Martin was staring down at the table, clearly afraid to make eye contact with me. I turned back to Robert. “So Martin saved you, sort of?”
“Sort of is right.” He threw a glance at Martin. “He didn’t really seem to believe me at first. He still doesn’t.” He raised an eyebrow. “But yeah, he sorted everything out for me, found me a place to live. Even though he never really seemed to completely believe my story.”
“So you did track down your family then?” I asked him, hoping that he had.
“Yeah,” he replied, a look of sadness crossing his face. He stopped talking and looked down at the table.
“And?”
“Well, my parents were long dead, of course...”
“What about your fiancé?”
He sighed. He lifted up his head to look at me. I had completely turned around in my chair to face him. A new feeling of hope had come over me: hope that maybe I could trust my instincts after all, that I had been right about Robert Smith. Even if he had been lying to me, I was desperate to find a kernel of truth in amongst it all.
“She was still alive. I...I tracked her down and just turned up out of the blue at the flat where she was living...” He trailed off, and I thought I saw tears fill his eyes as he turned away. “It was...awful, really. I mean, she was in her 60s for crying out loud...”
“Did she recognise you? Did she remember you?” I was desperate to know.
Rob shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t...she answered the door and I...I ran away.” He looked disgusted at the memory. “I couldn’t face it. It was awful, like I said, really horrible. I didn’t want to know.” He looked across the table at Martin. “I honestly don’t know why any of us want to do it: track down people we knew, I mean. I never wanted to even attempt it again.”
“So...is that why you moved here, to Australia, then?” I was still unsure about what had happened between these two: or what this strange allegiance was between Martin and Robert. Rob had said that Martin had stowed him away for three years.
Rob sighed and shifted in his seat a bit. “Not really...” He scratched his head. “Maybe, partly. But it was mostly because the Good Doctor talked me into it. He thought we could work together, fool people, back in Australia. He had this idea that we could trick your father...” He took one final look at me, before fixing his stare on Martin across the table, who still remained suspiciously quiet.
Martin nodded and took over the explanation. “We thought — well, I thought really — that Robert would be the perfect candidate. He knew all the symptoms he needed to fake, so he could be believable. He was still refusing to dress in era-appropriate clothing, so that would help with his story. And he really didn’t have anything else going for him in his life...”
“Hey,” Rob interjected, offended.
“Well it’s true,” Martin shot back at him. “Anyway, it seemed like the perfect plan. I would bring Robert back to Australia and we would fake a time travel scene.” He paused and looked up at me. “It was a well intentioned plan, really. I wanted to make your father think that his time machine worked properly, so that he would stop using it as a murder weapon. I thought that if he sent someone – Robert – ‘through time’ and he came out the other end in one piece, then he would give up his experiments. And I would be done with him. By that stage I had so much experience dealing with time travel victims I thought it wouldn’t be a problem at all.”
“And?” I prodded, remembering that this was all supposed to have taken place more than three years ago. “What happened?”
“Well, the Doctor’s great scheme didn’t exactly go to plan,” Rob said wryly.
Martin looked embarrassed. He glanced up toward the ceiling. “It turned out I was good at solving time travel mysteries but not great at conducting them myself.” He hesitated before going on. “I drove Robert up to Nelson Bay, to your father’s house. When we got there I made up a story about Robert being a ‘volunteer’ for the experiment. I had to make up a fake ID and story for him of course, so that your father didn’t catch on. The story was that Robert had been born in 1983, in Sydney, that he was a broke musician, and that I’d found him on Gumtree.com, volunteering for ‘medical experiments’.”
I couldn’t quite read Robert’s expression by this stage, but it seems to be one of resentment as he followed along with Martin’s story.
“And did my father believe any of that?” I asked, looking between the two of them for an answer.
“Yeah,” Martin replied, nodding. “That was actually how he found most of his ‘victims’ at that stage.”
“Oh my god,” I replied, horrified at the thought of him carrying out these experiments on poor broke people who were desperate for money.
Martin took a deep breath and continued on. “Anyway, the plan was that I would ‘distract’ your father, while he was carrying out the procedure, and Robert would escape and we’d just pretend he had ‘travelled through time’. Then, I’d hide him for a couple of months or whatever before ‘finding’ him perfectly healthy, proving to your father that time travel could be fun, simple and painless.”
“So what happened?” I asked frantically.
Martin cleared his throat. “Well, my attempts at ‘distraction’ failed disastrously. In fact, your father didn’t even use the time machine I’d been familiar with, the one I had seen there on a previous trip. Instead, he grabbed Robert and tied him up, dragging him away to some secret part of the house that I didn’t even know existed.” The lair, then.
Martin sat back in his seat, shooting Robert an apologetic look. “I was horrified, of course. Beside myself actually. Your father told me to wait in the house while he went and did the deed. I just waited up in the main part of the house, devastated, blaming myself for having Robert murdered.”
“Meanwhile,” Rob cut in. “I was being shoved into a cage downstairs! I tell you what, I was pretty furious at the Doctor.”
“Oh my god...” I murmured. I turned to Rob. “But you’re okay. What the hell happened to you down there?”
“Well,” Rob said, playing with his cigarette lighter in his hands. “Nothing. There was some buzzing and whirring, and I kind of recognised the sounds and sensation from the time I had actually travelled through time. So I was like, oh man, not again. You know?”
I nodded. “I suppose so. But?”
Rob grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Didn’t work man. I was like, immune to it or something.” He looked at Martin for corroboration, and he nodded.
Martin continued on. “The two of them returned upstairs about twenty minutes later,” Martin said. “I was so relieved: I thought the time machine hadn’t worked or something. But your father was furious at me. He was threatening to kill Robert on the spot, so we had to get out of there ASAP. We drove back to Sydney as fast as possible. The whole drive back we were just trying to figure out what had happened.”
“I was furious, of course!” Robert exclaimed. “I mean, this guy almost had me killed.” He pointed at Martin.
“Not on purpose!” Martin shook his head. “Anyway, I wasn’t thrilled myself. Now I was stuck with this bloody guy.”
“So you kept him in your house for three years?” I asked, bemused.
Martin groaned. “More or less. Not for the entire time. He was back and forth between here and England a lot.” He shot a look at Robert. “And for a brief time he did manage to find a job and his own place, but that was a short-lived foray. I mean, for a while our new plan was to figure out a way to make this new information work to our advantage. Surely a guy who was immune to time travel was worth something.”
I shook my head. My mind was racing with all of this information, struggling to take it all in. “So...then...what the hell happened at the hospital two weeks — or three months — ago? Because Robert was definitely lying in a hospital bed, unable to breath.”
Rob looked extremely guilty. I turned to Martin, who was glaring at him angrily.
&
nbsp; “Well?” I asked, turning to Robert.
“I may have purposely given myself an asthma attack and faked a trip through time?” he stated, like it was a question, looking up at me for forgiveness.
“Oh my god...” I began.
“I was sick of being hidden away! I figured that if I faked a time travel trip I would at least get some bloody attention. I could come out of the closet, so to speak.”
“Did you know about this?” I asked, turning to Martin. “On the day we went to RPA, I mean?”
“Not at first,” he replied, shortly and sharply. “When I saw who it was, lying there, I couldn’t believe it. I was just going to walk out and leave him there. But...” He stopped and suddenly looked behind him. “John Raymond was there. As far as he was concerned it was a real case.” He paused and dropped his voice even lower. “I thought that maybe we could at least try to put the original plan in action, use Robert for what he had originally been intended for.”
Rob looked offended. “Oi!”
Martin ignored this and continued on. “After all, Raymond didn’t know about the incident in Nelson Bay three years earlier. So I thought we may as well capitalise and play along a bit. Although…” he said, shooting a look at Robert. “I was unwilling to fully commit. For various reasons. And I had to remain cynical anyway, at least in front of Raymond.”
He sat back and sighed. Before he continued, Martin quickly glanced over his shoulder again and then leant in slightly towards me. “I didn’t want you involved at all, Anna. I didn’t want you to come along at all that day, and when I saw Robert in that bed, I was even angrier that you were there. But, at least...” he sighed. “At least with you there, I didn’t think your father would give orders for anyone to be killed. That’s why I left to go back to the university. I thought the two of you would be okay. I never would have thought he would…try kill his own daughter for crying out loud.”
I scoffed. “But he did.” I turned away and shook my head. “He’s never cared about my life being in danger. You knew he sent me through time when I was a baby-”
“That was his first trip,” Martin interrupted. “That trip was never supposed to end in murder.”
“Yeah well,” I said bitterly. “He had no qualms trying to hurt me the next time.”
Martin nodded gravely. “When you turned up the next morning and told me that they’d tried to kill the both of you, that’s when I knew I had to do something. That’s when I decided we had to go to Nelson Bay and stop him, destroy his equipment, something.”
Rob let out a slight laugh. “Although, that plan didn’t exactly work either.” He turned to face me. “Word of advice: when this guy says he has a plan to stop someone doing something, do not listen to it.”
“Well, it’s funny you should say that...” Martin began. “Because I actually have a plan...”
Robert groaned, but we were interrupted by Fanny, who was walking towards us.
“Fanny!” Rob explained, jumping up to greet her with a hug. For a second I wondered how he could possibly even know who she was, and then I remembered that he’d been in Sydney for years. The two of them probably hung out at secret time traveller’s anonymous clubs or something.
While the two of them were hugging and catching up I turned my attention back to Martin. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? About Robert, I mean.”
He sighed. “I didn’t want you to get even madder at me. I figured it was Robert’s lie and you would figure it out eventually and get angry at him for lying to you. After all, it was all his decision to appear at RPA hospital that day. He DID lie to you. I didn’t want you to find out from me though.”
“So you just kept making passive-aggressive hints to me about it?” My tone was not happy. “Rather than just being honest?”
“Anna...” he began.
“Seriously, Martin, why are you so concerned about me disliking or distrusting Robert?”
He glanced at Rob, who was still mingling excitedly with Fanny and shook his head. “Because I don’t like the guy!” He looked back at me sheepishly and added, quietly. “And I didn’t want you to like him either.” He shot me a meaningful look, but I pressed him to explain himself further.
“And why wouldn’t you want me liking Robert?”
“I guess I was...” he looked down at the table, fiddling with his fingers. “Jealous, I suppose.”
Chapter Thirty-Five.
Martin, Fanny, Robert and I all met up in a courtyard outside of the hospital. Across from us was a Nando’s fast food restaurant, which of course made Robert hungry. “Come on, let’s just get some food first,” he whinged.
“There’s no time to think about food right now,” Martin snapped.
“Why, because your next ‘brilliant plan’ just can’t wait?” Robert asked sarcastically, his British accent slipping out more than usual.
Martin rolled his eyes. “This plan is actually quite good, okay. You haven’t even heard it yet, so listen before you judge it.”
I stifled a laugh. “Are you sure? Because from what I’ve heard so far...we might be better just leaving the matter up to fate.”
Fanny patted Martin on the arm reassuringly, and I bristled a bit at the sight of the gesture. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just tell the other two what we intend to do.”
“Well,” he began, looking around at the rest of us. “We have to make sure Connie is safe, first of all. So the first step will be to wait until she is conscious, and then we will extract her from the hospital. Next: we have to get into Raymond’s office after hours, some time when neither he or his assistant — what’s her name?” he asked, looking at me.
“Naomi...”I began slowly.
“When neither him nor Naomi are there. Then, it is simply a matter of setting up Fanny’s time machine in there, and when they return: Bob’s your uncle,” he said, looking around at us triumphantly. “They will be sent through time never to bother anyone ever again.”
I must looked uneasy with this plan because Fanny stopped and asked me what was wrong.
I took a deep breath. “Well, firstly, do we really need to get Naomi involved with this? She seems pretty innocent to me. It’s John Raymond who does all of the killing.”
“Yes, we do need to get her involved.” Martin replied quickly. “She is on their side. They’ve both had access to my files all this time. All the people — all the time travellers I’ve been trying to protect — are at risk.”
“Come on Martin, let’s leave her out of it…”I began. But the concept of ‘sides’ led me guiltily to my next point. “And, um, also...” I began, really not wanting to tell them what I was about to say. “I...kind of told them what you were planning.”
“WHAT?” Martin exploded. “Are you freaking kidding me Anna? What were you thinking!”
“Shh,” I said, not wanting to attract attention to us. “We are in a hospital for crying out loud.”
Martin was furious. “What do you mean you told them what we were planning?”
“Well,” I began, looking at Rob, hoping I might at least get some sympathy from him. I didn’t. “It was earlier this evening, before we got the call about Connie, after I found Robert’s bag in your living room. I thought you and Rob were in on some evil scheme, that the two of you were the bad guys, and I thought I needed to warn John Raymond about you.”
“Unbelievable...” Martin said, dropping his face into his hands.
Rob raised his eyebrows. “Another brilliant plan come unravelled then.”
Fanny looked worried. “So they’re expecting us then?”
I nodded. “I wasn’t sure how, or when you were going to do it exactly, but I warned them...”
“What exactly did you say?” Martin cut in.
“I told them that you were going to ‘send them through time’,” I replied. “Nothing more nor less.”
“Anna I seriously can’t believe...”
“I didn’t trust you okay!” I yelled at him in the middle of the
dark courtyard. “I didn’t know what to think. You have lied to me so much.” Smoke was very nearly coming out of my nostrils, I was so mad. How could he turn around and blame this on me? “You brought this all on yourself!” I concluded and stormed away.
Robert ran after me, catching me just as I got down to Parramatta Rd “Ann! Where are you going?” he called, struggling to catch up.
“Don’t think I’m not mad at you as well,” I said, hurrying straight ahead. “You have been lying to me this whole entire time Robert! I trusted you.” I slowed down only slightly so that I could catch a glimpse of his ridiculously made-up face. “How could you lie to me, when I was the only one who believed you?”
“Anna I’m sorry-“
“So you didn’t actually travel through time when Martin and I did either, just last week, at Nelson Bay?” I asked, interrupting. “That’s how you were able to bring me into the hospital…”
Robert nodded. “Yeah. That was three real months for me. I was left behind in the lair, with your father. After you and Martin disappeared. I grabbed him, threatened to kill him with his own time machine unless he told me how far through time you would travel. When he told me it was only a few months, I knew it was just a matter of waiting there till you reappeared. I stayed at his beach house in the meantime. He was long gone.”
“Because he sent himself through time?”
Robert nodded.
He slowed down his jogging a bit in order to catch his breath. We had to push past a crowd of people at a bus stop as we continued our descent down Parramatta Rd.
“I wasn’t entirely lying to you all along…” he pointed out. “It was just a few years off. And I did wait for you to reappear at Nelson Bay.”
“I guess,” I said, softening. “But still, it was a lot of lying, Robert. All that time I was so worried about you finding your family. I looked them up myself you know,” I said, pausing to look for a reaction.
Allergic To Time Page 21