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“Are you sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’ve caught that cold that’s going around at the moment. I tell you what, go home, go to bed, and I’ll leave work early today. Then I’ll squeeze you some fresh orange juice and make a warm compress for your throat.”
“Mum, it’s not a cold. It’s worse. I—”
“Maybe it’s the smallpox,” said James.
Lesley looked at me encouragingly. “Go on!” she said under her breath. “Tell her.”
“Darling?”
I took a deep breath. “Mum, I think I’m like Charlotte. I’ve just been … I’ve no idea when it was. And last night as well … in fact it really started yesterday. I was going to tell you, but then I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”
My mother did not reply.
“Mum?”
I looked at Lesley. “She doesn’t believe me.”
“You’re not making any sense,” whispered Lesley. “Go on, try again.”
But I didn’t have to.
“Stay right where you are,” said my mother in an entirely different tone. “Wait for me at the school gates. I’m going to take a taxi. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
“But—”
Mum had already broken the connection.
* * *
“YOU’LL BE IN dead trouble with Mr. Whitman,” I said.
“Who cares?” said Lesley. “I’m staying with you until your mum arrives. Don’t you worry about that squirrel. I can wind him around my little finger.”
“What have I done?”
“The only right thing,” Lesley assured me. I’d told her as much as I could about my brief trip into the past. Lesley thought the girl who looked just like me could have been one of my ancestors.
I didn’t think so. Two people couldn’t be so similar. Not unless they were identical twins. Lesley thought that was a possible theory too.
“Like in The Parent Trap,” she said. “I’ll borrow us the DVD when I get a chance.”
I felt miserable. When would Lesley and I ever be able to sit comfortably together watching a movie again?
The taxi came sooner than I’d expected. It stopped outside the school gates, and Mum opened the door.
“Jump in,” she said.
Lesley squeezed my hand. “Good luck. Call me when you can.”
I was almost crying. “Lesley … thank you!”
“That’s okay,” said Lesley, who was fighting back tears herself. We always cried at the same places in films too.
I got in the taxi with Mum. I would have liked to fall into her arms, but she was looking so strange that I decided not to.
