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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.
