The Accidental Time Traveller (39 page)

Off she went, her immaculate red bob catching a streak of sunlight streaming in through the windows.

That was the other thing I couldn’t get used to – the office was so big and light. There were plants on the windowsills, not piles of yellowing newspapers. True, most people’s desks were chaotic, but there were sleek black computers everywhere and every desk had a phone. That seemed such luxury. The whole place was clean and spacious and tidy with carpet – carpet! – on the floor, an iced water machine, and a proper pot of coffee smelling delicious in the little alcove.

As I was taking it all in, some people arrived, two men and a girl wearing striped shirts, with a little tree logo. They carried watering cans and a little tool box of cleaning equipment. The girl took out a spray and a duster and polished the leaves of the big cheese plant near the news desk, while the two men nipped dead leaves from the plants in the huge tubs by the water cooler and watered the other plants scattered around the office. And oh, how I just wished Gordon could have seen that. I could just imagine what his outraged and spluttering reaction would have been.

Honestly, I never thought I would be so deliriously happy to be back in
The News
office – and that wasn’t even counting all the hugs, kisses and welcome back messages from friends and colleagues. There was a balloon tied to my keyboard and a bunch of roses by my phone. I took a deep breath of their scent and sat down at my desk again, switched on my computer, and checked my email. My Inbox was full, going back to the day I was ill. So I just deleted the lot. Fresh start. I went on Google for the simple pleasure of having instant access to all sorts of information. Then I emailed Will just to say Hi. It was so good to be back …

It was good to be back in the twenty-first century too. I’d gone back up to the flat at the end of the previous week. I’d driven my little car. I’d downloaded a whole new load of tunes onto my iPod. I’d upgraded my mobile. And yes, Will and I had bought a new TV … Well, I know we didn’t have room, but we soon would have.

Because that was the plan. We were househunting. We didn’t quite know where we were going in our careers – we both had dreams and ambitions, but we would see what happened. We were a team. We could work things out.

And that was another thing. Apart from that initial splurge and the extravagance of the TV – which was really my present to Will for all the hours he’d spent by my bed or charging back and forth to be with me – we were having a bit of an economy drive, to get a deposit together for the house. And do you know what? I hardly minded.

Whether the 1950s was a dream or reality, it left a lingering influence. I went shopping for some new outfits and I looked at the racks and racks of clothes. I thought of Carol wearing the same coat, the same skirt, the same jumper, the same shoes, day in, day out and not minding. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t stop shopping overnight, but I certainly thought a bit more about what I bought. And I certainly cut back on my bag habit. I mean, how many bags does one girl need – and certainly at a few hundred pounds a pop?

It was wonderful to have proper extra long length luxury waterproof mascara again, all on a double-ended twirly applicator – not some disgusting little scrap of something that you spat on and then scrubbed at. And back home, on my first day out in town with Mum, I’d had a little mini raid on the Bobbi Brown counter. But really, when I looked at all the stuff I had on my dressing table, I thought maybe I could manage for a while.

The first time I went into Waitrose after I’d been ill, I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. All that food! What’s more, all that instant food, all that really interesting delicious food that you just bung in the microwave or assemble on the plate. I was in foodie heaven. Bliss. Even though it was summer, I bought some microwavable porridge for the sheer extravagant delight of heating it up in a minute and a half and throwing the plastic pot away afterwards. I will never forget that big grey pan, the green soap and the manky bit of steel wool.

I was making supper one night. Well, let’s be honest, I was putting a goat’s cheese tart on a plate with a bag of mixed baby leaves (washed in spring water, of course), with some baby plum tomatoes, all followed by a delicious sharp lemon tart, and washed down with a nice glass of chilled Chablis (barely a glass in my case, I was drinking very little) and I remembered the hearts soaking in the mixing bowl, all those potatoes I’d peeled, the rhubarb, and the hours it took to cook it all …

But there again, there was something about all those stacked shelves that made me feel a bit queasy. One of the first features I was asked to do when I got back to work was about all the ways we could save energy, save the planet, and save money at the same time. Yawn.

‘That is incredibly worthy,’ I said to Stan, the Features Editor, my heart not exactly sparkling at the prospect of writing it.

I sat at the computer, looked up all sorts of facts and figures when it suddenly dawned on me – if we lived the way we had in the 1950s, it would solve the problem pretty well instantly. The intro snapped into my head. ‘How green was your granny?’ I typed and recalled all the things I remembered from the 1950s house.

Stan grinned when he read it. ‘I knew you’d make a decent fist of it,’ he said.

The piece hit a nerve. I had all sorts of letters and emails from people remembering how they – or their mothers or their grannies – used to do things.

‘Do you think there’s a column there?’ the Vixen was asking. ‘We’re all meant to be recycling more, and using less, and reducing our carbon footprint, etc, etc. Not too worthy though. We might as well try and make it fun. Give it a bit of glitz and glamour. Glitzy green. Just your style.’

‘Well, great, yes, why not?’

‘If you ever run out of ideas, come and ask me. I was a child of the 1950s.’

So in a way, I couldn’t let the 1950s go. Or they wouldn’t let go of me. My dream still troubled me. It hadn’t really faded. One day I even went up into the bound file room and pulled out the huge dusty volumes from the 1950s shelf. I got very excited when I read the report of the great flood. No byline, of course, just ‘By our own staff’.

That was it! I thought, carefully turning the pages. That was the bit that I had written. And there was Billy’s story. And George’s pictures. That was the story we had written up by candlelight in that little pub in the walls, where we ate crisps and pickled eggs. It
had
happened.

For a moment I could smell the old newsroom, the piles of papers, the damp coats, the cigarette smoke, and the masculine smell of beer and sweat. But then I opened my eyes and I was in the bound file room in a very modern building in the middle of a very modern industrial estate. And I realised, of course, that I’d probably been reading that story just when I was getting ill. That’s why it stuck in my mind. That’s why I dreamt of it. And put myself in it. There was no magic. No time travel. Just a nasty illness and vivid dreams.

Other stories were there too, for the same reason. The bull in the china shop, Princess Margaret’s visit, the murder in Friars’ Mill.

I put the huge file back in its place on the shelf, brushed the dust off the front of my T-shirt (stretchy, Lycra, no ironing – bliss) and felt somehow disappointed.

It had felt so real. I still felt I had lived it, not dreamt it – the little boat, rescuing the old lady, wading through the flood water dragging the boat on a bit of string, sitting in the pub with Billy and then walking along the walls in the moonlight …

For a dream, it had been pretty powerful.

I asked Kate, the Vixen’s secretary, if there was a way we could check back former members of staff. I wanted to know if Billy had been real, or if I’d dreamt him too. But there was no way of checking, no way of finding out. Even the accounts department had no record.

‘Most of the old paper files got ditched when we moved out of the old offices,’ said the Assistant Accountant, ‘we transferred the relevant ones to computer, kept a few from the early years for historical interest, but I don’t remember a Billy West. Can’t remember seeing that name, sorry.’

But Richard Henfield was real, of course, his picture on the Vixen’s office wall, the nice eyes, the weak chin – and I remembered the wandering hands …

One day when I was home before Will, I spent hours trawling through the internet looking at articles on time travel. I’d hoped there might be a simple explanation, but I soon got lost somewhere between the arrow of time and the collapse of wave function, neither of which meant much to me.

When you’ve eliminated everything else, then what’s left must be the truth.

One day I had an email from Margaret Turnbull’s daughter, the headmistress Rosemary Picton.

‘Mother’s by no means totally recovered and is still quite confused,’ she wrote, ‘but she is much better and we are going to try a spell in her own home, with plenty of care and support, to see how she gets on. We hope that being surrounded by familiar things might help a bit more.’

A few days later I went to visit her. Will came with me. We took a huge bunch of flowers, an enormous box of chocs and a bottle of brandy. It felt really odd going up to The Meadows. I could remember the day I came up before, feeling so ill and also that time – in my dream -when the houses were still bare and the gardens unmade and bleak.

‘Oh, the view’s gone,’ I said to Will as we got out of the car.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You used to be able to see right down to the town and the church and along the river. But now it’s gone.’

‘It’s a long time since anyone could see the river from here,’ he said. ‘There are all those office blocks in the way. Some of those must have gone up in the 1960s. And the leisure centre and the multi-storey car park. I remember that going up when I was at school, must be about twenty years ago. Long before your time.’

We were walking up the path to Margaret Turnbull’s house. I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. I expected everything to go black again, the ground to come up and hit me, or to find myself back in Doreen Brown’s kitchen, with the range and Sambo.

But no. The door opened and Rosemary Picton – scary head teacher of The Meadows School – was ushering us in. She had blonde hair, going grey, and a pleasant open face. She reminded me of someone.

‘How lovely to see you. I’m so glad you’ve recovered. Mother will be so pleased. Come on in.’

We manoeuvred our way through the tiny entrance hall into a spacious sitting room that seemed full of light and sunshine. As well as the big window facing onto the front garden, there was another window in the side wall, and the sun streamed in. The views were still far-reaching and must have been stunning when the house was first built. Mrs Turnbull, in black trousers and bright pink sweatshirt, was sitting in a chair by the window. We went towards her with all our offerings and, as she smiled in welcome I could see that the right side of her face drooped slightly, but her eyes still held a hint of sparkle. She had been a formidable woman. It was thanks to her that the south side of The Meadows was still a decent place to live – not like the no-go area to the north.

‘Rosie!’ she said, quite clearly, lifting her left hand out towards me.

I passed the flowers to Mrs Picton and turned back to her mother, took her hand in both of mine and gripped it hard. She was trying to thank me for the flowers and chocolates and, I think, especially for the brandy. But I was the one who had thank yous to say. ‘Mrs Turnbull, I hardly know what to say. Thank for saving my life! Because you did. If it hadn’t been for you …’

There was a low stool next to her chair and I sat on that, still holding her hand.

‘You … better … now?’ she asked me. The words came out slowly and slightly slurred.

‘I’m fine. Fine. In fact’ – with a quick glance at Will -‘I’m better and happier than I was before, than I’ve ever been. I am very, very lucky. And that’s largely down to you. But how about you?’

‘Getting … there. Getting … there.’

‘I’m sorry I never did the piece about the fiftieth anniversary of The Meadows.’

A freelance had done it while I was ill. It had been a competent enough piece but, of course, she hadn’t been able to interview Mrs Turnbull.

‘Very different … when moved in. See for miles. Woods at end of road … Tried to keep nice.’

‘Yes, you did wonders for this area, community initiative and everything. This part of The Meadows is still a good place to live. And now your daughter’s doing wonders with the school.’

‘Good girl … good girl.’

‘She is, a remarkable woman.’

At that moment Rosemary Picton was coming sideways into the sitting room carrying a large tray with tea things which she put down carefully on a low table.

‘Best china!’ she grinned. ‘Mum insisted.’

I looked at the cups and saucers, white porcelain with a little blue flower. There was something familiar about them.

Will, meanwhile, having got up to hold the door open for Mrs Picton, was looking at some of the photographs. The room was full of photos. Wonderful local scenes on the walls, and a great rack of family photos – weddings, babies, graduations – in front of the books on the shelves.

‘Of course,’ said Will, ‘your husband was a photographer with
The News,
wasn’t he?’

I looked up, surprised. I hadn’t known that. I was sure I hadn’t known that. How could I have done?