The Yoghurt Plot

by Fleur Hitchcock

  ‘Bugg!’ yells Lorna. ‘This way!’

  I look back and see her charging straight for the dance floor and the main exit. ‘Sorry,’ I say, as I duck around the big man, feel his fingers trail across my T-shirt and follow her through the dancing couples. They barely miss a beat, shimmying around us, closing the gap behind, all net, make-up and sequins. The Granddad/Dad man and his partner sidestep to let us through, and she slips me a wink, and for a moment she looks exactly like someone I know, but I can’t think who, and I really want to stop and talk to them, but all I can say is, ‘Sorry,’ before the house lights come up and I realise I’m going to be caught if I don’t speed up.

  We make it out through the doors and keep running. Before long we’re clear of the pier. Lorna dodges through the streets until we’re back near the shop, where she stops and sinks to the ground laughing and coughing. ‘That was great! Can we do it again? I could smell the make-up.’

  I’m breathless, I can hardly speak, but I’m so furious with her I force the words out: ‘If you’d left your stupid gerbils at home in the first place, none of this would have happened.’ I hand Coleridge over. He’s curled into a tiny ball and letting out what I suppose is a gerbil moan. A sort of squeak really.

  Lorna snatches him off me and rams him into her cardigan pocket. ‘I always have them, except for school. Mum makes me keep them in separate cages. This is the only way they can be together.’

  ‘Well, I wish you didn’t, and I wish you’d just do what you said you’d do. You were supposed to be looking after Granddad.’

  Lorna sticks her tongue out and opens the side door of the shop. The private door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I say.

  ‘Getting something to eat. I’m interested – do they have Cheesy Crunchers in 1969?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘It was my great-grandpa that started the shop. I don’t think it would be stealing.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t know that. Supposing they caught you? You can’t possibly explain.’ Surely she couldn’t be so stupid.

  But she could. I stand out on the pavement as she vanishes inside, feeling ridiculously anxious. What happens if she gets caught? What would happen if we ended up in a police cell? How could we possibly explain ourselves? I imagine 1960s policemen calling in 1960s social workers. Did they even have social workers then?

  I have completely stopped breathing.

  ‘There!’ says Lorna, bursting out of the shop and holding open her blue carrier bag. ‘Crisps,’ she announces. ‘I think.’

  I look inside: two blue and white waxy paper bags.

  She plunges her arm in, pulls out a packet, rips open the top and tips the crisps into her mouth. They cascade across the pavement. ‘Yuck!’ she splutters. ‘What’s this?’ She picks a tiny blue rectangle from out of her mouth.

  ‘Salt,’ I say, reading the outside of the other packet. ‘You add your own salt.’

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ she says, dropping the crisp packet back inside the carrier bag and throwing both onto the pavement. ‘I need something to drink.’ She turns and rushes back into the shop. I carefully tear the top off my salt sachet and shake it into the bag. The crisps are oilier, more delicious than now crisps, and the salt sticks to them in big crunching grains.

  Lorna bursts out of the door clutching a large bottle in her arms. ‘Run!’ she yells, and races off down the street.

  I hesitate. ‘Hey, stop! Thief!’ A grey-haired man charges out of the shop. ‘I’ll call the police,’ he shouts. ‘I’ve got your description. Nowhere to run to in this town.’

  A bubble of panic rises in my throat and my attempt to run away stalls. ‘How much?’ I squeak. ‘How much is the bottle?’ I daren’t mention the crisps.

  The man turns towards me. ‘Sixpence – why? Are you offering to pay?’

  A gust of wind bowls down the lane, catching the carrier bag that Lorna abandoned, scattering the contents. The grey-haired man manages to get the crisp packet, but the carrier bag fills like a balloon and scuds along the pavement. I try to stamp on it with my foot, but each time I get close it leaps a little and settles further down the street.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, abandoning the bag. I plunge my hand into my pocket and bring up the mix of old and new coins. He steps forward, grips my extended wrist and picks a threepenny piece and three big dirty coppers from my palm. I notice as he does so that at least one of them wasn’t minted until 1970, and I hope very much that it doesn’t cause some kind of hideous time accident.

  Still gripping my wrist, he looks into my eyes. I notice that he has the same mouth as Lorna, slightly too big. ‘I’ll let you off the crisps. I can see you haven’t got enough money. But I’d better tell your parents. Where do you live?’

  ‘Out of town,’ I say, waving towards the west as if we might come from miles away. ‘But,’ I say, pointing at the carrier bag now scudding along the road, ‘I should … ’

  The man’s face drops. He’s giving up.

  ‘I should get the bag.’

  ‘Off you go, but you’re both banned from my shop without an adult. Got it?’ He lets go and I run after the bag which is now hovering above a post box at the other end of the pavement. I can’t see Lorna, which is just as well because if I was to get near her at this moment I think I’d have to kill her, if only to save the world. The bag seems to have its own power source and is getting further and further ahead.

  I follow it around a corner, almost reaching it, before a car sweeps by, whisking it high into the air and over the sea wall.

  ‘Yay!’ says Lorna, running up alongside me. ‘That was hilarious.’

  I’d like to throw her over the sea wall, but instead, I say, ‘You nearly got us arrested.’

  It sounds feeble and she shrugs.

  ‘Lucky I had Granddad’s money. Anyway, you shouldn’t steal.’

  ‘Honestly, Bugg, it was only two and a half p. I doubt he’d have called the police. Here, try this, it’s delicious.’

  She hands me a big clear glass bottle with a bobbly texture. ‘Cream Soda’, it says. I take a gulp. It’s like drinking warm vanilla ice cream. I’m not sure it’s entirely pleasant, but I’m so thirsty I don’t really care. We turn back and walk on past the shop into the countryside, finding the little path we took before. Butterflies flap past, and swifts swoop and dive on us. It’s really beautiful, but I’m still completely furious with Lorna. It’s as if she has no idea what can happen if you change things.

  A fresh yellow butterfly whisks past the end of my nose and lands on a tall yellow plant. It’s drying its wings in the sun. Despite my anger, I pause to watch. I can’t imagine how anyone drove the first bulldozer into this, destroyed the hedgerow, dug up the grass. It so pretty, so green and alive.

  Our little house stands like a white island in the green, tall hedges cuddling around it, keeping it snug.

  We walk up to the hedge and peer into the garden. This time there’s a man digging a hole. He’s got his back to us and he’s listening to a little transistor radio on a chair. Distorted rock-and-roll music blares out, covering the sounds of our feet on the gravel driveway. I tiptoe, but Lorna makes a run for the kitchen door. I follow and crash into her back where she stands just inside the doorway, about an inch from a large, aproned woman holding a rolling pin in her left hand and Lorna’s arm in her right.

  ‘Who,’ she demands, ‘are you?’

  ‘Ah,’ says Lorna.

  I pull open the fridge, grab two modern-looking yoghurts, the spoons we used earlier and rip off the tops.

  ‘I beg your pardon! What on earth are you thinking of? Helping yourself to food from my fridge!’

  ‘I’m really sorry – Mrs –’ I say, plunging the spoon deep into the first pot and feeding it to Lorna. ‘But we have to –’

  ‘That’s what happened last time. That’s what that other boy said. Well, I’ve a mind to call the police. Jack! Jack, we’ve a pair of young burglars!’ she shouts at the open door.


  I cram two more spoonfuls into my mouth, and two more into Lorna’s – the large woman is starting to fade.

  Another spoon, and another, and another, and the kitchen fades, the woman’s gone. So’s the kitchen.

  I look down at my feet.

  Shingle.

  Chapter 16

  ‘What?’ says Lorna, looking around. ‘Oh my days! What’s happened?’

  There’s nothing. We’re on shingle, but it’s not by the sea. The sea’s miles out there with the remains of the pier. The pier that actually looks more complete than anywhere else here. The beach seems to have come right inland. All there is in the landscape is a huge bank of stones, some patches of grass, reeds, lumps of rusty concrete, a bin and a sign sticking out of the ground.

  No houses, no estate, no nothing.

  There’s the fridge of course. Standing there, all on its own, no electricity – no chance of electricity, humming. Actually, growling.

  ‘Is this now,’ asks Lorna, turning towards me, ‘or have we ended up in, like, 2050? You know, after the end of television and stuff.’

  I look around for anything that’s going to tell us when we are. Inland, sand dunes stretch away towards a line of pylons, and in the distance are storm clouds.

  There’s nothing of any use at all. I wander over to the sign.

  ‘Approximate site of the town of Shabbiton. Here, during the heavy rainstorms of the summer of 1969, a small but vital land drain was blocked by litter, undermining the subsoil and destroying the small town. One of the few remaining features of the town is the pier, and at low tide the streets are still visible under the sand. 6,600 people lost their homes.’

  I can’t actually speak.

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ says Lorna, taking one of the gerbils out of her pocket. ‘I mean, where’s it gone? Where are all the bricks? All the stuff?’ She looks around frantically. ‘Where’s the shop?’

  I glance in the direction of the shop. It’s not there. Nothing’s there.

  Nothing’s been there for forty-five years. The sea’s slowly taken over the land, piling stones and sand on what was left.

  She goes over to read the sign again. ‘Oh no,’ she says eventually. ‘It was that carrier bag, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have let it go.’

  I nod. I’m so cross with her I can hardly think. First her gerbils, then theft and now her litter – does she have no understanding of time and consequence? For a few minutes I pace up and down the shingle, grinding it under my shoes. And then I begin to wonder where my family would be. If they don’t live in Shabbiton, where would they have ended up? And if I did find them, do I already exist? How would my parents react to having two Buggs? Would I become twins? Which head would I occupy, or would I flit from one head to the other – or would I actually just melt into myself? I turn back to the fridge. It looks smug, really smug, like it’s taught us a lesson. I open the door. It’s completely empty, except for two foil-topped yoghurts in glass pots.

  ‘I think,’ I say, ‘that the fridge is giving us another chance.’

  Once again we arrive in the painted kitchen and it’s beginning to feel familiar. A millisecond before the kitchen comes into focus I see myself and Lorna, occupying the same space. There is nothing to do but throw ourselves under the table. We watch ourselves leap out through the door, and also watch me and Dilan examine the kitchen. When we’ve left, we wait for the other Lorna to arrive, examine the kitchen and run out of the back door. I’m terrified that the huge woman will appear, but equally I don’t want to rush into any impossible encounters with ourselves. So we watch the clock crawl around to six o’clock before we follow down the path, keeping out of sight and ducking in and out of the hedgerows.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ says Lorna. ‘What’s the plan?’

  I look over to her. She’s still got the faintest trace of blood under her nose. That was today. In the now. But we’ve been going back and forth for hours, even though it still looks as if it’s six o’clock. I’m starting to get tired, and irritable, and once we’ve solved the drain thing I AM NOT LETTING HER TIME-TRAVEL AGAIN.

  I am quite sure of that.

  In fact, I’m not letting her or her stupid gerbils anywhere near me. Ever.

  ‘We,’ I say, ‘are going to wait for the bag to blow over the sea wall. We are going to be on the beach. We are going to follow it, to the land drain, and you are going to stick your hands into the drain and take it out. Understood?’

  Lorna twists her face as if she wants to object, but I refuse to smile, or even meet her eye, so she sighs and shuffles along the track into town. We’re back in the fields with the bees and the butterflies, and, if it wasn’t for the stupid carrier bag, I’d like nothing better than to lie on the grass and watch beetles climbing flower stalks. The child runs past us, flying a kite, her mother behind, pushing an enormous pram with a huge parasol on the top.

  The woman stares. She doesn’t smile. ‘Haven’t I—’ she says.

  ‘Evening!’ I yell, walking a little faster. ‘But … ’ she calls after me.

  ‘Bye,’ says Lorna, kicking a clod of sand from her trainers. Sand from an alternative 2014. Sand that couldn’t possibly be there. I let my mind wander into the ramifications of the time crimes we’ve committed in the last hour or so – or the last forty-five years or so.

  Instead of following the path through to the shop, we run straight down towards the sea. This way we can’t possibly run into ourselves, although other people have obviously spotted us, or one set of us. I can tell from the strange looks we get. We don’t catch sight of ourselves, but I have to keep reminding myself that we could. And that I need to watch out for it.

  We don’t go as far as the pier. Instead we clamber over the sea wall and drop onto a mat of damp hard sand. The concrete wall runs along the top of the beach. Underneath it, a long metal pipe heads out to sea.

  ‘Is that it?’ asks Lorna. ‘It doesn’t seem to have a way in. I’ll go down the end and see.’ She charges off across the beach, looking for an opening into the pipe.

  Actually I haven’t a clue where the land drain is, but I’m not going to tell Lorna that. I’m too furious with her, and I suspect that the big metal pipe next to us is sewage, and no matter what happens to Shabbiton, I’m not tangling with it.

  Lorna capers back; she’s picked up some seaweed and is popping the bubbles.

  ‘Put it down,’ I say.

  ‘What – seaweed? How can that affect anything?’

  ‘Just stop. Don’t touch.’

  ‘O–K.’ A few drops of rain spot onto the rocks of the beach. She stands and looks up at the clouds. I look up too. Forty-four-year-old clouds, gathering into a grey stormy mass over the sea.

  ‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ she says to one of the gerbils. It looks unimpressed and crawls back into the darkness of her hand.

  I turn away and watch the wall. Any minute now, the bag should come over the top.

  One, two, three, four …

  I assume it will. I assume that we’re there somewhere on the other side of the wall losing it, or maybe it’ll just pop out of the air. Or maybe we did things differently this time.

  Except we couldn’t have done.

  It has to be coming.

  Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one …

  Or maybe this time someone else got it.

  Thirty-two, thirty-three …

  The blue carrier bag floats high over the wall, as if taking off on a longer, higher flight.

  ‘Oh no, Bugg! It’s too high,’ says Lorna, galloping sideways along the beach flapping her arms in the air as if the bag might just give up and land on her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, we just have to see where it ends up.’ I say, breaking into a trot.

  The bag takes a swing to the right and scuttles along the sea wall, threading its way around the rotting wooden seaweed posts poking out of the sand, moving slightly too fast and too erratically for us to catch it. Finally, just as I’m beginning to wonder if w
e shouldn’t go back in time again and stop Lorna actually bringing the wretched bag, it drops, windless, to lie on the sand.

  We race towards it, panting over the shingle, arms outstretched, and as we nearly reach it, it whisks straight into the air like a helicopter and swoops over the wall behind.

  ‘No!’ shouts Lorna, clambering onto a boulder that butts onto the sea wall and attempting to scramble over. ‘Come back here!’

  I race back towards a set of steps, charge up them and swing out onto the promenade. The bag’s lying in the middle of the road, like it’s been run over, but I know if I race up to it, it’ll just fill with invisible air and skip over the wall again. It’s as if it’s alive.

  I stroll towards it, not exactly looking at it. It rustles over the tarmac, slowly gaining speed before a car trundles past, whipping it into the air again and taking it down a side street. Once again I break into a trot. Whatever happens, I don’t want to lose sight of it. The bag jumps and swoops, vanishing under a shiny car. The car’s parked right next to the last in a row of cottages, and the front window is open, I can hear voices from inside. I drop down to my knees and crawl towards the front wheel of the car. The ground is dry, so apart from the gravelly bits digging into my knees, it isn’t too unpleasant. When I reach the car, I can see that the bag is on the far side, right by a rainwater gully; a little more wind and it might go straight in, but any rain and it would be dragged down instantly. I think about running back and finding a long stick or something, but the bag might just slip down the hole while I was away. Instead, I lie flat on my stomach and drag myself under the car.

  ‘But there’s no way they’ll ever let you do that by the pier,’ says a woman’s voice. ‘It’s for kiddies and ice creams and that, not cars.’

  ‘Of course, love, but we’ll never get anywhere if we can’t expand. It’s hopeless trying to sell all the cars from the garage out here, and those new Minis are … ’ A car passes so that I can’t quite hear. ‘We need something to do them credit. We could use your sister’s place out there in the fields. Or the plot on the seafront. Would make a lovely forecourt.’