Chapter 1

The Call From Ten Years Later

The night before my final A-Level exam, my phone lit up with a video call from a contact that did not exist.

Evelyn Hart—Ten Years Later.

I stared at the screen until it nearly stopped ringing.

Then curiosity defeated common sense, and I answered.

The woman on the screen had my face.

Not a face that merely resembled mine. My face—my narrow chin, the faint crescent-shaped scar above my left eyebrow, even the habit of pressing my lips together when frightened. But she was older. Fine lines framed her eyes, and whatever softness I still possessed had been burned out of hers.

She sat in a wheelchair.

For one absurd second, I wondered whether Chloe had found some terrifying new filter.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The woman looked at me as if she had been waiting ten years to hear my voice.

“You,” she said. “At twenty-eight.”

My laugh came out thin. “Right. And I suppose you're calling to tell me tomorrow's exam questions.”

“I'm calling to tell you not to use the pens Julian gave you.”

Every muscle in my body went still.

Two black rollerball pens lay beside my admission notice on the desk. Julian Cross had delivered them that afternoon, tied together with a ridiculous blue ribbon.

For Oxford, he'd written on the tag. For us.

The woman leaned closer to her camera.

“The ink disappears when it dries. Julian switched your pens because Chloe wants your place at the top, and he is terrified you'll go to Oxford without him.”

“Stop.”

“Your answer booklets will look normal when the invigilators collect them. By the time they're scanned, most of the pages will be blank.”

“Stop it.”

“The exam board will record incomplete scripts. Oxford will withdraw your conditional offer. You'll resit next year.”

Her voice was calm, but her right hand gripped the arm of the wheelchair so hard that her knuckles had turned white.

“Julian will promise to wait for you. He won't. He'll go to university in London, and within weeks he and Chloe will stop hiding.”

My lungs refused to fill.

Julian had been my boyfriend for two years. Chloe Bennett had been my best friend since primary school. The three of us had spent every lunch break together, revised at the same kitchen table and planned a celebratory trip to Brighton after results day.

“Why would either of them do that?”

The older me gave a small, bitter smile.

“Chloe wants everything you have. Julian wants you, but only if you remain smaller than he is.”

I shook my head. “You're lying.”

“After you resit, you'll go to London to surprise him. Chloe will already be living in his student flat. When you confront them outside his faculty building, they'll tell everyone you're an obsessed former girlfriend.”

Her eyes dropped to her motionless legs.

“You'll run into the road because you can't breathe. A van will hit you before you reach the other side.”

The room tilted.

I caught the edge of my desk, knocking one of Julian's pens onto the carpet.

“Prove it,” I whispered. “Prove you're me.”

She closed her eyes for a moment.

“You've already chosen names for the children you imagine having with Julian. Rosie and Kit. Rosie because he gave you a paper rose with his first love letter. Kit because your first proper date was at the little tea shop near Brandon Hill, where he spilled an entire pot over his shirt.”

My fingers slipped from the desk.

No one knew that. Not Julian. Not Chloe. I had written the names once on the final page of an old chemistry notebook, then torn the page into pieces and flushed them away because I was embarrassed by my own foolishness.

A rapid electronic beeping came from her side of the call.

Panic finally cracked her composure.

“Listen to me, Evelyn. Don't use those pens. Don't confront them tonight. Save every piece of evidence. And whatever Julian says, do not go to his university next year.”

White static crawled across the screen.

“Wait,” I said. “Does it ever get better?”

For the first time, her expression broke.

“Not for me.”

The call ended.

For several seconds, I heard nothing but the rain tapping against my window.

The call history showed a duration of two minutes and thirty-one seconds. There was no number beneath the contact name and no option to call back.

I told myself it was a prank. A stolen photograph, artificial intelligence, voice cloning—there had to be an explanation that did not require time folding in half to save me.

So I conducted an experiment.

On a clean sheet of revision paper, I used Julian's first pen to write: Julian Cross loves me.

With the second, I wrote: Chloe Bennett is my best friend.

Then I took the battered black pen I had used throughout sixth form and added a third line: Evelyn Hart, look carefully.

All three sentences appeared equally dark.

I photographed the page beside the clock on my laptop, propped my phone up to record it and set a timer for two hours.

I tried to revise, but the words in my textbook swam. At half past midnight, the alarm sounded.

The first two sentences were gone.

Not faded. Gone.

Only the line written with my own pen remained.

Evelyn Hart, look carefully.

Something inside me cracked so quietly that I did not realise it had broken until I tried to breathe.

Julian had given me two pens because one disappearing pen might run out. He had planned for that. He had imagined me smiling as I left the examination hall, certain I had secured my future, while every word I had written slowly vanished.

I did not ring him.

I did not message Chloe.

I photographed the blank page, backed up the video to two cloud accounts and sealed the pens, ribbon and gift tag inside a clear food bag. Then I placed everything in the lockbox where Dad kept old passports.

From my drawer, I selected four reliable pens and tested every one.

At two in the morning, I climbed into bed.

Until tonight, I had wanted to know what my life would look like in ten years. I had imagined Oxford, a career in materials science, Julian beside me and Chloe laughing somewhere nearby.

Now I knew what waited for me if I changed nothing.

But the woman in the wheelchair had changed something. She had found two minutes and thirty-one seconds and spent every one of them trying to save us.

Tomorrow, I would walk into that examination hall.

I would let Julian believe I was carrying the future he had chosen for me.

And while he waited for my life to disappear, I would begin dismantling his.