by Jodi Taylor
And then it would begin. Ten minutes later and I would be awake. Wide awake. Was that a sound on the roof? Was Clive Ronan, at this very moment, creeping across the roof tiles?
Or that creaking board on the landing. Were the Time Police on their way up the stairs, heavily armed and determined to get Matthew back, at any cost? Would Leon and I go down in a hail of fire as we tried to defend our son?
St Mary’s is a noisy place at the best of times. I don’t mean just the human inhabitants – I mean the creaks and cracks of an old building. Clanking pipes, ticking radiators, rattling windows. Normally these were comforting background noises, but not any longer. Leon had stolen Matthew back from the Time Police and I was certain they’d never willingly let him go. So I would lie awake, listening for telltale signs that Matthew was in danger.
Eventually, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I’d get up, creep across our sitting room to his bedroom and check he was safely asleep. Then I’d go around checking the windows and doors. Then I’d stand in his doorway listening to him breathe in the dark. Then I’d check the doors and windows again in case I’d missed something. Then I’d go back to bed, fall asleep, and ten minutes later I’d jolt back to wakefulness, convinced I’d heard something, and the whole process would start all over again.
Two days later I was nearly dead on my feet.
On the third night, I was standing in Matthew’s doorway, staring at the dark shapes of his furniture – to check it was just furniture and not a Time Police squad lurking in the corner – when Leon came up behind me.
I didn’t jump out of my skin because he’d made sure I heard him coming. He put one arm around my waist, pulled me back into our sitting room and gently closed Matthew’s bedroom door behind me.
We sat on the sofa in the dark.
‘Max, you can’t keep doing this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know I’m being high-maintenance again, but I can’t get these stupid thoughts out of my head. Sometimes I’m certain I can hear footsteps on the roof or coming up the stairs – but even if I can’t hear anything, I’m convinced someone’s here anyway and Matthew’s in danger.’
‘He’s not,’ Leon said gently.
‘I know. I do know that. But suppose he is. I can’t lose him again.’
‘You won’t. We won’t. He’s very safe here. I’m not worried about him at all. You, on the other hand . . .’
‘Suppose Ronan comes back and tries . . .’
‘Max, I will never let that happen. Trust me.’
‘No, I know you won’t, but suppose the Time Police . . .’
‘Edward will never let that happen. Nor Markham. Trust them.’
I drew a deep breath. ‘I know. I do know, really. I just . . .’ I was shivering with cold and . . . fear, I suppose.
He pulled the throw off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around the pair of us. We stretched out. I could feel his warmth and his slow, steady heartbeat. It felt good. I felt myself slowly relax into his arms. If Leon was here then nothing would ever get into Matthew’s room.
I touched his face. ‘Thank you for bringing him back.’
‘You and Matthew are the most important things in the world to me. I will never let anything happen to either of you.’
I closed my eyes. And opened them some hours later to find Leon smiling down at me. I snuggled closer and just as things were becoming exciting, Matthew’s bedroom door was flung open and Matthew himself, half in and half out of his dressing gown, raced in, trailing electrical cables and power leads and shouting, ‘Dad, it works.’
‘That’s good,’ Leon said vaguely, his mind and other things elsewhere. ‘You go back to bed and I’ll be in to see it in a minute.’
‘No need,’ he said. ‘I can show you now. Look.’
He clambered up on to the sofa, clutching something that looked as if a colander had mated with a calculator, and wriggled his bony, icy-footed way between us.
‘Drat,’ said Leon, mildly.
I told him he was displaying impressive restraint.
‘It wasn’t my restraint that was intended to be impressive,’ he said. I gave him a consolation kiss and took the opportunity to be the first in the bathroom that morning.
I slept better the next night, and the night after that I hardly woke at all. Slowly I began to relax. I became a little more balanced on the subject of Matthew being stolen from under my very nose, and started making every effort to get on with a normal life.
And Matthew himself?
Worryingly, he’d picked up the threads of his previous life here at St Mary’s almost as if nothing had happened. Which was both good and bad.
His calm acceptance of wherever he was, whenever he was and whoever he was with was worrying. One day I came right out with it and asked him if he missed the Time Police.
He was building something complicated with Lego and didn’t even look up.
‘I’ll see them again.’
I left it at that.
Unfortunately, before being released back into the wild, I had an appraisal with Dr Bairstow to get through. Apparently, it was felt that the last few months had been a little rough. For me, that was. A colourful kaleidoscope of fights with the Time Police, sex clubs, dinosaurs, organising the demise of Queen Jane the Bloody before she could do any real damage to the timeline and very nearly losing Matthew again. And then – the icing on the cake – my beautiful plan had worked beautifully and we’d finally, finally captured that bastard Clive Ronan and those even bigger bastards in the Time Police had let him go again. It would be fair to say I’d been a little bit put out by that. My near homicidal rage had been mitigated to some extent when Leon walked off with Matthew, right from under their stupid Time Police noses and brought him home.
There was no denying, though, that some recent events had been a teensy bit difficult and I’d had a couple of rough moments in the privacy of Sick Bay while Dr Stone kept the world away until I was ready to face it again. And now I was attempting to blag my way back on to the active list.
Before I go racing off into the story again, leaving everyone wondering what the hell’s going on – my name is Maxwell and I’m Head of the History Department here at the St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, where we investigate major historical events in contemporary time and never, under any circumstances, call it time travel. So that’s everyone clear as crystal, then. Where was I?
Yes. Sitting in Dr Bairstow’s office, watching him read through my medical file and, I have to say, making rather heavy weather of it.
He sighed. Men do that a lot, I’ve noticed. ‘Reassuringly, Dr Maxwell, Dr Stone tells me that despite recent events, your descent into madness does not appear to have accelerated. Not noticeably, anyway.’
‘Jolly good, sir.’
‘Your eccentric behaviour patterns remain unchanged.’
‘Excellent, sir.’
‘Your phobias, anxieties and irrational fears are all exactly as they were twelve months ago.’
‘Well, that’s good news, sir.’
‘The usual problems associated with your personality type have, apparently, failed to manifest themselves.’
‘That’s me, sir. Perpetual underachiever.’
‘In short, Dr Maxwell, astonishingly, you appear to be – and I hesitate to use the word normal to describe anyone in the History Department – but you appear to be no more abnormal than before you embarked upon your recent Ronan-based initiative.’
I beamed at him. ‘So, still hovering indecisively at the top of the personality disorder chart, but failing to slither down the slippery slope of insanity, sir.’
‘Astonishingly, yes.’
‘Dr Stone assures me I’ve found my sessions with him to be very beneficial, sir.’
‘In that case, and despite all my best efforts, I can find no reason
not to put you back on the active list. I am, however, offering you the option of another seven days’ leave first.’
I’d have loved another seven days’ leave but sometimes you just have to get back on the horse. Or behind the desk. Or into the pod. Because it’s always best to face these things head-on and give them a good kicking.
‘Thank you, sir, but no.’
He closed my file and pushed it away from him. ‘I shall be happy to sanction your return to duty as soon as you tell me what’s really troubling you.’
I briefly considered issuing my standard blanket denial of everything that had happened since the earth cooled, but this was Dr Bairstow and I knew better than to try. I looked out of the window for a while, clasped my hands tightly together and said, ‘Sir – what the Time Police did to Clive Ronan. The smartdust in his brain. The bomb.’
He folded his hands on his desk. ‘Yes?’
I closed my eyes for a moment but it had to be said. I had to know. ‘Did they do that to me too? I was unconscious for a time.’
‘No. You were exposed to the effect of their sonic weapons but that was all. We couldn’t get to you immediately because of the floodwaters, but I assure you, Max, you were never out of my sight. Not for one moment. Nor Leon’s, of course. The Time Police scanned you in their hospital pod and I saw the results of that scan. Dr Stone tells me that smartdust is detectable in its early stages – to make sure it’s been correctly placed in the brain – and as a further precaution, we scanned you ourselves on your return to St Mary’s. I can categorically assure you – you are completely free of smartdust.’
That was good enough for me. ‘Thank you, sir.’
He shifted in his seat. ‘Max, I know you’ve had a great deal to think about recently, but have you given any consideration as to how Matthew will live here? Schooling and so on.’
‘I have, sir – on and off. I’ve been waiting to see whether the Time Police would turn up demanding his return but so far that hasn’t happened. We can’t leave it much longer, though. We’ll have to start looking at schools and things soon.’
‘I may be able to help you there,’ he said. ‘Obviously, you will want to discuss this with Leon – and if neither of you are taken with the idea, then please do not hesitate to say so – but I wondered, what would you say to private tutoring?’
‘I think it would be wonderful, sir, but probably quite costly.’
He had that smug look he gets occasionally – like an ancient vulture in sole possession of a recent battlefield. An all-you-can-eat extravaganza for one.
‘I wondered if you would consider Professor Penrose? The two of you seemed to get on rather well when you met.’
Well, that was a bit of an understatement. Professor Eddington Penrose and I had started a riot in 17th-century Cambridge when that thieving sod Isaac Newton had stolen my mirror. From there we’d gone on to melt a pod and possibly kick-start a universe – as you do.
This was such an exciting idea. I couldn’t help it – I started waving my arms around. The traditional indication of an excited historian. ‘That would be amazing, sir. Absolutely amazing. And Matthew would love him, I’m certain. I’ll speak with Leon but I’m sure he won’t have any objections. But would Eddie want to do it? Come out of retirement and return to St Mary’s to tutor a slightly unusual child, I mean.’
‘I think I could persuade him,’ he said, placidly, ‘if you would like me to try.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, please, sir. If Leon’s happy, of course.’
He put my file away in a drawer. ‘Moving on to other matters, Dr Maxwell, we begin with some bad news, I’m afraid. Dr Black has allowed herself to be tempted away from St Mary’s and has taken up a post directly with the University of Thirsk.’
I stared at him. This wasn’t bad news – this was catastrophic news. Kalinda was our representative at the University of Thirsk. She went in to bat for us. She fought our corner. She secured our funding. She defended us on the distressingly frequent occasions when we needed defending. And she was good at it. At just under six feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed and looking like a Disney princess, she could punch a man’s liver out through his ears in 0.5 seconds flat. People were terrified of her. She was terrifying. She certainly terrified the living daylights out of the Senior Faculty at Thirsk. And now she was leaving us.
I sat back to contemplate the ramifications. This was a bit of a double whammy. Because the other half of the equation, Thirsk’s representatives at St Mary’s – both of them – had turned out to be a right pair of murdering bastards. One of them had suffered a tree-related death and the other was unsuccessfully attempting to explain his actions to a group of even bigger bastards than he was – namely, the Time Police.
We’d rather been hoping that they – Thirsk – would take the hint and keep their representatives to themselves in future. Obviously, we’d been deluding ourselves and now it looked as if we were going to be in the position of having one of them here without the benefit of having one of us there. I sighed. Some days it’s just like Sisyphus and his bloody boulder.
I was about to make this observation to Dr Bairstow when it suddenly struck me that he wasn’t looking anywhere near as depressed as he should be. In fact, to anyone who knew him well, he looked very nearly cheerful.
I sat back to have a bit of a think. And then I had it.
‘Dr Black is Thirsk’s new representative here, isn’t she?’
‘She is indeed.’
‘Well, that’s good news, sir. In fact, it couldn’t be better.’
He sighed again. ‘If you say so, Dr Maxwell. I should warn you I have already been on the receiving end of half a dozen emails from her requesting – no, demanding we put together something spectacular to celebrate her new posting here.’
‘I’ll give it some thought, sir.’
I was expecting one of his don’t just sit there, Dr Maxwell, see to it looks but it didn’t happen. There must be more to come.
There was.
He shifted a couple more files. ‘Moving on. At her request, Miss North is remaining at TPHQ for a while longer.’
That didn’t come as a great surprise. I knew she’d been giving evidence against Halcombe and Sullivan after our infringement of a Triple-S site. Technically, it should have been me, but since relations between me and the Time Police were at an all-time low, I’d just been grateful North had been prepared to stand in.
‘Do we know why, sir?’
‘There appears to be a mutual attraction.’
Interesting. Actually, I could just see North doing quite well with the Time Police. Their rigid, authoritarian, do as I say and stop thinking for yourself approach would probably quite appeal to her. And her I like to do everything properly attitude would certainly appeal to them. A marriage made in heaven. However . . .
‘The only downside is that it will leave me short of female historians, sir. I’d have only Miss Sykes and Miss Prentiss. And me, of course.’
‘Allow me to present you with a very acceptable alternative. It is proposed to exchange Miss North with Miss Van Owen, who has, apparently, expressed a desire to return to St Mary’s.’
‘One for one, sir?’
‘Indeed.’
This was even better, having North safely out of the way – or transferring to a more sympathetic environment as I must remember to say in future – and Greta Van Owen, an experienced historian, returning to the nest. I couldn’t see a downside.
‘Will I need to liaise with the Time Police about this, sir? Because I think it would be fair to say I’m not their favourite person at the moment. We will almost certainly have real problems being civil to each other.’
‘I have an immediate assignment for you, Dr Maxwell, that will preclude your involvement in any way. In fact, I have appointed Dr Peterson to deal with Miss North’s transfer so there will be no need for eithe
r of us to become involved.’
That was a relief. Dr Bairstow was no more popular with the Time Police than I was. If that were even possible. Still, the possible absence of North and the reacquisition of Van Owen was such good news that I wasn’t going to do anything to prejudice it. I could safely leave everything to Peterson.
There was one thing, though.
I leaned forwards and said quietly, ‘Sir, I have to ask.’
He knew what I was going to say. ‘Yes, Dr Maxwell?’
‘The teapot, sir.’
And no, I’m not referring to the traditional tea-pouring, cosy-clad receptacle, but the time-travelling twelve-foot-high teapot belonging to a couple of naughty but rather endearing teenagers named Adrian and Mikey, which was supposed to have been destroyed as part of the deal between the Time Police and us. They’d broken their end of the deal and we’d broken ours. The teapot was currently concealed in Hawking Hangar awaiting its fate.
He seemed to become strangely reluctant. He didn’t actually say, ‘What teapot?’ but the question certainly hung in the air between us.
‘We were supposed to destroy it, sir, and while I have no qualms at all about deceiving the Time Police, I am reluctant to give them a reason for coming back here.’ I gathered myself for just the teensiest hint of criticism. ‘It does seem to be an unnecessary risk.’
We both took a moment to contemplate those unfamiliar words and then he said, ‘I find myself reluctant to part with it.’
I waited, but he said no more.
‘Sir, Clive Ronan now knows of its existence. A pod with no safety protocols built in is God’s gift to anyone who wants to plunder the past. I doubt he’ll be able to resist.’
‘Leon tells me he and Miss Perkins may be able to reprogramme some of its basic protocols and if this is, in fact, the case, it would give us an additional and much needed working pod. And I am confident the removal of some of its more . . . controversial features will render it acceptable to the Time Police.’