“I can hardly believe that we’ll be cheek to cheek like this 25 years in the past by tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“And lips to cheek, and tongue to cheek...” said Trudi.

“You’re really not helping my self control, you know. I’m trying to do the fair thing right up until the last second if this timeline,” said Daniel.

“That’s one of the things I’ll really like about you in the next one,” she said, “Which reminds me of some specific outcomes we’d better prepare for. We know that you’re here at your grandma’s every school holidays, but we don’t know the fine details from memory. If we arrive at a time when one or both of us is in a house with my mother or your grandma, then we’ll just have to start playing along in the roles of our younger selves.”

“That will be the most challenging part of it. I’ll have to play that part in order to conceal the time travelling of my mind for quite a few years. I’ll have to talk like a child again,” said Daniel.

“Well maybe that ’30 years old in the head’ accusation will help to cover any slip ups you make, but try not to,” she said, “We can each take the first available opportunity to head outside, under the fairly truthful banner of ‘playing in the garden’. Then we each just head to the row of trees and wait for the other, and compare notes. I’m glad that fence wasn’t there back then. It would have made all our upcoming rendezvous operations very tedious.”

They danced and talked for two hours, and then settled down in their separate bedrooms.

The next morning, after a breakfast which made another generous use of household supplies which would no longer be needed, they stood together in the living room.

“We should take off from the corridor with the windows that look out on your place,” he said.

They walked up the stairs and positioned themselves by the window.

“There’ll be plenty of cuddles in the new timeline, but would you like to launch ourselves back together in the shared posture of a hug?” she asked.

“Surely,” said Daniel.

They put their arms around eachother, drew close and embraced.

“Now just remember everything you’ve learned and practiced, and concentrate on going back to the school holidays of 24 years ago,” said Trudi.

It was eight-thirty in the morning, when everything seemed to dissolve from view around them.

The next thing Trudi knew, she was at the back of the garden of 69 St Patrick Street. She looked down at her clothes and saw that she was wearing a creamy brown and white dress. A few meters away from her was a garden seat, and just in front of that, the row of trees. She stood beside the seat and watched intently, waiting for some sign that Daniel had made the journey back with her. She had asked herself many times what she would do, if anything went wrong, and his mind was lost in the future of the old timeline.