evening.

“Mirelen already knows this house well enough to complain about it properly. Aelira finally saw it instead of hearing reports about deeds and roofs. Your Waykeeper managed an entire evening without rearranging history.” A faint smile appeared. “And the Lifegiver asked where the dirty plates went.”

Lethira pushed herself away from the counter and returned to the table. She rested her fingertips against the back of one of the empty chairs, but again made no effort to move it.

“I don't think I want six people here every few days. Possibly ever again if the next six eat that much pudding.” Her humour eased. “But I think I understand why I wanted them here now.”

She looked around once more before turning her attention fully to Ian. “Which part of tonight did you like best?”

“That everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, no one got upset, and I didn't have to intervene and block a builder god being naughty.” Ian paused, looking around the emptied table. “And having all my friends together.”

Lethira's mouth twitched at the first answer. “An evening in which you never had to prevent divine misconduct. We should have written that achievement on the invitation.”

The amusement stayed for another moment, then softened as the second answer settled. She looked around the table again. Mirelen's familiar place was easy to identify even empty. Aelira had chosen the chair from which she could see the back door. The Lifegiver and Waykeeper had ended up opposite one another without anybody assigning them there.

“All your friends,” Lethira repeated, without mockery. “I think that may be the stranger part. Not that you have them. That those particular people can sit around one table and, for one evening, nobody has to be a princess, a Warden, a god being judged, a god trying to repair herself, or the man capable of stopping any of them if things go wrong.”

She glanced towards the kitchen, where the evening had left enough washing to resist any claim that the gathering had been entirely miraculous. “They were mostly just guests.”

Lethira was quiet for a few seconds. “Were you worried something would happen?”

“I think I was most worried about the two sisters meeting as they hadn't seen each other for a while and a lot had happened. Also, someone asking a question that was too much maybe? I wasn't expecting trouble, but I was just ready for it.” Ian looked towards her. “Did you have fun? I saw you talking to the Waykeeper outside.”

Lethira considered the first answer while she carried another plate towards the kitchen. “That makes sense. I was watching them too.”

She set the plate beside the others and stayed there, one hand resting on the edge of the counter. “Not because I expected either of them to start a fight. The Lifegiver had already agreed to the rules, and your Waykeeper has become rather better at recognising when a choice is not hers. But they are sisters who have spent a very long time knowing exactly how to hurt one another while believing they are helping.” Her mouth tightened briefly. “And a great deal has happened since they last stood in the same place.”

The first embrace returned to her: the Lifegiver stopping before touch, the Waykeeper closing the remaining distance herself.

“I think the moment I stopped worrying about that was when your Waykeeper found the dirt beside her sister's thumbnail. It was such a thoroughly unimportant thing to notice.” A small laugh escaped her. “As for somebody asking too much—yes. Mirelen came closest, I think, with the question about whether they still felt like themselves while they were limiting what they could perceive. It was a good question. It could also have gone badly if either of them had heard something different in it. But it didn't.”

At Ian's second question, her expression softened. “Yes. I had fun.”

The admission came without qualification.

“I liked feeding everyone. I liked watching Mirelen realise that irritating gods is apparently within her professional competence. I liked seeing Aelira in this house rather than discussing it as property. And I enjoyed discovering that the Lifegiver can become competitive about the crisp part of a pudding.”

She picked up one of the empty cups, found nothing left in it and put it with the washing. “And I liked talking to the Waykeeper.”

Lethira glanced towards the dark window. “Not about anything particularly important. She was still looking at everything as though it might become a road if she stared long enough. Outside she picked up an ordinary stone and examined it with enough seriousness that I laughed at her.”

Her smile returned at the memory. “I think she is trying to learn how to be somewhere without immediately asking what it leads to. She is not very good at it yet. But she came here. She ate our food. She sat still long enough to have a second pot of tea. Then she went back to the road because she still wanted to, not because the evening had persuaded her that stopping was secretly the correct answer.”

Lethira looked across the room at the empty chair the Waykeeper had used. “I liked that.”

Ian walked closer to her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “It was nice to have people in our house too.”

Lethira relaxed back against him almost immediately. One hand came up to rest over his forearm while she looked across the room at the chairs they still had not put away.

“Yes.”

For a little while she seemed content to leave it there.

“I liked hearing Aelira in the kitchen,” she said eventually. “And Mirelen behaving as though she had always been entitled to criticise the food. Even the gods started looking less strange once there were crumbs everywhere.” Her thumb moved slowly against Ian's arm. “I don't think I knew I wanted this house to be somewhere people came to visit until they were already here.”

She tilted her head slightly against him. “Not again tomorrow, though.”

“No, I think a bit of a break till the next gathering. Plus, we might go to theirs next time...” Ian smiled and kissed her neck.

Lethira's shoulders rose slightly at the kiss before settling again against him. The hand over his forearm tightened.

“That depends which *theirs* you mean. Mirelen would probably feed us properly. Aelira would pretend inviting us to the settlement was an ordinary social arrangement until somebody noticed who you were. The Lifegiver has a garden large enough to lose a dinner party in.” She turned her head enough that her temple brushed his. “And the Waykeeper currently lives on an unfinished road through her own mistakes, so I am not accepting that as suitable hospitality.”

A quiet laugh escaped her. Then she looked again at the four empty chairs. “But yes. Next time, somebody else can wash the pudding bowls.”

“What do you plan to do tomorrow? I'm going to see if the Lifegiver has decided if she wants an identity yet. I've researched what a viable minimum is for her on Earth, so I'm quite keen to see that through, but it's her call.” Ian squeezed her a little.

Lethira made a small sound at the squeeze and settled more firmly against him. “Tomorrow I want a slow morning.”

She considered the rest while looking towards the dark window. “If the bathhouse builder appears with the amended drawing, I'll deal with that. Otherwise I might go into town after midday and look at the Guild board. Nothing that keeps me away overnight. Or I may decide I have had enough organised activity for several days and shoot instead.”

The mention of the Lifegiver held her attention a little longer. “She sounded closer tonight.”

Lethira did not turn that into certainty. “Closer is not the same as ready, though. You know that. If she wants to see what you found, show her. If she decides she still wants another month of buying badly potted herbs without possessing a legal existence, then I suppose Earth will have to endure the delay.”

A faint smile touched her mouth. “I am curious what your *viable minimum* looks like. Last time you explained it, the difficult part seemed to be giving her enough history for the paperwork to work without quietly inventing a life she never lived.”

Ian showed her the researched identity on a parchment.

Lethira shifted enough within his arms to take it properly. At first she read with the mild curiosity she had shown when he described the problem rather than the solution. That changed somewhere between the place of birth and the list of documents. She went back to the beginning.

“Name not decided. Birth date not decided beyond the year and part of the year. A real place to be born. Home educated, so there are no school qualifications to account for. A pub that no longer exists for part of the missing history.” Her eyes moved farther down. “A bank account. Your national number. Healing records. Passport.”

She read the birth-certificate section more slowly. “This is much more elaborate than I expected from *minimum*.”

There was no criticism in that yet. If anything, Lethira seemed interested in the architecture of it: how several ordinary records could support one another without requiring an impressive life behind them.

Then she reached the family section. Her expression changed. She read the residential history again: mother until 2016, then the proposed woman beneath it—name still undecided, born in the 1950s, dead in 2016, cleaner.

Lethira tapped that part with one finger. “This is the problem.”

She looked up at Ian. “She said no family she never had. This does not merely put a woman's name in a box because a birth record requires one. It gives her a mother, says she lived with her for twenty years, gives the woman a job and a death.”

Her gaze returned to the parchment. The father's section received much less attention; the birth certificate itself already allowed him to be absent.

“I can see what you are trying to do. Almost everything else is deliberately unremarkable. No invented education. No impressive profession. No useful friends. Even the missing electoral registration seems designed to avoid giving her another history.” Her finger remained beside the proposed mother. “But unless I am misunderstanding your Earth records, this part is exactly the sort of invented life she told you she does not want.”

Lethira turned in his arms enough to face him more directly, still holding the parchment between them. “How were you planning to solve the mother?”

“Make her a work of fiction too. Hopefully she'll be okay with that. Otherwise it won't work.”

Lethira looked back down at the proposed mother. “That is cleaner than pretending she was somebody the Lifegiver somehow forgot.”

She read the line again, now treating the woman as part of the administrative construction rather than a lost relationship. “But I think you need to tell her exactly what that means before she agrees. Not merely that the woman is fictional. That the records would say she had a mother, lived with her for twenty years and lost her, even though none of those things happened to her.”

Her thumb rested against the edge of the parchment. “She may decide that is an acceptable piece of paperwork because nobody living is being given false memories and no real person is being drafted into her past. Or she may decide that having a dead fictional mother is still too much invented life. I wouldn't guess which.”

“No one will ask or know. It is just a requirement of a birth certificate, which is rarely needed either.” Ian shrugged. “I'll see what she says. I did also get a bit into the research.”

Lethira's eyes dropped to the parchment. “A bit.”

She let the two words sit there while her gaze travelled over the accumulated dates, document requirements, addresses, numbers and notes.

“Ian, you researched the administrative childhood of a woman who does not exist yet.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “How far is *a bit*?”

Ian smiled and buried his head in her neck. “I'm guilty as charged of administrative obsession.”

Lethira laughed, the sound partly lost against him. “Yes. I had noticed.”

She turned her face enough to press her cheek briefly against his head, then looked down at the parchment still between them. “I suppose there are worse things to become obsessed with. At least this one ends with somebody possessing the correct papers instead of you reorganising a kingdom.” Her fingers closed around his forearm again. “And you did all of that because she mentioned perhaps wanting a job.”

The teasing softened without disappearing. “That is very you.”

Ian moved around to face her and kissed her.

Lethira returned it at once. One hand came up to the side of his face while the other settled at his waist, drawing him the last small distance closer rather than letting the parchment remain between them. When the kiss ended, she stayed there, forehead lightly against his.

“The pudding bowl can soak.” Her eyes flicked once towards the kitchen and back to him. “Bed?”

“Thank you for letting today happen.”

Lethira's expression softened. “You didn't need my permission to want it.” Her thumb brushed once over his hand. “But thank you for asking me before you made it ours.”

“And yes, bed with the woman I love.” Ian smiled, took her hand, and they went upstairs.

Lethira's answering smile stayed with her as she followed.

The dishes remained downstairs. Water covered the pudding bowl; everything else could survive until morning. Upstairs, the house narrowed again to its ordinary scale. Six chairs and two gods belonged to the floor below. Here there were only clothes put aside, the familiar bed, darkness beyond the window and the stream faint enough to disappear whenever the room made another sound.

Nothing from dinner required solving before sleep.

Morning returned the house to work. Lethira woke first. By the time the kitchen had warmed, four of the extra chairs had gone back against the wall and the table belonged to two people again. The pudding bowl proved less troublesome after soaking. She washed it, inspected the faint berry mark still clinging near the rim, scrubbed once more and set it upside down to dry.

Breakfast was deliberately unambitious. No guest arrived. No god appeared. The bathhouse builder did not take advantage of the early hour to produce revised plans. Outside, the western land held the quiet left after a clear night, and the unfinished range remained exactly as unfinished as it had been before six people ate beside it.

Lethira had not settled whether she would go into Merrowford later or spend the day shooting. She seemed content to postpone the decision until the morning had earned one.

Later, Ian appeared in the Lifegiver's realm.

She was in the garden rather than beside the stream, kneeling at the edge of one of the beds with both hands in the soil. Several young plants stood in a line beside her, waiting to be put in. The crowded London basil had been split across more than one pot now; the divisions were not equally successful, but most had survived.

She looked up. Recognition changed her face quickly. Pleasure came first, followed by a glance at his empty hands as though checking whether the considerable research he had mentioned had somehow arrived visibly with him.

“You came.”

She sat back on her heels and wiped soil from her fingers onto the work apron over her clothes. “Is this about the identity?”

Ian walked over and embraced her tightly. “Yes, I'm keen, I know. But I wanted to show you what I'd done.”

The Lifegiver wrapped both arms around him and held him just as firmly for several seconds before easing her grip. “I know you're keen.”

There was amusement in it, but not irritation. She looked up at him, then towards the low stone beside the stream where they had talked before.

“And I did tell you I wanted to see it when I was ready.” Her gaze returned to his face. “I think I am ready to look.”

She wiped the last loose soil from her hands onto the apron, untied it and left it beside the bed she had been working. “Show me what you found.”

Ian handed the parchment over, removing it from the other world as he did.

The Lifegiver accepted it and carried it to the low stone beside the stream before beginning to read. She did not skim.

The first section held her for only a short while. The blank name received a faint smile. The proposed year of birth did not. She counted something silently, glanced at Ian, then continued.


She read the place names twice, sounding *Greensplat* under her breath as though deciding whether a village could genuinely have been called that.

“It is real?”

She did not wait for an answer before reaching the education section.

“Home educated. No qualifications.” That pleased her more visibly. “You resisted making me mysteriously accomplished.”

The residential history slowed her down. The unnamed mother. The years in Greensplat and elsewhere. Three years living and working in a St Ives pub which no longer existed. She traced the line with one fingertip before continuing through the electoral registration, bank account, National Insurance number, passport and NHS record.

By the time she reached the birth certificate, her attention had become considerably sharper. She read every numbered field. The blank father did not trouble her. The mother's entry did.

The Lifegiver continued into the final section and found the proposed woman beneath it: born in the 1950s, cleaner, dead in 2016.

For a while she said nothing. Water moved through the channel behind the stone. One of the newly separated basil plants shifted in a faint current of air.

“So.” She laid the parchment across her knees. “You have made the smallest life you think your country will accept.”

There was no accusation in the words. She looked down again. “A birth in a real hospital. A mother because somebody had to give birth to me. No father recorded. No school certificates. No electoral record. A few years of work in a place which cannot now be inspected very easily. A bank account. The numbers governments use to recognise a person. A passport.”

Her fingertip settled beside the proposed mother. “And this woman?”

The Lifegiver looked up at Ian. “Is she meant to have been real somewhere in that Earth, or would she exist only because my records need a mother?”

“She's fictional, not a real person.”

The Lifegiver's shoulders eased slightly. “That is better.”

She looked back at the line on the parchment. “I don't want some woman who actually lived to be turned into my mother because the records happen to fit. And I don't want strangers given memories of her, or of me with her.” Her fingertip remained beside the proposed entry for several seconds. “But if she exists only in the paperwork because the paperwork insists that I came from somewhere, I think I can accept that.”

The words came carefully, as though she was testing the boundary while she spoke. “She is not someone I lost. She is not part of my life. She is simply the smallest false statement required to make the rest of the documents function.”

The Lifegiver looked up at Ian. “No one would remember her?”

“I don't see how. The village doesn't exist; it was removed shortly after you were ‘born’. That was one reason for choosing it.”

The Lifegiver looked down at the parchment again. “That is rather clever.”

Her finger moved from the proposed birthplace to the later addresses, following the constructed life forward. “Not because nobody could ever ask questions. Because there is less surviving ordinary life for the paperwork to contradict.”

She sat with that for a moment. “I think I can live with a fictional mother on those terms.” The phrasing made her pause. A small, rueful smile followed. “Poor choice of words.”

She tapped the parchment once. “But I mean it. If she exists only as the necessary explanation for why an infant appears in a birth register, and nobody is made to remember loving her or knowing me, then I don't feel as though I am stealing someone's life.”

Her attention moved farther down the page. “The pub worries me less. A place can have employed somebody without needing anyone alive to remember the employee personally.”

Then she looked up. “Would any part of this require giving living people memories of me?”

“None. If someone really started digging they might find gaps, or more likely just an unusual lack of record.”

The Lifegiver nodded slowly. “That I can accept.”

She looked down at the parchment again, but this time the gaps seemed to interest her rather than trouble her. A life thin enough to look unusual if examined closely was still different from a life padded out with invented friends, teachers, neighbours and employers who had somehow known her.

“I would rather have missing pieces than false people. And if somebody someday asks why there is so little, I can deal with the question then. I don't need you to solve every possible suspicion before it exists.”

She smiled faintly, apparently aware that this instruction was directed at exactly the person most likely to try.

The parchment remained across her knees. “I think the structure is acceptable. But I want the things which are actually mine to choose to be mine.” She touched the blank name first. “So. What do I still need to decide before you could make the records real?”

“Names and dates that are TBC or xx/yy, et cetera.”

The Lifegiver looked down and began finding them. “The name first.”

Her finger rested over the empty line longer than any of the administrative numbers had held her attention. “That feels considerably more real than choosing when the paperwork says I was born.”

She read the proposed year again, then the incomplete dates farther down. “I can choose dates. They are only anchors for records. But if I am going to walk into a shop, apply for work and answer when somebody asks who I am, I would like the name to feel like mine rather than something selected because it fits a form.”

She went quiet, still looking at the blank. “I have never needed one that wasn't a title.”

The stream continued beside them.

“What names did you find?”

“None. I'm going to alter history so they appeared in the system at the correct time.”

The Lifegiver's attention sharpened. She looked back over the dates on the parchment, then at Ian.

“Alter the records backwards, you mean.”

It was not quite a question yet. She worked through the distinction herself. “So that when somebody checks the birth register, the tax records, the bank or whatever other systems ought to have known about me years ago, they find entries which have always been there from their point of view.”

Her expression grew more serious. “But the missing life stays missing. Nobody remembers meeting me. No childhood actually happened. No pub worker remembers sharing a shift with me. The history of the records changes; people do not acquire a history with me.”

She tapped the parchment lightly. “That distinction matters to me.”

“I mean I will go back in time and change the written records then, not add them now backdated. And yes, no human minds edited by me, and you can choose a first name and family name.”

The Lifegiver went still for a moment at the first clarification. “Actually go back.”

Her eyes returned to the parchment. “So the register really receives an entry in 1996. The later records are genuinely entered when their dates arrive. What changes is the documentary history, not the memories of the people living alongside it.”

She considered that much more carefully than she had the possibility of records simply appearing complete in the present. “I prefer that.”

Her fingertip rested beside the blank name. “It is still a past I didn't live. But the false part remains where we have agreed it may remain: paper describing the minimum shape Earth requires a person to have. You aren't filling the empty space with people who remember me.”

The seriousness eased when she returned to the name. “A first name and a family name.”

She smiled faintly. “I have spent longer choosing what to do with one basil plant.”

The blank suddenly seemed to deserve considerably more attention than every government number beneath it. “I want something ordinary enough that the name itself does not become another explanation I have to give, but I don't want to choose one merely because it is convenient.”

She looked at Ian. “Would an unusual name cause practical problems?”

“Only if I can't say ‘<unpronounceable> is good looking’.” Ian smiled. “It depends how unusual. Lifegiver probably would raise questions... I don't know really...”

The Lifegiver stared at him for half a second before laughing. “That was a very poor argument for choosing an easy name.”

She looked back at the blank line, still smiling. “And no, I am not putting *Lifegiver* on a passport. I have learned enough about Earth to understand that introducing myself to a florist that way would create the wrong sort of conversation.”

Her expression turned thoughtful again. “Ordinary, then. Not invisible. Just something a person can hear once, spell without a theological discussion and use without wondering why my parents hated me.”

She traced the empty space with one fingertip. “I think I want to hear some possibilities before I choose. Not because you are choosing for me. Because I have no idea what an ordinary English woman's name from 1996 sounds like.”

Ian showed her a list of common British girls' names from the 1990s: Sophie, Chloe, Jessica, Hannah, Lauren, Emily, Charlotte, Rebecca, Megan, Shannon, Katie, Bethany, Laura, Georgia, Lucy, Emma, Jade, Sarah, Alice and Holly.

The Lifegiver read through it once without speaking. Then she went back to the beginning and tried several aloud, not performing them for Ian so much as testing what happened when she imagined answering to them.

“Sophie.” A pause. “Chloe.” That one earned a small frown. “Jessica. Hannah. Emily.”

She continued more quickly through the rest, then returned to three. “Emily. Alice. Sophie.” Her fingertip moved between them. “I like *Alice* more than I expected.”

She said it again, quieter. “Alice.”

For a moment her expression became oddly intent, as though the name had shifted from a word on Ian's list into something she could picture a stranger using across a shop counter. “I think that could be mine.”

Then she looked farther down the parchment, where the second blank still waited. “Family names are going to be worse, aren't they?”

“Alice is good looking,” Ian tested. “Works well.” He paused. “Family names... are tricky. Is Green too obvious? It's quite common.”

The Lifegiver considered that. “Obvious to us, perhaps.”

She tried it aloud. “Alice Green.” Again, more slowly. “Alice Green.”

Her expression turned thoughtful rather than dismissive. “I would know why we chose it. You would know. Anyone else would simply hear a common family name.”

She glanced towards the garden around them. “That might be enough symbolism.”

A faint smile returned. “I think I like it.”

“A forename for your mother, then.”

Alice's expression changed slightly at the wording. “My fictional mother.”

She said it without discomfort, more as a boundary she wanted kept accurate. “That one matters less to me. She does not need a name I would have loved calling her. She needs a name an English woman born in 1956 could have had without anybody noticing it.”

Alice looked down at the blank beside **Green**. “I would still rather choose it than have the machinery choose for me. What were common names for women born around then?”

“Susan. Linda. Christine. Margaret. Janet. Patricia. Carol. Elizabeth.”

Alice listened through the list, then repeated several under her breath.

“Margaret Green sounds as though she ought to have opinions about curtains.” Her mouth twitched. “Elizabeth is too grand for someone we are deliberately making administratively uninteresting. Susan...” She tried it with the surname. “Susan Green.”

A pause.

“Yes. I think Susan works.”

She looked down at the parchment again. “Alice Green, daughter of Susan Green.”

This time the invented relationship did not seem to trouble her. She regarded it as a line in a record rather than a recovered piece of herself. “Susan, then.”

“And date of birth: for the Goddess of fertility it has to be spring really, so March, April or May.”

Alice gave him a look which was half amusement and half consideration. “That is very obvious.”

She glanced towards the garden, where new growth made the argument difficult to dismiss entirely. “Which does not make it bad.”

Her finger hovered over the blank date. “March still feels like the world deciding whether it means it. May feels almost too settled.” She thought for another moment. “April.”

The word seemed to please her. “Something in the middle. Things growing, weather still changing its mind.”

She looked up at Ian. “April.”

“And a day, not the first.”

Alice laughed. “I wasn't going to choose the first simply because it was convenient.”

She looked at the blank date for a little longer, then seemed to make the decision almost deliberately before she could turn it into another problem. “The fourteenth.”

She traced the imagined figures with one finger. “Fourteenth of April, 1996.”

Alice read the whole line once. “That feels sufficiently arbitrary to belong to a real person.”

They settled Susan Green's administrative dates as well: born 22 July 1956, dead 3 November 2016, with Alice's birth registered three days after it occurred. The fictional mother remained exactly that—an administrative person in the records, not a real woman drafted into the role and not a relationship implanted into anyone's memory.

The garden did not change around Alice when the last blank was filled. Nothing divine fell away. The new name simply sat beside the title she had carried for ages: something a stranger on Earth could say to her without knowing anything else.

“A few more things to sort out, but that feels like progress.” Ian hugged her. “I feel like the admin side of this is more for my benefit.” He blushed.

Alice returned the hug and stayed close long enough for the admission to settle. “I had noticed.”

There was no accusation in it. If anything, the amusement in her voice made the blush worse.

“You like taking something complicated and making the pieces agree with one another. I think the difference is that this time you are not pretending you dislike it.” She drew back enough to look at him. “I want the identity because I want to be able to go there without borrowing my existence from you every time. The paperwork itself could vanish into a hole in the ground once it has done that job, as far as I am concerned.”

Her smile softened. “So if filling in the impossible forms makes you happy, I am willing to let that be part of the arrangement.”

“Thanks, boss.”

Alice's smile changed immediately. “There it is.”

She folded her arms with exaggerated composure, although the effect was undermined by how pleased she looked. “I was beginning to think *Alice Green* had somehow made me respectable.”

A beat passed. “Fortunately, my subordinate remains committed to preventing that.”

“Ms. Green.” Ian bowed slightly.

Alice stared at him, then laughed hard enough to lose whatever dignity the new name was supposed to have provided.

“Oh, that is dreadful.” She put one hand over her face for a moment, still laughing, then lowered it and attempted something resembling composure. “Do it again after I have the passport. I want to know whether it becomes worse once the government agrees with you.”

“We need to find you somewhere to live, I think. We should maybe do that next. But first.”

Ian altered the manifestation's documentary history at the points where the records belonged rather than simply adding present-day entries with old dates. Alice remained on the low stone while the effect reached backward through the systems Ian had researched. She acquired no childhood memories, no recollection of Susan Green, no remembered school, colleagues or neighbours. No human mind was edited to remember either woman.

Registers and databases acquired the agreed entries. Her bank account accumulated the thin transaction history expected of the frugal life on the parchment, leaving a modest balance rather than an implausible windfall. Tax and National Insurance records acquired the minimum PAYE and contribution history consistent with that scaffolding; a sparse credit file followed the ordinary documentary ripples. The past remained thin where they had chosen to leave it thin.

Ian then produced the present objects Alice would actually use: a smartphone connected on EE with access to Monzo and ordinary communications, a physical Monzo debit card, an aged certified copy of the birth entry, the historically appropriate National Insurance notification rather than the obsolete plastic card his early notes had assumed, an NHS record showing her number rather than a patient medical card, and a passport. He handed them to her.

For Alice, the first evidence was simply weight.

A small collection of objects now existed where none had a moment earlier: documents with different ages and textures, a bank card, the passport, the phone. None looked newly manufactured for presentation. The birth copy had the wear of something issued years ago and kept rather than displayed. The records behind them extended farther than the objects themselves.

Alice did not reach for everything at once. She picked up the passport first.

For several seconds she only looked at the cover. Then she opened it.

Her own face looked back at her beside a name which had existed for less than an hour from her perspective.

**Alice Green.**

She read it once, then again. The date beneath it was the one she had chosen.

Her expression became very still. “This is strange.”

She turned another page, then closed the passport carefully and laid it across her palm. “It isn't pretending I remember being her.” Her eyes moved to the other objects. “But the world does.”

That distinction seemed to matter enough that she sat with it before touching anything else.

The birth certificate came next. She found Susan Green's name and rested one finger beside it. There was no sudden grief, recognition or borrowed affection. Alice read the line as she had read it on the proposed parchment: a necessary statement about a woman who had never existed as a person in her life. Nothing inside her answered it.

She exhaled. “Good.”

The bank card was easier. She turned it over, recognising the sort of object she had already learned to use in London, except this one now bore her own name.

The phone was not easier.

Alice picked it up cautiously and examined the dark screen, the buttons along its side and the unfamiliar absence of any obvious instruction about where to begin. She had watched hundreds of people use phones in London. That suddenly seemed inadequate preparation for owning one.

Then she noticed the bank card again, the passport, the documents, and the fact that all of them now belonged to the same person.

Her.

Alice Green.

A small smile appeared. “I think I understand why you were enjoying the paperwork.”

She looked back at the passport. “This makes it feel considerably less theoretical. I can go back to London now without carrying money you gave me on a temporary card. I can apply for something. I can be asked for identification and have an answer.”

Her eyes lifted to Ian. “And apparently I now own a telephone which I do not know how to use.” She held it out slightly, regarding it with suspicion. “You are teaching me this part.”

“If you insist I spend more time closer to you, I shall be forced to comply.” Ian grinned.

Alice's eyes narrowed in immediate amusement. “That is an astonishingly dishonest description of your hardship.”

She kept hold of the phone rather than handing it back, turning it once in her palm as though the object itself had become implicated. “And I notice you have somehow arranged matters so that teaching me is both useful and an excuse to stay.”

Her smile lingered. “I approve of the efficiency.”

Then she shifted along the low stone, leaving space beside her. “Come on, then. What do I need to know first?”

“Press the top right button once, and release. It is the power and lock/unlock button. The larger one below it is two buttons, top for louder, bottom for quieter. It's keyed to your fingerprints already.” Ian indicated the screen after it woke. “The little icons that then appear are different functions. I've kept it minimal: a web browser, a phone, a text message and Monzo, the bank.” He paused. “None of those words will mean anything, I know.”

Alice pressed the upper button once and released it. The screen woke beneath her thumb. For a moment she simply stared at the sudden light, then at the small collection of symbols Ian had left on it.

“No,” she agreed. “They do not.”

She touched the side of the phone experimentally, then stopped before pressing anything else. “But I understand the shape of it. This opens it. Those change how loud it is. And these pictures are doors to different things.”

Her eyes moved between the icons. She pointed first to the telephone symbol. “That one at least has the decency to look vaguely like what it claims to be.” Then to the message icon. “And this one is writing to someone without paper?”

Her finger hovered over Monzo without touching it. “This is the bank?”

The web browser received the longest inspection. “And that one?” Her expression turned suspicious. “What exactly are you giving me access to when you say *web browser*?”

“Actually, that might be a mistake.” Ian considered how to describe it. “The sum total of human knowledge, depravity, belief, loss, humour and feelings.”

Alice looked at the browser icon again, then at Ian. “That is a very poor description of something you have already put in my hand.”

She did not sound alarmed. If anything, curiosity had sharpened. “The sum total is obviously impossible. But enough of all of those things to make the distinction unhelpful, I assume.”

Her thumb moved away from the icon rather than opening it. “I have spent a very long time being able to know too much whenever I chose to reach. I am not especially eager to replace divine intrusion with mortal intrusion delivered through a rectangle.”

A small smile appeared. “But I also do not want you deciding which parts of Earth I am allowed to see because some of them are ugly.”

She held the phone between both hands. “So perhaps the mistake would be pretending this is harmless rather than giving me access. Teach me how to use it without accidentally wandering into the worst thing humanity has ever put on a page.”

Ian showed her Google and SafeSearch and tightened Chrome's settings as far as he reasonably could. “I can't guarantee it. Please don't put any bank details or passport or birthdays or your name in.”

Alice watched the settings change with close attention, though most of the labels meant very little to her yet. “So this machine can know nearly anything people choose to tell it, but I should behave as though it is also listening whenever I ask.”

She looked down at the search box. “That feels familiar in an unpleasant way.”

The comparison did not seem to frighten her. It made her more careful. “Bank details, passport, birthday, name. Nothing which lets a stranger prove they are me.”

She repeated the list once, then touched the search field without typing. “And if I want to search for something I would rather strangers did not know I was asking about?”

Ian showed her private browsing.

Alice watched him open the separate mode and read the explanation on the screen before looking back at the ordinary browser. “So it forgets more when I leave.”

She considered that distinction. “Not *nobody knows*. Just less is kept here.”

That seemed to satisfy her more than a promise of perfect secrecy would have. Alice closed the private window, then opened it again herself to make sure she remembered how.

“All right.” She held the phone a little more confidently now. “What should I search for first?”

“Places to live in London?” Ian suggested. “Rentals, hotels. Maybe serviced apartments. We need to find one who will take you with no history.”

Alice entered the words slowly, correcting one mistyped letter before letting the search run. The page filled with choices faster than she could read them.

“Hotels I understand.” Her finger moved down the results without opening anything yet. “Renting sounds as though somebody may want to know where I lived before, whether I paid someone else reliably, whether I have work.”

She stopped at the unfamiliar phrase. “Serviced apartment.”

Alice read the short description beneath one result, then looked at Ian. “So this is somewhere more like a temporary home than a hotel room, but they still expect people to arrive and leave rather than prove they have already lived respectably somewhere else?”

Her expression brightened slightly. “That sounds closer to what I need.”

“After a while, if you like this parallel life, we can rent a flat or something, but they want evidence that is harder to manufacture but comes with time.”

Alice considered the phrase *parallel life*. “I like that better than pretending this is replacing anything.”

She looked again at the search results. “My garden remains home. This would be somewhere I live when I choose to be Alice.”

The distinction seemed to settle something for her. She opened one of the serviced-apartment results and began reading what was included rather than merely looking at the photographs.

“And if time there gives me ordinary evidence because I actually paid bills, used the bank account and lived at an address, then eventually the paperwork starts describing things I really did.” A small smile appeared. “I prefer that considerably to you inventing more of my past.”

She scrolled farther. “So for now I need somewhere temporary enough not to care that Alice Green has only just started behaving like a person.”

“And when I say *we* renting a flat, I mean you.” Ian blushed. “I wasn't intending on sharing.”

Alice looked at him, then at the screen, then back at him. “I understood that.”

The blush made her smile widen. “You becoming embarrassed has made it sound considerably more suspicious than it was.”

She shifted the phone into one hand. “I want somewhere that is mine to use when I am there. You can visit if I invite you.” A beat passed. “That seems safer for everyone.”

“Yes.”

Alice nodded and returned her attention to the phone. She scrolled through several listings more slowly now, ignoring the photographs at first and reading what each place actually offered: length of stay, kitchen, laundry, identification requirements, deposits, transport.

“I don't need impressive.” One listing disappeared beneath her thumb. “I want somewhere I can cook, somewhere I can leave clothes and books without packing them every morning, and somewhere I can walk out of the door without immediately needing you to take me somewhere useful.”

She paused over the map attached to another property. “And preferably not so expensive that Alice Green's first independent decision is to discover how quickly she can empty her bank account.”

Her eyes lifted to Ian. “Do you know enough about London to tell me which areas I should avoid for practical reasons, or should I learn that part myself?”

“A little. Anything in the City of London itself, but quite a lot of London is expensive.” Ian considered the alternatives. “House shares are maybe a thing. I think they're quite common for women to share with others—one owns and rents out rooms to cover the cost.”

He smiled. “Not sure how they'd feel about Alice having an older gentleman caller, though.”

Ian pondered it a moment longer. “I think the easiest way is I help you pay for a serviced apartment, you decide if you want to stay, get a job or whatever. Then try to find someone wanting to rent a room?”

Alice's attention left the listings at *older gentleman caller*. She looked at him over the top edge of the phone. “I think Alice Green can probably survive the scandal.”

The smile lasted another moment before she returned to the practical part. “A serviced apartment first makes sense. I already know I like being in London for a day. I do not yet know whether I like waking there for weeks, buying food because I actually need it, cleaning my own rooms and discovering that employment is less charming when somebody expects me at the same time every morning.”

She scrolled back through the results. “And I would rather learn that before moving into somebody else's home.”

Her thumb stopped. “The money bothers me a little.”

She looked at Ian. “Not because I think you are trying to buy anything from me. But if this is supposed to become my life, I don't want it to remain a life you finance indefinitely.”

A thoughtful pause. “So perhaps you help me begin. Then if I choose to stay, Alice gets a job and starts paying for Alice.”

“It isn't my desire to be your sugar daddy, no.”

Alice stared at him. “I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

She looked down at the phone in her hand, then back at him. “But I now possess a device which, according to you, can answer almost any question humanity has ever asked.” Her thumb hovered over the browser icon. The smile spreading across her face was distinctly unhelpful. “Should I search for it?”

“You'll need to learn the peculiar terms of my world eventually, so yeah, go for it.”

Alice opened the private browser with considerably more confidence than she had possessed a few minutes earlier and typed the words carefully.

**sugar daddy**

The results resolved. Alice read the first explanation. Her eyebrows rose. She read another. Then she lowered the phone very slowly and looked at Ian.

“Oh.”

A few seconds passed. “So an older man who gives a younger woman money or expensive things in return for some form of romantic or sexual relationship.”

Her eyes dropped briefly to the passport, bank card and phone he had just given her, then back to him. The silence lasted long enough to become deliberate.

“Ian.” Her mouth twitched. “You really should have checked that phrase against the immediate circumstances before saying it.”

“Technically you're many times older than me...” Ian smiled innocently.

Alice's eyes narrowed. “That is an extremely selective use of arithmetic.”

She glanced once more at the search result, then at the phone, passport and bank card spread beside her. “Although it does rather damage the usual arrangement.” Her smile turned wicked. “If age decides it, does that make *you* the sugar baby?”

Ian laughed. “Taken advantage of by an older woman, naivety exploited. Seems pretty accurate.”

Alice laughed with him, then looked down at the search result again as though checking whether it had somehow improved his defence. “Yes. Terrible. You arrived in my garden entirely powerless, with no ability to leave and no capacity to refuse me.”

She closed the browser. “History will condemn me.”

The phone settled onto the stone beside her passport. “Fortunately, I intend to exploit you mainly for technical support.”

“This is worryingly familiar to what all the girls of my teenage years wanted me for.” Ian let the joke land before returning to the practical problem. “So a serviced apartment, not funded in exchange for sex, then you can decide what to do. But if staying there is interesting, look to rent, possibly a house share? A house share would be a nice way to interact with people too.”

Alice's laughter faded into a smile. “I am choosing to believe the first part is tragic rather than evidence that you spent your adolescence repairing everybody's computers.”

She picked the phone up again and returned to the apartment listings. “Yes. Serviced apartment first.” This time she sounded decided. “Somewhere I can stay long enough that London stops being an outing. I buy food because the cupboards are empty. I learn the washing machine because nobody else will. I find out whether I still enjoy walking through the city when I have somewhere I am expected to return to.”

Her thumb moved down the screen. “And if I want to keep doing it, then work. After that, perhaps a room in somebody's house.”

She considered the idea more carefully. “I think you are right about the people. A flat entirely to myself would give me independence, but it would also make it very easy to spend all my time alone and call that success.”

Alice looked towards the garden around them. “I already have somewhere magnificent to be alone.”

Her gaze returned to Ian. “If I share a house eventually, I would like it to be because I want ordinary company, not because I need somebody to supervise Alice Green.”

A small smile returned. “And my scandalous older gentleman caller will have to behave himself in the communal kitchen.”

“I make limited commitments as to scandal involving a house of younger working women.”

Alice lowered the phone and gave him a long look. “That sentence has made the hypothetical house considerably more dangerous.”

Her smile betrayed her before she could maintain the severity. “I think the sensible answer is that if I eventually live with other people, you behave like someone visiting *me*, not like a man who has discovered an unexpected social opportunity.”

She picked the phone up again. “And if the household contains several younger women, I reserve the right to introduce you as my older technical-support problem.”

Ian laughed and gave her a hug. “Shall we find an apartment? I think there are plenty, so it's more around location, I guess. We can go look if you narrow it down to a few.”

Alice returned the hug, then settled beside him again with the phone. “Yes.”

She opened the search results and began treating them less as photographs of appealing rooms and more as places she might actually wake up. “Somewhere I can walk to shops. Somewhere with public transport close enough that getting lost doesn't become a full-day expedition. A kitchen I can genuinely cook in, not one shelf and a decorative pan. Laundry would be useful.”

She dismissed one listing almost immediately after finding that its attractive weekly price concealed a much longer minimum commitment. “And not somewhere chosen because it is impressive.”

Another disappeared when she found the location inconvenient.

For the next several minutes Alice worked mostly by herself. She moved between maps, photographs and descriptions, occasionally reopening the street atlas beside her when the shape of London on the screen became too abstract. The process seemed to please her: not being delivered to the correct answer, but reducing a city by preferences she was discovering while using them.

Eventually she saved three. “One near the river, though perhaps too expensive. One farther west which seems more ordinary. And this one.”

She turned the phone towards Ian. “The third is not the prettiest, but it has a proper kitchen, a washing machine, shops nearby and a station within walking distance.”

Alice looked between the three saved listings. “I want to see these rather than decide from photographs.”

Ian took her hand. “Ready?”

Alice looked once at the passport and phone beside her, then gathered both along with the bank card and slipped them into her bag. The hesitation, when it came, was brief.

“Yes.” Her fingers tightened around his. “Take me to the first one.”

They appeared in a pedestrian cut between two narrow streets, London offering limited quiet even there.

Alice's grip on Ian's hand tightened for the instant of transition and then relaxed. The garden vanished into brick, paving and the layered noise of the manifested city. Traffic reached them indirectly from somewhere beyond the buildings. A delivery van reversed with intermittent electronic beeps. Footsteps crossed one end of the passage without the walker looking down it.

Alice took out her phone. This time she did not wait for Ian to orient her. She opened the map, found the marker for the first apartment and compared it with the nearest street name. The process was slower than it would have been for somebody accustomed to the screen, but the street atlas remained in her bag.

After a moment she pointed towards one end of the cut. “That way.”

A small satisfaction showed in her face. Then she looked at Ian. “Walk with me?”

“Of course.”

Alice smiled and started towards the street she had chosen, still holding his hand.

The passage opened almost immediately into ordinary London inconvenience: parked vans narrowing the road, bicycles chained to railings, scaffolding around one frontage and pedestrians repeatedly deciding that two people could occupy the same strip of pavement provided neither admitted defeat first.

Alice checked the phone at the first junction. She nearly turned the wrong way, stopped, looked at the map again and corrected herself without comment.

The apartment building proved less impressive than its photographs. The entrance sat between a café and a small convenience shop, with a narrow lobby visible through glass doors and a discreet sign carrying the serviced-apartment company's name. People moved past without paying it any attention.

Alice stopped across the pavement from it. “I like that.”

Her gaze travelled upward over the building. “Not the building particularly. That nobody cares.”

She looked towards the café, then the shop, then back to the entrance. “If I stayed here, I could buy food without planning an expedition, and there are enough people around that I wouldn't feel as though I had been hidden somewhere.”

She glanced at Ian. “Shall we go inside and ask to see one?”

Ian nodded and followed her inside.

The lobby was smaller than the photographs had suggested. A reception desk occupied one wall, with two chairs opposite it and a rack of tourist leaflets beside the entrance. The air smelled faintly of coffee from next door whenever the outer doors opened.

Alice slowed for half a step. Until now, every part of this had been private: a garden, a parchment, a passport placed into her hand. The woman behind the desk was the first stranger who might expect **Alice Green** to behave like someone whose existence required no explanation.

Alice approached the desk. “Hello. I saw your apartments online. I'm considering staying for a few weeks, possibly longer, and I'd like to see one before I decide. Is that possible?”

The receptionist smiled and asked which apartment type she had been looking at. Alice took out her phone, found the saved listing without Ian's help and showed her the screen.

“This one.”

The receptionist checked something on her computer. “We do have that layout available to view. I can take you up in a moment. Would the booking be for one person?”

Alice paused only briefly. “Yes. Just me.”

As they went upstairs, Ian wondered whether the receptionist would refer to him as Alice's father, friend or something else, or simply avoid comment.

The receptionist did not attempt to classify him. Once she had collected a key card and stepped out from behind the desk, she simply looked between them and said, “You're both welcome to come up.”

Alice noticed the wording. Her eyes flicked briefly towards Ian, but she said nothing.

The lift was narrow enough that three people filled it comfortably without leaving much unused space. The receptionist pressed the floor button and spent the short journey explaining the practical terms instead: housekeeping frequency, what was included in the rate, how laundry worked in this apartment type and where deliveries could be left.

No question came about whether Ian was Alice's father, partner, friend or anything else.

When the doors opened, Alice followed the receptionist into the corridor with the faintest trace of amusement still at the corner of her mouth. Ian walked behind them.

The receptionist stopped at one of the doors, touched the key card to the reader and held it open.

The apartment beyond was smaller than the photographs had made it feel, though not dishonestly so. A short entrance led directly into a combined kitchen and sitting space. The kitchen occupied one wall with a proper hob, oven, sink and refrigerator rather than the token arrangement Alice had been wary of. A small table stood near the window. Beyond an open doorway lay the bedroom; another door led to the bathroom.

Alice stepped inside and looked around before touching anything.

The receptionist pointed out the washing machine beneath the kitchen counter, showed where cookware and crockery were stored, then explained that ordinary utilities, internet and scheduled cleaning were included in the rate. Longer stays reduced the nightly cost, though the exact price depended on dates.

Alice opened one cupboard, then another. Pots, plates, glasses. Nothing remarkable. That seemed to please her.

She moved to the window and looked down at the street they had just entered from. The convenience shop sign was visible from one side; farther away, the tops of buses moved beyond the junction.

“This feels more like somewhere I could actually live than the hotel did.”

The receptionist, taking it as an ordinary prospective guest's comment, smiled. “That's generally what people use these for.”

Alice turned back towards the room. She did not look overwhelmed. She looked as though she had begun mentally placing groceries in cupboards.

Then her attention found Ian. “I think I like this one.”

Ian leaned closer and whispered, “Shall we take it for four weeks, with an option to renew, and see how it goes?”

Alice looked around the room once more: the usable kitchen, the small table, the washing machine beneath the counter and the ordinary London street below the window. Then she nodded.

“Four weeks.” Excitement showed now that the decision had a definite shape. “That is long enough to find out whether I like living here, and short enough that I am not pretending I already know.”

Alice turned back to the receptionist. “I'd like to take it for four weeks, please. And if I want to stay longer after that, can I extend the booking if there is availability?”

The receptionist nodded. “Yes. We can book four weeks now. If you decide you want longer, let us know as early as you can. We can usually extend, but it depends on whether this apartment has already been allocated to somebody else after your departure date.”

She opened the booking page on her tablet. “For a stay that length, we take the first payment at booking and a security deposit. The rate includes electricity, water, heating, Wi-Fi and one housekeeping visit each week. Towels and bedding are changed then as well, although you can decline the cleaning if you prefer.”

Alice nodded, following each item. “The kitchen equipment stays?”

“Yes. Everything you saw in the cupboards is included. If something is missing or damaged when you arrive, tell reception rather than replacing it yourself.”

The receptionist continued. “We'll need photo identification for the guest making the booking, a payment card and your contact details. For a short serviced stay we don't need landlord references or employment references.”

That caught Alice's attention. “So you do not need evidence that I have rented somewhere else before?”

“No. Not for this property and this booking.”

The answer visibly pleased her.

“There is also a cancellation period written into the booking terms, and after check-in there are different rules if you decide to leave early. I'll show you those before you pay rather than try to summarise them from memory.” The receptionist scrolled farther down. “No smoking. No parties or events. Visitors are allowed, but the apartment is booked for one resident, so somebody else cannot effectively move in without being added to the booking. Reception is staffed all day, with an overnight contact number if something goes wrong.”

Her glance passed briefly over Ian without attempting to define what kind of visitor he might be.

“For four weeks, the easiest arrangement is payment in full for the stay plus the deposit. If you extend, we price the additional period at the rate available then.”

Alice looked at Ian, then back to the receptionist. “And if I decide after three weeks that I want another month?”

“Ask us then. Earlier if you already know. If this apartment is unavailable, we may have another in the building.”

The receptionist tilted the tablet so Alice could see the summary. “If those terms suit you, we can go downstairs and start the booking.”

Alice read the summary once more, then nodded. “Yes. I'm happy with that.”

She handed the tablet back, and they returned downstairs with the receptionist.

The lobby felt more consequential now than it had on the way in. Alice still carried the same passport and bank card, but the next few minutes would turn them from proof that she could exist into tools for actually living somewhere.

At the desk, the receptionist opened the booking form. “Right. I'll need the name exactly as it appears on your passport first.”

Alice opened it herself. “Alice Green.”

Ian smiled and let her continue. She supplied the remaining details herself as the receptionist asked for them: passport, phone number, email address and the payment information required for the stay.

When the total appeared, Ian suggested sending the money to Alice's own account so she could make the payment herself. Part of his first thought had been that using her own banking might help establish her credit history; a debit-card purchase itself would not do that, but it would at least make this present transaction genuinely hers rather than another payment made in Ian's name.

Alice understood the more important distinction immediately. “Yes. Do that.”

Ian sent the money to her Monzo account.

Her phone vibrated. Alice looked down at it, opened the bank app and found the balance had changed. “That was alarmingly quick.”

The receptionist waited without interest while Alice checked the amount against the booking total. Whatever relationship existed between the two people in front of her was apparently less important than whether the card payment cleared.

Alice took out her own debit card. “So I pay.”

She used the terminal herself. The pause while it processed was only a few seconds. Alice watched the screen with considerably more concentration than the transaction deserved.

**APPROVED.**

Her shoulders relaxed.

The receptionist printed the booking confirmation and deposit receipt, then sent the same information electronically to Alice's phone. “You're booked for four weeks.”

Alice accepted the papers. For a moment she looked at the name across the top.

**ALICE GREEN**

This time it was not a document Ian had created to make the rest possible. It was a record of something she had actually chosen and paid for herself.

Her smile came slowly. “I think that may be the first piece of paperwork which is genuinely mine.”

Ian smiled at her and pressed his shoulder against hers.

Alice leaned into the contact rather than moving away. Her eyes stayed on the booking confirmation for another moment before she folded it carefully and slipped it into her bag beside the passport.

“I know you paid for the beginning,” she said quietly. “But I chose this.”

The distinction seemed to please her. Then she looked up at him, still shoulder to shoulder. “I think I want to see what it feels like to unlock my own door.”

Ian nodded.

The receptionist finished the check-in steps, handed Alice a key card and explained the building entrance and lift access once more.

Alice listened, then took the card between two fingers. “Right.”

Upstairs, she stopped outside the apartment door they had just viewed. This time the receptionist was not there to open it.

Alice touched the card to the reader. A light changed, followed by a quiet click from the lock. She pressed the handle and opened the door.

For a moment she remained on the threshold, looking into the same small kitchen and sitting room as before. Nothing about the apartment had changed. Her relationship to it had.

Alice stepped inside, turned around and smiled at Ian from her own doorway. “Do you want to come in?”

“If the scandal can hold it, yes please.”

Alice's smile widened. “I think the building will survive.”

She stepped back and held the door open for him. “Come in, then.”

Once Ian had crossed the threshold, Alice closed the door behind them and stood for a moment with one hand still on the handle. The apartment was quiet in the particular way of somewhere not yet lived in. No groceries. No clothes. No books. Nothing on the table except the information folder the building had left there.

Alice looked around. “So.”

She let the word sit in the empty room. “This is mine for four weeks.”

“At least four weeks.” Ian touched her arm. “Happy?”

Alice looked around the apartment once more before answering. “Yes.” The word came easily. Then she laughed, quieter. “More than I expected.”

Her hand came up over his where it rested against her arm. “I thought the passport would be the moment it became real. Or the name.” She glanced towards the kitchen, then the closed door behind them. “But this feels different.”

A small pause. “I can leave things here and come back to find them where I put them. I can wake up tomorrow and decide what Alice Green does with an ordinary day.”

Her smile returned. “So yes. Happy.”

“Do you want me to bring your other Earth clothes and things here for you?”

Alice considered the empty apartment again. “Yes.”

Her smile turned practical. “The clothes I bought, the London book, the atlas, my notebook and the things that belong to this life already.” She glanced towards the kitchen. “Not everything from my realm. I want this place to acquire its own things because I actually need or choose them.”

Her hand remained over his. “But those can come here.”

Ian made the clothes, London book, atlas, notebook and the other things from her visits appear in a pile on the bed.

“I also make it so you can come and go from this room to your realm, at will.”

Alice looked towards the bedroom. The pile itself made her laugh softly. A green dress lay across the top beside one of the bags she had carried through London, with the street atlas partly visible beneath it.

Then his second statement registered. She turned back towards him. “At will.”

Alice considered the closed apartment door, then the bedroom beyond it. “So I can leave through there like anyone else, spend the day in London, come back here—and if I decide I want my garden instead, I don't need to call you.”

Her expression softened. “Yes. I want that.”

She glanced towards the bedroom again. “It means this can actually be mine without becoming another place I need you to enter or leave.”

Ian nodded and gave her hand a squeeze.

Alice squeezed back. For a moment she said nothing. Then she looked around the apartment again, not with the uncertainty of someone deciding whether she belonged there, but with the practical attention of someone beginning to notice what was missing.

“I need food.” Her eyes moved towards the kitchen. “And probably something to wash clothes with.” A pause. “And towels which belong to me rather than the building.”

She smiled. “This may be the least divine list I have ever made.”

“Shall I leave you to explore Alice's life?”

Alice looked around the apartment once more. Then she nodded. “Yes.”

There was affection in it, but no reluctance. “I think I want the first evening here to be mine.”

She stepped closer and embraced him tightly. “Thank you. For helping me get here without deciding what I was supposed to do once I arrived.”

When she drew back, one hand remained briefly against his arm. “And you may visit.” Her smile turned faintly mischievous. “If invited.”

Ian embraced her back and kissed the top of her head. “I hope I will be.”

Alice stayed close for another moment. “You will.”

She drew back enough to look at him. “Just not because I need rescuing from the washing machine.” Her smile softened. “Because I want you here.”

Ian blushed a little and smiled at her.

Alice noticed. Her expression softened, and for a moment the teasing disappeared entirely. She lifted one hand and touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers.

“I meant it.”

Then she let her hand fall, still smiling. “I'll see you soon.”

“I know you did. I want to be here too.” Ian disappeared.

The apartment became abruptly quieter.

Alice remained where he had left her for a few seconds, looking at the empty space with a smile she did not immediately lose. Then she turned towards the bedroom. Her clothes waited in an untidy pile on the bed. The London atlas lay partly beneath them, and her notebook had landed near the edge. Beyond the bedroom door was a kitchen with empty cupboards, a washing machine she had threatened not to require rescuing from, and a front door which now opened onto a city she could enter without borrowing Ian's presence.

Alice picked up the notebook. On the first page remained the address of the florist.

She looked at it for a moment, then closed the book and slipped it into her bag beside the passport.

Food first.

She took her key card, checked that she had the phone and bank card, and opened the apartment door.

At the bottom of the stairs, Alice stopped.

*Because I want you here.*

The words had been simple when she said them. They had also been true.

She stood beside the lobby doors while a man carrying two shopping bags passed her on the way in, then stepped aside before she became an obstacle.

What had she meant?

Not that she wanted Ian available whenever London became difficult. She had been quite clear about that. She wanted to learn the washing machine herself, get lost without summoning him, choose work without having it arranged for her and find out whether she could build a life which did not depend upon his attention.

But she wanted him in it.

Alice frowned faintly at the pavement beyond the glass.

That was not entirely new. She had wanted him in her garden. She had wanted him beside her in London the first time, and had missed him during the second despite deliberately choosing to go alone. She had wanted him at dinner, noticed where he looked and felt pleased when he blushed because of her.

Lethira remained part of that truth whether Alice found it convenient or not.

She had not solved anything by acquiring a passport.

“Good,” she murmured.

A woman entering the building glanced at her. Alice smiled politely and went outside.

The neighbourhood became easier once it stopped being a prospective address. She walked first without a destination, keeping the apartment building behind her until she reached the first junction and then checking the map on her phone. The station lay in one direction. A small supermarket stood in another. There was a pharmacy, a bakery, two cafés, several restaurants and a shop whose window contained enough household cleaning products to make their individual purposes unclear.

She chose the supermarket.

This shopping felt different from buying ingredients for one recipe. Alice needed breakfast without knowing what she would want tomorrow morning. Milk had dates printed on it. Eggs came in quantities which assumed future meals. Bread required deciding whether she intended to finish a loaf before it became stale.

She bought enough for several days rather than attempting to provision an imaginary perfect household. Tomatoes went into the basket almost automatically. So did garlic. Alice caught herself considering another basil plant and walked away from it.

Laundry detergent took longer. She read three labels, searched one unfamiliar phrase on her phone, rejected an aggressively scented option and eventually chose something ordinary. Towels came from another shop farther along the street, along with a second mug because the apartment's identical white ones looked too much like hotel equipment.

She paid for everything herself. Nobody found this remarkable.

That remained one of Earth's stranger pleasures.

By the time she began walking back, both hands carried bags and the phone in her pocket had already become useful enough that she understood why people kept looking at the things. She checked the route only once.

The apartment building appeared ahead without needing to be searched for.

Alice slowed. For the first time, she recognised it.

Not as somewhere Ian had taken her. Not as a place from a listing.

Home was still the garden, with its water channels and impossible reach into living things. That had not changed. If she wished, she could return there from the room upstairs; London had taken nothing of that away.

For four weeks, this was where Alice Green lived.

She went inside carrying groceries, towels, detergent and one unnecessary dark-green mug.

London continued around her without noticing.