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“Mr. George,” said Mum. “Of course. You came to see us in Durham when Gwyneth was born. I remember you too. This is Gwyneth. She’s the Ruby you’re waiting for.”
“That’s impossible!” said Aunt Glenda shrilly. “Utterly, totally impossible! Gwyneth was born on the wrong day. And two months premature. An underdeveloped little thing. Look at her.”
Mr. George was already doing just that, scrutinizing me with a pair of friendly, pale blue eyes. I tried to look back with as much composure as possible and hide my discomfort. Underdeveloped little thing! Aunt Glenda must have lost her marbles! I was not underdeveloped. I was nearly five feet six inches tall, my bra was a size-B cup, and much to my annoyance, I was growing out of it!
“She traveled for the first time yesterday,” said Mum. “I just don’t want anything to happen to her. The risk grows with every uncontrolled journey back in time.”
Aunt Glenda laughed sarcastically. “No one will take this seriously. It’s just another pathetic attempt to make yourself the center of attention.”
“Oh, do be quiet, Glenda! There’s nothing I’d like more than to keep out of this whole thing, leaving your Charlotte the thankless part of laboratory guinea pig for fanatical mystery mongers and pseudoscientists obsessed with esoteric subjects! But it just so happens that Charlotte is not the one who’s inherited this wretched gene—it’s Gwyneth!” Mum’s expression was one of rage and contempt. I was seeing an entirely new side to her.
Mr. George laughed softly. “You don’t have a very high opinion of us, Mrs. Shepherd.”
Mum shrugged.
“No, no, no!” Aunt Glenda dropped onto one of the office chairs. “I am not prepared to listen to this nonsense anymore. She wasn’t even born on the right day. And she was premature.” That bit about me being premature seemed to be especially important to her.
“Shall I bring you a cup of tea, Mrs. Montrose?” Mrs. Jenkins whispered.
“Oh, who wants your stupid tea?” spat Aunt Glenda.
“Would anyone else like some tea?”
“Not me, thank you,” I said.
Meanwhile Mr. George had turned his pale blue eyes back to me. “Gwyneth. So you’ve already traveled in time?”
I nodded.
“Where to, if I may ask?”
“Right where I am now,” I said.
Mr. George smiled. “I mean, to what period did you go back first?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said crossly. “There wasn’t a notice up saying what year it was, and when I asked some people, they wouldn’t tell me. Listen, I don’t want this! I want it to stop. Can’t you make it stop?”
Mr. George did not reply to that. “Gwyneth came into the world two months before her expected date of birth,” he said to no one in particular. “On the eighth of October. I checked the birth certificate and the entry in the civil register myself. And I checked the baby, too.”
I wondered what there could be to check about a baby. Whether it was real or not?
“She was born on the evening of the seventh of October,” said Mum, and now her voice was trembling a little. “We bribed the midwife to move the time of birth a few hours forward on the birth certificate.”
“But why?” Mr. George didn’t seem to understand that any more than I did.
“Because … after all that happened to Lucy, I wanted to spare my child such stress. I wanted to protect her,” said Mum. “And I’d hoped she might not have inherited the gene at all and just happened to be born on the same day as the real carrier. After all, Glenda had Charlotte, and everyone’s hopes were pinned on her.”
“Stop telling lies!” cried Aunt Glenda. “You did it on purpose! Your baby wasn’t supposed to be born until December, but you manipulated the pregnancy and risked a premature birth just to have her born on the same day as Charlotte. It didn’t work out, though! Your daughter was born a day later.”
“It ought to be fairly easy to prove what you say. We must have the name and address of the midwife in our files,” said Mr. George, turning to Mrs. Jenkins. “It’s important to find her.”
“There’s no need,” said Mum. “You can leave the poor woman alone. She only took a little money from us.”
“We just want to ask her a few questions,” said Mr. George. “Mrs. Jenkins, please find out where she lives today.”
“I’m on my way,” said Mrs. Jenkins, disappearing through the side door again.
“Who else knows about this?” asked Mr. George.
