There was a high fence between the two properties, but soon Murray heard Trudi’s footsteps out on the footpath, and then she came into view. He saw her walking past, looking keenly along the footpath, then turning to face the street with her back to him, and then turning around and facing back towards her own property. Murray made sure that he kept himself well and  truly out of sight, and just peeked past a flower petal to monitor her movments.

“Why would he have run away?” he heard her saying aloud to herself, “Even I didn’t know I was going to eat him after all, until a few minutes ago. I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet, and now it doesn’t look like I’m going to get that chance... unless I already did.”

He knew that she had fully understood the story of how he had used mental time travel to escape from the giant widow. He guessed that she was just now joining the logical dots to work out that he could have been told of his upcoming fate in a second timeline, and then repeated the time travelling method of escape in order to get away from Trudi herself too. She wouldn’t have known that he only made it less than 24 hours into the past. She would have assumed that he’d played it safe and gone back weeks, maybe months or years further into the past, to a point where her even younger self wouldn’t have even known of his existence.

“I’m glad she doesn’t know how close she came to recapturing me,” he whispered to himself, “If I couldn’t get back any further than the middle of the night, I don’t think I’ll be able to time travel ever again, at least not that way.”

“For all I know he made himself five years old again, and resolved to stay out of my way,” she murmured aloud, “He’d be able to live all those years over again, with a fully educated and developed 29 year old mind. I suppose he’ll skip the cartoons and watch the whole run of ‘Mountains Family’ through this time, while hiding in the living room of any full sized local who addictively never missed an episode.”

Trudi wandered back into the house.

While she was presumably having breakfast, Murray walked through four more front yards, until he came to one with a pink car parked in the driveway and a bumper sticker which indicated that the owner was obviously a young woman. He waited until he saw her get in the car, wearing a business coat and dress which implied a day’s office work and drive off to begin it. Then he snuck into her house and used her telephone to call directory assistance. He got the number for Trudi, and managed to press the buttons to call her.

“Hello, Trudi Northumberland speaking,” came her voice.

“And it’s lovely to hear you,” said Murray, in as loud a voice as he could manage.