“Marry me, babe.”
Benjamin hiccupped and held one of his cheese puff rings to her face. He blinked unevenly as his last beer lulled him to sleep. He wavered before finally succumbing, his head lolling onto the sofa before a drilling snore erupted from his gaping mouth.
Elena clutched her book and stared wide eyed at the stale cheesy ring in his limp hand. She took up her wine and devoured the remaining half glass of merlot in a large gulp, grimacing as it momentarily caught in her throat.
This was a new low.
London’s belly boomed as a crack of thunder sounded throughout her apartment, the rain trickling traced patterns on her windows.
She slumped back into the sofa and stared at the snoring form next to her. Relationships had never been her strong suit, much to the dismay of her well-meaning, but carelessly candid mother who’d raised Elena on the belief that love was immaterial, but a well-off marriage was a must. Unbeknownst to her mother, Jane Austen’s thesis had severely outdated and a lot of single men in possession of a hefty fortune these days were rather not in want of a wife. Instead, despite protests and promises, often weren’t even single, but in want of a mistress with a kinky habit and an only fans account.
Benjamin choked back another snort as if concurring. A lazy hand rubbed over his mouth, spreading the cheese powder that laced his lips onto his cheek.
Elena did her best to hold out hope with Benjamin, that love would come, finally proving to her mother that despite her bullishly self-reliant nature, Elena could find love and work hard and be happy. Regrettably, waiting for love to come with Benjamin, was like waiting for a blistering English sun in December.
There was no guilt in admitting these feelings. After all it went both ways. Benjamin’s proposal was as empty as the crisp packet on his lap. Of course, they cared somewhat for each other, but truthfully, they knew this relationship was a comfortable routine of familiarity. He got to lounge on her comfy sofa most weekends, use her streaming services and fridge supplies, while she got a getaway pass from her mother’s incessant set ups and interrogations surrounding her dating life.
Elena ran a hand down the cover of the novel in her lap.
Austen, Hardy, Brontë. Romanticised historical fiction was her toxic therapy. Toxic, because the brooding gentlemen with impeccable manners and god-given looks were only feeding her false hope about impossible love ideals and fictional worlds she could only dream of.
A crack of lightening struck across the sky, and a slow creak sounded from her bedroom. Elena’s eyes snapped to the dark room peeking at her from across the hall.
Another bellow of thunder rumbled over the city.
She tossed her book on the kitchen bench and flicked the switch on the kettle.
Tomorrow, she would break it off with him tomorrow.
Thud.
Elena’s attention flew once again to the blackened hallway.
Usually, a collection of eery sounds in the middle of a storm would have caused some alarm, but the echoes emitting from her bedroom had become a familiar humdrum over the last week thanks to her newly purchased, bargain priced, antique cedar wardrobe. Beautiful? Yes. But she’d never met a piece of furniture so intent on destroying itself. Moaning and groaning, hanger bars snapping, hinges coming off doors which proceeded to try and crush her flat. As pretty as it was, she was close to taking an axe to the damn thing.
She tore open a packet of wheat biscuits and shoved two into her mouth, chewing viciously and glaring at her bedroom doorway.
Her smiling government ID badge stared up at her passing judgement from its spot on the kitchen bench. “Wha–?” she spluttered, crumbs flying from her mouth. She looked so happy in that stupid photo. Elena’s tongue moved over her teeth to dislodge the dry wheat from the crevices of her mouth.
Delusional, but happy.
Perhaps the timing was right to move on from her flailing love life and return her focus to her flailing career. After all, those papers didn’t staple themselves, and her senior officer, Mr Marsh, was very particular about his morning brew. God forbid he’d ever use her skills of deduction in any effective way other than hunting down the city’s best bagels.
She slung the badge at her gym bag before shoving another two biscuits into her mouth with the palm of her hand. The GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), where she’d worked now for the past several years, had started offering self-defence as an extra-curricular to all employees, and despite her mediocre position as an administrator for the data and intelligence team, every Tuesday and Thursday morning, Elena got to train with the big suits from upstairs, working out her frustrations in one-on-one sparring matches. It was therapeutic both personally, to work out her ongoing disappointments she had dating their kind– and professionally, because they were all overpaid, overvalued dickheads in need of a little humility.
Another crack of lightening lit up the sky.
BANG.
Elena jolted crushing the biscuit packet in her hand.
Maybe it was that big hairy rat which had been lurking around her neighbours’ front door the past fortnight after he’d forgotten bin day– twice.
Idiot. This was London. If there was anything to know about living in this city, it was to never ride the central line during a hot summer peak hour. Never go to Oxford Street on a Saturday around Christmas. And lastly, never ever forget bin day unless you wanted rodents, who could double as your cat, prowling about your home.
Elena shuddered and soundlessly picked up a cast iron frying pan. She headed toward the dark room, twisting the pan in her hand like a tennis racket, armed and ready to scare any hairy intruders who were looking for shelter from the storm.
Elena peaked in from behind the frame and scanned the darkness for any movement or unfamiliar shapes.
Nothing.
She stepped in, twisting the frying pan once more and glanced about.
The cupboard door wavered.
She froze.
There was no breeze, no window open, no draft stirring with every breach sealed because of the storm. She wasn’t good with oversized furry critters on the best of days, so if it was anything larger than a soap bar, she was going to lose her shit.
Readjusting the pan to a double handed grip, she stalked slowly toward the wardrobe. She took in a breath and grimaced as her heart picked up.
She flung the doors open and they slammed against the walls.
But there was nothing.
Nothing except her jackets and dresses hanging still and silent.
An odd tingling on the back of her neck triggered the hairs on her arms to stand and a fearful thought crept over her.
Was someone here?
With shallow breath, she turned slowly and scanned the shadows behind her.
Her grip tightened around the pan.
“Just so you know–” she said, her voice cracking. “I work for the government.” There was a gentle creak and her body seized. “So… so I know a lot of people with guns.”
Silence.
A car drove by the window dispelling the darkness for a fleeting moment.
The room was empty.
Elena swallowed, relieved, as truthfully she didn’t have any connections at work outside of the barista of level two who gave her cheap coffee most mornings.
She turned and reached to close the doors, but a glimmer of light caught her eye from the back panelling. It shone through the wood, as if from behind, breaking a thin streak of light onto her face.
She checked over her shoulder.
The night rain softly pattered against the window.
Moving her clothes apart, she brushed her fingertips over the glow.
How odd.
She rested her palm against the grainy wood at the back of the wardrobe and pressed gently.
There was a crack.
Elena closed her eyes and frowned. The shifty old man who’d sold her the damn thing certainly wouldn’t take it back if she’d broken it. She sighed. Too late now. She pushed again, a little harder this time.
The wood split open and light poured over her swallowing the darkness. She squinted, shielding her eyes as they adjusted to the light.
“What on–” her voice dissipated.
With her apartment located on the fourth floor, at the north-east corner of her block, logically, on the other side of that wardrobe, if it could open through the layers of insulation and brick, was four flights of empty air and a clear view into her neighbour’s opposing apartment. Instead, despite the rain and dark skies behind her, Elena stood before a lavish bedroom bathed in sunlight beyond her own.
“Impossible,” she muttered, completely in awe, looking over her shoulder again to check the inky black sky outside her window.
Her eyes moved to the clock on the bedstand.
9:43PM.
Her mind went blank as it tried to process the strange room beyond her own. She waved an arm out in front of her, but where solid wall should have been, her hand moved freely past into the air beyond. She turned her outstretched hand and watched the sun play over her fingers.
It was warm.
She had to get a closer look.
Taking hold of the side panels, Elena stepped in and the cupboard let out a dreary moan.
“If this is Narnia,” she muttered, grimacing as she pulled a coat hanger from her ribs, “I better get to see some talking lions or meet that cute Prince Caspian bloke.”
Awkwardly hunched in the wardrobe, Elena stuck her head through but was sadly not greeted by a half human-goat man or a plate full of Turkish delight. Instead, she gazed upon a bright and decorative bedroom, lined with green wallpaper and framed with a floor to ceiling window which ran over half the room. A magnificent four-poster bed with a white canopy hung above a soft downy duvet, unmade, as if someone had recently rolled out of it to start their day.
She went to step through but paused, her foot hovering mid-air over a thick pile rug as her brain ticked over. Had she cracked it? If she put her foot down, would she plunge down four flights of empty air onto a dank London sidewalk?
She squeezed her eyes closed and held her breath.
Soft wool moved up between her toes, tickling her feet as she sank down. She opened her eyes and let out an exasperated gasp in relief.
She wasn’t dead.
Her laugh died in her throat as the thought seeped in.
Or was she?
Maybe the wardrobe had fallen and crushed her, or there had been an intruder and they’d shot her in the back of the head without her realising and now this was what death was?
Her Latin professor sprang to mind shaking his head at her in derision as he so often had.
Cogito, ergo sum.
I think therefore I am.
If that were true, with the pace her brain was running at, she was more alive than she’d ever been before. Maybe she was hallucinating then? She hadn’t had that much wine tonight, had she?
Behind her, her modest little room sat silently in the dark on the other side of the wardrobe, the faint patter of rain still audible from where she stood.
She took a few steps into the strange room. The aroma of burning wood and jasmine drifting over her. There was a fireplace in front of a Parisian style sofa with a dainty coffee table in front of it on one side of the room, and a large divider, with a full-length gilded mirror and a small table with amenities behind it on the other.
These were some severe hallucinations.
On the bedside table next to her was a small frame with a sketch of a family. She picked it up and flipped it. The inscription on the back read
Edith, Papa and I, February 2nd—1876.
The drawn portrait was good, in fact the girl within it looked eerily like her. Her lip curled and she placed the irksome picture back down. She moved to the polished cedar desk in the corner of the room. A leather-bound diary and a small ink pot and fountain pen lay atop it.
She flipped the diary open to a random page.
Monday, October 2nd, 1876.
It’s been three days since I last saw Elizabeth. I know he’s taken her no matter what the police tell me. What have we done? I never should have left her. My poor Elizabeth. I wish I knew how to find her, or who to turn to, but I don’t know what to do, or who to trust. With every passing day, I feel her slipping further from me. I have to find her. No one can ever find out the truth.
Elena blinked, her brows puckering.
She swiped forward a few more pages to an entry dated a few days later.
Thursday–October 5th, 1876.
Elizabeth is still missing and I can only sit here hopelessly. To make matters worse, Edith is planning an introduction with father and the horrid Mr Graves this Saturday. I can only wait in dread for the event. I don’t have time to waste, but she is fixated on me finding a match before my twenty-seventh year as she believes me an old spinster. I know she means well, but surely she can see how brainless and half-witted these men are? Most of whom aren’t looking for a partner, but a wife to bear their heirs and sit pretty on their arm at social occasions. I will not be subjected to such levels of derision.
There were no more entries after this.
Her fingers trailed over the neat cursive writing.
She couldn’t imagine dating in the nineteenth century. Disney-like fairy tales weren’t exactly plausible renditions of history considering the misogyny and general male chauvinistic way of life during the era.
Sure, those princesses got a crown and a Prince, but a right to vote?
LOL– not in your lifetime, Cinderella.
“Miss Elena?”
Elena jerked straight.
“Oh my god,” she whispered.
There’s people here?
The door handle jostled, and her throat seized.
“I’ll bring your tea now Miss.”
A shadow wavered beneath the door before disappearing. Without thought, Elena leapt over the unmade bed and slung open the doors to the wardrobe.
She shrieked stumbling back as a girl in a long white nightie stood in her dark little room on the other side of the cupboard fingering through something on her desk.
Elena stood slowly from the bed.
“HEY!”
The girl turned, and horror struck hard and fast.
It was impossible.
She was looking at… herself.
The girl took a step toward her.
“Woah woah–” Elena yelled bumping back into the bed.
She was dumbfounded, the girl’s appearance was perfectly uncanny to her own. The girl stood a little taller as she in turn took Elena in, but she didn’t seem surprised, just– curious.
The girl gave her a small bobbing curtsy.
“My name is Elle.”
Elena swallowed, unable to speak.
The girl raised a brow.
Her brow.
“I’m–”
“Elena Manning, yes I know who you are,” the girl said. “It seems we have that in common.” Elena’s fingers tightened into a death grip on the blanket behind her as the girl took a few steps toward her.
“Our name?”
“Yes.”
“Your name is Elena Manning?” Elena remained frozen in place, her eyes dropping down the girl once again. “I think we’ve got a little more in common than that.”
“I found the door a few days ago after my father had the wardrobe acquired at my request,” the girl continued. “I must say, it’s a very curious place here. You have so many implements and machines.” She picked up Elena’s phone from her bedside table and inspected it closely.
“How curious,” the girl whispered in wonder.
Elena took in a shaky breath.
“Calm down Ariel it’s just a phone.”
The girl glanced up, confused.
“My name is Elle.”
Elena opened her mouth to retort but the girl continued.
“–I wish I could ask you about it all but I’m afraid we don’t have much time.” She smiled in wonder and showed Elena her phone screen. Elena’s mouth dropped open as her unlocked home screen stared back at her.
“Did you just–”
“I am yet to move beyond your servant quarters,” Elle continued, putting the phone back in its place, “I assume the rest of the house is beyond the locked door in the other room?” she pointed.
“I’m sorry?”
“The servant’s door? Outside the room next to us.”
The girl motioned to Elena’s kitchen.
“That’s not a servant’s door, that’s my front door.”
“It’s just these three rooms then? And no servants?”
“Just these three–?” Elena audibly scoffed. Did this girl understand how much a one-bedroom apartment went for in Stratford these days?
“Listen, Elena or Elle or whatever your name is–”
“Elle, I prefer Elle.”
Elena pressed her lips together.
“It doesn’t matter what your name is. Right now, what is happening, is I’m having a mental breakdown. Do you understand? I think I fell asleep on my sofa, after reading my book and having one too many wines–” Elena’s head snapped back as a pen hit her square in the head.
“You are not dreaming,” said Elle, “and we have to hurry.”
“OW!” Elena yelled in utter shock as a piercing pain stung the middle of her forehead. “Did you just throw a pen at my face?!”
“You’re not dreaming, and you’re not dead. But you are in a completely different world to the one you know, and I need your help. We don’t have much time before the door closes now you’ve passed through.”
Elena shook her head manically as the girl spoke.
“Stop stop stop,” she said laughing. “I get there are words coming out of your mouth, but at the same time, I have absolutely no idea what you’re rambling on about. I’m in a world different to the one I know? What the hell does that mean? Where am I?”
“My bedroom. In my father’s house at Grosvenor Square.”
Grosvenor Square?
Elena blinked.
“I’d hardly say that’s another world just because you live in the rich people part of town.”
“It’s not just that.”
“How about we address the fact that you and I look exactly the same? It’s one thing to walk through a cupboard and be shipped across the city to a different time zone, but this–” she said motioning between them. “If this is some kind of ‘Parent Trap’ scenario where my mother’s been lying to me my whole life and I have a long-lost twin, I’m going to lose my–”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“For what?”
“You’re a policeman are you not? You find people?”
Elena's face contorted.
“What?” She let out a small laugh. “I’m not a policeman. What on earth gave you that impression?”
“Your identification papers say you work for the government, that you find bad people?”
Elena did her best to comprehend the girl.
“I work in administration for criminal intelligence. It’s a far cry from–”
“I need you to find someone.” Elena shook her head overwhelmed at the conversation. “It appears we’ve been connected of sorts by this magical wardrobe–”
“Right,” Elena muttered, “as one does.”
“–the man who sold it to my father and I, he spoke all this dribble about it being magical for the special few, if you’re one of two–”
The shifty old man who had sold Elena her wardrobe had said something similar. Chuckling to himself that he hadn’t seen one like her in a while. She thought he’d mistaken her for someone else or that he was a bit off his marbles.
“Obviously, I thought it was all a tale,” Elle continued, “but then it opened for me, and I went through, and I’ve been able to pass freely between my home, and yours for some days now.”
Elena’s brows shot up.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t worry, I would try and come when you and your husband were asleep.”
All those creaks and strange noises, the haunting of her wardrobe hadn’t been the wardrobe at all, it had been–
“You!” This was unbelievable. “And I’m not married.”
The girl lowered her voice as if now was the time to take caution.
“The naked man in your bed?”
“Benjamin?” Elena laughed. “He’s not my–”
The cupboard between the two girls creaked.
“Oh no,” Elle said stepping back.
“What?”
“It’s happening, we must hurry.”
“With what?” Elena said as the wardrobe wavered. “What’s happening?”
“I went back to the old clerk for answers, he told me that once both halves have crossed over, a deal by the first must be struck and completed for each to return.”
Return?
Elena moved to the wardrobe and put her hand out, but her fingers touched something invisible. She pushed harder and her palm flattened against the air between them.
“It's not letting me back through!”
Elena beat her shoulder up against the invisible wall in a panic.
“How come you were able to cross back and forth?”
“You hadn’t yet crossed over.”
“Oh well that seems fair!” she yelled.
“We have to strike a deal.”
“Then give me something quick to do and we can switch back.”
Elle paused.
“My friend Elizabeth is missing… I– I need you to find her.”
Elena stopped hitting her shoulder against the invisible wall, her face dropping in disbelief.
“That’s the deal you want to strike? You don’t want to maybe go for something a little easier? Pick up that pen? Oh done! Problem solved, we can switch back.”
“I don’t want to switch back.”
“What?” Elena spat in disbelief. “Trust me when I say switching lives with me won’t be fun for you.”
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me, I just need someone capable to find her.”
“Listen to me, I don’t know what papers you’ve rummaged through and found in my apartment when I’ve been sleeping you little creep, but to clear things up, I’m not what you think I am, I work as an administrator for an officer. The only cases I see are when I peer over his shoulder as I serve him coffee. I’m sorry but no, you need to do this yourself or go talk to the police. Give me something else to do!”
“The police think she’s gone willingly because they’re to fearful to go near this case. She’s been taken by some very dangerous people, and I can’t find her on my own. My skillset is sewing and knowing how to hold polite conversation.”
Elena was as dumbfounded as she was angry.
“Sewing. Really?”
Not that Elena could speak, she could barely hem a skirt.
“It’s life or death for Elizabeth. She needs you more than she needs me.”
“Oh, for god sake–”
“And at least this way I’ll know you’ll be motivated to find her.”
Elena swivelled from her pacing to face the girl.
“Motivation? Is that what you’re calling this? Because it feels a lot more like blackmail.”
“If you don’t accept my offer, the door will close on both of us and you’ll be stuck where you are forever.”
Elena laughed. “In Grosvenor Square? How terrifying.”
Elle stepped forward, her eyes welling.
“Please, I’m begging you.”
Elena pinched the bridge of her nose. She really thought Benjamin’s proposal was going to be the strangest turning point of her night.
Boy, how wrong she was.
“Just tell me something before I do.”
Elle nodded.
Elena pointed to the diary on the desk at the end of the room.
“Is that your diary?”
Elle nodded.
“Why is it dated October 5th, 1876? Tell me that’s not the date here.”
Elle shook her head.
“No.”
Elena closed her eyes and let out a long breath as a wave of relief rushed over her. “For a second I thought–” she shook her head, dejected. She’d always wanted a case of her own, albeit she imagined herself hunting terrorists or dingy drug lords. But perhaps a smaller case like this was the starting point she needed to show her boss she was ready to take on more.
“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll agree to find your friend. Give me a laptop and your wi-fi password and I’ll figure it out as I go.”
Elle looked baffled.
“I meant it’s not the fifth.”
Elena shifted on her feet, her brow puckering again.
“I’m sorry?”
“Today’s the seventh.”
Something deep and sharp rushed through every part of her being. Her fingers and toes exploding with pins and needles, numbing her from the inside out.
“And the year?”
Before Elle could answer, she registered a faint rhythmic clopping of horse hooves and trundling wheels on stone. Her eyes snapped to the window behind her. She’d lived in the thick of the city for years so wasn’t numb to the chaos of urban life. Sirens, honking cars, drunken teens to screaming football hooligans– she’d slept through it all.
But horse hooves?
That was unusual.
Slowly, she approached the window, drawing back one of the heavy curtains.
She swallowed, and her heart fell from her chest into some part of her lower stomach.
Trundling over the cobbled streets below were horses and carriages of all sizes, filling the roads like cars in peak hour traffic. Men strode around in tailcoats and top hats, hurrying on-foot to their destinations, tipping their hats to women dressed in ornate floor-length dresses who passed them by. Labourers in flap caps and worn clothes scrambled the streets, manoeuvring through the traffic with their baskets of produce and brooms and tools. Shop keepers positioned their produce and swept their stalls while cabbies around them, prepped their carriages and patted their horses as they waited for passengers.
“What the hell is this?” Elena whispered.
She turned back to Elle.
“Elle? What the hell is this?”
She strode back to the cupboard and whipped the few items hanging to each side.
A wave of nausea hit her like a punch in the stomach. Her fingers gripped the cupboard doors to keep her standing, but her blood was already rushing from her head to her toes.
Elle was gone, as was her room, and a solid wooden panel stared back at her.
“Elle?” she called.
But no one answered.
She banged on the back of the cupboard. She pushed and hit it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“No no no no no.”
Moving to the back of the wardrobe, she heaved it from the wall and shoved an arm behind it to feel for a hole. “Elle are you there? Can you hear me?” But her hands met solid wall. She opened the cupboard one last time and pummelled the back of it.
“Elle?”
There was no response.
She took a few weak steps back and collapsed onto the bed, dragging her hands over her face. The faint patter of horse hooves and carriages continued to waft around her as she sat still and silent, head in hands.
She glanced back over her shoulder, and moved once again to the window, throwing back the curtain violently. There were no skyscrapers, no digital billboards, no movie posters or lights or telephone poles. There was no trace of twenty-first century life before her. It was loud and busy, with people milling around, with places to go, and people to see.
The people, the buildings, the haste; despite the obvious differences, it was still reminiscent of London–
But of one that was far from her own.
