“I suppose I’m just a stickler for meticulously making bookings,” said Murray.

“I’m at ease with its effect on you, and quite resigned to it. I’ll be celebrating that resolve with the meal that surrounds and includes you in a few minutes’ time. I didn’t tell you about it any sooner, because it wouldn’t have been helpful to give you any more warning. You’d have just spent the whole time worrying about and put me through all those protestations and alternative suggestions again. I don’t think either of us needed to go through that one more time. It’s the one thing we’ve done so many times without having it lost in a time travelling gesture. Let’s just go out to the table and enjoy it one last, and in one sense, one first time.”

She put the lid back on the spray can and put it away. Then she picked up the pavlova bowl in both hands and carried it out to the dining table. He looked up at her facial detachment and tried to concentrate on bringing about one more time travel effort of his own. Nothing happened.

He could see that she had already set the table with a spoon and a napkin. So there was no chance of him attempting to get off the table and make a run for it while she was making a nonesuch return to the kitchen. He watched her sit down, pick up the spoon, dig it into the pavlova right under a strawberry, scooping both fruit and sugary dessert up. He saw her tongue come out of her mouth to recieve the spoon’s contents, and thought she looked more stunningly beautiful than he’d ever seen her before.

He watched her untroubled efforts with the spoon many more times, until there was nothing but a bit of pavlova and cream stuck to his body. She passed the spoon under him, and he slipped backwards and lay down on it, and watched her raising it to her lips. He saw her tongue come out of her mouth at point blank range and lick the remaining dessert elements from his body, before her free hand lifted him off the spoon, so that she could lick the cream from his sides and behind him as well. She turned him front on and licked him again, put down the spoon, and held him in her free hand. Replacing the spoon with a glass of water, her other hand raised it to her mouth. He watched the elegant movement of her neck as she gulped down a full glass of water in less than fifteen seconds.

“Does everything look all clean and shiny in there now?” she asked, and opened her mouth wide in front of him.

“Yes, and sparkly in the case of your tongue,” said Murray.

“And have you accepted that all your scientific techniques and tricks have run their course, and that your time has really come?” she asked, with an arousingly intelligent look in her eyes.