We drove about for a bit, me clinging to the seat, looking constantly behind, feeling sick.
After a while, the dad said, “Looks like they’ve given up. They must have thought you were with us. I think you’ll be all right now, son. Where do you want us to drop you?”
“Are you sure they’ve gone?”
He looked again. “As sure as I can be.”
I reckoned we were about ten minutes’ walk from my shed. “Here will be fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
The mum stopped the car. I double-checked there was no one after us. The dad pulled out his wallet and offered me twenty quid. I wanted to say no, that they’d done enough, but I never knew when I was going to need cash so I took it. I couldn’t look him in the eye as I said, “I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just pay it forward someday, okay?”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
The little kid had fallen asleep, ice cream all over his face. I said, “Those men talked to him. You can’t trust no one. Don’t let him wander so far.”
“Point taken. Look after yourself now.”
I was careful heading back and I did a last check before lifting the loose panel of fence to get into my garden. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. If they’d tracked the phone here, surely they’d already have come? I opened the shed door carefully. Hot air wafted out, but there was no evidence of intruders.
Scrag trotted in and lapped greedily at his water. He obviously couldn’t smell anything strange. I locked and bolted the door. It was baking inside. Not a lot of sun came through the window but it beat down on the roof and warmed the shed up like an oven. I dolloped out the tin of food I’d got Scrag earlier. He licked up every scrap and farted loudly as he rolled on his back.
“That stinks, you little pig,” I said, tickling his full belly.
I started to calm down a bit. I was as sure as I could be that no one knew I was inside. I pulled out the box where I kept my tools and set to work on a little pecking bird I’d been making. The tools weren’t great but I liked how my hand fitted where Bert’s once had. I kept them clean and sharp, just how he’d taught me.
The smell of wood shavings always made me think of Bert, before he got ill. I mean really ill, not just the booze. He’d taught me how to make different things – automata, he called them, mechanical toys. And he’d told me which stallholders would buy what. There was a woman with a shop under the arches who liked the pecking birds. I made other things too – turnips that you pulled out of the ground with a winder, tiny figures with hearts that beat when you turned a handle.
Scrag came over and settled down beside me, snuffling in my lap until he found my stumpy arm, his favourite thing to lick. It always made me laugh – I couldn’t help wondering if he secretly wanted to gnaw on it like a bone. I pulled him close, rubbed his ears and buried my face in his scraggy head.
“Dog: one – Loneliness: nil. We’re all right, aren’t we, boy?”
And we were. In that minute we were just fine.
That’s what my head said anyway. My stomach was a knot of coiling snakes.
Marsha pushed open the door to my room and handed me the key.
“You won’t need it,” she said. “No one locks their door.”
We dragged my trunk in. The room was smallish but nice. A built-in desk stretched from one wall to the foot of a narrow bed. A window looked out onto a glittering sea – it had those little diamonds of glass you can fake with stickers. These were real though, and held together with lead like a crystal jigsaw. It was beautiful.
It was also way too hot and stuffy. I opened the window and the breeze nearly snatched it from my hand.
“Whoops!” Marsha said. “Here…” She tucked a shoelace someone had tied to the handle of the window over a hook in the stone frame. “If you let the wind catch it and it smashes…” She drew a finger across her neck and made a cutting sound. I closed the window, worried it might break, but it had already let in a huge gulp of fresh, salty air. The smell reminded me of holidays with Mum, Ima and Alfie, but instead of tripping me up, Vera’s therapy kicked in.
Touch the desk. Smell the sea. See the top of Marsha’s head as she bends over my luggage.
I held it together, determined to impress the girl who’d volunteered to help me settle in. No one wanted a blubbing crybaby for a friend.
Marsha opened my trunk and put my blazer on the bed with my slate and Mariya’s bag of toiletries next to it. She handed me Vera’s book and the pasta-framed picture without a word and started hanging my clothes in the wardrobe. When she got to a long fluffy black thing, she squealed. “I have this exact same onesie. I can’t wait for winter – we can wear them together!”
I hadn’t noticed it in there. It looked like a rabbit costume. It even had a hood with big floppy ears.
“Really? It’s like a giant Babygro,” I said, and immediately felt my face go scarlet. Now she was going to think I was horribly rude and an idiot who knew absolutely nothing about fashion.
“Don’t stress, loads of people have onesies.”
I hoped she was right.
She said, “You’ll be okay, you know. Honestly, hardly any girls really hate it here. Come on, if we close the lid, I think we can stand this sideways in your wardrobe.”
She tried, and succeeded, in upending my trunk, which we managed to manoeuvre into the cupboard. She shut the door with her bum, then opened it again, tore a sweatshirt from one of the hangers and flung it on the floor.
“That’s better. It was way too tidy.”
She stood with her hands on her hips and nodded. “Job done, I think. Come on, the others will be back from Zenathon soon. Let’s wait in the ODR and surprise them.”
I was beginning to feel like I was properly defrosting and it wasn’t just because the sun was beaming into my little room and heating it up like a sauna. Meeting Marsha felt like the beginning of a friendship. A real friendship.
In the ODR, she put the kettle on. “English tea?”
I nodded. “I’ll make it, if you like? Just show me where everything is.”
“Oh just root around. You’ll learn better that way. Cups are on the shelves. I’ll have peppermint, that black stuff is disgusting.”
Marsha was so easy to be around. I didn’t feel like I was invading her space or anything. She said, “So, are you disappointed we’re not all wearing spacesuits?”
I burst out laughing. A proper laugh. It felt good. “Yeah, I guess I am a bit.”
I slid her tea towards her. She turned the tap on from the wrong side of the counter, splashed some cold in it then took a sip before saying, “You’ve got to admit we have better computer games than you. I’ve seen PAC-MAN.”
I smiled. “I haven’t seen any of your games but I like YouTube, that’s pretty cool. Do most people have computers?”
She nearly spat her tea over me. “You’re kidding me?”
I felt my face turn red again. “So most people…”
She tipped her head to one side and said, “Right. You weren’t kidding. You have many things to learn, my friend, but fear not, I–” she put her hand on her heart and bowed her head – “volunteer for this difficult task.” She looked back up. “I can pretend I’m clever for once. Tell you what, I’ll answer one of your questions and you can answer one of mine? So yeah, everyone has a computer – I mean, literally everyone – apart from the anti-tech weirdos. You can’t really live without one. Okay, my turn, what was it like waking up in a different century?”
Her face was so openly curious, I just answered straight away: “Weird. Scary. It wasn’t the different-century thing – I didn’t even know how much time had passed when they first brought me round. It was the confusion. I couldn’t remember anything. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what I was.”
“You didn’t remember anything?”
I shook my head. “Not then. It came back slowly…”
Marsha bent down so her head was lying on
the counter and she was looking up at me. “Do you think it’s weird? What your parents did? Freezing you like that?”
I stopped for a moment, unable to speak. They’d been desperate. They had no choice.
Marsha said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I am a little too direct sometimes. My parents are completely selfish so I assume everyone’s are. Maybe yours were lovely. Maybe you had Mr and Mrs Christmas.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Ms and Ms…”
She shrugged a whatever shrug. It seemed like Benjie was right: people really didn’t care about that stuff any more. I had that feeling again, of letting go just a tiny bit.
She slurped her tea, her eyes sparkling. “So, tell me, did you have a special friend? Hey, how did you even flirt with people if you didn’t have the Cupid app? Oh my God, did you write, like, actual letters? That’s a cool idea! I could do that. I wonder if Yuri would even open one – he’d probably think it was a bill. Or a bomb. A love bomb.”
She was laughing at her own joke when the door opened and a sudden rush of feet and chatter filled the room. Girls aged from eleven to eighteen poured in, along with a giant stuffed chimpanzee and an enormous orangutan.
“The peace is shattered once more,” Marsha said, swinging off her seat with a twirl. She clapped her hands. A few heads looked her way but they were clearly all abuzz with their trip, so Marsha picked up her chair and banged it down hard and repeatedly on the floor.
A teacher piped up. “Marsha! That floor is new. Housekeeping will brain me if you damage it.”
“Sorry, Madam,” she said, sounding anything but sorry. “But look – new girl, well, old girl if you like. It’s the girl from the past!”
Everyone turned to look at me. I forced myself to smile. A tall, wide girl with reddish-coloured fuzzy hair – the kind that could be tamed into ringlets if someone showed her how – came towards me. People moved apart to let her pass and, with a sinking feeling, I recognized the type. This was the girl who’d give me trouble if she decided she didn’t like me. Or if I was a threat to her. Or… I didn’t have time to think about any more “or”s, because Marsha wrapped the girl in her arms and somehow, despite the difference in their sizes, managed to lift her off the floor.
“I missed you, Suki-Pops. I should have come, you were right. Did you buy me a present?”
“Put me down, you crazy Russian!”
“Only if you have Creme Eggs.”
“You are squeezing the breath out of me. Right pocket.”
Marsha put her down and stuck her hand in the girl’s pocket as the girl introduced herself to me: “Suki Phillips. Netball captain. Do you play?”
“Erm…a bit.”
“Excellent, try-outs tomorrow. Right then, tea everyone?”
And that was it, no trouble at all. They acted like I belonged. I came from a different world, a different century, but I felt like I might fit in better here than I ever could have hoped.
I must have fallen asleep because I snapped awake when rain started hammering on my shed roof. I sat bolt upright, my heart racing. There was a wet patch on my sleeping bag. I thought Scrag had peed on it until water splashed onto my skin. The roof must have shrunk in the heat, cracked enough to let rain in. A bolt of lightning lit up the shed and then tumbled it into darkness with a rumble of thunder. The rain beat down even heavier. Scrag whimpered and huddled close. I put my arm over him while I tugged my sleeping bag away from the drip.
Another bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, sending fingers of bramble shadows clawing across my sleeping bag. I hugged Scrag closer.
“It’s all right, lad. It’s only a bit of lightning.”
Only that wasn’t all it was. As the lightning faded, a thin beam of light remained, probing its way into my shed. Searching.
“No!” I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and backed against the wall.
Someone pushed the end of a torch against the window. I pressed myself as far into the wall as I could. The light moved away but then whoever was out there rattled the door.
No, no, no.
They’d found my shed. They’d found me.
Once everyone was back, we went to the main dining room. We lined up before a stack of glass lockers dispensing plates of roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas and gravy. My mouth watered. Then I noticed a column of lockers labelled Special Menus. My name was on one of them. I lifted the flap. Banana C-plan and a bowl of pureed peas.
“Mmmm, bogies for your tea. Yum,” Marsha said.
I shook my head. It was weird, how comfortable I felt with her. Maybe it was because she was displaced too. I mean, she’d come here, not knowing anyone, and had had to settle in and get on with it. They all had, I supposed, at some time or another. Maybe that made them more accepting?
Curious eyes followed us as we walked across the hall to find a table.
“Keep your sticky noses out,” Marsha said to no one in particular. “She’s not an alien.”
I kind of was though.
She nodded at a table with just two girls at one end. They must have been around eleven, judging from their pigtails and tininess. They looked at me, got a glare from Marsha, and turned their attention back to their food.
Marsha said, “This will be the worst bit. Answer all questions as best you can or they’ll start with some mild torture – you know, pulling out your fingernails or something – before they work up to the really mean stuff: teddy-bear kidnap, drawing willies on your luggage.”
“They’d have to get at my luggage first.”
“That’s true,” Marsha said, laughing. “I did wedge it in, I am queen wedgier.”
I was ridiculously pleased that we had a tiny private joke. The mark of friends.
Suki came and sat with us. “Please tell me that’s not some fad diet?” She nodded towards my C-plan.
I shook my head. “I can’t eat properly yet – my stomach doesn’t like it.”
“Thank heavens for that. All that diet nonsense is ridiculous. This obsession we have with looking perfect all the time. Exercise and fresh air. That’s all you need.”
She sounded like a PE mistress from Enid Blyton or something. She turned her attention to her plate as if nothing else mattered.
Marsha said, “She won’t speak now. Not until the sticky toffee pudding has been eaten. Food is her religion and every meal is worship.”
Two more girls sat at our table – the tall girl and the short girl with bunches who I’d seen earlier. A stiff look passed between them and Marsha.
“Can we sit here?” the short girl asked.
“Free country,” Marsha said.
“You’re speaking to me then?” said the short girl.
Marsha shrugged.
I shuffled in my seat at the animosity crackling across the table.
The short girl put her tray down and held out her hand. I shook it. Hers was tiny. She was tiny. Even tinier close up than I’d thought before.
“Keisha Touray. And this is Susan Li.”
Susan smiled, somehow managing to look up at me, even though she was about a foot taller than anyone else at the table. I was a bit relieved to see she had braces on her teeth – and I hadn’t spotted as many really white smiles as I’d expected. Real life seemed to be a bit different to Blackhurst Clinic and Instagram.
I took a slurp of C-plan. Susan was still staring at me.
“You don’t look nearly sixty,” she said eventually.
“She’s not nearly sixty, you idiot,” Marsha said. “She’s been frozen. Things don’t age when they’re frozen.”
“Bet it was darned cold,” Suki said, pushing aside her now-empty sticky toffee pudding bowl. “Was it darned cold, Laura?”
I tried to shrug the question off. “I was asleep.”
“What about when you woke up though – you must have been darned cold then?”
I had an actual physical memory of heat in my skin, the violent shaking, the panic. I pushed it away. In that bright, chatty
room, I didn’t want to think about it.
“Honestly, I don’t remember.”
“I bet you miss your friends,” Susan said.
An image of Stacey holding her bowl out to Mum for seconds of apple crumble filled my head but was swept away by Susan saying, “And those little boats in the shape of swans you have to pedal.”
“What?” Marsha said.
“Pedalos!” Susan said triumphantly. “I’d miss them if I’d come from the eighties.”
“We still have pedalos, Susan,” snapped Keisha, before steering the conversation back to sanity, sort of. “I’d miss my friends. Did you have friends? Are any of them still alive?”
The question was so abrupt I nearly laughed.
Marsha said, “Seriously, Keisha? Just come right out with it, why don’t you? I thought I was blunt. Why would they be dead, you idiot? My grandmother is a hundred and seven.”
“She is not.”
“She is.”
Keisha stuffed a roast potato in her mouth as she said, “Isn’t,” and earned a scowl from Marsha.
“I bet you played loads of sport,” Suki said. “You had nothing else to do back then, did you? None of this pretend sport on a slate. Proper sport. Outside, having fun, like it should be.”
She stopped in shock, as if the strangest thought had occurred to her. “Did you have TV?”
“Yes,” I said, laughing. “Of course we had TV. It wasn’t the Stone Age!”
Keisha, who was eating so fast her plate was nearly clean, asked, “Did you have rationing?”
“No. And we didn’t have plague and I wasn’t alive in the war. Neither of the World Wars anyway.”
Susan said, “You were alive in a war?”
I hesitated before I answered. There’d been the Falklands Campaign, but I doubted they’d even have heard of that, so I said, “No. Not really.”
It didn’t stop her though. “Did you know Elvis Presley?”
I said, “Sorry?”
“I knew an Elvis Presley. Not the actual singer. My piano teacher’s cat.”
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