Eva and Valentine's return

Not many tales start in such a bizarre manner. I can only describe my circumstances as accurately as possible for you to understand the predicament I found myself in. Attached to my right wrist by handcuffs was a very pretty, twenty-something woman dressed in a policewoman’s outfit. OK, maybe any stag-do might end like this, but I was nearly sixty and to my knowledge was not expecting to get married in the near future. From what I could remember, I was already married and had been for some time. What’s more the policewoman was crying, no, bawling her eyes out, at what she could see. Holding my left hand was a young girl I recognised. I knew her to be twelve years old. She wasn’t crying, in fact quite the opposite, she had a beaming smile on her face from ear to proverbial ear. To make matters worse, in her left arm she held a child of about two years of age. For all that had gone before, it was not difficult to remember that the child was called Valentine; a strange name for the year 2008. As I looked around at our surroundings it was clearly not 2008, and it was these surroundings that were making the lady to my right sob her heart out. “Where are we?” she cried, “and who is that horrible-looking man?” She was pointing with her free hand at one of the most gruesome-looking gentlemen you would ever wish to see. I recognised him and knew why he looked so gruesome. He gave a toothless grin and I smiled back. I removed my hand from the young girl’s, knowing that it would make the man disappear. “Where has he gone?” she exclaimed. This was not the time to explain but I would attempt to do so later. For now we had to take stock of where we were and probably more importantly, when we were! Some of the details of what had happened to us began to return to my confused mind. I had been standing in the dock at the Crown Court in the city of York and had just been charged and convicted of kidnapping two young children. One was called Eva and I knew her well. Her parents were present in the court and, despite Eva’s protestations of my innocence, they thought that I was the lowest of the low. If her rugby-playing Dad could have got his hands on me, my present situation would seem like a picnic compared with what he would have done to me. Eva had tried to explain the strange story of how we had been on a mission of mercy to bring a father and son from the 17th century together for the first time. The story was incredible and was believed by nobody despite being close to the truth. The jury certainly didn’t believe it and a long custodial sentence was coming my way. The baby was a mystery to everyone else except Eva and me. His name was Valentine Walton and indeed he was born in the 17th century. In the mission that nobody believed, Eva and I had indeed reunited father and son. The rest of what had happened was still confused, but I remember Eva, child in arms, clambering up the steps to the dock in which I stood and running straight into me, grabbing my hand as she did so. The result of what she did had produced the predicament that the four, no five, of us were in at the present moment. I tried my best to calm the hysterical policewoman. “It’s OK. Everything is going to be alright.” “Where on earth are we?” “I am not sure, but the old guy you saw will be able to tell us when he gets back.” Eva smiled as both she and I knew that Henry, for that was what he was called, had not gone anywhere. He was still there but only Eva could see him. She had magical powers which allowed her to see both the living and the dead. Anybody in contact with her had the same powers, as the young policewoman had found out to her horror.