“So if you woke up at six am on the previous timeline too, you’d have had nearly an hour and a half to think about me, before I awoke. I guess it must have been some time during that eighty-something minutes that your mind turned to thoughts of making dinner plans for that day which would not have worked out in my favour,” said Murray.

“I’m enjoying this discussion very much,” said Trudi.

“I like the way we’re filling in a few blanks for me too,” said Murray.

“So what happened next with you?” asked Trudi.

“Well it was still pitch dark in some parts of your room, but I had enough moonlight to work with. I slid and climbed down the blanket to the floor, ran across the carpet, out of your bedroom and out into your garden. I had to work my way around to your front fence, out onto the footpath, and then slip between the separated palings of the next door neighbour’s fence. I only just got there in time, when I heard you walking through your garden, humming the same old tune you sang in the ‘Mountains Family Easter Special’. I kept myself hidden in the front of the next door neighbour’s garden, and watched you look around the street for me and then heard you working out that I’d used another time travelling effort to escape you, after you’d told me your plans in the previous timeline,” said Murray.

“But how did you call me from the nextdoor neighbours’ place, when she stayed home all that day. I remember her car was in the driveway. It was the first one I checked,” asked Trudi.

“I ran from one property to the next, a few times, until I reached another one, just in time to see a lady leaving for work. I snuck into that house and made my first call. I realised how careless I’d been in taking risks like that, when you told me your plan to come out and find me, but I just had to hear the voice of the woman I loved once more,” said Murray.

“Very gallant, kind sir,” said Trudi, “Do go on.”

“I knew you’d be checking the house I was in soon enough, and it stood to reason that you’d get me,” said Murray, “There was no point in getting caught while trying to run to another house, and you’d have checked that one as well in due course. I hid myself in the only place that I didn’t think you’d look.”

“Where was that?” asked Trudi.

“In the battery compartment of the phone I’d used to call you, after I rolled the batteries into the waste paper bin and saw them fall between the paper balls and out of sight,” said Murray.

Trudi opened her mouth in surprise. From where he sat, the view of her tongue in her mouth was not as good as the view had seen when her previous timeline self had begun the process of eating him. Still it aroused him nevertheless.