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“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.”
“Shh, my leetle swan-necked beauty,” said Madame Rossini. “What do you think zey pay me for ’ere? For you to wear ze same dress twice?” She concentrated on doing up the little buttons at the back. “I am only sorry you ’ave ruined ze ’airstyle. In ze Rococo age, a work of art like that ’ad to last for days. Ze ladies slept sitting up on purpose.”
“Well, I could hardly have gone to school with it piled up like that,” I said. I’d probably have got stuck in the door of the bus. “Is Giordano helping Gideon to get dressed?”
Madame Rossini clicked her tongue. “Huh! Zat boy say ’e does not need ’elp. Meaning ’e will wear dull colors again and take no care with ’is cravat. But I ’ave given ’im up! Now, what can we do with your ’air? I will get ze curling wand, and zen we will simply put a ribbon in it, et bien!”
While Madame Rossini worked on my hair with the curling wand, I had a text message from Lesley. “Will wait another two minutes. If le petit français isn’t here then, he can forget about mignonne.”
I texted back. “Your date isn’t for another fifteen minutes. At least give him ten!”
But I didn’t get an answer back, because Madame Rossini took the mobile away from me to take the now-obligatory souvenir photos. The pink suited me better than I’d expected (it wasn’t my color at all in real life), but my hair looked as if I’d spent the night with my fingers plugged into an electric socket. The pink ribbon threaded through it looked like a vain attempt to tame my exploding curls. When Gideon arrived to collect me, he burst out laughing.
“You can stop zat! We might just as well laugh at you!” Madame Rossini snapped at him. “Ha! What do you zink you look like?”
Oh, wow, what did he look like? There ought to be a law against looking so good—even in silly dark knee-breeches and an embroidered bottle-green coat that made his eyes shine.
“You ’ave no idea of fashion, young man! Or you would ’ave put on ze emerald brooch zat go with zat outfit. And zat sword—you are supposed to be a gentleman, not a soldier!”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Gideon, still laughing. “But at least my hair doesn’t look like those wire-wool pads I use to scour my pans.”
