Seeds of Time

Chapter Seven

AN: One person asked if Meg could be pregnant. Back in chapter 3 I mentioned that she had a contraceptive hormone implant, which lasts 3 years so no, no baby Hal’s running around.

Chapter Seven

Meg’s (admittedly poor) excuse for where she had been proved unnecessary when she was found sobbing incoherently, sitting on the coronation throne. When the staff tried to rebuke her, they found she could do nothing but sob hysterically.

More assistance was called and she was soon surrounded by tourists, staff and even a priest. Someone recognised her as a missing person, so the police were called and she was ferried to hospital.

Worried about her hysterical crying, the hospital staff decided to sedate her so that she could sleep. When she awoke, the police had some awkward questions for her.

She couldn’t answer them in any way that would be believable, so she simply claimed not to know where she had been or what had happened. She told them of what happened the day she went missing, of going to the Abbey, but then she claimed not to remember anything else.

They asked about the burns on her hands, which she had sustained while testing the gunpowder and fuses, but she still claimed not to know anything about them. Her tears, which were never far from the surface, made them treat her kindly and gently.

She had little choice but to keep claiming amnesia, and so she began to ask where she had been, didn’t anyone know, and hadn’t anyone seen her? A person did not simply puff out of existence for almost five months, she insisted.

The doctor explained both to her and to the police, that she suspected Meg was suffering from dissociative amnesia following trauma, and that with counselling or in time, her memories might return.

The police accepted this and eventually allowed her brother and sister in to see her.

Her brother Matthew came first, Ruth hot on his heels and she hugged them both tightly.

“Where have you been all these months?” Ruth demanded. “We were so worried.”

Meg didn’t answer, she couldn’t through her fresh tears, and her sadness was now laden with a heavy dose of guilt too.

***

It took her two days to pluck up the courage, but she reasoned that she had to tell her siblings what had really happened to her. They both looked at her like she was insane and when she went to make tea, she heard Matt suggest that maybe this was a part of the dissociative amnesia, that her brain had filled in the blanks of the memories she had repressed with fanciful tales.

“I’m not crazy,” she tried to explain when she came back. “I know it sounds that way, and even I thought I was hallucinating to begin with, but I’m not. I swear.”

“So you went back in time and had a love affair with Henry the fifth?” Ruth said, trying not to sound scornful.

Meg sighed, they were never going to believe her so she stopped trying to convince them. When she sometimes questioned her sanity, she looked at the selfie she’d taken of Hal on her phone, proof positive that he hadn’t been a dream.

It was surprisingly easy to slot back into her life. Since her savings and current accounts were linked, her savings were automatically transferred over to cover payments, rather than going overdrawn, so her mortgage and bills had all been paid on time.

Her work had kept her job open and although they’d had to reduce her wages, she still received sick pay, so not even her savings had taken that big of a dent.