Ruby Red

So except for the love-bite affair, as Lesley called it, and Gordon’s pepperminty performance, I was entirely unkissed. And possibly also immature, as Miles claimed. I knew that at sixteen and a half, it was getting late, but Lesley, who had stayed with Max for a whole year, thought kissing in general was overrated. Maybe she’d just had bad luck, she said, but the boys she’d kissed so far definitely did not have the knack for it.

Kissing, said Lesley, ought really to be taught as a school subject, preferably instead of religious studies, which nobody needed.

We often discussed what the ideal kiss would be like, and there were any number of films we’d watched over and over again just because of the good kissing scenes in them.

“Ah, Miss Gwyneth. Will you condescend to speak to me today, or are you going to ignore me again?” James saw me leaving the Year Six classroom and came closer.

“What’s the time?” I was looking around for Lesley.

“Do I look like a grandfather clock?” James was indignant. “You ought to know me well enough by now to be aware that time means nothing to me.”

“How true.” I went around the corner to take a look at the big clock at the end of the corridor. James followed me.

“I’ve only been gone twenty minutes,” I said.

“Gone where?”

“Oh, James! I think I was in your father’s town house. It was really lovely there. Gold all over the place. And the candlelight—it was so soft and glowing.”

“Yes, not dismal and tasteless like all this,” said James, with a gesture that took in the mainly gray corridor. I suddenly felt very sorry for him. He wasn’t all that much older than me, and his life was already over.

“James, have you ever kissed a girl?”

“What?”

“I asked if you’d ever kissed a girl.”

“It’s not done to talk about such things, Miss Gwyneth.”

“So you’ve never kissed anyone?”

“I’m a man,” said James.

“What kind of answer is that?” I couldn’t help laughing at James’s expression. “Do you know when you were born?”

“Are you trying to insult me? Of course I know my own birthday. It’s on the thirty-first of March.”

“What year?”

“1762.” James thrust out his chin challengingly. “I was twenty-one three weeks ago. I celebrated at length with my friends in White’s Club, and my father paid all my gaming debts in honor of the day and gave me a beautiful bay mare. And then I had to get that stupid fever and go to bed. Only to find everything different when I woke up, and a pert minx telling me I’m a ghost.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You probably died of the fever.”

“Nonsense! It was only a slight indisposition,” said James, but there was a look of uncertainty in his eyes. “Dr. Barrow said it was not very likely that I’d have caught the smallpox at Lord Stanhope’s.”

“Hm,” I said. I’d have to Google smallpox to find out more about it.

“Hm? What do you mean, hm?” James looked offended.

“Oh, there you are!” Lesley came running out of the girls’ toilets and flung her arms around my neck. “I’ve been dying a thousand deaths.”

“Nothing too bad happened. I did end up in Mrs. Counter’s classroom when I came back, but there was no one there.”

“Year Six are visiting Greenwich Observatory today,” said Lesley. “My God, am I glad to see you! I told Mr. Whitman you were puking your guts up in the girls’ toilets, and he said I should go back to you so I could hold your hair out of your face.”

“Disgusting,” said James, holding his handkerchief to his nose. “Tell your freckled friend that a lady doesn’t talk about such things.”

I took no notice of this. “Lesley, something kind of funny’s happened … something that I can’t explain.”

“I believe you.” Lesley held my mobile out to me. “Here. I took it out of your locker. Call your mother now, right away.”

“Lesley, she’s at work. I can’t just—”

“Call her! You’ve gone back into the past three times now, and I saw you do it with my own eyes the third time. All of a sudden you simply weren’t there! It was really terrible! You must tell your mum, this minute, so that nothing else awful will happen to you. Please.” Did Lesley actually have tears in her eyes?

“That freckled girl is in a dramatic mood today,” commented James.

I took the mobile from Lesley and breathed deeply.

“Please,” Lesley begged.

My mother worked in the administrative office of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. I dialed the number of her direct line, looking at Lesley.

She nodded and tried to smile.

“Gwyneth?” Mum had obviously recognized my mobile number on her display. She sounded worried. I’d never, ever called her from school before. “Is something the matter?”

“Mum … I’m not feeling too good.”

“Are you sick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’ve caught that cold that’s going around at the moment. I tell you what, go home, go to bed, and I’ll leave work early today. Then I’ll squeeze you some fresh orange juice and make a warm compress for your throat.”

“Mum, it’s not a cold. It’s worse. I—”

“Maybe it’s the smallpox,” said James.

Lesley looked at me encouragingly. “Go on!” she said under her breath. “Tell her.”

“Darling?”

I took a deep breath. “Mum, I think I’m like Charlotte. I’ve just been … I’ve no idea when it was. And last night as well … in fact it really started yesterday. I was going to tell you, but then I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”

My mother did not reply.

“Mum?”

I looked at Lesley. “She doesn’t believe me.”

“You’re not making any sense,” whispered Lesley. “Go on, try again.”

But I didn’t have to.

“Stay right where you are,” said my mother in an entirely different tone. “Wait for me at the school gates. I’m going to take a taxi. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“But—”

Mum had already broken the connection.

* * *

“YOU’LL BE IN dead trouble with Mr. Whitman,” I said.

“Who cares?” said Lesley. “I’m staying with you until your mum arrives. Don’t you worry about that squirrel. I can wind him around my little finger.”

“What have I done?”

“The only right thing,” Lesley assured me. I’d told her as much as I could about my brief trip into the past. Lesley thought the girl who looked just like me could have been one of my ancestors.

I didn’t think so. Two people couldn’t be so similar. Not unless they were identical twins. Lesley thought that was a possible theory too.

“Like in The Parent Trap,” she said. “I’ll borrow us the DVD when I get a chance.”

I felt miserable. When would Lesley and I ever be able to sit comfortably together watching a movie again?

The taxi came sooner than I’d expected. It stopped outside the school gates, and Mum opened the door.

“Jump in,” she said.

Lesley squeezed my hand. “Good luck. Call me when you can.”

I was almost crying. “Lesley … thank you!”

“That’s okay,” said Lesley, who was fighting back tears herself. We always cried at the same places in films too.

I got in the taxi with Mum. I would have liked to fall into her arms, but she was looking so strange that I decided not to.

“The Temple,” she told the driver. Then the glass pane between him and the back seat went up, and the taxi drove off.

“Are you angry with me?” I asked.

“No. Of course not, darling. You can’t help it.”

“No. I can’t! It’s all stupid old Newton’s fault,” I said, trying to make a little joke of it. But Mum was in no mood for jokes.

“You can’t blame Newton either. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I’d hoped this cup would pass us by.”

I looked at her, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”

“I thought … hoped … I didn’t want you to…” My mother never stammered. She looked tensed up, and sadder than I’d seen her since Dad died. “I didn’t want to admit it. I’ve been hoping all this time that Charlotte would be the one.”

“Well, everyone was bound to think so! No one would ever think of Sir Isaac Newton getting his sums wrong. Grandmother’s going to be furious.”

The taxi was threading its way through the dense traffic of Piccadilly.

“Never mind your grandmother,” said Mum. “When did it first happen?”

“Yesterday! I was on my way to Selfridges.”

“What time?”

“Just after three. I didn’t know what to do, so I went back home to our house and rang the bell. But before anyone could open the door, I traveled forward to our own time. Then it happened again last night. I hid in the built-in cupboard, but there was someone sleeping there. A servant. Rather an angry servant. He chased me all over the house, and everyone was looking for me because they thought I was a thief. Thank goodness, I traveled back before they could find me. And the third time was just now. At school. This time I must have gone further back in time, because people were wearing wigs.… Mum! If this is going to happen to me every few hours now, I’ll never be able to lead a normal life again! And all because silly old Newton…” But even I realized that I was milking the Newton joke too hard.

“You ought to have told me at once!” Mum caressed my head. “So much could have happened to you!”

“I wanted to tell you, but last night you said we have too much imagination in our family already.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.… You haven’t had the slightest preparation for this. I’m so sorry.”

“But it’s not your fault, Mum! How could anyone have known?”

“It’s my fault,” said Mum. After a short, uncomfortable pause, she added, “You were born on the same day as Charlotte.”

“No, I wasn’t! My birthday is the eighth of October—hers is the seventh.”

“You were both born on the seventh of October, Gwyneth.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I could only stare at her.

“I lied about the date of your birth,” Mum went on. “It wasn’t difficult. You were born at home, and the midwife who made out the birth certificate understood what we wanted.”

“But why?”

“It was only to protect you, darling.”

I didn’t understand. “Protect me? What from? It’s happened now, anyway.”

“We … I wanted you to have a normal childhood. A carefree childhood.” Mum was looking intently at me. “And you might not have inherited the gene, after all.”