Lena had long avoided Heneage Street. She had known Brick Lane all her life—its bustling markets, the smell of curry and fresh bagels, the clatter of people moving through it. But Heneage Street… it held a peculiar power over her. She discovered it in her early twenties, quite by accident, on a mundane afternoon stroll. As she crossed the invisible threshold, her legs felt younger, her step lighter, and suddenly, she wasn’t 21 anymore. She was 16, walking in the late summer of 1976.
The phenomenon had haunted her since then. Each time she left Brick Lane and ventured down Heneage Street, she was transported backward in time. She would re-enter a different year, not as a spectator, but fully as she had been—feeling the emotions and wearing the skin of her younger self. She experienced everything again: the adolescent joy of passing exams, the excitement of travelling abroad for the first time, the thrill of meeting her future husband.
But no matter how far back she went, one constant remained: the grief that had first settled in her heart when she was 13—the year her sister, Evie, died. Lena had been supposed to watch over her that day, but she got distracted, a moment’s lapse that had cost Evie her life. The weight of it had shaped Lena’s adulthood in quiet ways, but she had resolved to live well, to do right by the family she built. She raised two children, forged a strong career as a Project Manager, and even enjoyed the wisdom that comes with grey hair and gentle wrinkles.
Still, every time she stepped into Heneage Street, she feared where it would take her. The youngest she’d ever been was 13, the year she started dance school, the year Evie died. And though she hadn’t yet been thrown into a time earlier than that, the possibility terrified her. What if she went back to a version of herself too young to remember? What if she was trapped in some distant past, lost to the shifting tides of time?
The years passed, and with each decade, Lena made fewer trips down Heneage Street. She grew older, more cautious, more afraid of the unknown. Eventually, she stopped altogether. Her children moved away, her husband died, and she found herself living alone in a small flat not far from where she’d grown up. One day, while putting away groceries, she fell and broke her arm. The ambulance took her to the Royal London Hospital.
Her days in the hospital were long and quiet. The rhythm of nurses and doctors was soothing in its regularity, but it gave her too much time to think. One afternoon, a familiar thought crept back into her mind, unsettling her in a way it hadn’t for years. Heneage Street was only a few minutes’ walk away. Just there, just beyond the bustle of Brick Lane. What if…?
One evening, after the nurses had gone for their rounds, Lena slipped out of bed. Her arm was bound in a cast, but she didn’t care. With surprising determination, she made her way out of the hospital, down the street, and towards Brick Lane. The pavement felt solid beneath her feet, the air brisk with the scent of autumn. She turned the familiar corner, and there it was—Heneage Street. It waited for her like an old, familiar tune she hadn’t heard in years.
With her heart pounding, she stepped across the threshold.
The world shimmered, the air thickened, and when she blinked, her surroundings shifted. She was 13 again. The awkwardness of adolescence returned: the too-long limbs, the uncertainty of everything, the brightness of a life just beginning. And then, for the first time, something was different.
She wasn’t alone.
Lena looked down at her hand and saw it. Another hand, smaller and warmer, gripping hers. She turned, and there stood Evie—her beautiful 11-year-old sister, smiling up at her with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
“Evie?” Lena whispered, her voice trembling.
“Yes, it’s me,” Evie replied, her voice as sweet and familiar as a long-lost melody.
“I’m so sorry,” Lena’s voice cracked. “I should have—”
Evie shook her head and squeezed Lena’s hand tighter. “You don’t have to be sorry, Lena. I never blamed you. Not even for a second.”
Lena’s tears fell silently, rolling down her young cheeks. “I’ve missed you so much. Every day.”
“I know,” Evie said gently. “But I’ve always been with you. You just couldn’t see me.”
They stood together, the two of them, lost in a moment that felt infinite, a pocket of time where all the years and all the grief dissolved into nothing. Lena’s heart swelled with a warmth she hadn’t felt in decades. She didn’t need to go forward or backward anymore. She was right where she needed to be.
“Can we stay like this?” Lena asked, her voice soft, almost childlike.
Evie smiled, a knowing smile. “For a while, yes.”
And so, they stood there, sisters reunited, hand in hand, the past and present merging in the quiet of Heneage Street, where time, for once, stood still.
Verbal Alchemy 