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“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.
o;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.
