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“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.
