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If Mum had believed me about Asrael, then she’d probably believe me about the time-travel gene as well. I waited for a good moment to talk to her. But somehow the right moment never seemed to come. As soon as she was home from work, she had to discuss something with Caroline, who had put down her name to look after her class’s terrarium in the summer, particularly the class mascot, a chameleon called Mr. Bean. The summer break was still months away, but it seemed that the discussion couldn’t wait.
“You can’t look after Mr. Bean, Caroline! You know perfectly well that your grandmother won’t have pets in the house,” said Mum. “And Aunt Glenda is allergic.”
“But Mr. Bean doesn’t have any fur,” said Caroline. “And he’ll be in his terrarium all the time. He won’t be in anyone’s way.”
“He’ll be in your grandmother’s way.”
“Then my grandmother is just silly!”
“Caroline, we can’t keep him this summer. No one here knows the first thing about chameleons. Suppose we did something wrong, and Mr. Bean got sick and died?”
“He wouldn’t. And I do know how to look after him. Please, Mummy! If I don’t bring him home, then Tess will have him again, and she’s always saying that she’s Mr. Bean’s favorite in the class.”
“Caroline, I said no!”
Quarter of an hour later, they were still arguing, even when Mum went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Caroline stood outside the door and said, “Lady Arista wouldn’t need to know. We could smuggle the terrarium into the house while she wasn’t here. And she never goes into my room.”
“Can’t a person get any peace around here, at least when she’s in the loo?” Mum called back.
“No,” said Caroline. She could be a terrible pain. She didn’t stop going on about it until Mum promised that she personally would plead with Lady Arista to let Mr. Bean spend the summer with us.
I spent the time that Caroline and Mum were wasting on their argument getting chewing gum out of Nick’s hair.
We were sitting in the sewing room. He had about half a pound of the stuff sticking to his head and couldn’t remember how it got there.
“You must have some idea!” I said. “I’m going to have to cut some of these strands of hair off.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Nick. “You can cut it all off. Lady Arista said I looked like a girl the other day.”
“Lady Arista thinks everyone with hair longer than stubble looks like a girl. It would be a real shame to cut your lovely curls so short.”
“They’ll grow back. Cut it all off, okay?”
“Not with nail scissors. You’ll have to go to the barber’s.”
“Oh, go on, you can do it,” said Nick confidently. Obviously he’d completely forgotten that I’d already cut his hair with a pair of nail scissors once, and he’d looked like a freshly hatched vulture chick. I’d been seven at the time, and he was four. I’d needed his curls to make myself a wig. But it hadn’t worked, and I got a scolding and a day’s house arrest.
“Don’t you dare,” said Mum, who had come back into the room. She took the scissors away from me for safety’s sake. “If it has to be done, it’ll be done by a barber. Tomorrow. We must go down to supper now.”
Nick groaned.
“Don’t worry. Lady Arista is out today!” I grinned at him. “No one will scold you for the chewing gum. Or the dirty mark on your sweatshirt.”
“What dirty mark?” Nick looked down at himself. “Oh, darn. That must be pomegranate juice.”
“Like I said, you won’t get in trouble.”
“But it isn’t even Wednesday,” said Nick.
“Well, they’re not here today either.”
“Cool.”
When Lady Arista, Charlotte, and Aunt Glenda were there, dinner was tense and uncomfortable. Lady Arista criticized people’s table manners, mostly Caroline’s and Nick’s (but sometimes Great-aunt Maddy’s as well); Aunt Glenda was always pestering me about my marks at school so she could compare them with Charlotte’s. Then Charlotte would smile like Mona Lisa and say, “None of your business,” if anyone asked her anything.
All things considered, we could have done without these cozy get-togethers, but our grandmother insisted on having all of us there.
The only way you could get out of family dinner was if you had a note from the doctor or a noticeably infectious disease like the plague. Mrs. Brompton, who was the housekeeper during the week, cooked all our meals. (Unfortunately, at weekends either Aunt Glenda or Mum did the cooking, which was usually so gross, Nick and I could barely force it down—and we never got to order out.)
