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“I know,” said Lesley, “but I’m not a Francophile.”
“He fancies you,” I said, putting my books down on our table.
“Maybe,” said Lesley, “but I’m afraid he’s not my type.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “No, of course not!”
“Oh, come on, Gwenny. It’s bad enough for one of us to lose her mind. I know his sort. They just give you trouble. Anyway, he’s only interested because Charlotte told him I was a pushover.”
“And because you look like your dog, Bertie,” I said.
“Yes, exactly, because of that, too.” Lesley laughed. “Anyway, he’ll forget all about me the moment Cynthia throws herself at him. Look, she’s been to the hairdresser specially to have highlights done.”
But Lesley was wrong. Raphael obviously wasn’t interested in talking to Cynthia. When we were sitting on the bench under the chestnut tree at break and Lesley was studying the note with the Green Rider code on it yet again, Raphael came strolling over, sat down beside us uninvited, and said, “Oh, cool. Geocaching.”
“What?” Lesley looked at him with annoyance.
Raphael pointed to the note. “Don’t you know about geocaching? It’s a kind of modern treasure hunt using GPS navigational devices. Those numbers look like geographical coordinates.”
“No, they’re only … oh! Do they really?”
“Let me see.” Raphael took the note from her. “Yes, assuming a few of the zeros are superscript zeros so they mean degree, and the strokes are minutes and seconds.”
A shrill sound came over the yard to us. Cynthia was standing on the steps, gesticulating wildly as she talked to Charlotte, and that made Charlotte look our way with a nasty expression.
“Oh, my God.” Lesley was all excited. “Then it means 51 degrees, 30 minutes, 41.78 seconds north, and 0 degrees, 08 minutes, 49.91 seconds west?”
Raphael nodded.
“So it’s the description of a place?” I asked.
“That’s right,” said Raphael. “Rather a small place, measuring about four and a half square yards. So what do you find there? A cache?”
“If only we knew,” said Lesley. “We don’t even know where the place is.”
Raphael shrugged his shoulders. “Well, that’s easy to find out.”
“How? Do we need one of these GPS things? How do they work? I’ve no idea about them at all,” said Lesley excitedly.
“I do, though. I could help you,” said Raphael. “Mignonne.”
I glanced at the steps again. Sarah had now joined Cynthia and Charlotte, and all three were looking daggers at us. Lesley didn’t notice.
“Okay. But it’ll have to be this afternoon,” she said. “We have no time to lose.”
“Same here,” said Raphael. “Let’s just meet in the park at four. I’ll have shaken Charlotte off somehow by then.”
“Better not expect it to be easy.” I looked at him sympathetically.
Raphael grinned. “I think you underestimate me, little time-travel girl.”
The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb—for we have no word to speak about it.
THOMAS CARLYE
TWELVE
“I COULD JUST HAVE worn last week’s dress,” I said, as Madame Rossini put a little girl’s dream of a dress over my head. It was lavishly embroidered with cream and wine-red flowers. “The blue flowered dress, I mean. It’s hanging in the wardrobe at home—you only had to say.”
