‘I… or I should say we… are the people who fixbroken things. Now, take my hand, Madelaine. Take it now!’

Instinctively, she stretched out towards him.

A stewardess pulled up a few feet short of them. ‘Excuse me,’ she cut in,‘someone has reported the pair of you loudly using the “B” word… bomb.’ She whispered the word quietly. ‘I’m sorrybut you just can’t use language like that on a passenger plane.’

The old man looked up at her and smiled sadly. ‘No… I’m the one who’s sorry, ma’am. I truly am.’

Maddy looked at him. ‘This is for real?’

He nodded. ‘And we have to leave right now.’

‘OK,’ she uttered, grasping his extended hand tightly.

The stewardess tipped her head on one side curiously, her forehead furrowed, her lips pursed.She was about to ask how they planned to leave the plane exactly.

Then the world suddenly was a blinding white and Maddy snapped her eyes shut.

CHAPTER 5

2001, New York

She was screaming, at least that’s what she thought the sound was. It mighthave been her. It might have been the sound of a wing tearing itself from the plane.

It might even have been the stewardess; she wasn’t sure.

A terrifying dropping sensation, dropping away into darkness.

‘No-o-o-o-o!’ she found herself crying with a voice that sounded like the raggeddeath-squeal of a slaughtered pig.

She lurched suddenly and violently.

‘Oh Jay-zus-Christ-Almighty!’ a male voice beside her gasped.

Maddy’s eyes opened wide and locked on to a flickering light bulb dangling from a brickceiling, then on to the rusty springs of a grubby bunk bed directly above her. Finally, to herright, her eyes drifted to the smooth face of a young man sitting on a scruffy metal-framedbed across from her, dressed in what looked like a waiter’s uniform.