Daniel was clearly happiest when taking mental refuge in the memories of the earliest recollected years of his childhood, being those from age five to ten. Psychiatric text books had been documenting for decades the fact that many people, perhaps everyone at some stage, spends a portion of their adult life trying to recreate whatever situations had made them happy in the first ten years of their lives. For Daniel, everything seemed to have gone downhill in high school, with everything from school cadets to bullying and avoidance of drug pushers.

Trudi’s teenage years had been different. She didn’t feel that strongly attached to the first ten years of her life. But from age 15 to 17, she had been well liked at school, as her friends were fans of ‘Mountains Family’. All of her scenes had been filmed on Saturdays, which required any cast members and guest stars in her scenes to attend on Satudays as well, so that Trudi could continue with her regular schooling on the weekdays. She had left school at age 18, entering into her short lived marriage, while continuing on as a regular cast member in ‘Mountains Family’.

So her teenage years were the ones which were brought back to the forefront of her mind by Daniel’s second poem. She had spent fifteen years nostalgically recollecting the timelines in which she had eaten Murray. Now, for the first time since she’d BEEN a teenager, Trudi was consumed with happy memories of that earlier time in her life.

What also stood out in her mind was the fact that her teenage years had coincided with Daniel Blackridge’s childhood of ten years earlier in his life. His poem had poured out his attachment to the days when he’d been aged five to ten, and made particular reference to school holidays spent staying at his grandmother’s house. During those exact same years, she had been aged 15-20. She felt no nostalgia at all for her marriage, having been discarded for a different model when the user had grown bored with her. Yet being aged 15 to 17 was a time that she would give anything to return to, now.

Anything?

Even undoing the satisfaction that she still felt from having seen Murray finally accepting the immutable imminence of his fate that night in the pavlova? She began to re-evaluate the scenario in her mind. From her perspective, she had done that. Even if she time travelled back to an earlier time and undid that event, she would still retain the memory of the time that Murray had been forced to come to terms with being her irrevocable dinner treat at no cost to her own continued enjoyment of subsequent life.

As the final performing poet plunged the tone of the night into shameless crudity, Trudi forced her mind keep focussed on considering the effects of time travel.

In the very first timeline she’d known about, Murray had met her 37 year old self when he had been 27.