With Jane weeping on my shoulder, her mask of detached self-assurance having slipped to reveal a confused and isolated vulnerability, Carlee began to take charge. She put aside whatever doubts she had harboured, and the quiet nod of her head, as our eyes met, was ample affirmation of her intent. Smiling palely, she put her left arm around my shoulder and her right around Jane's. In the cool, soft light of the clearing, silent but for the mellow murmur of the river as it whispered like a co-conspirator over the rocks, the three of us stood in a circle, in a quiet embrace, our heads touching, our breaths mingling; and something happened then, a magical transformation, an alchemical reaction of the soul. Fear has a metaphysical weight, an abstract bane which shackles the spirit and saps your resolve; and, as a true agent of destruction, it acts slyly, gradually accumulating its negative energy and consuming the fire of its host, a parasite replicating itself over and over inside you. But as we stood together, united by a common purpose, we each felt a glorious change come over us: fear gave way to encouragement, encouragement to hope, hope to determination, and determination to endeavour. We knew we needed to act. Each of us silently made the same calculation and arrived at the same answer. It was Carlee who expressed it.

"We've got to go back to that house. And we do it now."

We raised our heads and looked at one another, a trinity of hope kindling in the keenness of the day. Pressing forward, eyes raised to the tree tops, to the glorious blue beyond, to the freedom of the skies, our lips met in a trinal display of attachment, and we lingered, long enough to feel our love.

Fear is never banished, of course - it can only be controlled. As we walked towards the end of the Hallow Road, to the rickety fence and dilapidated gate - that decrepit entrance to the fates beyond - my stomach was in turmoil, my mind racing, heart throbbing. Without Carlee and Jane by my side, I would have retreated and fled home long before the river arced to the north in its final, valedictory turn before it parted from the Hallow Road and streamed towards the sea. At first, we tried to talk, masking our concerns with a pretence of normality, but it was strained and by the time we reached the gate we were silent. With an exchange of nervous glances, we filed through, relinquishing the solid safety of the Road for the dark doubts of the track beyond that led uphill towards the Ripley House.

Lying on the rotting fence post, where we had discovered it two days before, was the little collection of wild flowers, now sadly withered, a dried and frayed shadow of its former beauty, the vivid blues and yellows and reds and purples dulled brown by the progress of time.

"Oh," said Jane, lifting them gingerly, "I picked those the other day and forgot about them." She turned them deftly in her hand, her fingers seeming to caress the lifeless stems. I felt sad to know that they had been picked by Jane: two days before, when they were still vibrant and full of hope, they were a link between us, evidence that our paths had unwittingly crossed. She laid them quietly on the grass. "I left them there and meant to collect them later. Poor things."

Poor things indeed. One's tracks across space are simple, a steady line from A to B, a clear progression from start to end. They can be plotted, traced on a map, visual evidence of what has been. The tracks of time, though, form a complicated canvas - a frenetic weave of events and happenstance, of encounters and missed opportunities, of little lives and lonely deaths, all interplayed and overlayed; and sometimes connections are made, but more often moments slide past one another in unknowing chance. Jane had been on the Hallow Road two days before - as had we - and yet our tracks in time had not crossed, our fates were not enjoined, the separate strands of our existence were left untied. Who knows, now, how things might have turned out: if we hadn't stopped to observe the deer in the field, perhaps we would have arrived at the gate at the moment when Jane laid her posy on the post; and if Jane had picked just one more flower, then she might have delayed long enough to see our arrival. And then?

And then. And then, who knows. But no, our tracks across space were matched, but time - in its mystery - eluded us. All that linked us were the tiny flowers, those fragile offerings of the rump of the year, sad and alone, left to die unattended.

We climbed towards the railway cutting, taking extra care where the fresh rain had turned the surface to mud. Lancing downhill were wide and turning rivulets, eroded chasms scarring the surface of the track, digging down as though excavating through the ages. We shivered as we entered the shadow of the embankment, its baleful northern aspect enveloping us with a cloak of gloom. No-one spoke as we passed through the tunnel, as the echoes of footsteps haunted the air. I strained to hear, to recall, to garner some comfort from the sounds of the past: in my mind, I fancied I heard one last, forgotten cry of "Carlee", left hanging from our visit before, a tenuous link, a hopeful reminder.

All three of us were tense, unhappy to be doing what we had resolved to do. Unconsciously, we walked slowly, delaying the moment, but all too soon the tunnel ended, and we emerged once more into daylight. I grabbed at Carlee's hand and then at Jane's, and together we approached the Ripley House, the sad remains of a time gone by.

The ruins of Jane's life.

She approached falteringly. Against the ruins, her small frame seemed slighter than ever, the thin dress affording her little protection, and suddenly she looked a tragic figure. The dark cascade of hair, in contrast to the paleness of her body, gave her a monochrome aspect, an ethereality compounded by her slow, disjointed movements. She stood by a solitary stone, long since toppled from its rightful place and rested at an oblique angle in the ground. "Home," she said, with an ironic laugh.

"Do you come here a lot?" asked Carlee.

"No. I don't like it." Jane looked pensive, her face a mask of melancholy, her demeanour weary and lonely. She shivered, folding her arms around herself protectively, staring at the ground; her small, dark eyes, usually so bright and full of life, were leaden and listless, dull as the day itself. She seemed lost, overwhelmed by her presence at a scene from another life, another time. The words of my poem came to me, and they seemed to fit Jane perfectly: 'At Ripley's House I hesitate, adrift in time.' I put my arm around her shoulder, and she lowered her head on to it briefly, smiling at me. "The past is alive, here," she whispered.

"I'm sorry," said Carlee.

"No need, honestly." She tried to convey a nonchalant ease, but to me, knowing her as I did, the depth of her discomfort was painfully evident.

The window of blue sky had long disappeared, replaced by the slate-grey of winter, low and threatening, looming over us as though resting on the tree-tops and preparing to smother us. There was a coldness to the air, but it was heavy and stale: the trees lining the edge of the clearing barely moved and the mist of our breath seemed to sink helplessly to the ground. The remains of the Ripley House lay scattered before us, a forlorn skeleton revealing a glimpse of what once had been, without affording any prospect of understanding.

"Where was your room?" Again, Carlee asked the questions I would never have dared.

"Up there, on the right, above the living room."

"Is that where you died?"

"No, I don't think so. But I don't know. I was barely a year old, remember." Her voice began to waver.

"I'm sorry."

"Again, no need." But once more, Jane's words and reactions revealed different truths.

Carlee caught the look of pain on her face and blushed in embarrassment. I felt for her: she was struggling with her emotions, uncertain how to react to Jane, and the strangeness of the circumstances did not help. She walked around the house, skirting the walls, her hand dragging in the air behind her as though she were tracing their secret outline. As she reached the back wall she disappeared behind the central stack of the chimney, and I was alone with Jane.

She took my hand. "We never came here together."

I laughed. "No. And d'you know why? You'll like this: I always thought this was my place. My special place, and I didn't like to share it with anyone else." I squeezed her hand. "Not even you, my special friend. And now what do I find: it actually is your place - genuinely yours. How ironic is that?"

"Not mine, not really. It's just a ruin."

"More than a ruin. You know that as well as I do."

"Do I?"

"'The past is alive, here,' you just said. I know exactly what you mean by that. And so do you." Jane nodded but made no reply. "It's happened to you as well, hasn't it?"

"What has?"

"You've gone back?"

Jane was staring at the ground. Her dark hair hung in waves around her face, emphasising the childish puffiness of her cheeks. Her eyes, solemn and deep, evidencing long experience and heavy pain, offered a startling contrast. "Once," she replied. "The night before I fell in the river."

Guilt lanced through my body. "You didn't tell me."

"Did you tell me when it happened to you? Anyway, what could I say? 'I saw my own death last night?'"

"Did you?"

"What?"

"When you went back, did you see the fire? Your own death?"

"Not quite. I saw two people: my parents, obviously, but to be honest I can't think of them like that. I never knew them, they don't mean anything to me. They were arguing, a ferocious argument, and it all got out of hand. I knew he was going to hit her; it was getting nasty."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? It happened thirty-odd years ago. Really happened - you can't change time, Harriet. So I ran away. Ran like hell. Ran before I could see what happened next. Because you know what happened next." I wanted to say something, but no words emerged. "But I couldn't help looking back, and I saw it. I saw flames and smoke. I saw it start. So yes, I suppose you can say I saw my own death."

I held her close, my hand rested on her cheek, head nestling in her hair. "I'm so sorry, I wish I could have helped."

"But d'you know what? What I've never figured out is: which death did I see? Was it history or future? Or both?"

My stomach was churning, a nauseous tremor sliding up my throat and into the back of my mouth. My ears were awash with the sounds of despair, a withering stream of noise and nuisance, and I found it difficult to gather my thoughts. Around me, the clearing appeared confused - too sharp, as though the contrast were too high - and the colours were bleached, raw and mordant. It seemed as though nature were mimicking the unease in my own body, reacting in tune with my distress; and gradually the two began to merge, as I felt myself slide out of my body and ooze into the atmosphere, become part of an amorphous swirl of ambiguity, neither corporeal nor transcendent. It became impossible to tell whether my fears were shaping the environment, or circumstance was feeding my alarm.

Then, as I knew it would, I felt the shudder of time. Reality tilted, it shimmered and shivered, the impossible weave of history unraveled.

"Harriet!" shouted Jane in alarm.

"I know, I know. It's happening."

"Harriet, hold me, I'm scared."

"It's okay. Where's Carlee?" But I knew it was too late, and Carlee wasn't there: we were on our own. My voice sounded strange, distant and echoing, as though it and I were on different planes. The grass beneath us slithered, rustling and rippling like a river in spate, and the air rifled round us, lassoing, fixing us in its grip. My body grew heavy, but my legs felt hollow, and I seemed to be floating on air. Jane was beside me, her eyes burning with fear, a veil of sadness fixing her features. We slid and stammered through the years, edging closer to destiny, helpless in the maw of a greater force, and with a tremor we emerged from the shadow of the future.

And stood, once more, in the Ripley House.