“I imagine you’ve been time travelling again,” said Trudi.

“And I don’t have to imagine what you’d be telling me now, if I were still in your bed with you,” said Murray.

He didn’t want her to know that he was still relatively close to her, in her own street in fact.

“I thought that’s what had happened,” said Trudi.

“I decided that the best thing to do was go back to a point before you’d met me in your back garden. But after I escaped into the past, I wanted to talk to you. So I got your number from directory assistance and called you,” said Murray.

“And you’re telling me that you’ve been waiting in your younger body for weeks or months, how long exactly to ring me up and chat about it?” asked Trudi.

So far everything he had said had technically been true. He’d merely deliberately omitted to tell her that his longer time travel attempt had been cut short in the middle of the night.

“It’s probably best if I don’t tell you,” said Murray, “I was more than halfway down your throat, when I finally had the desperate thought of time travelling again to escape. That tends to put a different complexion on the concepts of self preservation and secrecy.”

“You needn’t bother trying to trick me, Murray. I still have a memory of everything right up to our last conversation before I dropped off to sleep for the second time after going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. That means you only made it as far back as the early hours of the morning, and had to escape from my bedroom the more manually exhausting way. It’s a shame that I can’t remember what it was like to have you in my throat. We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

“Not likely,” said Murray.

“I do take it from your account of events, and my having straightened out the full detail, that you aren’t able to travel back in time any further. Don’t answer or deny it. The conclusions are obvious. You can only have gone as far as your tiny self could walk or run in the last few hours, which by my reckoning doesn’t even get you out of my street. You’re obviously calling from one of the neighbouring houses, on a property that doesn’t currently have a car in the driveway, because the owner has gone to work and can’t catch you using his or her phone without paying for it. So all I need to do is check a few driveways for absent automobiles, and then perform a brief but necessary break in. I’ve plenty of earnings from ‘Mountains Family’ to reimburse the owner anonymously later, for any windows broken in order to gain entry. I’m coming out now, and once I’ve recaptured you, I don’t expect that you’ll be able to make another last second time travelling departure from my throat. I’ll see you soon enough, Murray.”