“So what are we gonna do when we get back in?” Ally asked.
“Not we, me,” I said. I headed towards a thick clump of bushes growing in the garden bed by the wall. “You need to keep a lookout and let me know when she’s coming back.”
“That sucks!” Ally thrust her hands on her hips. “If I can’t come in I’m going home.”
“Fine,” I said, stepping closer to the shrubs. “But do you know the way from here?”
“Course I do!” She stomped towards the car park, then faltered and turned back. “You owe me big time for helping you out.”
I squeezed through the bush and squashed between it and the wall, shrinking into the smallest ball possible. Ally copied my actions and sat, hugging her legs with her chin on her knees.
“The loos are just there.” I pointed to the end of the alley. “You’ll be able to see her quite easily.”
“And she’ll see me,” Ally grumbled.
Foot traffic through the alley was sporadic: a woman weighed down with shopping bags, a couple pushing a pram, then nothing for what seemed like ages until a whole heap of people came through at once. A bus group, I decided, heading to the tearooms then a sightseeing tour around the church. Their voices faded into the high street and the scamper of claws and the soft flip-flop of thongs replaced them. The sounds stopped way too close to our hiding place and a wet nose burst through the undergrowth.
“Get outta there, Dipstick!”
The dog’s head was jerked sideways, but not before a trickle of wee sprinkled the leaves by my shoe. I cringed as some splashed on me, and hugged my knees tighter.
Ally sniggered.
“Shhh!” I hissed.
Dipstick’s owner peered between the leaves and jumped when he saw us. I gave him the sweetest smile I could muster but his forehead creased in suspicion. Thank goodness another smell enticed Dipstick and the dog dragged its owner away.
Shadows shrank as the sun rose to its peak position. Twigs poked my skin; leaves tickled my sore ear and sounded like an elephant playing drums inside it. Sweat beaded on my top lip and the stink of warm dog pee grew stronger.
Just as Ally started to shift and curse, the sound of the door rubbing on its frame filtered towards us. My heart quickened as I parted the branches to see Mrs Rosemount pressing the door to check it was locked. I withheld a sigh. I could only guess she’d sussed out what I’d done and locked it properly.
Once her footsteps were well past, I struggled to my feet, pain shooting through them. “Fingers crossed,” I grunted.
I stepped from the bush, brushed my clothes off, and ducked down to pretend to tie a lace as an old couple walked through the alley. I waited for them to go then quickly checked there was no one else before pushing the door. It opened!
“How am I supposed to tell you when she’s coming back?” Ally asked.
“I dunno!” I half turned to face her but she was completely hidden. “Bark or something!”
I slipped inside the museum and pressed the door closed behind me. Framed colour prints hung at perfect intervals around the walls, some of places I’d seen, some unfamiliar, but none of the statue. Photos and knick-knacks filled a glass cabinet along the side wall and although one was a distant shot of the statue taken in the church grounds, the varying grey tones masked the colour of the eyes.
A narrow corridor led to a creaky wooden door at the far end of the building. It opened onto a flight of stairs and cold air. I fumbled for the light switch then skipped down to the basement where a huge block of stone greeted me. I gazed up in awe at the imposing statue that towered above me. Letters carved into the smooth base informed me that this was who I was looking for and my stomach knotted.
The face jutted from the neck, the mouth square and unsmiling. Above it, a huge nose cast a shadow over one cheek, and above that were two indentations. From the base it looked as though they could have been intended that way, but the shadows were so black, so deep, that I suspected there was something missing.
I extended my arm to try and compare the jewel with the eye socket. The shape was the same even though I was too far away to tell if it would really fit. But my heart told me that this was where it belonged.
What happened back then? Why would Jack have stolen the sapphires?
Faded memories limped through my mind as the worlds between my present and past began to merge. The Stewarts had been poor, but we were no worse off than anyone else in those times. We had a roof over our heads, not ours, admitted, and we shared it with Auntie Carol and Jack. The adults had tried their best to make life as normal as possible: we still went to school, played with friends, had each other, had hope.
And why had we both disappeared? And why couldn’t I remember?
Fear washed over me. My birthday. What if Jack had wanted to give the jewels to me as a gift! Poor Freddie, Mum, Auntie Carol – they must’ve been out of their minds at me and Jack going missing. And on top of that, we were accused of stealing. But they mustn’t have believed it else they would have left Trentham Weald. Or had they only stayed in the hope that we would return?
I hugged the stone to my chest as if it would somehow fill the emptiness in my heart. My knees buckled but I didn’t fight the weakness and dropped to the ground as the worlds finally separated, leaving me on spongy, damp grass with a warm breeze wafting over my clammy skin.
I struggled to my feet in the hope this vision would bring some answers. Water gushed beneath the road bridge opposite the church. I should have probably been getting back, it was almost dark and I’d hate to be caught out during blackout. But maybe Jack was hiding beneath the bridge. Two minutes wouldn’t make much difference to the light.
My skate shoes slipped on the embankment and I slithered down sideways on my right hip and leg.
What was that smell though? It reminded me of the firework display after Grade Six graduation; something from my life as Katie. A smell that didn’t belong by the riverside, surely?
“You wait ’til your dad hears what you did!”
The voice in the darkness made me jump and I tried to make out the distant figure moving through the river ahead, the peak of his cap jutting forwards.
Jack?
To my left was a sheer wall with pale lettering, WEALD MILLS. I remembered now – the gunpowder mills. To my right were the road footings; ahead was gushing water, and no sign of Jack.
“Jack?” I yelled. But my voice was drowned by falling water.
Jagged stepping stones nudged randomly through the water, my skate shoes slipping and sliding as I stumbled and fell through the river back to the embankment.
Blood dripped down my shin as I rolled from my knees onto my backside. I dropped the jewel into my left hip pocket, tore a scrappy tissue from the right and pressed it hard against my leg. The tissue softened beneath my fingers and even though I couldn’t see the blood, I had to close my eyes against the nausea.
Where did you go, Jack? Maybe I should have let Mum and Auntie Carol know I was going out? They might have got Mr Bettis to help look – he was used to wandering around in darkness.
Woof, woof, woof.
My ears pricked up. The barking sounded way off, and no one in our street had a dog. Rations were meagre enough without sharing food with a pet. But maybe it could help sniff Jack out of his hiding place.
WOOF, WOOF.
The barks grew louder. My mind swirled in confusion. Maybe it was Honey and Mum had already realised we were both missing. The throbbing beneath my fingers gradually lessened and I opened my eyes.
The statue towered above me and the wooden floorboards felt dry and hard.
WOOF!
Uh oh! That was Ally.
I scrambled from the floor and fled to the exit of the museum.
– chapter six –
The door wedged behind me as Mrs Rosemount jabbed the rubber end of her walking stick at my stomach.
“I warned you!” she shrieked.
I pushed her cane to the ground and
sidestepped her, glancing around for my sister. I glimpsed Ally’s elbow and hip protruding from the shop corner as she brushed dirt from her clothes at the high street end.
“About time,” she said when I caught up to her.
The trickle of fresh blood from my knee brought bile to my mouth and I quickly swallowed it back, flumping light-headed against the wall of the alleyway.
“Whoa,” Ally said. “You look crap.”
“I’ll be right,” I moaned, sliding to my backside. “Just give me a minute.”
“Yeouch!” Ally said, staring at my knee. “What the hell did you do?”
Tripped on river rocks in 1944? I wasn’t sure I believed that myself actually! Seeing visions of the past was one thing, but was I really physically there? My shorts felt damp, my shoes definitely were and mud was streaked down my right side. I jerked my head towards the museum.
“You didn’t see me come out of there?” I asked. “You know, before you barked?”
Ally shook her head. “Wish you had though.”
I struggled back to my feet, still light-headed.
“So,” Ally said, flicking her head back. “You gonna tell me what happened in the museum?”
“Ally, this is like, so weird. You know how when we touch the jewel, we see stuff, like from the past?”
Ally sucked in a sharp breath and stiffened.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
I threw her a sideways greasy. “Okay, then, I see stuff,” I said, huffing. “Only I’m not sure they’re visions any more. I think…” This was even crazier, but what else could it be? “That I actually go back in time.”
“Ha, ha, very funny. Not!” Ally marched towards the bollards.
“How else could I have done all this then?” I waved my hands at my grotty clothing. If Ally had a rational explanation, I’d gladly accept it. Mine was just too weird.
“Maybe you caught yourself on a branch when we hid in the bushes, the mud’s from the garden bed and… hah,” she broke off, staring at my shoes, “the dog peed on you!”
Logical enough, except there was no squishy mud, the ground was baked so hard it looked like a broken jigsaw, and the dog only hit one of my shoes yet both were now saturated.
Ally had managed to find her way back to Trentham Terrace by the time I gave up speculating and caught up.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I panted. “But I really do think I went back to the time I lived before.”
“Crazy’s an understatement.” She flung her shoulders back and her hair shimmered in a golden cascade across them.
“These weren’t here during the war.” I pointed at the flats. “It was like a mega veggie patch that everyone shared.”
“So?” she said. “The flats where Grandad lives weren’t there either. Doesn’t mean I,” she made inverted commas with her fingers, “went back in time to find out.”
“Okay then,” I said. “How do I know about blackouts and rations and that people used the underground as a shelter?”
“Der, you’re a history nerd?”
I faltered on the footpath. We had been studying World War II in history before we’d left Australia, but we’d only covered how it started and life in concentration camps, not everyday life in England, and I doubted I’d convince her that my knowledge was firsthand.
“Wait up!” I hurried after her. “Don’t you want to know about the statue?”
She stopped at the junction by Dougie’s Corner Shoppe – the closed sign was still in place – and faced me, hands on hips.
“All I want to know is why, when the rest of us came to England, you went on a trip to la la land.” She flicked her hands around her head as if that was where la la land was.
“What the hell are you on about?”
“I didn’t want to come either,” she said. “But I don’t go making up stories like you with your ‘I’ve lived here before’ crap and fainting…”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!”
Ally gave me a death stare and started walking again.
I darted across the road and passed the Royal British Legion Hall with her.
Da dada da…
“Don’t tell me,” Ally said, flinging open the ground floor door of the apartments. “That song you’re humming’s from another life too?”
“Huh, humming?” A tune had invaded my mind but I hadn’t realised I was singing it.
Ally ran up the stairs two at a time as I dawdled behind, searching for the tune in my mind again. The stink of bleach hit me inside the front door and an odd squealing greeted me down the passageway. I followed the sound to the lounge where Freddie was sitting on the edge of his armchair with several glasses of water lined up on the coffee table.
“Thirsty?” He offered a half full glass to me and I held it to my mouth. “Not too much!”
I took a sip and he dipped his forefinger inside, traced it around the rim, nodded satisfied, and set it with the others.
A squeaky tune began to unfold as he circled each glass and, curious, I sat opposite him on the floral sofa. Assured of an audience, he started singing in his croaky voice.
I drew a sharp breath as his song resonated through my brain. It was the one I’d just been singing! Maybe I’d heard him through the window just now. But the lounge window was closed and the room was on the opposite side of the building to where we’d walked.
“I’ve heard that tune before,” I said, frowning. “We’ll Meet Again, isn’t it?” I couldn’t place if it was from one of Dad’s war films or if it was something from my own memory.
“As if you haven’t.” Freddie smiled. “The words strike a chord with us all, eh?”
He sang a bit more, unaccompanied by the glasses, and then sighed deeply. “And we will all meet again, Kathy. One day. We will.”
I swallowed hard to lose the lump in my throat.
“Why the long face?” Freddie asked. “Don’t you want us to be reunited with Jack?”
“Um, of course.”
“Gawd blimey, don’t tell me you two had another barney over the bread crust!”
I had no idea what he was talking about but he chuckled, a deep, rolling laugh from his belly. One of those laughs that made you smile.
“Freddie…” But I broke off; he was so happy that I didn’t want to upset him by asking about the alleged theft of the sapphire eyes.
“What’s up, Kathy?” Freddie asked.
I stood up and patted his shoulder. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
He’d spent too many years doing that already.
But the shadow darted from his shoulder up to the ceiling, then arrowed at the ground, and I shivered uncontrollably as it looped around me before settling once more behind Freddie. I finally tore my focus away, realising Freddie’s gaze was fixed on my face. Our eyes locked but I wasn’t staring into the eyes of an old man. I was staring at his tormented soul.
The lounge misted through my watery eyes and I flopped back in the seat.
Freddie reached into his trouser pocket and laid the jewel beside the glasses. I blinked rapidly, trying to bring Freddie back into focus, but he remained as fuzzy as the shadow behind him.
I leaned forward and touched the jewel but Freddie kept his fingers on it as well.
“Happy birthday, Kathy,” Freddie said, but his voice was young and unbroken.
I dropped onto the mattress I used on the floor in Jack’s room and eyed Freddie warily as he poked about under the blanket on the bed he top and tailed in with Jack. The white headboard had started to stain in the middle from Jack’s permanently greasy hair, but no matter how much Freddie complained that his pillow kept falling on the floor, Jack never let him have that end, and they were always waking me in the night when they kicked each other or wrestled with the blanket.
“Go on,” Freddie said, holding his cupped hand towards me. It, like his grazed knees and torn short trousers, was filthy.
“You shouldn’t have.” I deliberately sat
on my empty hand, fully aware of what his wicked grin meant – that his gift was something I would rather not have.
Freddie feigned a look of hurt. “But I spent hours getting this for you, special like.”
“You promise me it’s nothing bad?” I said.
“Go wash your hands, Kathy!” Auntie Carol yelled from the kitchen. “I’m just boiling your egg.”
“Can’t I have it fried?” I whined, glancing at the door.
“What do I fry it in?” Auntie Carol snapped. “We’re out of butter!”
“Poached then?”
“It’s already in the pan!” she muttered. “Do you want this egg or not?”
“Yes,” I said. “But can you cook it so the yellow is runny?”
“You’ll have it as it comes!” Auntie Carol said.
“Ugh, I hate that we have to stay with her!” I grumbled to Freddie.
“Here.” Freddie grasped my left hand, palm up, opened his into it then curled my fingers around his gift.
It was cool and slimy. And wriggling!
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