She fed him scraps from her ragbag because words were all that were left now. Perhaps he could use them to pay the ferryman. The air rippled and shimmered. Time narrowed to a pinpoint. It was about to happen.
Across the world millions of lives are altered by the absence of the dead, but three members of Teddy's last crew--Clifford the bomb-aimer, Fraser, the injured pilot, and Charlie, the tail-end Charlie--all bail out successfully from and see out the rest of the war in a POW camp. On their return they all marry and have children, fractals of the future.
The clock had been Sylvie's, and her mother's before that. It had gone to Ursula on Sylvie's death and Ursula had left it to Teddy, and so it had zigzagged its way down the family tree... ...The clock was a good one, made by Frodsham and worth quite a bit, but Teddy knew if he gave it to Viola she would sell it or misplace it or break it and it seemed important to him that it stayed in the family. An heirloom. ('Lovely word,' Bertie said.) He liked to think that the little golden key that wound it, a key that would almost certainly be lost by Viola, would continue to be turned by the hand of someone who was part of the family, part of his blood. The red thread.
And with a massive roar the fifth wall comes down and the house of fiction falls, taking Viola and Sunny and Bertie with it. They melt into thin air and disappear. Pouf!