Chapter Text
She thought she had imagined the call, but when Timothy stopped walking beside her, she turned as well, her nose catching a strong downwind whiff of fish from the pier. “Shelagh? Shelagh Mannion?” The man cut an impressive figure in a finely tailored suit, slender yet broad at the shoulders. He was near in height to Patrick, but atop his head was a flop of windswept dark blonde hair where her husband's was a rich dark brown. He had the clean sparkle of a man who clearly lived a very different life than the majority in Poplar.
Beside her, Timothy squeezed her hand and whispered, “who is that, mum?” to which she could only shrug. Her mind ran quickly in circles, trying to identify this stranger from her varied histories, but came up blank.
The man jogged four quick steps toward her before stopping a respectable distance away. “I thought that was you! I can't believe, after all this time... I heard you'd joined the order?”
Propriety required that she answer, though she was still stunned. “I did. I left. I'm terribly sorry and I'm quite embarrassed, but I must ask, do I know you?”
The man chuckled and shook his head. “Of course, forgive me. I am much changed since we last laid eyes on each other. It's Arthur from Aberdeen. With the ears?” He pinched the shell of his ears and pulled them slightly outward and Shelagh gasped. Arthur Stewart was a lanky boy of thirteen, no older than Timothy now, with ears that jutted aggressively out the side of his thin acne-marked face. Much changed, indeed.
She jolted back from the wash of memories from another life when Timothy squeezed her hand again. “Mum?”
As though he had just seem the barely teenaged boy beside her, Arthur started with widened eyes, before regaining his composure and turning to Tim with an outstretched hand. “Arthur Stewart at your service. Your mum and I were old schoolmates.”
The man had a strong grip and Tim responded in kind, maintaining eye contact as his father had taught him. “Tim Turner.”
“Your boy has a strong grip, Shelagh.”
Timothy was a subject on which she could dwell all day and she relaxed visibly, running a quick hand through the boy's hair. “That he does.”
“I'm terribly sorry, I'm late for an appointment, but I'd love to call on you some time. Perhaps we could have lunch and catch up?” In the fog of the past, Shelagh vaguely remembered nodding and taking a card printed on thick, creamy paper.
Then he was gone.