The Yoghurt Plot

by Fleur Hitchcock

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ says Mum. ‘That’s why you changed your PJs. Dad’s going to stay home to look after you.’

  ‘What?’ squeals the other Bugg.

  The other Dilan, and the Dilan with me inside the airing cupboard, laugh.

  ‘You’ll be fine – and I’ve thrown away all the yoghurts, although there seemed to be an awful lot of them. Far more than I remember.’

  ‘Really?’ asks the other Bugg anxiously.

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Mum. ‘I keep on finding more and more – most mysterious. Anyway, I’m off to work.’

  ‘More and more yoghurts? What’s the fridge playing at?’ I say to Dilan. ‘We need to take a look.’

  ‘Shh,’ says Dilan. ‘She’s going out. Won’t the other Bugg take a look?’

  ‘Exactly. We need to get there first, in case the other Bugg decides to take another trip.’

  ‘Will the other Bugg take another yoghurt trip? Won’t the other Bugg be too scared without me alongside?’

  I can’t see whether Dilan’s smiling, but I suspect he is.

  ‘Can’t chance it. I need to go down.’

  Mum’s car engine starts up outside. I creep out of the airing cupboard and slope down the stairs into the kitchen. Granddad’s standing there, playing with the letters on the fridge.

  ‘Look,’ he says. ‘My name. ARNOLD.’ He fiddles around with the remaining letters.

  ‘Can I just have a look in the fridge, Granddad?’ I say.

  He nods, his face pulled into deep thought, and moves to one side. He goes on playing with the letters as I look inside. Six more yoghurts.

  ‘Stop,’ I say. ‘Stop, fridge.’ I pull out the tubs and drop them in the bin.

  ‘What?’ says Granddad.

  ‘Nothing, Granddad,’ I say. But something occurs to me and I lean forward and whisper to the fridge. ‘I know, fridge. I know that if Mum and Dad don’t go back in time, or forward or wherever it is they go, we won’t go and look for them. If we don’t go and look for them, then we won’t see what we saw, we won’t hear what we heard. We won’t know that the pier didn’t burn down on its own. But it’s all right, because we’ve heard and seen it not; it can’t be taken away from us – we don’t need to go and look for Mum and Dad.’

  ‘And, DANCE,’ Granddad announces. ‘ARNOLD MUST DANCE IN TIME,’ he announces.

  Behind me the door opens. There’s nothing for it – I have to dive into the pile of dirty laundry.

  Dad’s feet sound on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Arnold must dance in time,’ says Granddad carefully. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Dad sighs. ‘If only.’

  I’m squashed in next to Dilan’s dirty socks for ages, so long that my leg goes to sleep and I can’t actually work out where it is. While I’m there, I think all this time stuff through again.

  It occurs to me that the other Bugg must go to school. If Bugg misses school, then Lorna won’t come back. She might still do the trust game and get a nosebleed, but Miss Golightly will go back to Lorna’s house and won’t come here.

  Would that matter?

  It would because of the gerbils and the plastic bag.

  Without the whole gerbil thing, I wouldn’t have overheard the conversations, and we wouldn’t know that someone else had time-travelled. But on the other hand, the fridge now knows that we know, so it might not feel like it has to send us back to do the gerbil thing.

  I think.

  There’s also the small matter of all these simultaneous timelines. If there are two Buggs and two Dilans wandering around, won’t there be two Buggs and two Dilans forever? But then the person who interfered with time before us would also be wandering around in multiple forms and I can’t think that they’d have managed to keep it going for forty-five years. There must be a moment, like the real present, when the timelines join up. When Bugg One and Bugg Two become a single Bugg.

  I hope.

  Eventually I creep back up and sit with Dilan in the airing cupboard. He’s been to his room and brought his entire stash of uneaten Christmas chocolate. It’s white and fuzzy in places, but I’m not going to turn it down.

  ‘How worried are you then?’ he says. ‘On a scale of one to ten.’

  ‘I think,’ I say, ‘that we need to get back to now – to tomorrow. I think if we don’t something very confusing will happen with Lorna and there will be too many of us trying to sort this out.’

  Dilan sucks on a white chocolate reindeer. It might never have been white; it might only be white now.

  He nods. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I think you’re right – and to be honest, I’m getting pretty bored in here.’

  I change back into my school uniform. We sneak down the stairs, and open the fridge door. Two yoghurts. New-looking ones, and the date is 3rd July 2014.

  ‘That’s today – isn’t it?’ says Dilan.

  ‘Yes – but later on. It’s always six o’clock.’

  He nods wisely and rips the top off one of the yoghurt pots, but I know he doesn’t really understand.

  The tidy world we’re in fades and reappears, but this time with Lorna in it.

  ‘Wow – how did you get here?’ says Dilan.

  ‘I’ve been here almost the whole time. You’ve only been gone a few minutes – but you’ll be glad to know that I took my gerbils home,’ she announces. ‘And I haven’t got any carrier bags or large pieces of plastic, or anything really. Oh, and I asked my mum about the house.’

  ‘And?’ asks Dilan.

  ‘Margaret, otherwise known as old Madge, used to live here.’

  ‘Madge?’ I say, trying to remember where I’ve heard the name.

  ‘Margaret, sister of Charlotte,’ says Lorna deliberately. ‘Charlotte Henderson – married to George.’

  ‘Eddie Henderson’s aunt?’

  ‘Hang on – what’s that got to do with anything?’ says Dilan.

  ‘Everything, and maybe nothing,’ I say. ‘So Eddie would have had access to the house?’

  Lorna nods. ‘Yes – he would. Mum said that when Madge got really old, Eddie would come and go with her shopping. She said he was really quite kind. Most unlike him.’

  ‘Tell me, is there another Bugg out here somewhere?’

  ‘What?’ Lorna says. ‘No – just you.’

  ‘But did you do the whole falling over thing with the nosebleed?’

  ‘Yes. And your mum picked us up from school, like she said she would, and now she’s gone out.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, you were late, but … ’ She shrugs.

  Dilan smiles at me. ‘That. Is. Awesome.’ He opens the fridge. There are three yoghurt pots, old ones with the foil lids.

  ‘Are there only three?’ I ask, examining the pot for a sell-by date.

  ‘Only three, so these have to be the ones,’ he says, pulling out three spoons.

  ‘Ready?’ I ask, and plunge my spoon deep into the pot, savouring every delicious mouthful and remembering the instructions from the fridge.

  ‘Gordon Bennett! What you wearin’?’ says Dave Dando, twirling his bike. He’s pointing at Lorna’s school trousers.

  ‘School uniform,’ says Lorna, staring down at her legs. ‘What sort of bike is that?’

  ‘You know – a Chopper – five-speed, see?’ The boy fiddles with a large black ball on the end of a chrome stick. He weaves out across the play park and back, the front wheel wobbling from side to side. ‘Anyway, you look ridiculous,’ he says. ‘Surprised your mum let you out like that.’ He stops, climbs off his bike.

  Lorna raises an eyebrow at Dave’s jeans

  ‘Weren’t you here a minute ago?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ says Dilan.

  ‘But without her?’ says Dave Dando.

  ‘Did you say your dad was a fireman?’ I say casually.

  Dave stares at me. ‘Yes, about fifteen seconds ago,’ he says. ‘When you walked out of the playground that way.’ He points towards the town. �
��How did you do that? How did you get back round?’

  ‘Um,’ I say.

  Lorna giggles and we all glare at her.

  ‘Anyway – better get going,’ I say. ‘Bye for now.’ But Dave accompanies us across the playground, pulling wheelies behind us.

  ‘What time is it?’ mutters Lorna.

  ‘Must be around six. It always is,’ I say.

  ‘We’ve got an hour until the fire,’ says Dilan.

  ‘No,’ I correct him. ‘We’ve got an hour to stop the fire.’

  Everything is very much exactly the same as our first visit to 1974. Except that Dave Dando follows us.

  ‘How did you do that so quickly? How did you get round?’

  ‘We’re quick,’ I say hopelessly.

  He lurks on his Chopper as we pass the shop. Lorna checks the date on the newspapers. ‘2nd July 1974.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Dave. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  Chapter 25

  Crowds of people mill around the entrance to the pier.

  ‘Dance competition,’ says Dave. ‘No fun at all – all that flouncy stuff.’

  ‘Well,’ says Lorna, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a handful of change. ‘This time we should be able to pay.’

  ‘You goin’ in?’ asks Dave, his jaw dropping. ‘Boys don’t go to things like that.’

  I rather wish Dave would disappear. I don’t want to explain everything to him, but then, I don’t want a scene either. ‘Do you want to come too? We might have enough money.’

  ‘If you’re payin’.’ Dave props his bike against the railings and stands in the queue with us. ‘So long as no one from school sees me.’ He fiddles with the zip on his jacket and stares at Dilan’s shorts as if he’s not sure if he should be doing this.

  I help Lorna count out four pounds. All the coins are bigger, and we don’t quite have enough. I fumble in my pocket and find another of Granddad’s old coins, an old fifty-pence piece. We give the money to the man in the booth, who raises his eyebrows and hands us four small white tickets.

  We show them to a woman dressed from head to toe in turquoise. She’s talking to another woman, and barely notices us. ‘Oh yes, Ted Mildenhall, I believe, and apparently he’s a big fan of Arnold’s.’

  ‘Ooooh – how thrilling,’ says the other woman, and she pats the back of her rock-hard hairdo as if it might have collapsed.

  The ballroom is extra sparkly, and extra busy. Even the women in the audience are wearing feathers and sequins, and all the men have suits. We must look really peculiar, especially Dilan in his shorts. No one in 1974 has ever seen a pants-waistband sticking out over the top of someone’s trousers before – it’s obvious that they haven’t, and people stare and point.

  ‘Should we sit down in the audience?’ whispers Dilan.

  ‘We’ve paid, we’re entitled to a seat,’ says Dave, squeezing onto the end of a row, next to an enormous man, and crossing his arms.

  ‘I think we need to take a look around,’ I say. ‘And I think you should pull your T-shirt down over the top of your shorts.’

  Lorna hides a smirk as Dilan yanks up his shorts and drags down his T-shirt, trying to hide the pants gap.

  Leaving Dave in the ballroom, we trail back out into the foyer. I’m looking for Eddie Henderson, the young version, but I can’t see him anywhere. Perhaps I’m completely wrong about this. Perhaps he’s got nothing to do with the pier, with time travel, with any of it.

  While I’m combing the crowd, Lorna marches up to a door marked DRESSING ROOMS and pushes on through. Dilan follows and I hesitate outside, feeling foolish, trying to look as if I’m reading a poster but actually checking everyone as they enter.

  A moment later, and the dressing room door bursts open, releasing a cloud of suffocating hairspray. Dilan and Lorna stumble into the foyer propelled by the man who threw us out the first time we came here. ‘Out! No kids in the dressing rooms. It’s a serious competition, you know. We can’t have you lot mucking about back here.’

  Lorna sticks out her tongue as the man vanishes behind the door. Dilan pulls up his shorts and sweeps his hair back. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t think anyone could get past him.’

  ‘Dilan’s right,’ says Lorna. ‘The security’s very tight.’

  I gaze at the closed door. ‘If that’s the case, then the fire must have started outside.’

  ‘But there isn’t an outside,’ says Lorna.

  ‘Let’s look,’ I say, and we shuffle past the turquoise woman.

  ‘You can’t just wander in and out, you know,’ she says.

  ‘I need to check on my bike,’ says Lorna.

  ‘Yes,’ says Dilan. ‘We’re checking with her, aren’t we, Bugg?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re all checking. On the bike.’

  The woman frowns at us, but what must be a coach party arrives with lots of noise and women rushing for the cloakroom, and the foyer fills up, giving us the chance to run outside. Clutching the tickets, I stand on the road and look back at the pier. Lorna’s right – there isn’t really an outside on the sides, just a narrow strip of wood and lots of ironwork. For a moment we stand and watch the whole area.

  ‘I can’t see anyone doing anything,’ says Dilan.

  ‘No,’ says Lorna. ‘But in just over half an hour the whole thing is going to burst into flames.’

  ‘We can’t stop it before it starts if we don’t know where it starts,’ I say.

  The other two look doleful. Dilan hitches up his shorts for the millionth time, and Lorna fumbles in her empty, gerbil-free pockets.

  I think of Dave sitting inside, waiting for the action to start. ‘On the other hand,’ I say, ‘we could call the emergency services here, so that they’re already on the scene when the fire starts.’

  ‘But they might not make the fire happen if the emergency services are here,’ says Lorna.

  ‘They’re time-travelling. They have to come back to now. The fridge must have sent them to now. Their piece of time travel has already happened.’

  ‘Hang on,’ says Lorna. ‘You mean that whoever started the fire was sent back by the fridge? But why is the fridge sending us back to do a right thing if it sent the other people back to do a wrong thing? This is making my head hurt, Bugg.’

  ‘And mine,’ says Dilan.

  ‘Because, because … ’ I say, trawling my brains. ‘Because it didn’t know they were going to do a bad thing when it sent them. It probably thought they were going to do something innocent – like visit their granny, or plant a tree or something.’

  Dilan rubs his head and sniffs the air, as if he could smell a crazy idea. ‘You’re completely mad, Bugg, but you may be right.’

  ‘O–K,’ says Lorna, doubt plastered across her face. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Chapter 26

  Lorna’s scream is very good. It sends prickles down my back.

  ‘Look!’ says the man behind me. ‘Look, she’s stuck – and the tide’s coming in.’

  ‘The poor little thing!’ says his wife. ‘Quick, call the coastguard, Ernest. There’s a phone box up by the shops.’ She turns and flaps her hands at the air. ‘Help, help, there’s a girl stuck on the footings of the pier! Help!’

  Ernest runs for the phone box. More people gather to stare and shout at Lorna, who is doing a full-on impersonation of someone stuck, which indeed she might be by now. ‘Help!’ says Dilan feebly.

  ‘Help,’ I echo, watching the people, in case any of them are trying to set fire to the pier.

  ‘The phone box is bust!’ yells Ernest. ‘Ruddy kids have broken the phone off.’ He holds out a black telephone receiver with a tangle of red wires dangling beneath.

  ‘Help!’ calls Lorna. ‘The sea’s rising.’ Water laps around the concrete post she’s clinging to. It looks as if she might truly be in trouble.

  ‘I’ll run down to the one in Station Road,’ says another man.

  ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do,’ says a third. ‘It was vandal
ised last night.’

  ‘I could go to the doctor’s surgery,’ says a woman.

  ‘You need the firemen,’ says another. ‘They’ve got ladders. Hang on there, girly, we’ll have you off in a jiffy.’

  ‘What about Dave?’ I mutter to Dilan. ‘His dad’s a fireman – he must know how to get hold of them.’

  ‘Right,’ says Dilan. ‘Give me the tickets. I’ll run and get him.’

  Dilan vanishes into the crowd and I stand back and, with my eyes popping from staring, study every inch of the pier. I can’t see anyone, and I can’t see any sign of fire. Glancing back over my shoulder I see the town clock. Six forty-five. Within half an hour it should be well and truly ablaze. Surely it couldn’t happen that fast.

  Dilan and Dave rush out of the pier entrance. Dave jumps on his Chopper, pulling an accidental wheelie all the way along the promenade. ‘He’ll bring them,’ says Dilan. ‘I just hope it isn’t too soon. Anything happened?’

  I shake my head. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘What’s that?’ says Dilan, pointing towards a small orange boat bobbing out at sea.

  It’s an inflatable dinghy. It’s difficult to make out which way it’s heading. There’s definitely someone on-board, but from this distance they’re just a grey blob. ‘I can’t make them out,’ I say.

  Dilan’s practically hanging over the railings. ‘Nor me – although I think there’s only one person.’

  I rush to the sea telescope on the other side of the pier. ‘10p, it says. Have we got 10p?’ I pull the last coins out of my pocket, and there, among the pennies, is a shiny old 10p piece. It slips into the slot and the telescope starts to tick.

  ‘There – left a bit,’ says Dilan, swinging the telescope around so that I can see the little orange dinghy. I twiddle with the focus until I identify the person on-board rowing towards us.

  ‘Eddie Henderson,’ I say.

  ‘Where?’ says Dilan.

  ‘In the boat.’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Dilan grabs the telescope and pushes me away. ‘Blimey – he’s really young.’

  ‘Yes – but old enough to know what he’s doing.’

  ‘What?’ asks Dilan.

  ‘He’s time-travelling, he shouldn’t be here. When they investigate the fire, they’ll find out that he’s in bed asleep.’