by Alexia James
“Where have you been, I haven’t seen you in ages?”
“Oh, here and there,” back and forth through time, “you know how it is.”
Janet let go of her long enough to shut the front door and drag her to the kitchen.
Freya sighed as some of the tension left her. “It’s good to see you, Jan. You are never going to believe what’s happened, but you’re gonna have to try ‘cause it’s all true, I swear.”
“Uh oh, that sounds like trouble.” She flashed Freya a grin over her shoulder as she pulled out a couple of mugs. “I’ve got a few unbelievable things to tell you, too. A real eye opener about Greg, that guy in the Muppets shirt I had my eye on the other week. Anyway, it’s brilliant to see you, tell me your news first. Where have you been and what have you been up to?”
“I’ve been with Jeremy.”
“Oooh.”
Freya grinned. “It’s not like that.”
“Really? How disappointing for you.”
Freya burst out laughing. “I’m not on that page yet, Jan. I’m still content to drool from afar.”
“So tell me, what’s been going on with you?” Janet pulled out a tin of cake and put the kettle on as she spoke.
Freya settled down as it began to rain. The sound was soothing on the windowpane, creating a sense of isolation from the rest of the world. When she had finished her rambling tale, Janet was looking thoughtful.
“So you can just walk into 1908, just like that?”
“Uh huh. I thought I was going crazy at first. If I hadn’t actually done it, I’m not sure I would have believed it was possible.”
“You know, before I met Greg, if you’d told me all of this I’d have been smiling sincerely while reaching for the number for your GP, but now I know as much as I do about him, I have no problem saying I believe you.”
“You do?” An astonished smile lit Freya’s face. “So how come? Does Greg have a time machine?”
“Not only has one but left it kicking about in an unlocked desk. I snaffled it and went to see a film in ‘96.”
“What!”
Janet laughed, “I know, but it was nothing less than he deserved for being so careless about what was going on.”
Freya was practically hopping up and down, “Do you still have it? Do you—”
Janet shook her head, looking amused, “I had to give it back.”
Freya’s look of disappointment made Janet smile. “I actually saw him appear out of nowhere when he thought I wasn’t looking, and that was after all the stuff I saw on his laptop.”
“Why am I not surprised you looked at his computer?”
“I only read a few e-mails.” She grinned and held up a hand so she could continue, “Even before that, I knew something was off about him. All that rubbish about being an IT specialist when it was clear he didn’t have a clue about computers. People think because I’m a jeweller I won’t know about stuff like that.”
“If he only knew…”
“Enough about me. What are you going to do? I am not at all sure about your plan to steal a time device. Maybe you should have talked things through with Jeremy.”
“I can’t believe you just said that when you already went time travelling with a nicked time machine.” She shook her head slightly, “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Seriously, Freya, you like him and you think he returns your feelings. Why didn’t you talk to him about being unable to get home? He would have to be a monster to keep you from your friends and family.”
Freya bit her lip, looking anxious for a moment. “I don’t know, Jan. I don’t think he would expect me to stay there all the time, but if he closes the time doorway, I would be dependent on him bringing me back here. It puts all the power in his hands and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. However nice he seems now, I can’t just allow him the ability to restrict my movements. It’s not like I could walk out if we had a fight.”
Janet paused as she considered her friend. “Do you think he would keep you against your will?”
“He did keep me there. If I hadn’t escaped I’d still be there now.”
“You didn’t tell him you were unhappy with his ultimatum, and you ran away rather than talk to him. Do you think he still would have kept you there if you had made your feelings plain to him?”
Freya ran a hand through her hair and then hissed out a breath in exasperation. “I know what you’re getting at, but it’s not that simple. I know he is interested in me; I would have to be blind to miss it. I’m just not sure what I want to do about it.”
“All right, answer me this: has he ever done anything that has been detrimental to your health and well-being?”
“Yes! He handcuffed me to his stupid bed.”
“He handcuffed you to his bed?”
“Um…”
“Are you sure this is something you want to tell me about?”
Freya huffed. She had, admittedly, left out some of the finer detail. “It wasn’t like that,” she said in a small voice.
“Did he hurt you, Freya, physically or emotionally?”
“Probably. I’ll probably have issues over it all for the rest of my life.”
“Poor Jeremy has no idea what a mountain he has to climb with you does he.”
“What do you mean, poor Jeremy?”
“If you weren’t blinded by fear over your feelings, you would have talked rationally to him, and—”
“And if I want to give this relationship a chance then I need to have some control. I can’t give that up.”
“Well, at least you are admitting you’re in a relationship with him.”
Freya scowled at her friend.
Janet rolled her eyes and grinned. “Jeremy has a lot to answer for in not being up front with you. I know you are incapable of keeping things straightforward, but I would have expected better of him.”
“Well I can’t go back now and undo everything that’s happened. I don’t have a time device. So. What would you do in my shoes?”
“I guess I would want to have a time device of my own,” she said, but on seeing Freya’s triumphant face added, “But I would have talked to him about it, and you’re still going to, Freya.”
“Does that mean you’re gonna help me?”
“Of course I will. Tell you what, we’ll go steal a time device for you and you can put it in a plastic bag and bury it near Jeremy’s house somewhere. Then you go back to him and tell him how sorry you are for walking out like you did. You can have it all out with him, see what he says, and work on your trust and commitment issues safe in the knowledge you have a fail-safe backup plan.”
“I love the way you put that. We’ll just go steal a time device. Do you think it’s even possible? I mean, I can’t see that they’d leave something like that lying around, especially after you nicking Greg’s. I know it was my original idea, but the more I think about it, the more nuts it sounds, and don’t suggest we take a look around during the day while paying a friendly visit, because I don’t want to go anywhere near Greg while I’m effectively on the run from Jeremy.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll go when the office is shut and we can search properly, and if we don’t find one, we’ll come back here and think again.”
“How will we get in, do you have a key?”
“No, and I’ll have to disable the alarms first, but it shouldn’t be a problem.” She flashed Freya a grin and jumped up to grab her laptop off the desk, hugging it to her chest and turning a neat two-step circle. “Project!”
It was after three when Freya woke up. She had tried to take an interest when Janet pulled out her laptop, but found her eyes kept drifting closed. Now she allowed them to wander around Janet’s small sitting room. The rain had turned heavy and the room was dim from the downpour.
Janet sat close to where Freya was curled up on the sofa. Her face, bathed in the glow from the screen, was a mask of concentration. Fingers flying over the keys then stopping abruptly and tapping absentl
y at the sides of the machine.
The rain pounded against the windows; gusts of wind echoing mournfully through the chimneybreast.
Freya yawned and straightened up. “Any luck?”
“Hmm, yeah, nearly there now. Aha, gotcha.” A lazy grin curved Janet’s face as her fingers went into overdrive flying over the keys.
Freya shrugged, stumbled out to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face to try to wake up a bit. She felt empty inside. Strangely cold. She wanted to run back to Jeremy, wrap her arms around him and feel warm again; tell him it was only a joke when she’d run off and that she hadn’t meant it.
What was wrong with her? When she had been with him, she had thought only of escape. Now she had managed it, she wanted to run back to him.
She heaved a sigh. This was a crazy plan. What had she been thinking anyway? With hindsight, it was easy to see that she shouldn’t have dementedly run away. Jeremy wasn’t her enemy; he would worry over her going missing, and might spend hours searching for her.
Suddenly, what had seemed like a rational decision to get herself home, now looked childish and stupid. She didn’t want Jeremy to worry over her, or think she was so messed up that she ran at the first opportunity, even though it hadn’t precisely been like that.
She hadn’t exactly made a great impression on him. Perhaps he would get tired of her stupid behaviour and think she was more trouble than she was worth. She closed her eyes at the thought. How had everything escalated into this mess?
Freya wandered back to the sitting room, to the large bay windows and looked out at the rain-slicked street. Janet was hacking into the security system at Greg’s office and occasionally gave a cackle of joy and said something like: it’s child’s play. Freya felt a smile twist her mouth. Janet was enjoying herself anyway.
It sometimes made Freya laugh that Janet had chosen to work for a small jeweller in town. Although the long hours and overtime culture in Janet’s software job had been horrendous, Freya couldn’t see that retail was all that much better. It just paid a lot less. Especially as Janet still spent a large amount of her free time keeping up with the latest technology and languages anyway.
Janet looked up suddenly and grinned. “I’m in. You would not believe how basic their security is. It’s a joke, considering what they have to hide there.”
“It’s only a joke to you because you’re a genius, Jan. Everyone else would consider it Fort Knox.”
“What can I say? I’m talented. Now that I’m in we have to decide when we want the alarms disabled, and for how long.”
“I reckon we should do it at one in the morning, not too late for us to stay up, but far beyond time anyone would have stayed late working.”
“Good idea. We’ll give ourselves a good few hours to look around and have it all re-alarmed by, say, four? Make sure we’ve got plenty of time to do a thorough search and still be far away before the alarms come back on.” Janet transferred her attention back to the screen. “What the—?”
“What is it?” Freya hurried over.
Janet shook her head, a reluctant smile on her face. “Nothing, just a screen saver.”
Freya peered over her shoulder and saw an image that made her grin too. Two men were sitting back to back, on what looked like a boardroom table. Their hands appeared to be tied together behind them with pink restraints of some kind.
One of them had his tie around his head, school-kid Rambo style, while the other had 'Eat Me' painted on his forehead. Both were laughing and the image itself was slightly blurred, indicating camera shake on the part of the photographer.
Janet turned to look up at her friend, “Just the boys playing tricks on each other. Now for those alarms.” She flicked through other screens and was soon deep in some odd-looking text. Freya was bored and wandered to the window to look out at the sheeting rain.
Finally, Janet closed the laptop and stretched, giving a happy sigh. “We’ll take my car. It’s quieter than your van. I’ll lend you a black pullover to cover that white blouse of yours. The skirt should be fine though. We don’t want to look like burglars, after all.”
Freya gave a nervous giggle. “D’you think this will work, Jan. I mean, we won’t get caught will we.”
“Don’t worry, Freya, it’s an office in town not a Jewellers or Bank. The alarm will disable, no one will be any the wiser, we will have a look around and scurry off home before you know it.”
Freya took an excited turn about the room. “I can’t believe we’re really going to do this. I feel like I’m in a Bond movie.”
Janet snorted with laughter, “Bond, Janet Bond, and her trusty sidekick Freya Keele. Oh, wait a second.” She darted up, and Freya followed her to the bedroom. Janet knelt on the floor, upending a handbag and pawing though the contents. She muttered quietly and then gave a yip of triumph, turned and waved a credit card aloft.
“I forgot I had this, it’s a pass key for Greg’s office. I lifted it last time I went round there. I figured it’d come in handy at some point, just didn’t know it would be so soon.”
“A pass key, I thought you were going to disable the alarms?”
“I am. This is for the drawer where he keeps his laptop. As we’re going there anyway, I may as well install a little bitty piece of software on his machine for him. Just so I can keep an eye on things.”
“I can feel it in me to be sorry for Greg.”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“I can’t believe you spouted all that rubbish about trust to me when you clearly don’t intend to trust Greg.”
“Hey, what can I say, I care about your welfare and will always advise you to do the most sensible thing. Besides, Greg doesn’t second-guess my every thought. He’s not quick enough to catch me in a lie. My ideal man, really.”
Freya folded her arms and had to admit that Janet had a point. Jeremy did second-guess everything she was thinking and he put ideas together at surprising speed. If she tried to lie to him and he guessed, then it would not take him long to work out the truth.
It occurred to her that if she managed to steal a device she would have to be extremely cautious in its use if she was to keep it from him. It really would be a last resort and she would have to find a good hiding place for the thing.
Freya had to admit she was nervous about going back to Jeremy. She wondered if he would be angry that she had run off.
Still, he did not know she was stealing a time device. He would think she simply did not want to show him the time doorway. She would have to keep up that pretence if she did not want him to guess what she had done.
As evening came round, the rain clouds lifted slightly and pale sunlight filtered through the little flat. Janet ordered a pizza and a bottle of cola. Freya tucked into her share of pizza gratefully, orange grease dripping down her chin.
“God, I love pizza,” She said between mouthfuls, “What am I going to do if I can’t have pizza anymore? Suppose he makes me stay there and I can’t have pizza again.”
“It would be a most cruel fate, but there must be stuff he misses too. From his time, I mean. You already said he still sees his family, and he must go back to get stuff. I’m sure he’ll be fine about it all. You just need to talk to him.”
Freya washed down her mouthful with some icy cola, revelling in the sparkling coldness, “I hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right. Now, we need to talk through our plans for tonight. Between the left side of the building and the underground car park, there’s a service door. I used it a lot when I went to see Greg. It’s better than the reception area because there are no cameras there. I think it was designed to be a fire escape. It’s just a narrow staircase with windows to one side, but it goes up to all the floors. Once the alarms are off, I’ll use a card to get the lock.”
“Is that possible?” Freya interrupted, “I thought that kind of thing only happened in the movies. What if the card snaps off?”
Janet just shrugged, “Then we’ll use a
nother one. Relax, Freya, the cards are freebies that come with junk mail. It doesn’t matter if they get wrecked and anyway, I know it’ll work ‘cause when I was at IBM we had a break in and the police said that was how it was done. The lock on the service door is the same kind we had back then. It’s not a deadlock and there are no bolts on the inside so, in theory, it should work. Once we are inside, we’ll go straight to Greg’s office. I’ll sort the computer and you can search for your time machine.”
Freya sat back. “So simple,” she said with a roll of her eyes and reached for another slice of pizza.
“C’mon, Freya, it was your idea to nick a device from the office. I’ll get us in and help you search, but I’m not gonna pass up the opportunity to keep tabs on Greg. It might help us if you can’t find a time thingy and Jeremy really does decide to keep you in 1908.”
“Janet!” Freya choked on her cola, spluttering as the fizzy went up her nose. “I thought you said he wouldn’t do that!”
“Well I don’t think he will, but it doesn’t hurt to have a back up plan. Better to be prepared.”
“How will putting stuff on Greg’s laptop help?”
“It’s a kind of monitoring software, but with a few extras. It means I can dial in when he’s online and see what he’s up to. Besides, I’ll have access to the main frame and can hack in while he’s playing online.”
Freya sighed. “What if I can’t find a device? What am I going to do then? What if he does keep me there?”
“Well,” Janet paused and considered Freya. “Why don’t you tell me where the doorway is, then at least I have a starting point if he manages to close the thing.”
Freya nodded her agreement, still looking worried. “It’s just inside the wood about 300 metres from the back wall of the farmhouse. The wood sticks out on a corner and when I cut through that bit to get to the house, I found it. It’s weird, like a narrow sheet of glass, but quite tall and higher on one side. You can hardly see it from the side, and it’s tricky to find unless the sun’s on it, reflecting in a weird way.”