Ruby Red

“A time machine?” Fueled by blood? Good heavens!

Great-aunt Maddy shrugged. “I’ve no idea how the thing works. You’re forgetting, I know only what I’ve overheard, same as you, sitting here acting as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. It’s all a deadly secret.”

“Yup. And very complicated,” I said. “How do they know Charlotte has the gene, anyway? I mean, why her and not … well, let’s say you?”

“I can’t have it, thank goodness,” she said. “We Montroses were always a funny lot, but the gene came into our family through your grandmother. Because my brother just had to go and marry her.” Aunt Maddy grinned. She was my late grandfather Lucas’s sister. Never having been married herself, she’d moved in to keep house for him when they were quite young. “The first time I heard about this gene was after Lucas’s wedding. The last gene carrier in Charlotte’s hereditary line was a lady called Margaret Tilney, and she in her turn was the grandmother of your grandmother Arista.”

“So Charlotte inherited the gene from this Margaret?”

“Well, in between Lucy inherited it. Poor girl.”

“Lucy? What Lucy?”

“Your cousin Lucy. Harry’s eldest daughter.”

“Oh, that Lucy,” My uncle Harry, the one in Gloucestershire, was a good deal older than Glenda and my mum. His three children had grown up ages ago. David, the youngest, was a twenty-eight-year-old British Airways pilot. Which unfortunately didn’t mean we got a discount on flights. And Janet, the middle one, had children of her own, pains in the neck, both of them, Poppy and Daisy by name. I’d never met Lucy, the eldest. I didn’t know much about her either. The Montroses never said a thing about Lucy. She was kind of the black sheep of the family. She’d run away from home at the age of seventeen, and nothing had been heard of her since.

“Lucy’s a gene carrier too?”

“Oh, yes,” said Great-aunt Maddy. “All hell broke loose here when she disappeared. Your grandmother practically had a heart attack. It was the most shocking scandal.” She shook her head so vigorously that her golden curls got all tangled up.

“I can just imagine it.” I thought of what would happen if Charlotte simply packed her cases and made for the wide blue yonder.

“No, you can’t. You don’t know the circumstances in which she disappeared, and it was all to do with that young man—Gwyneth! Take your finger out of your mouth this minute! That’s a disgusting habit.”

“Sorry.” I really hadn’t noticed myself beginning to bite my fingernails. “It’s just there’s so much going on—so much I don’t understand.”

“Same here,” Great-aunt Maddy assured me. “And I’ve been listening to all this stuff since I was fifteen. What’s more, I have what you might call a natural talent for mystery. All the Montroses love secrets. They always have. That’s the only reason my poor brother married your grandmother in the first place, if you ask me. It can’t have been her alluring charms, anyway, because she didn’t have any.” She reached into the box of sherbet lemons, and sighed when her fingers met empty air. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid I must be addicted to these things.”

“I’ll run to Selfridges and get you some more,” I offered.

“You’re my darling child, you always will be. Give me a kiss and put your coat on, it’s raining. And never bite your nails again, all right?”

My coat was still in my locker at school, so I borrowed Mum’s raincoat and pulled the hood over my head as I stepped out of the front door. The man in the entrance of number 18 was just lighting himself a cigarette. On a sudden impulse I waved to him as I ran down the steps.

He didn’t wave back, of course.

“Weirdo,” I muttered as I hurried off toward Oxford Street. It was raining cats and dogs, and I wished I’d put on my wellies. The flowers on my favorite magnolia tree on the corner were drooping in a melancholy way. Before I reached it, I’d already splashed through three puddles. Just as I was trying to steer my way around a fourth, I was swept suddenly off my soggy feet. My stomach flip-flopped, and before my eyes the street blurred into a gray river.

Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas.

(Eternity hangs from this moment.)

INSCRIPTION ON A SUNDIAL IN THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, LONDON

THREE

WHEN I COULD SEE properly again, I noticed a car was coming around the corner—a real old-timer—and I was kneeling on the pavement shaking with fear.

Something was wrong with this street. It didn’t look the same as usual. Everything had changed so suddenly.

The rain had stopped, but an icy wind was blowing, and it was much darker than a moment ago, almost night. The magnolia tree had no flowers or leaves. I wasn’t even sure whether it was still a magnolia at all.

The spikes of the fence around it were gilded at the tips. I could have sworn they’d been black when I’d seen it not a moment before.

Another vintage car came chugging around the corner. A strange vehicle with tall wheels and shiny spokes. I looked along the pavement—the puddles were nowhere to be seen. Nor were the traffic signs. The paving was bumpy and out of shape, and even the street lamps looked different. Their flickering yellowish light hardly reached the entrance to the next building.

Deep down inside me, a nasty idea stirred, but I wasn’t about to entertain it seriously yet.

I forced myself to breathe deeply. Then I looked around again, more thoroughly this time.

Okay, strictly speaking, there wasn’t that much difference. Most of the buildings really looked the same as usual. But still—the teashop where Mum bought the delicious Duchy Originals made by the Prince of Wales had disappeared, and I’d never set eyes on the colossal columned building on the corner.

A man wearing a hat and a dark coat looked at me with a touch of curiosity as he passed, but he didn’t try talking to me, or even helping me to stand up. Finally, I did it myself and brushed the dirt off my knees.

The nasty thought that had occurred to me was slowly but surely becoming a ghastly certainty.

Who did I think I was kidding?

I hadn’t run into a vintage car rally, and the magnolia hadn’t suddenly lost all its leaves. And although I’d have given anything to see Nicole Kidman suddenly come around the corner, this was not, unfortunately, the set of a film from a Henry James novel.

I knew exactly what had happened. I simply knew. And I also knew that there must be some mistake.

I’d landed in another time.

Not Charlotte. Me. Someone or other had gotten the whole thing wrong.

My teeth immediately began chattering. Not just from nerves but with cold as well. There was a bitter chill in the air.

I’d know what to do. Charlotte’s words were still echoing in my ears.

Of course Charlotte would have known what to do. But no one had told me.

So I stood there shivering, teeth chattering, at the corner of my own street while people gaped at me. Not that there were many of them out and about. A young woman in an ankle-length coat with a basket over her arm passed me, and behind her came a man in a hat with his collar turned up.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Can you by any chance tell me what year this is?”

The woman acted as if she hadn’t heard me and walked faster.

The man shook his head. “What impertinence!” he growled.

I sighed. Although the information wouldn’t really have helped me much anyway. Basically it didn’t make much difference whether this was 1899 or 1923.

At least I knew where I was. I lived less than a hundred yards away. The obvious thing was just to go inside my house.

I had to do something, after all.

The street seemed calm and peaceful in the twilight as I slowly walked back, looking all around me. What was different, what hadn’t changed? The buildings looked very like those of my own time, even on closer examination. I did have the feeling that I’d not seen certain details before, but perhaps it was just that so far I hadn’t noticed them. Automatically I glanced at number 18, but the entrance to it was empty—no man in black anywhere in sight.

I stopped.

Our house looked just as it did in my own time. The windows on the ground floor and the first floor were brightly lit, and there was a light on in Mum’s room up at the top of the house as well. I felt really homesick as I looked up. Icicles hung from the dormer windows.

I’d know what to do.

So what would Charlotte do? It would soon be dark, and it was already bitterly cold. Where would Charlotte go to keep from freezing? Home?

I stared up at the windows. Maybe my grandfather was still alive in there. Maybe he’d even recognize me? After all, he used to let me ride on his knees when I was little.… Oh, don’t be so stupid, I thought.

Even if he were alive now, he could hardly recognize me when he hadn’t met me yet.

The cold was creeping in under Mum’s raincoat. Okay, I’d just ring the bell and ask for shelter for the night.

The only question was how to go about it.

“Hello, my name is Gwyneth, and I’m Lord Lucas Montrose’s granddaughter, but he may not have been born yet.”

I couldn’t expect anyone to believe that. I’d probably find myself in a psychiatric hospital much sooner than I liked. And psychiatric hospitals were probably dismal places at this period. Once inside, you might never get out again.

On the other hand, I had few alternatives. It wouldn’t be long before it was pitch-dark, and I had to spend the night somewhere without freezing to death. Or being spotted by Jack the Ripper. Why couldn’t I remember when Jack the Ripper had prowled the streets of London? And where? Surely not the elegant surroundings of Mayfair, I hoped.

If I did manage to speak to one of my ancestors, I might be able to convince him that I knew more about the family and the house than any normal stranger could. Who but me, for instance, could say straight off that the name of Great-great-great-great-great-uncle Hugh’s horse was Fat Annie?

A gust of wind made me shiver. It was so cold. I wouldn’t have been surprised if snow soon swirled down on top of me.

“Hello, I’m Gwyneth, and I come from the future. I can prove it—take a look at this zipper. I bet those haven’t been invented yet, right? Or jumbo jets or TV sets or refrigerators…”

Well, it was worth a try. Taking a deep breath, I went up to the front door.

The steps seemed, in an odd way, both familiar and strange. Automatically I felt for the bell-push, but there wasn’t one. Obviously electric bells hadn’t been invented yet. Unfortunately, however, that still gave me no hint about the exact date. I didn’t even know when they’d found out how to use electricity. Before or after steamships? Had we learnt that in school? If so, I couldn’t remember it now.

I found a handle hanging from a chain, like the one that flushed the old-fashioned toilet in Lesley’s house. I pulled it, hard, and heard a bell ring behind the door.

Oh, my God.

One of the domestic staff would probably open the door. What could I say to make him or her take me to a member of the family? Maybe Great-great-great-great-great-uncle Hugh was still alive? Or already alive. Alive, anyway. I’d simply ask for him. Or Fat Annie.