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I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.  On the first day of Christmas, life gave Jenny Lewis a troop of small monkeys in a high-class shopping centre, a local news crew chock-full of cheek, a number of suspicious policemen and absolutely no make-up in her handbag. Not unreasonably, Jenny swore. "What?" Stephen said, plainly taken aback. Jenny swore like a sailor, but not regularly - and never when there were journalists about. "If it's the primates, we're nearly sorted." "I'm not worried about the primates," Jenny said, dumping out her handbag on an ergonomically curved pine bench and sorting through her paraphernalia. Becker, clearly feeling gentlemanly, stopped a rogue clementine from rolling off down the hall with one foot and handed it to her. "The primates are your problem. The press, however, is my problem. I came out without make-up this morning." She liked going without make-up, sort of, although she wished it were down to confidence rather than a sheer lack of time. Her routine had always been elaborate - she had painted on brazen, demanding, brilliant Jenny Lewis long before she'd ever felt like she was that person - and finding time for it was difficult, in light of dinosaurs. And then, Nick had liked her without make-up and with her hair loose, so it wasn't as if she'd felt she had to dress up for him. In fact, he'd always preferred it when she hadn't. "Is that a problem?" Stephen sounded puzzled, but willing to hear her out. "Yes," Jenny said. "It's about being what people expect, so they don't ask questions." She almost regretted saying that; of course, Stephen knew all about meeting expectations. But Stephen’s handsome face showed no sign that he'd taken offence. He simply rubbed his chin with one thoughtful hand - the other fully occupied with a squirming net full of... monkey-thing, Jenny didn't know what - and apparently applied his brain to the problem. "There was a Chanel back that way," Becker observed. "You could borrow a thing or two." "Do you know how Lester reacts when you buy make-up on expenses?" Jenny knocked a hair tie loose from the bottom of her bag and stuffed it into her pocket, in case it turned out to be useful. "Is it better or worse than his response when you rent a tank?" Becker enquired, unhelpfully. Behind him, Agent Provocateur was cycling through worryingly sultry Christmas tunes and a short video loop of laughing women in knickers and men in suits. Jenny decided not to comment on his pronounced resemblance to one of the male models. "I have some eyeliner you could borrow," Abby offered, crating up Stephen's new friend and handing him to Adey and Finn for transport into the anomaly. Jenny emptied out the coin pocket she never used, and was very surprised when a tube of bright red MAC lipstick rolled into her hand - an old favourite, the kind that she always used to have on her. "Huh," she said, and uncapped it. There was still plenty left, and she wouldn't need a brush to apply it. "Back in two minutes," she said, and bolted for the nearest bathroom, where she painted the lipstick carefully onto her mouth, blotted it, applied a second coat and then tied her hair up in a messy bun. She spared a moment to look in the mirror, surprised that it worked without any other make-up; but then, she had dark brows and lashes and the on-trend messiness of the bun made it all look deliberate. In some peculiar way, she looked as if she had suddenly come into focus. "Huh," Jenny said again, and went out to face her team, her burden of monkeyish things, the police and the local news crew. In that order. *** “I trust, ladies and gentlemen,” Lester said, sweeping into the meeting with his nose in the air and coffee in hand, “that we will get through today’s meeting briskly.” Stephen and Becker rolled their eyes at each other, Abby stared at the ceiling, Connor pretended he hadn’t been playing some game with grumpy cartoon birds under the table, and Jenny met the eyes of Lester’s PA, who was directly behind Lester and readying herself to take notes. Lorraine was far too much of a professional to pull a face, but Jenny had been working in the same office as her for more than a year now. She knew exactly when Lorraine was thinking of making a face like an old boot at the back of her boss’s head. The irony being, of course, that all of them grumped and moaned about Lester on a near-daily basis, but when the chips were down or Christine Johnson was in the house, they’d all fight for him like rabid honey badgers.  “You’re the one who’s late, guv,” Danny said cheerfully. Jenny decided that the sooner Danny went on holiday the happier she’d be. Lester glared and opened his mouth. Lorraine set her laptop down on the glass conference table with a very definite noise. Lester, who was just as capable as anyone else of correlating the quality of his behaviour with that of his coffee, closed his mouth and straightened infinitesimally. Becker grinned across the table at Lorraine, who was decorously focussed on opening her laptop and preparing her minutes, and who definitely wasn’t smirking at the screen. Jenny glanced down the table and saw Sarah nudge Stephen like they were sharing a joke. “If we could begin,” Lester said loudly, pretending to ignore all of this. Two hours and four presentations later - Lester’s unnecessarily sarcastic introduction, Jenny’s quarterly lecture on the freedom of the press, the law, and for Christ’s sake manners, Stephen’s admirably concise summary of the creatures they’d encountered over the last year, trends, and best practices, and finally Abby’s discussion on animal handling - they reached Connor’s work. Connor had hired an intern four months ago, a bright-eyed and worryingly young red-head called Jess, and Jenny was pleased to see the way he included and credited her for the research they’d done together. He was still as long-winded as he’d always been, and tended to stumble over his own enthusiasm, but he’d discovered bullet points since the first year-end assessment Jenny had sat through. He’d also stopped taking the bait when other people made interjections. Last year’s digression into temporal physics with Nick had taken a full half an hour of the meeting and an outsized proportion of everyone’s patience.   Nick, Jenny thought, and was surprised to realise that the memory of him leaning over this very table with sparkling eyes as he and Connor disappeared into the weeds of highly theoretical physics didn’t actually pain her. It only bruised a little. Now she remembered how annoyed she’d been as much as she remembered how handsome Nick had looked. It was like that with so many little things, she only remembered now how much they’d got to her - his charm had smoothed them over, when he was right there. A man who could get away with joking about a hot date with a dead shark to the woman he was interested in had a significant measure of charm, even if it wasn’t necessarily immediately obvious. She’d let him get away with murder, sometimes, just because of the way he’d smile at her, and so had Stephen... “-shut up and piss off, Danny, that’s not relevant,” Connor said, dragging Jenny’s attention back to the meeting. Becker and Sarah whooped. Stephen let out a much quieter oooh sound. Abby laughed, Jess giggled as if she wasn’t sure she was allowed, and Danny dropped his jaw exaggeratedly, as if stunned. “Mr Temple, language,” Lester complained. “Sorry, Mr Lester. Fuck off, Danny. Anyway, as I was saying, we’ve brought inaccurate signals on the ADD down to 0.01% and the crosschecks are improving all the time. Jess and I have a new algorithm, we’ll test it after the Christmas break, but we think we can bring the rate of false positives right down and increase the sensitivity by another five to ten percent.” “Will that avoid a repetition of the last few days’ random alarms in the west of Scotland?” Shut your door if you don’t want to hear them, James, Jenny thought to herself, and then added but you’re far too nosy and far too much of a mother hen to even consider that. “They’re not random,” Connor said, and that was something else he would never have done before - disagree with Lester directly, instead of letting Abby or Nick take up the cudgels on his behalf. “I just can’t accurately localise the signal, the way I should do if it was strong enough for a proper anomaly. They’re consistently off the coast of Skye. But they never last for more than thirty seconds.” “Any other explanations, besides an anomaly?” “Not that I can think of,” Connor said dubiously. “If it was less often, or at specific times of day, or hung around for longer, I could get a better idea.” He sat back, rubbed a hand over his hair and then folded his arms. “The best I can do is that there is an anomaly there, it’s just fading in and out, probably too quickly for anything to come through. The balance of probabilities is that there’s nothing there, but Jess has set up alerts for the area and she’s watching the cryptozoology forums.” Lester nodded, and opened his mouth to speak again. He was interrupted by the anomaly detector blaring Jingle Bells. Connor, Abby and Sarah, who were on roster, leapt from their seats and ran. “Kent!” Connor shouted from the atrium. “I’ll be two minutes, don’t leave without me!” Sarah yelled. Becker got to his feet and bawled out the door for Abby to remind Lyle to stick to Sarah like glue, because they all knew how she tended to wander off.  “Do take your seat, Captain Becker,” Lester said, sounding exquisitely bored and weary. “I’m sure Lieutenant Lyle knows his work.” “He does,” Becker said. “But if I tell Abby to tell him, she’ll remember that she has two mad scientists to corral, not just one.” Lester sighed deeply. “As a side note, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to address the degree of, er, festive cheer that seems to be… omnipresent… at the moment.” “You authorised the budget for the decorations last month,” Lorraine said helpfully. “I believe you said that anything but the sodding baby Jesus would be acceptable.” ‘Believe’, Jenny knew as well as Lester did, meant ‘I have it in writing’. Lester sighed even more deeply. “Be that as it may -” “I’ve made a very careful survey of the Christmas decorations,” Lorraine assured him. “And the sodding baby Jesus doesn’t feature?” Stephen enquired. There was a sneaky smile lurking at one corner of his mouth that Jenny had got accustomed to seeing over the last couple of months, and that completely belied his usual stern-to-the-point-of-stupid persona. “No,” Lorraine said demurely. “My instructions weren’t intended to authorise an entire herd of light-up reindeer or an office Advent Calendar,” Lester complained, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “I believe we’d reached point five?” Jenny said to Lorraine. “I’m afraid we’ll have to skip Sarah’s presentation,” Lorraine said. “Next in the running order, I believe, is Danny.” Lester directed a betrayed look at both Jenny and Lorraine.  Jenny smiled and ignored him. *** Lester was grumbling. Lester was usually grumbling - she only really worried when he stopped - but today the constant, low-grade chatter of it grated on Jenny’s nerves. She glanced left at Stephen’s profile, which looked like it had been carved in marble. Very tense marble. Jenny hoped the Home Secretary admired the strong and silent, because the chances of Stephen managing to open his mouth to present any of the anomaly team’s work were getting slimmer by the second.  She repressed a sigh and settled herself deeper into the car seat. Lester had taken the front passenger seat as if by right, and Becker, of course, was driving, which left Stephen and Jenny sat in the back seat like reluctant children on a family field trip. Used as she was to crossing the country in the back of a car, chasing anomalies and outrunning dinosaurs, she couldn’t say she enjoyed it much. She might be helpless during those trips, she might be tensely waiting for the other shoe to drop (or the story to hit the BBC), but at least she didn’t have to listen to Lester whine. Jenny pulled out her notes to go over her own presentation, and refrained from kicking the back of Lester’s seat. It was very, very difficult. When Stephen looked sideways at her, as Lester reached a peroration involving Christmas carols in the atrium - and for the love of God Jenny could not see why he cared so much about Connor’s listening material, which was inaudible from his soundproofed office and made everyone but the pinstriped Grinch smile - Jenny realised she was clenching her jaw. She unclenched it and smiled reassuringly at Stephen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Becker’s hand move off the gearstick and slide sideways. Lester’s complaints dwindled to nothing. Stephen’s eyes nearly popped. Jenny removed her phone from her bag and selected Stephen’s number from her top contacts. What the fuck, she texted. On the other side of the car, Stephen’s phone buzzed lightly. Becker touched his knee??? Stephen replied, within seconds. “Nothing serious, I hope,” Lester said, still cross but no longer actively moaning.  “Abby got 85% on her latest essay,” Stephen said. “The evolution of raptors. The eagle kind, not the dinosaur kind.” Abby had dropped by Jenny’s office to tell Jenny about that too, glowing with shy pride. Jenny smiled just thinking about it, and this time she meant her smile. Abby had always been defensive about her half-finished degree; starting a new one, even if only part time, had brought a lightness to her that Jenny didn’t think she’d ever seen before. The same kind of joy Connor found in innovating, now that he had an intern to help and technicians to maintain the ADD. “How gratifying,” Lester said. He actually seemed to mean it. “I’ll be sure to congratulate her.” Becker’s hand moved back onto the gearstick, and he grinned and winked at Jenny in the rear-view mirror.Jenny stifled a laugh, and turned her eyes back to her notes. It was difficult to make a clear, factual, convincing presentation out of her current work. It was hard to point to the statistical proof the Home Secretary tended to demand for everything, regardless of whether the numbers in question were convincing, accurate, or even relevant to the question that had actually been asked. Jenny kept meticulous records of the actions she took and the disasters she’d averted, but it was hard to prove a negative. And for her, a negative was a success. If they weren’t on Buzzfeed, the Daily Mail or the BBC, she’d done her job, and done it very well - but ministers tended to believe that that happy state of affairs could have come about naturally, which considering Jenny’s bananas colleagues was so far from the truth it might as well be on Mars. She occasionally had nightmares about the havoc Danny Quinn was capable of bringing into being. She hadn’t been sorry at all when he’d taken off for an early Christmas holiday, in order to make up for working the Christmas and New Year shift; if he found anomalies in Argentina, that wasn’t her problem. And if he got arrested, she’d make him the Foreign Office’s problem.  He wouldn’t have been involved in this meeting, though, she reminded herself. Senior staff only. Which meant Abby and Connor both escaped, and that Sarah and Danny would have been excused even if they weren’t on holiday. Jenny glanced down at her notes, decided that fidgeting with them was a nervous tic she could do without, and slipped them back into her handbag. They wouldn’t quite go back where they’d come from; Jenny pushed at them, frowning, and then realised that there was something trapped underneath them. She pulled it out, sliding the notes back into their place. Red lipstick. MAC, Lady Danger, last used the previous week, when Jenny had been trying to deal with a bunch of monkeys in Bluewater (never mind the basal primates). And well, it had worked then, made her feel smarter and sharper and surer, and it would look nice with the professional, sleekly cut slate grey she was wearing, so why not? Jenny took out her make-up mirror, waited for Becker to halt at a traffic light, and then slicked the colour on, quickly, as if she expected to think better of it. It looked good. She quirked her lips at her own reflection, put the lipstick away, and forgot about it until they got out of the car and Lester blinked at her. “I could have sworn,” he began, and then stopped, shaking his head.  Jenny, who had no idea what to make of that, looked at Becker, who shrugged, and Stephen, who looked equally puzzled. “Maybe he just means we haven’t seen you wear red lipstick in a while,” he suggested, as Lester forged ahead, closely tailed by Becker, and eventually brought to a halt by the latter’s argument with a metal detector. Jenny had assumed he wouldn’t need to be armed, and it sounded from what she could overhear as if Becker had actually forgotten he was wearing the knife that had tripped the detector, but that wasn’t making the security guard any happier. “I suppose I just haven’t felt like it,” Jenny said, hurrying forward to pour oil on troubled waters. She hadn’t really thought about her make-up habits; Nick, dinosaurs, Christine Johnson, the vagaries of the team, and her increasingly unreasonable dry cleaning bills had all been more pressing concerns. Her therapist had asked if she’d changed anything drastic about herself lately, but really, in answering that question, where was Jenny supposed to start? The meeting with the Home Secretary started promptly on time - after Becker had been sent back to the car in disgrace to hide the knife in the glove box along with all the other things he wasn’t supposed to have brought along - and ended bang on schedule an hour later. This was not because the Home Secretary had finished with them. She seemed very intrigued, and was keen for further details, which made Lester look vaguely pained even as he supplied them. No, the meeting came to an end because there was an anomaly at Kew Gardens, and when Jenny slipped off to call Connor about it, he insisted that they were all absolutely fine and having fun, and that the anomaly actually blended in quite nicely with Kew Gardens’ Christmas lighting, given the gathering dark of the late afternoon. Jenny, who was uneasily aware that there was such a thing as jinxing yourself, called an immediate halt to the meeting and had Becker drive herself and Stephen straight to Kew Gardens.  Connor was right, in the end. It was quite a nice anomaly. It didn’t even last more than about two hours, and blaming the temporary closure of a portion of the lighted gardens on a technical fault was child’s play. Nobody died, nobody got hurt, and the triceratops eggs were easily retrieved and replaced on the correct side of the anomaly - not that Jenny gave much for their chances, considering the cold. She bought everyone a round of hot drinks on the way out, and they piled into the cars laughing, Finn bemoaning the patch of triceratops poo he’d slipped in, Becker saying callously that it served him right for not looking where he was going, and Connor and Abby singing the words to Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  Lester met them at the ARC’s car park. “I trust I’d have heard if all was not well,” he said, and then arched an eyebrow. “Are you planning to expense all those cups of coffee?” “Hot chocolate,” Jenny corrected, hoping he wouldn’t get close enough to the empties to smell that some of them had been flavoured with brandy and that she had in fact been drinking mulled wine.  Lester rolled his eyes elegantly. “On my desk by close of play, Jenny, and I may consider signing it. Oh, and Abby - I hear congratulations are due on your latest assignment.” Abby’s smile was brighter than the Oxford Street Christmas lights and a good deal more surprised. “Thanks!” she said, bright and happy, and Jenny couldn’t help thinking - sometimes things do get better, not everything has to be awful - sometimes - It was probably just the mulled wine talking. Very embarrassing. She wiped the last smudges of red lipstick from her mouth, scrubbed thoughtfully at the traces left on the disposable cup, and went to tie up the last loose ends. *** December the thirteenth found Jenny standing on the platform of a small station just west of Reading, having a phone call with someone at National Rail who was irate that they were about to be blamed for a major malfunction on the main rail line west. Jenny, who could see the ankylosaur responsible, and who was keeping an open mind about retreating through the station into the car and out of the area if necessary, was not sympathetic. She could see their point about the public opprobrium closing the line would cause, but firstly a contest between a train and an ankylosaur was one no-one would win and secondly a chunk of the line had been very thoroughly stamped on and would need to be replaced before a train could run on it. Good thing there were already works in progress, really. The men needed to fix the problem were already onsite, and it would be easy to say that the works were more complicated than anticipated, or that damage done in the course of the works meant that they would take longer. Well, it would be easy if National Rail cooperated, which they would, because (as Becker had put it) she was Jenny fucking Lewis and they didn't have a choice. The minion at National Rail demanded to know what the bloody hell that roaring noise was. "I have no idea," Jenny said. She would have described it as more of a lowing, really. "Interference on the line, perhaps. I can hear you loud and clear." "Interference -" The minion exploded. Jenny smiled. Maybe it hadn't been tactful to describe it like that. Every possible joke about the wrong kind of dinosaur on the line had been made as soon as it had been established that the linesmen surprised by the ankylosaur were all alive and perched in a signal tower, with no worse injuries than some broken ribs and one concussion. "I hope you can hear me properly?" Jenny said solicitously. Connor waved at her from where he was sitting on the edge of the platform, dangling his feet, and she strolled over. He showed her the screen of his phone, which was providing a live feed from the Anomaly Detection Device, currently manned by Jess. It showed that the mysterious little anomaly in Scotland was open again. Jenny frowned. "Loud and clear, Miss Lewis," said the minion, evidently furious. "But I want to protest this meddling in the strongest possible terms!" Jenny formed an impression of the minion. Middle-aged, she decided, paunchy, officious and rather slow but very proud of a middling degree from a very good university. It would explain the pompous vocabulary. "I'm ready to take on your feedback," Jenny promised, generously and untruthfully. She knew the minion would do as he was told, and the minion knew he was going to do as he was told, but in the meantime this dance of complaint and insistence would have to be played out to its end. She sat down next to Connor, wincing at the cold concrete and textured paving stones of the platform, and kept half an ear on the minion's rant while she watched the anomaly team work. The ankylosaur was about fifty metres away, being skilfully herded towards an anomaly glittering in the middle of the line by Abby and the soldiers. Abby was calling out instructions, and bowling entire heads of lettuce gently towards the anomaly, forming a tempting salad trail. The ankylosaur didn't seem enormously interested in the food for its own sake, but iceberg lettuce was an improvement on the tactical yelling and flapping of orange high-vis borrowed from the linesmen, who had all been removed for a restorative cup of tea and bacon butty or medical treatment, as required. Jenny had had to confiscate a few phones temporarily - fortunately the anomaly had knocked out the signal, so there was no social media to clear up - but once they'd been satisfied that any blame was going to be laid on a hated manager and they weren't in danger they'd been quite helpful, as bystanders went. One of them, a dinosaur fan who had slyly asked if they had any jobs going, had even provided Becker and Abby with useful advice regarding the structure and dangers of the railway line. "- Are you even listening to me?" demanded the minion. "Of course," Jenny said soothingly, and summarised his concerns. He muttered with irritation. Jenny, picking at a loose thread on her skirt until it snapped, ignored him. Five minutes later, she'd secured his cooperation - and written confirmation of that cooperation - and got him off the line. She slipped her phone into the pocket of her coat, and watched the ankylosaur edge forward, step by step. It was slow going, with frequent setbacks, but it was moving, huge and hulking against the foggy grey sky and the stark dark twigs of the trees and hedges that lined the tracks. There was probably some kind of metaphor in that, but Jenny didn't mean to go into it. "So," she said, after a few moments. "This anomaly in Scotland. Is it a problem?" "Probably not," Connor said cautiously. "If it sticks around we might have to go and investigate, but right now it just flickers. No pattern, really. And still nothing to prove anything's come through." He shrugged awkwardly. "It's off the coast, so hopefully..." "Just so long as it's not an anomaly in water," Jenny said. "Or one with a noxious atmosphere." "We could probably explain that away," Connor said. Jenny nodded with the confidence of someone who had successfully shifted all the blame for a series of awkward anomalies dripping primordial sea onto Thames Water. "It would be inconvenient, though." Connor grinned. The ankylosaur groaned and shoved its head through the anomaly, probably in order to get away from the soldiers. Jenny refrained from applause. "Thanks," Connor said suddenly. Jenny blinked. "For...?" "Helping me get Jess hired in. The work's going a lot better. I mean, you heard, at the review. But." Jenny's heart softened. "You're welcome. It was overdue, really." "Yeah, but..." Connor kicked his heels against the wall of the platform. "I wouldn’t have put together a good enough proposal. So thanks. For helping." "Of course," Jenny said. "Any time." *** By six o’clock on December the seventeenth, the office party, and attendant Secret Santa, were in full swing. Jenny knew because she could see it from her office. She and Lester were still putting out a small Christine Johnson-related fire, and had been for the last six hours: they had both skipped lunch, and Jenny’s eyeballs were beginning to ache in her head. She’d watched the extra tinsel go up, caught snatches of the music turning on as the office door opened and closed behind Lorraine moving in and out, and she had even had a festive cup of non-alcoholic mulled wine at which Lester had turned up his nose and a plate of surprisingly acceptable mince pies. Every now and then the Anomaly Detector hit a new note among the Christmas music and there was a slight but perceptible diminution in the background noise, before Connor evidently gave the all-clear and everyone carried on partying again. Jenny would rather have been downstairs. The two of them were stuck in the office until the last loose ends were tied up, though, and there was no point fussing about it. She didn’t know what it was that was bothering her; she’d done longer days, worked on far more urgent problems, suffered far more over the course of the last year. But something about this felt like the last bloody straw on the camel’s bloody back, and she was gasping for a proper cup of mulled wine. By the pinched look on his face, Lester felt similar. Finally, Jenny tweaked a word, Lester retyped a sentence, and then the pair of them nodded almost unconsciously at the computer screen before Lester hit send. It was possible they’d been working together a little too long.  Jenny tried not to slump in her chair. Lester leaned back and let out a sigh. “And I profoundly hope that’s the last we’ve seen of that,” he said, glaring at the screen. “Is this a sign you two have sorted out whatever pile of shit it was this time?” Becker enquired.  Jenny twitched. She hadn’t actually noticed him enter the room. “We have,” Lester said, trying to sound stern. “Captain Becker, have you considered the concept of knocking?” “I did. Neither of you were paying attention.” Becker replaced Jenny’s empty cup of non-alcoholic mulled wine with a full cup so strong the alcohol caught her as soon as she breathed in the steam, and tossed the empty cup casually into a bin on the other side of the room. Lester raised his eyebrows, and Becker pulled a hipflask from one pocket and wordlessly handed it over.  “Brandy?” Jenny said idly. “Scotch. You’re welcome to it, if you like.” Becker leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “Lorraine says she’s holding the Secret Santa until the two of you get down there.” Jenny rubbed at her temples. “I don’t know about you, James, I need a moment to decompress.” Lester, who was leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut, nodded.  “You can sneak out the back,” Becker said gravely. “I won’t tell.” Jenny smiled, and slipped out of the office with her handbag and the mulled wine, walking briskly along the top layer of the mezzanine. She allowed herself one brief glance back, and was unsurprised to see that Becker was now leaning against the side of the desk, apparently chatting idly with Lester.  She wondered how long it had been going on, and how serious it was. Neither of them was likely to show even the faintest hint of affection outside a professional sphere in the workplace unless they meant it. Becker carried around a fairly flippant persona along with the visible weight of others’ expectations, but in the time they’d been working together Jenny had come to understand that he took absolutely everything too seriously. Including Jess Parker’s crush, which would probably wear off a few days after someone - most likely Lorraine, who somehow got landed with the difficult conversations despite her obvious distaste for managing social situations - explained he was gay.  Jenny weaved away from a bunch of mistletoe and ducked into the one bathroom she could guarantee was completely mud, blood and dinosaur-free. By decree of Lester - and she had to admit it was a sensible kind of measure, given the Defence Minister Incident of November 2008 - there was a unisex executive toilet near Lester’s office and the largest, fanciest conference room. It was unusually spacious, kept immaculately clean, and looked more like it belonged in a nice hotel than an office building. It wasn’t anyone’s particular preserve, Lester wasn’t as much of a snob as that, but there was one unbreakable rule concerning it, and that was that if you were already covered in grime, swamp or dinosaur effluvia you were not to go anywhere near it, on pain of Dot the cleaning lady.  Most people avoided it. It was so tidy and Dot was so fierce in its defence. But someone, Jenny noticed, had decided to render it a little less pristine: there was an elaborate paper chain of tiny, delicate snowflakes strung across the top of the mirror. She smiled at the sight. Jenny used the facilities, washed her hands, ran rough fingers through her hair to stop it looking as if Christine Johnson had caused it to stand on end, and then pulled her make-up bag from her handbag. Most of the make-up she’d put on that morning was still there; she touched up the concealer, fixed some smudged eyeliner, and then got out a lip liner and lipstick. They were both new, because she’d actually taken the time to think about when she’d bought that old MAC Lady Danger lipstick, and had realised that it was probably unsanitary to have it around.  She lined her mouth, added the lipstick, blotted, applied another coat, blotted, and paused to admire the effect. She smiled at her own reflection, and then went to join the party. Thirty seconds later, she doubled back for her mulled wine. It was a good party. Sometimes she forgot how far they’d come over the last year, with Stephen’s slow and difficult reintegration back into the team after rehabilitation from his injuries, with Nick’s loss sending shockwaves through them all and Christine Johnson’s grotesque politicking, just when none of them were in a position to deal with it. But seeing Abby laugh, and Connor and Jess manipulate the ADD with casual expertise when it alarmed briefly, Jenny remembered how much better things were now. How much straighter Stephen stood, and how much less they felt as if the place was tearing itself apart. Maybe it was just that things had been so desperate for so long - since she’d joined the project, really - that being in a place to be proactive felt better than it should. Maybe it was the mulled wine, or the voucher for a thirty-minute massage at a nice spa that Lester had spent far too much on, or, God knows, maybe it was the lipstick, the tinsel, the Christmas goddamned cheer. “You’re smiling,” Stephen pointed out, when Jenny decided she had had enough of dancing with Abby and Connor, since only one of them could dance (and it wasn’t Connor). She had stumbled off the makeshift dance floor, laughing, and come to rest next to the anomaly detector, which had been moved out of the centre of the atrium for the occasion. Stephen had nabbed himself a spot there a while ago, near the table of food, and he made room for her now. “So are you,” Jenny said, and pilfered a mince pie off his plate. “Oi,” Stephen said half-heartedly, and then Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree burst briefly from the detector, only to be muted by Jess. Both of their heads swung around. “Scotland again,” Jess said, looking up and seeing that they were both watching. “It was gone as soon as it arrived. It’s in more or less the same location.” She frowned at the screen and typed a short burst of characters. Stephen and Jenny looked at each other. “Don’t worry about it,” Stephen said, with the same kindness he always found for Abby, Connor and the younger bystanders at anomalies. “If it’s not sticking around you can’t do anything about it now.” He extended the plate to her. “Have a mince pie instead.” ***Jenny wasn’t exactly surprised when her Wednesday began at five in the morning with a call from the ARC. She’d given up on being appalled by the anomalies’ refusal to respect normal working hours within a month of taking up her position. But she still wasn’t very pleased, especially given that the duty technician on the other end added the information that it was a steady anomaly off the west coast of Scotland, in the same area as the phantom alert that had been flitting in and out. Jenny swore into her pillow and repacked her go-bag with warmer clothes before she left for the office. It meant she was later than Lester would have liked - and how he managed to be in before six a.m. she didn’t want to know and wasn’t going to ask - but, on the plus side, she wouldn’t get frostbite in the Hebrides. Only a skeleton team was assembled in the atrium, which was freezing cold and very quiet. The ARC maintained a night staff, but not a very extensive one - just enough to respond to an emergency and call in further resources - so none of the usual sources of noise were available, and the heating was turned down in most of the building. The night team had clearly been sent home, given the borderline timing of the callout - they would have been on duty since six in the evening, and Jenny saw from the roster that they’d handled a pair of stegosauruses in Dorset in that time - and even Lorraine wasn’t in. Lester looked as neat and tidy as ever, though a little soured by the time of day; Stephen looked half-asleep, from what little of his face Jenny could see over the enormous coffee mug in his hands. Ditzy and Blade were present, Blade slouching over a bunch of go-bags and examining a knife closely in case it was less stabby than the last time he’d used it, but apart from that the military presence was surprisingly limited. Jenny cast her mind back - with an effort, considering it was still only six in the morning and she’d only had one cup of coffee - and tried to remember the duty roster. Captain Becker should have been here, and she would have expected to see… possibly Finn, possibly Lacey. Jenny couldn’t remember.  Lester said something rude about her timing. Jenny ignored him as gracefully as possible. Stephen extricated himself from the mug of coffee, and interrupted Lester. “The anomaly’s off the coast of Skye. Near a place called Sleat. I know the area a bit. It’s pretty rural, very quiet, locals tend to keep themselves to themselves. We’ve got no reports of anything coming through, but the anomaly’s holding steady.” Stephen took another gulp of coffee. “If you cross-reference it with the previous anomalies that have really lasted, though, it doesn’t look that strong. I wouldn’t put it at more than twelve hours.” “Twelve hours is long enough,” Jenny said grimly. “Where’s Captain Becker?” “Already on his way up, with Lacey.” Stephen downed the rest of his coffee. “He’s gone to borrow some equipment off someone. We can’t drag everything up there by helicopter.” Ditzy grinned in a way that suggested he knew exactly which strings Becker was pulling, and wished he could be there to see it. Jenny felt a vague qualm. “Legitimately, I hope,” she said. “On my authority, so I hope so too,” Lester retorted. “You’ll be following them up as soon as you can get in the air.” *** Jenny was in the helicopter - not very comfortably, given the limited space she was sharing with three very tall men, the faint juddering of the craft, and the sheer noise levels - when she realised something Stephen had said was very odd. Possibly it was the second coffee of the day, which she’d filled her thermos with at the Battersea helipad, but something sparked off in her head, and made her brain come to a stop. Stephen didn’t have anything to do with Scotland, unless it had something to do with Nick. His family, to the best of her knowledge, was from somewhere near Exeter, and he owned a part-share in a house in rural Cornwall, for the surfing.  She fiddled with the intercom on her headphones until she got to the right line to contact Stephen, and only Stephen.  “You said you know Skye,” she said. Next to her, Stephen twitched in his seat. “Did you mean -” “Yeah,” Stephen said, before she could finish the sentence. “Nick’s old place. His grandmother’s cottage. We used to go up there a lot - Christmas, New Year, summer, sometimes.” Stephen looked at his feet, and Jenny hated herself a little for the way his face had tensed up with remembered pain. “Not last year, obviously.” “I never went,” Jenny said. She’d been busy. She’d spent Christmas 2008 with family - it was long before she and Nick had become serious enough to consider spending major holidays together - and Nick, of course, had died in the course of the following year. “It’s nice,” Stephen said. “Quiet. I brought the keys with me in case we have to stay overnight.” “Will there be space for all of us?” Nick had described the cottage as a small place, a bit run down but comfortable and homelike. Once badgered for details, he’d shown her pictures of the kind of tiny place you could hardly stretch your feet out in, but which had a kitchen range, homemade knitted blankets, and a faint but distinct air of strong tea and buttered crumpets. Jenny had always wanted to go, but then - and then after that she’d put it out of her mind. Stephen nodded. “Some people’ll be sleeping on sofas, but there’s a lot of camping kit up there. Some of it’s mine. We’ll be able to make do.” “Yours?” Jenny didn’t bother to add ‘and he kept it?’ Nick had been very vindictive towards Stephen, she knew that much from Connor, and Nick’s own inherent sense of drama would probably have led him to throw out Stephen’s kit if he’d had time. He’d almost certainly had the inclination. Stephen nodded again. “I went up to get it in July. Nick forgot to change his will, so - the cottage’s still mine. I didn’t know what to do with it.”  Vindictive, but not detail-oriented. That didn’t surprise Jenny either. Stephen shrugged. “It was still there. I… left it there.” He looked away. Jenny took that as an indication that he wanted to end the conversation, and went back to her coffee. Ditzy was looking at her as if he knew something important had been under discussion. Jenny wondered how much he already knew. For as long as she’d been on the project – and her arrival, if she’d understood Lester’s explanation correctly, had come shortly after Helen had caused a permanent rift between the two men - Stephen had spent most of his time with the soldiers. Stephen wasn’t exactly talkative, even considering the improvements over the last few months, but it was more than possible that he’d let enough slip about the cottage on Skye. Jenny widened her eyes at Ditzy, and devoted herself to her coffee. Somewhere around half-past ten, they landed at a helipad by a white-painted, slate-roofed hotel on the edge of the sea. Everything seemed grey-toned, from the sky to the sea and the gravel. Jenny spotted clean 4x4s in the car park and tartan trousers on one curious guest lingering in the gardens, and decided that this was probably not one of Nick’s favourite haunts. There was some kid in a cashmere jumper pressed up against a window, too. Becker might have acquired a pair of plain Jeeps not in khaki, and neither he nor any of his men were in uniform, but they were still attracting attention. “You can’t tell me you came here with Nick,” Jenny yelled into Stephen’s ear as they hurried away from the helicopter’s frantically spinning blades.  “No,” Stephen yelled back. “He couldn’t stand it here. Stags and tartan for posh English people sort of thing.” Jenny stifled a laugh, and hoped nobody from the hotel had heard them.  “Well posh,” Lacey observed to Ditzy and Blade, when they had all exchanged greetings and grouped around the cars. “We went inside for a cuppa and I thought I was going to be kicked out for having mud on my boots.”  Becker looked amused. “At least you got the little caramel biscuits. Worse things happen at sea.” He turned to Stephen. “Any word on the anomaly?” “Connor texted five minutes ago. Holding steady near Sleat. Still offshore, but only by a couple of hundred metres.” Stephen rubbed his mouth. “He sent me GPS coordinates. There’s still no sign of whether anything’s come through - no news reports, nothing on Twitter -” “They have Twitter up here?”“-yes.” “What are we waiting for, exactly?” Jenny interrupted. “An engraved invitation? Or the pair of you to finish picking on each other?” Becker’s grin was unrepentant, and Stephen’s rather sheepish, but they were still in the car on the way to Connor’s coordinates within five minutes, so Jenny counted it as a win. There was nothing at the anomaly site besides a few people lingering on the beach with binoculars, staring into the distance.  “Leave any heavy weaponry in the car,” Jenny ordered, feeling her heart sink as they abandoned the Jeeps and headed closer. Stephen looked puzzled, for which she couldn’t blame him. There was nothing obvious to see, but the well-bundled up families and sightseers on the beach - more than she’d seen anywhere as they’d driven around the island - were palpably excited. Jenny and the men made up their own group, staring out to sea. Becker was sweeping the area slowly with binoculars: Jenny nudged him when she judged he’d had a chance to see anything there was to see, and without looking down at her he shook his head. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Maybe a bit of a glimmer over there, where the anomaly should be, but apart from that…” “Hmm,” Jenny said, and then glimpsed a sudden black flash of something tall and proud. She grabbed Becker’s arm. “What was that?” “I don’t know,” Becker said, binoculars glued to his face again. “Didn’t catch it.” “I think it was -” Blade began, and then a child bounced over to Stephen and cried “Are there really new orcas?” The anomaly team swivelled to stare at Stephen, who looked profoundly discomforted and surprised. He blinked at the child, a girl of about nine with almond-shaped dark eyes and a delighted smile, and then blinked at his team as if they could help him. Seeing him full-face, Jenny realised what the problem was: Stephen was wearing a navy blue fleece hat with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society’s logo on it, in bright, clearly visible white. “Stephen,” she said. “Your hat.” Stephen grabbed his own head as if he’d forgotten he was wearing a hat, and then turned back to the girl, who laughed at him. “I, uh - I don’t know, miss, I don’t work for WDCS any more.” “Oh.” The girl drooped. “We’re a film crew,” Jenny said, before their most useful source of information thus far could wander off. “We’re scouting for a documentary - filming in February, we hope. We hadn’t heard about any new orcas, though.” “I thought the West Coast Community hadn’t had a new calf for decades,” Stephen said, surprising Jenny. The little girl lit up again, bouncing on her toes. Dolphin-patterned wellie boots, Jenny noticed. “That’s what everyone says! But! These aren’t new baby orcas! They’re adults!” “Really,” Becker said. “Have you seen them?” “They were here! A minute ago. But now I think they’re gone.” The girl looked devastated. “And I couldn’t really see them properly. Just a glimpse of the fin.” “Huh,” Becker said. “Pity.” The girl’s parents called out to her, and she uttered a hasty “Bye!” and ran off. They were all left staring at Stephen. “I don’t know what you’re looking at me like that for,” Stephen said, reattaching his binoculars to his face. “Let’s try and look like a professional film crew.”“So long as you all agree I’m the producer,” Jenny said, folding her arms against the wind, which was bitter. They waited at the anomaly site over the next hour but nothing happened, even though they confirmed with Connor that the anomaly was still there. Abby was fascinated to hear about the orca sightings and searched the internet at Stephen’s request for signs that new additions to the population had been seen around the Inner Hebrides. Sure enough, a handful of sightings had been reported at the days and times when the phantom anomaly had been open.  “It could just be coincidence,” Stephen said, driving Jenny to the village shop in order to buy sandwiches and talk loudly about the practicalities of filming where people could hear them. It was a well-established cover story with a script at this point, and explained the large amounts of equipment they toted around provided nobody got out a gun where the locals could see them. “The anomaly was only ever open for minutes at a time,” Jenny agreed. “I should think it more than likely is a coincidence. But if it’s not... I suppose a hunting whale wouldn’t need long to surface and become visible.” “And the locals know the pod,” Stephen said. “People do, when particular dolphins or whales frequent the area.”“I’ll take your word for it.” “There are also transient communities of orcas sighted around here sometimes,” Stephen added. “The only way you could be sure it’s not one of those is by getting a pretty good look at it. The West Coast Community are distinctive -” “How distinctive?” “To someone who sees them once a week or so, very.” Stephen parked. “And they don’t interact with incoming pods.”“I didn’t have a dolphin phase as a child. I have no idea what any of this means.”  “I’ll explain when we get back to the others.”They bought out what felt like half the village shop in snacks and packets of crisps, talking idly about hiring a boat and why February was a bad choice for a shooting schedule, and the personality quirks of the presenter (who had already, almost unanimously, been voted in as Becker, since he was the only one who didn’t make a believable cameraman and Jenny had already bagged the producer role). Better yet, they made a detour to the local café – since there were no pre-packed sandwiches to be had in Sleat – and carried on nattering there while an order of takeaway sandwiches was made up for them, which spread their story in a nice natural way. Jenny wasn’t sure they were convincing, but at least they had something to say for themselves.  Back at the beach, the soldiers had retreated into the shelter of a large rock and were diligently watching the area where the anomaly should be, which was to say that Ditzy and Blade were watching diligently and Becker and Lacey were playing cards. Jenny handed over the sandwiches and thermoses of hot tea from the basic cafe next door, and Stephen laid down armloads of crisps, chocolate bars and bottles of water. The card game came to an immediate halt. “Nothing?” Stephen said, jerking his head in the direction of the sea. “Nothing,” Lacey agreed, ripping open a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. “Anything interesting in the village?” Becker asked. “No new information.” Stephen helped himself to an egg mayonnaise sandwich, and passed Jenny a ham, tomato and cheese when she prodded him. “The kid behind the counter just looked bored.” “I want to know what you know about these orcas,” Jenny said, settling herself down on the sand next to the others. She could worry about getting it out of her trousers later. “Yeah,” Becker said. “The Western Community thing.” “West Coast Community,” Stephen corrected.  “Oh, excuse me.” “Um.” Stephen stared at his feet, ate a bite of sandwich, and then said: “Not much. I was never a specialist in them. But I did some work up in Scotland with WDCS when I was a student, and, well, it’s the UK’s only resident population, so I know a bit about them. They’re unusual. There’s about ten of them, if I’m remembering right, and they feed on seals mostly. I think. Anyway, they’re interesting because they don’t interact with the transient pods of orcas that come into UK waters, and because they seem more closely related to populations in the Antarctic than the more northerly populations who actually visit here.” He took another bite of the sandwich. “They’re bigger. Their teeth are different. And there’s something different about the white eyepatches but I can’t remember what.” Stephen frowned and took another bite of sandwich. “They haven’t reproduced in… years. Not since they started being recorded, in 1992. No-one’s sure why. Probably pollution.” “That’s sad,” Jenny said. Stephen nodded.  There was a long pause. “It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a cover story, if there are orcas coming through the anomaly,” Stephen said eventually. “Hell, you’d barely need a cover story. It’d probably attract less interest if we didn’t get involved. They split up into satellite pods and are almost never seen all together, so any ‘new’ sightings could just be mistaken identity. More orcas in Scottish waters is just a happy passing news story, and it’s not likely to be more than a blip on anyone’s records.” “Good to know,” Becker said. None of them said aloud that they really might as well not be here, in that case.  Jenny watched the sea. There was still nothing visible there, but her pocket still buzzed with the half-hour confirmatory text from Connor: Still there.  By half-past two, it was getting dark, and Connor had taken to adding “sorry” to his texts. Jenny made the executive decision that they needed to work out where they were going to stay for the night, and Stephen volunteered to open up Nick’s cottage. The soldiers all looked intrigued in a way that suggested later nosiness, but Becker blessedly confined himself to ordering Lacey to go with them and help.  Stephen still looked resigned. The cottage was a twenty-minute drive away, close to the road and tucked into the side of a rolling hill, maybe five minutes’ walk from a hamlet right on the Sound of Sleat. Mountains rose, cloud-crowned, in the background, and the sea rushed soothingly. The little cluster of houses and shops and the stone pier showed up clearly despite the fading light, the soft yellow of indoor lamps shining from the windows. A lighthouse shone brightly from a nearby islet, its whitewashed cylinder still just about visible. Someone laughed very loudly in the distance, and Lacey nudged Jenny and pointed to an enormous eagle circling idly over the waters. The sky’s clouds were slowly clearing, and though it left the air bitterly cold Jenny would take the frost nipping at her cheeks and lips in return for the first diamond-like stars rising. Next to it all, Nick’s cottage looked very small and dark. Jenny put that idea firmly out of her head, and followed Stephen as he trod over the damp ground in a business-like fashion and - after some industrious fiddling with the keys - got the door open. It was cold, but clean. Stephen muttered an explanation about a kid from Isleornsay coming in to keep an eye on it occasionally, and started turning on all the lights and cranking the heating into action. Jenny went to help Lacey carry bags in, and when she came back found that Stephen had put the kettle on and was investigating the back shed with the camping kit in it. He didn’t seem like he wanted to be disturbed, and Jenny felt too awkward to poke around, so she confined herself to standing in the kitchen, watching the kettle boil. The cottage wasn’t large, and the ceilings were low. Stephen stooped so naturally it must be habit. Downstairs there was only a kitchen, cramped but cheerful with two heavily scribbled-over cookbooks and a collection of mismatched mugs and humorous tea-towels, mostly dinosaur-themed. It was divided from the living room by a narrow hall; the door was open, so Jenny could see a battered old sofa-bed taking up most of the space. Stephen must have pulled out the mattress in their absence, and it sat there, obscuring a cheerful rag rug and taking up all the space that wasn’t occupied by a TV with DVD player, several ramshackle bookshelves full to the brim of books and the odd seashell, and a small collection of DVDs, mostly nature documentaries. Jenny would have bet any money that those were Stephen’s. Similarly, she would not have hesitated to bet her last bonus as a PR consultant on the wager that the delicate watercolours - nature studies, of fish and deer and a charming collection of otters - were not in Nick’s hand. The kettle boiled. Jenny made three cups of tea and passed one to Lacey, who had not had her inhibitions about snooping. “Ta. There’s only the one bedroom upstairs, but the bathroom looks fine.” Lacey took a deep gulp of the tea, even though it was steaming hot, and jerked her head at the back wall. “D’you think he and the professor shared?” “I have no idea,” Jenny said. “I never asked him. Well, either of them.” She sipped at her own tea. “Do you think we’ll fit?” “Two people’ll have to watch the anomaly, so yeah.”  Jenny winced at the thought of midnight watches, and then put it out of her mind, for consideration when she couldn’t avoid it. She put her phone away, and then noticed with a jerk that Lacey was carrying something: a framed picture. “Tanya! Did you take that from upstairs?” Lacey didn’t look even the slightest bit guilty. “It’s not like I’m stealing it. Just look. It’s relevant.” She turned it over, and laid it on the kitchen table. Jenny’s breath caught with surprise. It was two orcas: mother and juvenile, by the look of their relative sizes. They were so large in the picture, a watercolour about the size of Jenny’s two hands, that either the artist had imagined some details or the initial pencil sketch had been done from very close to, probably on a boat or maybe on the end of the pier, depending on the depth of the water out there. The baby had its head and part of its chest all the way out of the water; foam flew in the picture, as if someone had just been splashed. It was bright and lively. Christina Budge had signed and dated the picture in 1932. It looked as if it had faded over time, but not as much as might have been expected; perhaps Christina had been careful to keep it out of the light. Jenny tried to remember if she knew Nick’s grandmother’s name. Stephen came stamping back into the cottage, his arms full of sleeping bags and other gear, which he promptly dumped on the sofa-bed’s mattress for later care. “I made you tea,” Jenny said.  “Thanks.” Stephen came into the kitchen. “It’ll be a tight fit, but I think we’ll manage. What have you got there? Oh. One of Nick’s grandmother’s paintings.” Jenny winced on Lacey’s behalf. “It looks like the orcas we were looking for,” Lacey said, completely shameless. “So it does.” Stephen picked up the painting and scrutinised it. “That’s what’s different about their eyepatches.”“What?” Jenny said. “West Coast Community orcas have backward-sloping eyepatches. It’s distinctive.” He laid the picture on the table. “I thought West Coast had only been known since the 1970s, but it makes sense that they’ve been present here for a significant amount of time before that, given their isolation and how unique they are. The population’s presumably much older than 1930-what, 1932.” “Could these be some of the orcas that are here now?” Stephen shrugged. “Possible, but not likely. Orcas can live a very long time, especially the females, but I wouldn’t bank on one surviving seventy-five years. Especially given how small the pod is now.” Lacey picked up the picture again, frowning. “So the ‘new orcas’ that little girl mentioned, they could be from –“ she gestured vaguely – “the same pod? From back in history, like? That came through the anomaly?” “That would make sense.” Stephen gulped at his tea. “It’s as good an explanation as any.” He raised his eyebrows at Lacey. “Put it back where you found it before we leave, okay?” Lacey nodded. By the time they went back to the others, it was fully dark and very cold. Becker had pulled the Jeep he still had with him up onto a rise just off the beach, where the anomaly site was clearly visible. The moon was shining brightly, glimmering off the black waves rushing softly onto the pale beach, but Jenny thought that if she stared she could still see an extra-glittery patch where the anomaly should be. After a brief conference, they decided that food needed to be organised. They still had some of the snacks left from the afternoon, but not really enough to feed all of them for the night, and none of them fancied breaking into either the emergency energy bars or the various ancient tins in Nick’s old cottage. Stephen recommended the hotel in Isleornsay, near the cottage; he said he’d often gone there with Nick, and the food was good and Lester wouldn’t yell about the prices. They split up into shifts again. Becker insisted on staying at the anomaly, saying he wasn’t hungry yet, and sent Blade off with Jenny and Stephen to eat before settling in with Lacey and Ditzy. Jenny wasn’t going to complain about food, frankly; she hadn’t really been hungry earlier, and had ceded a large amount of her lunch to the gannets masquerading as her colleagues. Her growling stomach was telling her that was a mistake. Stephen drove them back to Isleornsay along the single-track road, seemingly unconcerned by the lack of passing places or the lack of street lamps, and parked just by a small, friendly-looking hotel, as whitewashed as most of the other buildings and fairly lively-looking. They still had no trouble getting a seat in the bar and ordering drinks - non-alcoholic, firstly because Lester always complained about even a hint of alcohol on the expense forms and secondly because no matter how quiet it was there was still an active anomaly out there - and while it wasn’t enormously loud, it wasn’t so quiet that they could be easily heard by any bystanders. Which would be all for the best if any anomaly-related problems came up.  According to the chalkboard they were two days short of an Evening of Music, for which Jenny was pathetically grateful. She was looking over the menu when she heard Stephen exclaim “Eilis!” and saw him get to his feet. She glanced up and then stared: Stephen was actually smiling at, and had in fact hugged, a young woman wearing a t-shirt with the hotel’s name on it and carrying a small notepad. “You’re late! You haven’t been back for months. And you promised you’d be back for New Year!” She had a local accent, and spoke so familiarly with Stephen - notoriously shy and a man of few, if not no words - that Jenny found herself speechless. Even Blade, who wasn’t exactly talkative himself, looked nonplussed. “I didn’t promise,” Stephen said, half-laughing. “I said I might be. I might be.” “Well, it’s yours now, isn’t it. Since Nick passed. You can come up whenever you like.” Eilis swept an assessing look over Jenny and Blade, lingering over Blade’s handsome face the way most people did. She was short and plump, with strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and narrow grey eyes.  “It’s a long way from home. I’ll try to come up whenever I can.” “Aye, well, if you film that documentary up here you’ll be golden,” Eilis said equably, and then turned a bright, intensely amused flash of a smile on Stephen’s face. “That’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it. Documentary filming.”Stephen nodded. Jenny remembered - had never been in a position to forget - that he was, in fact, a terrible liar, unless he carefully avoided discussing anything and everything to do with the subject he wanted to lie about. “Well, let me get your orders if you’ve chosen,” Eilis said, whipping out a pen to go with the notepad. Jenny picked the fish and chips almost at random, and thought from the tone of Stephen’s voice that he had done the same with the bangers and mash. Eilis favoured them with another smile and whisked herself away. “Ex-girlfriend?” Blade suggested. Stephen shook his head. “I used to bump into her a lot when I came up here with Nick - she’s been waitressing here since she was old enough to get a job.” He scratched at his stubble. “I thought she was studying in Glasgow. She must be home for Christmas.” “She’s sharp,” Jenny said. “Always has been.” Stephen hesitated. “You should have heard her in July - when I came back without Nick.” Blade stared into the middle distance as if it was profoundly interesting, Jenny tried to think of something to say, and then Eilis returned with their drinks and pulled up the fourth chair at the table, easy as breathing. “Introduce me to your friends, Stephen,” she said, and added with a wink - “especially the good-looking one.” The backs of Blade’s ears went red, and Stephen grinned. “He’s got a terrifying girlfriend back home in London, Eilis.” “What makes you think I didn’t mean the lady?” Eilis retorted, mock-insulted, and Jenny laughed. “People never do.” She held out a hand. “Jenny.” “Niall,” Blade said, with a quick nod, which was good, because Jenny had completely forgotten his real first name.  “And you must be part of the film crew, too, both of you.” Eilis tilted her head on one side and looked at Jenny. “Presenter?” “Producer,” Jenny said, wondering exactly how much scrutiny Eilis was going to subject their lie to. “Our presenter’s sorting out the accommodation.” “For shame, Stephen, you left them alone with that disaster boiler?” “It’s fine,” Stephen said defensively. “And Becker can cope.”Eilis grinned. “Lucky for him. Is that the one that met you at Kinloch this morning, with a load of kit from the base over at Kyle of Lochalsh?” Jenny was too practised at this to freeze, but Stephen almost did. Blade’s eyes flicked to Eilis as if he was assessing whether she was a threat that needed to be dealt with, a habit Jenny wished the soldiers would learn to conceal a little better. “Uh?” Stephen said. Jenny didn’t slap her forehead. “My sister works at Kinloch,” Eilis said. “General manager. And her best friend’s boyfriend works at the base. Gossips like the fiend, that one.” She looked at Stephen. She was still smiling, but in a way that suggested it was for anyone looking. “Everyone around here knows you do dinosaurs, not documentaries, Stephen. We’ll keep our mouths shut, but mind out for the tourists.” “At least there are basically no tourists,” Stephen retorted. Eilis laughed. “True. Well, it’s Christmas, isn’t it. We’ve only got the people that do holidays away from home and fancy Scotland at this time of year -” “Masochists,” Stephen remarked. “-look who’s talking!” Eilis got to her feet and smiled down at Stephen. “You do look better than you did in July.”  “Well, it’s been six months since… Nick.” Stephen looked down at the table. “I knew it had to get better some time.” Eilis’ face softened. “We miss him, Stephen. But probably not as much as you do.” Something must have shown on Jenny’s face, because those disconcerting eyes brightened and sharpened again. “And if you’re Jenny, you must be the Jenny Nick mentioned.” “Well, if there’s another one, I’d like to know about it,” Jenny said, papering over her shock. “I don’t think so.” Eilis smiled. “I’m sorry for the both of you.” She looked at Blade. “Don’t tell me you have a tragic past with old Nick, too.”  “No,” Blade said, very simply. “Good.” Eilis got to her feet, collected their menus together and slapped them briskly into a neat pile. “Just remember you lot are a little more obvious than you think you are, to anyone who knows this place. Oh, and weren’t there more than three of you? Four, if we count the… presenter?” “Six altogether,” Jenny said. “Can we reserve a table for the other three? Say in a couple of hours’ time?” “No need. I’ll slap a reserved sign on this one when you’re gone.” Eilis tucked the menus under her arm. “Enjoy your food.” She went away. Blade sat back in his chair and disappeared into his drink as if he had no intention of talking to anyone, ever again. “Locals,” Jenny said. “They always know more than you think they do.” Stephen grunted. It didn’t sound like the way Nick would have done it.Their food was delicious. They ate their way through it in record time. Jenny wasn’t surprised when Eilis was in charge of collecting the bills at the bar. “Watch out for that one,” Eilis said, waving the PIN machine around until it took the details from the ARC’s card. “He and Nick set a lot of store in each other, that was always obvious.” Jenny sighed. “I know,” she said, and didn’t elaborate. She left a sizeable tip. “I bet the terrifying girlfriend in London’s not as scary as me,” Eilis said meditatively, looking over at Jenny’s colleagues. “What do you think my chances are?” Jenny choked a laugh. “They’re very devoted to each other, so - not high, I’m afraid.” “Damn,” Eilis said cheerfully. “Have a nice night. Send your colleagues along soon, kitchen wants to close by eight.” Jenny, Blade and Stephen took Lacey, Ditzy and Becker’s place at the beach, after warning them about Eilis the waitress, and settled in to wait. It was very quiet and sleepy, save for the distant crashing of the waves and the occasional buzz of a confirmatory text from the duty technician saying the anomaly was still there. Then Blade, normally as impassive as the average fridge, nearly leapt from his seat in shock. Both Jenny and Stephen started. “What-” Jenny said feebly, and Stephen swore. “Look - Jenny, look -” Under the clear light of the full moon, an orca leapt from the water, twisted, and dropped back into the sea. “I think it just came out of the anomaly,” Stephen said, awed.  “I’m going down onto the beach,” Jenny said, fumbling for outer layers, gloves and hat and letting herself out of the car as quickly as she could. “Wait!” Blade said, as Stephen tumbled out as well, and chased after them with torches. Stephen hadn’t bothered - he seemed to know Sleat so well - but Jenny couldn’t see where she was going without a torch, and even with it on she stumbled constantly. On the beach the sand crunched under their feet as they ran to the edge of the pitiless sea, and out among the waves, the orcas… played. Stephen was counting them under his breath, one… two… three… four? Yes, four, and his murmuring melded with the faint whistles and blows that Jenny could just distantly hear, carried to her on the wind. “They’re not hostile,” Blade said, looking awed, his tone full of doubt. “Why would they be hostile?” Jenny said, puzzled, and then added: “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to think about it. Tell Becker, but I think you can say… I think you can say we don’t need him back here. Unless he wants to come and look at the orcas.” Blade nodded, and tried to raise a call. He couldn’t, and let out a huff of frustration. “There’s signal up on the hill,” Jenny observed, extremely reluctant to leave the shoreline. Blade pointed at her. “Don’t go anywhere, don’t run into the sea, and yell if you get into shit.” “What are you expecting to happen here?” “I don’t expect things, ma’am, and they happen anyway.” Blade left at a run, the light from his torch bobbing on the path away from the beach. Stephen didn’t seem to have heard any of this. He had his binoculars to his eyes, and was totally engrossed in watching the orcas. Jenny divided her attention between the orcas and his face, surprised by just how happy he looked, surprised by the contrast to the stern Stephen she’d first known. “I think those two might be the mother and baby from the picture,” Stephen said, offering Jenny the binoculars. “Or if they’re not, they’re another pair very like them. The mother’s dorsal fin isn’t quite right.” “How can you tell?” Jenny asked, putting the binoculars to her eyes. She could see them easily with the naked eye, but the binoculars offered her more detail, got her just a little bit closer. She’d never been animal-mad, but she understood why Christina Budge had sat out to sea to draw and paint these creatures in 1932. They were so full of life, and so strange. “In this light?” “I squinted, honestly.” Jenny smiled.  “I don’t know whether to hope they stay or hope they go,” Stephen murmured. “It would be good for the population, to have new blood - supposing they’re from a time or place that’s different enough - but…” “Who knows what it might change,” Jenny said, hearing the echo of Nick’s old argument. “Nick,” Stephen said, confirming it. He stuffed his gloved hands into his pockets. “I always thought that argument was a circular one. And it makes much more sense if the anomalies lead us into alternate timelines. Connor gets the physics, but I always just thought -” He glanced at Jenny, and then away. She lowered the binoculars. “What?” “I thought it didn’t make any sense for some weird change to have made you out of someone else,” Stephen said. “The Claudia Nick was always going on about.” Jenny’s breath caught. “I never thought that made any sense, either.” Stephen looked down at the sand, and then looked out hard at the orcas, his eyes tracking them as if he could avoid the conversation. “Nick was a good man.” “But undoubtedly not a perfect one.” Stephen’s mouth twitched. Jenny thought of something, and poked around it like she was examining a new wisdom tooth with her tongue, before deciding that it didn’t hurt so much she couldn’t bear to touch it. “He wasn’t always very good at seeing things for what they were. Things and people. Especially people.” Stephen bit down on his lip. “How many times did he call you Claudia?” “Too many, thank you very much. How many job opportunities elsewhere did he discourage you from going for?” Stephen winced. “He didn’t discourage me. It was just there was always something more to do at CMU.” “And he didn’t always call me Claudia. He just encouraged me not to dress like Jenny.” “In fairness,” Stephen said, “the stiletto heels did have to go.” Jenny laughed. “Not dinosaur compatible, no. But the lipstick would have been fine.” “I told you, the lipstick’s nice.” Jenny grinned. “Thanks.” She paused. “I miss him, you know. A lot. But I sometimes think I’m more myself without him.” Stephen nodded, and looked down at his feet. “I get that.” There was a long pause, in which the baby orca threw itself into the air and nearly hit one of its companions on the way down. Stephen and Jenny both chuckled. “I don’t think I’m there yet,” Stephen said, when the laughter had died down. “But I’m… getting better.” “I wondered,” Jenny said, and nudged his shoulder. “You seem happier.” Stephen’s mouth twitched again. “It’s easier now I’m not being Nick’s translator for life.” Jenny laughed. She would have denied it to anyone else, but she knew exactly what he meant, and Stephen knew she knew it. “Watch the orcas,” she said. “If they can manage to be happy, we probably can too.”  After a few minutes, Blade jogged back down to the beach. “Captain Becker says he’s insulted you thought he wouldn’t want to see the orcas and they’ll be back this way as soon as they can,” Blade said, which was probably the most words in a row Jenny had ever heard from him. “Did you get into shit?” “You have no faith in us. No.” Jenny handed him the binoculars. “Your turn.” She stood on the shoreline with the sea lapping at her toes, and stared out into the night. The orcas played in the darkness, and Jenny felt her heart lighten with every glimpse of a fin. Somewhat before dawn on the morning of the 23rd of December, Jenny woke to a phone call from an excitable technician, saying that the anomaly had closed. Jenny managed to scrape together enough brain cells to say thank you, and then lay in bed thinking until she realised that she couldn’t go back to sleep, at which point she got up, shivering, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and dressed in every item of clothing she could feasibly put on. Her hand fell automatically on her make-up bag, lying on the dresser in the bedroom, but after a second’s sleepy thought she realised she didn’t need anything she didn’t want to wear. On an impulse, she pulled out the red lipstick and applied a coat, squinting in the dresser’s tiny mirror. Because it was there. Because she could. Lying in the bed next to the empty space where she’d been, Lacey stirred and opened her eyes, but went back to sleep as soon as Jenny told her nothing was happening. Likewise, Ditzy and Becker clearly woke as she went downstairs, but neither of them got up or did anything when she put the kettle on in the kitchen. Becker did yell at her, sleepy-voiced and half-volume, not to go far from the cottage when she opened the back door, mug of tea in hand. Jenny called back an acknowledgement, and then let the door close behind her. It was bloody cold, and the light was only just touching the world, turning from grey to the pinks and blues of dawn. Rain was forecast for later in the day, but for now the clouds were gone, and a faint dusting of snow that must have fallen in the night lay over the hills and crusted the mountains. Jenny hoped it wouldn’t be so heavy elsewhere that they couldn’t get home. It was stunning. She sat down on the back step, tucking her coat beneath her to cut the cold, and drank her tea. A flicker of movement fairly close to the shore caught her eye, and she almost spilled tea over her gloves as she jumped, before staring into the horizon looking for it. For a few moments it didn’t appear, but then there it was again: the smaller black dorsal fin of an adult female orca, and the still-smaller one of a juvenile. The adult slapped the water with her tail, and the juvenile leapt from the sea for the joy of living. Jenny laughed, and then she smiled.