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In passing, he caressed my cheek, and it was so quick that I was incapable of any reaction. “Get well soon, Gwen.”
“Ah, zere ’e goes! At least ’e looks right for ’is adventure in ze time of Queen Elizabeth ze First, zat little rebel.” Madame Rossini was grinning. “But I am sure ’e will take ze ruff off on ze way, zat bad boy.”
I was staring after the bad boy myself. Hm … maybe the trunk-hose were just a tiny bit sexy after all.
“Come on, we have to go as well,” said Mr. Marley, taking my elbow and then letting go of it at once, as if it had burnt him. He kept several feet away from me on the way to the car. All the same, I heard him mutter, “Outrageous. She is definitely not my type.”
* * *
MY FEARS that Charlotte might have found the chronograph by now were unfounded. I’d underestimated my family’s ingenuity. When I arrived home, Nick was playing with a yo-yo outside my door.
“Only members allowed into HQ,” he said. “Password?”
“I’m the boss, remember?” I ruffled his red curls. “Yuck, is that chewing gum again?” Nick began to protest indignantly, but I took my chance to slip into my room.
I hardly recognized it. Aunt Maddy, called in by Mr. Bernard, who was probably still chasing from flower shop to flower shop, had spent all day in here, and she had given the room a little of her own special Aunt Maddy touch. I wasn’t exactly untidy, but all the same, my things, for some unknown reason, had a tendency to lie around covering all parts of the floor. Today, for the first time in a long while, you could see the rug again, and the bed was neatly made. Aunt Maddy had conjured up a pretty white bedspread from somewhere. My clothes lay neatly folded on a chair, loose sheets of paper, exercise books, and textbooks had been sorted and stacked on my desk, and even the pot with the dead fern on the windowsill had gone. Instead there was a beautiful flower arrangement there, smelling deliciously of freesias. Even Xemerius wasn’t dangling untidily from the ceiling light, but sitting decoratively on the chest of drawers with his dragon tail coiled around him, right beside a huge dish of candy.
“Gives the room a totally different feeling, doesn’t it?” he said. “I must say, your auntie knows something about feng shui.”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t thrown anything away,” said Aunt Maddy, who was sitting on the bed with a book. “I just cleared up a bit and did some dusting, so that I could make myself comfortable.”
I couldn’t help it, I had to give her a big kiss. “And I was worrying dreadfully all day.”
Xemerius nodded energetically. “You were right to worry. We’d hardly read ten pages—er, I mean, Aunt Maddy had hardly read ten pages, before Charlotte came slinking in,” he said. “She looked really surprised to see your auntie. But she made a quick recovery, claimed she wanted to borrow an eraser.”
Aunt Maddy told the same story. “Since I’d just tidied your desk, I was able to help her. Oh, and I sharpened your crayons and sorted them by color. Later she came back, saying it was to return the eraser. Then Nick and I took turns all afternoon. I had to go to the loo now and then, after all.”
“Five times, to be precise,” said Nick, who had followed me in.
“All that tea I drank,” she said apologetically.
“Oh, thank you, Aunt Maddy. You’ve both been wonderful.” I tousled Nick’s hair again.
Aunt Maddy laughed. “I like to make myself useful. And I told Violet that we’d have to meet in your room tomorrow.”
“Aunt Maddy! You haven’t gone and told Violet anything about the chronograph, have you?” cried Nick.
Aunt Maddy’s friend Violet Purpleplum was much what Lesley was to me.
“Of course not!” She looked at him indignantly. “I swore by my life not to breathe a word! I told her the light is better for needlework up here, and Arista can’t disturb us. Although one of your window frames needs repairing, Gwyneth dear. There’s a draft coming from somewhere. I could feel a breath of cold air all the time.”
Xemerius looked guilty. “I don’t do it on purpose,” he said. “But the book was so exciting.”
My thoughts were already busy with the coming night. “Aunt Maddy, who was sleeping in my room in November 1993?”
My great-aunt frowned thoughtfully. “Let me think—1993? Was Margaret Thatcher still prime minister? If so, then … oh, what was her name?”
“Oh, dear! Your old auntie is getting it all confused,” said Xemerius. “You’d do better to ask me! That was the year Groundhog Day hit cinema screens—I’ve seen it fourteen times—and the affair between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles went public, and the name of the prime minister was—”
“It doesn’t really matter,” I interrupted him. “I only want to know if I can travel back from here safely to 1993.” I suspected that Charlotte might have dug out a black combat suit and was now lurking in the corridor all around the clock. “Was anyone sleeping in this room at the time or not, Aunt Maddy?”
“Lanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,” cried Aunt Maddy. Xemerius, Nick, and I stared at her, baffled.
“Now she’s gone right off her rocker,” said Xemerius. “I thought as much this afternoon, when she kept laughing at the wrong places in her book.”
“Lanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,” repeated Aunt Maddy, beaming happily and popping a sherbet lemon into her mouth. “That’s the name of our housekeeper’s hometown in Wales. No one can say I don’t have a good memory.”
“Aunt Maddy, I only want to know whether—”
