Chapter 9.
‘But we can’t stay here. We don’t belong here, and neither does our mother,’ I protested.
‘How do we get back to our own time?’ Eddie asked bravely.
The robot’s lenses swivelled to look at Eddie as a large green button started flashing. ‘That is not permitted,’ it intoned.
We heard that phrase a lot after that. The days all seemed to follow the same pattern. We had to go to the kitchen every morning and cook something, anything, and then we were free for the rest of the day. We couldn’t go outside or explore anywhere. We couldn’t even get to Mum. She was frustratingly always leaving the kitchen as we arrived or arriving as we left. We didn’t even know where her room was. Days went by like this and we were in despair. We tried to liven things up by cooking all sorts of strange things using the ingredients in the kitchen. We hoped that we might poison Sal and escape somehow, but all that happened was that we were busted back to food tasting for a few weeks so we tried to cook the best that we could.
One day, when I was feeling we were doomed to stay in the future forever, Eddie had a brainwave. ‘Next time we go into the kitchen, you distract the robot by asking it questions while I sneak after Mum. I’ve got to see why she is ignoring us.’
I nodded. I was feeling so desperate that if Eddie had suggested I take off all my clothes and do handstands then I probably would have agreed to it. We followed the robot dutifully and as it led us into the kitchen I picked up a blue container and called out, ‘what is this?’
‘That is substance X024,’ the robot answered.
‘Yes, but where does it come from?’
The robot paused and a few clicks sounded. ‘It is manufactured from a tree root,’ it began.
Eddie gave me a quick thumbs-up and legged it after Mum as I asked question after question. Finally the robot gave up on me after the seventeenth ‘that is not permitted,’ and I dutifully began to make chocolate pudding. The robot spun around a few times then shot off after Eddie, who by this time had disappeared with Mum. Nothing happened. I finished the pudding and went on to make jam sponge, using something that looked and tasted a bit like jam, even though it was dark green. This done, I wandered back to the bedroom and waited to see if Eddie would turn up.
Eddie came in looking cheerful, even though his wrists had been gripped so hard by the robot that it had left deep red marks.
‘I’ve seen where Mum went,’ he said excitedly. ‘It’s only two doors along from us. We should sneak in there and wait for her to come in, then we can talk to her.’
‘But we can’t get out unless the robot opens the door,’ I pointed out.
‘I thought of that. Next time we come in I’ll kick off my shoe and jam it in the doorway. Maybe the robot won’t notice and the door will stay open.’
I hugged him. ‘That was a brilliant idea. Let’s put our ordinary clothes on as well, so Mum has more chance of recognising us.’
We couldn’t put our plan into action until the next day and it was hard to concentrate. I made a really lopsided fruit cake and Eddie had to scrape the burnt side off the sausages he cooked up. At last the robot came to escort us back to the room. As we approached the room and stood in the doorway, I asked the robot a string of questions. It focussed on me and answered a couple of them reluctantly while Eddie nudged his shoe into the corner of the doorway. The robot turned and walked out and the door hissed shut, only to stop with a jolt as it hit the shoe. It went in and out a few times then gave one last hiss and stayed open. We peered out, but the robot had already motored out of sight down the corridor. I raced to the cupboard and after telling it to open we took out our rather grubby clothes. They felt a bit stiff and odd after the pyjamas, especially the jeans, but we felt much more like our old selves. We waited just beside the door for ages, as we knew that Mum did lots of cooking in the kitchen. Finally, when we couldn’t wait any longer, we slunk out the door and down the corridor.
‘It’s this one,’ Eddie whispered. We stopped outside the door and I said ‘open,’ in a voice that sounded a lot more confident that I felt. The door hissed back and we walked in, Eddie having the presence of mind to put his other shoe in the doorway so we could get out again. Mum was siting on the bed staring into space.
‘Mum, it’s us,’ I said uncertainly. She didn’t look at us. We walked over and stood in front of her where she couldn’t ignore us and held her hands.
‘We are your children,’ Eddie told her. Mum closed her eyes and opened them and looked at us properly, then she went all vacant again.
‘Mum, we came here like you did, through a split in time. We are in the future. Don’t you remember? You were sitting on the swinging seat and holding the thyme.’
‘Show her the thyme,’ Eddie hissed at me. ‘Maybe that will help.’
I reached into my pocket and dragged out the handful of rather dry and bedraggled plants. I thrust them under Mum’s nose and said, ‘here, smell these. They are from your herb garden.’
Mum gave a sudden jerk then reached out and took the herbs from me. ‘Thyme,’ she sighed, as she crumbled it between her fingers. ‘I used that for my new potato recipe. And that one is Rosemary, it's for remembrance. This one is a weed, though. Oh. Poppy and Eddie you are real.’
The next few minutes were a bit confused with a lot of hugging and crying before we could all settle down to talk properly. It turned out that Mum had gone through the crack in time the same way we did and she thought she must have had a breakdown of some sort. She couldn’t believe it was the future.
‘I thought I was being kept in some sort of mental hospital.’
‘Why didn’t you recognize us when we saw you the first time?’ Eddie wanted to know.
‘I thought I was hallucinating. You were wearing those weird pyjamas and I thought if I said anything to you then the doctors would have thought I was getting worse and I would have had to stay here longer. But now I can see that it is a dream and you are in it with me.’
It made sense. I guess adults have trouble accepting things they don’t understand so they come up with explanations for them to sort of fit them into a framework they can cope with.
‘We have to get out of here,’ I said determinedly and Eddie nodded in agreement.
‘But how will we find the crack again?’ he frowned. ‘We have to get back the same way we came in, I reckon.’
‘I found myself in the kitchen,’ Mum interrupted. ‘Is that where you came in with your dream?’
Eddie shook his head. We looked at each other and decided not to freak Mum out even further by telling her about the conveyor belt and all the machines. She was looking fairly shaky as it was and didn’t look as if it would take much to upset her. I could see that it was up to Eddie and me to get us out.
‘I don’t know,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Maybe we don’t have to be in exactly the same place but we should do everything we can to recreate the same conditions.’
‘None of these seats squeak,’ objected Eddie. ‘In fact, if we need a noise we’re out of luck. There’s nothing in either of our rooms to make a noise with.’
‘Not in here, maybe, but there is in the kitchen,’ I told him. ‘What we will do is to fill jars with water and tap them and keep adding and tipping out water until we reach exactly the right note.’
‘That’s a brilliant idea, but what about the thyme? We can’t use that now.’
I looked where he was pointing. The thyme was now a dusty scattering around Mum’s feet and she was doing the vacant stare bit again.
‘I think we’d better go,’ I said regretfully. ‘Tomorrow we will try and find some thyme,’ I sighed. ‘If I tell the robot I need some for a recipe then it should bring us some. Then all we have to do is grab Mum and hit the right note.’ Eddie nodded but looked unconvinced and I must say it sounded a lot easier than it turned out to be. We left Mum with a final hug and took the shoes out of the doors, which obligingly hissed shut behind us.
A request for thyme th
e next day met with a blank stare from the robot, until I had a brainwave and asked for herbs. So each day after that, a different herb was laid out on the bench for me. It was so frustrating as none of them was the right one and we were desperate to leave. I became really expert at making herb scones and muffins, which were the easiest things I could think of, although they were a bit peculiar tasting. I knew that as every day we were given an assortment of food to eat. Some of it was bits of the food we had cooked but some of it was other strange stuff we couldn’t identify. We usually ate it anyway, as we would have starved otherwise. Sal obviously took the best of the food for himself and we were lucky to get a few scraps at the end of the day. He obviously didn’t like the herb muffins as we often ended up with most of those.
‘It will do Sal good to eat a bit less, anyway,’ I muttered.
‘Do you suppose he got to be so fat because he doesn’t walk anywhere?’ Eddie asked.
‘Probably,’ I grunted.
I was getting rather cross as Eddie had the easy job. He had experimented with a whole heap of jars and containers, tipping water in and out happily. He had at last found one jar that we were sure made the right note, as the air seemed to shiver when he struck it. I was the one having to keep cooking, finding time to give Mum a quick hug every now and then to encourage her to believe we were for real. At last one day there was a bunch of thyme on the bench.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked Eddie.
‘She’s not here yet but she will be soon, I hope. You’d better start cooking.’
I began to make muffins and used one precious sprig of thyme in them. I had to do that. If you didn’t touch the ingredients on the bench for a while, there would be a sort of ‘glop’ and they’d disappear. So I kept the bunch of thyme firmly in one hand as I worked. At last Mum walked tiredly to one of the other benches. Eddie set up his jar of water and grabbed the spoon. He marched down and grabbed Mum’s hand.
‘Poppy needs help with the muffins, Mum,’ he said firmly.
Mum looked a bit dazed and bewildered but obediently followed Eddie over to where I waited.
‘Now,’ I said.
Eddie banged the jar and I held the thyme up to each of our noses in turn.
‘Smell it,’ I urged Mum.
Eddie banged the jar for a second time and we heard a loud metallic ‘clang as the robot came zooming towards us. ‘It is not permitted,’ the robot droned.
Eddie banged the jar for the third time and a mist surrounded us. In front of us we could see the shadowy shape of the swinging seat in the herb garden. Taking Mum’s hand I pulled her forward as Eddie pulled her along from the other side.
‘It is not permitted,’ squealed the robot,’ and I felt its pincers close on the back of my jacket.
‘Pull Eddie, pull,’ I shrieked as we dragged Mum though the mist. There was a nasty stretching feeling and my ears popped like they do in the car when we travel up a big hill. The mist cleared and there we were, all three of us, safe home and standing beside the herb garden. Something was different. The last time we were in the garden it had been unkempt and overgrown. Now it was tidy and neatly trimmed.
‘I wonder how long we’ve been away?’ Eddie murmured.
Mum looked down at him. ‘For goodness sake stop pulling on me, Eddie. You are terribly grubby and your hair is a mess. What sort of game have you been playing?’ She frowned at him and began to gather a handful of mint. ‘This will do for the sauce. Now go and tidy yourself up.’
We gaped at her and gave each other bewildered looks. Eddie gave me an odd glance and started to say something then shook his head. We followed Mum to the kitchen and there was Dad coming out the kitchen door.
‘Oh Jean, there’s a phone call for you,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘What’s going on?’ I whispered to Eddie.
He shook his head in mystification. ‘Blowed if I know.’
We went to my room, which rather bizarrely held Eddie’s bed and all his stuff. There was no sign of any of my things anywhere. Eddie’s room was weird as well. It held a bed and an empty chest of drawers that I had never seen before and had that unused smell of a spare room. There was no sign of Aunt Daisy and no indication that she had ever been there. We checked out the living room and none of Dad’s work things were there and we could smell a roast dinner cooking in the kitchen.
‘I think we’ve come back to a different time,’ Eddie said. ‘One before Mum went missing. We did climb through from a different place so maybe that’s what did it.’
I ran to the computer and checked the date. ‘You’re right.’ I was shaken. ‘It’s the same day that Mum went missing. I’ll never forget it.’
‘Do you think we dreamed it all?’ Eddie asked, rather uncertainly, still giving me odd looks.
‘No,’ I said definitely. ‘Nobody could dream all that.’
‘Mum doesn’t seem to remember it.’
‘Maybe adult’s brains are different, I don’t know.
‘I think you should write it all down in case we forget it too,’ Eddie said firmly. ‘But Poppy, you do look peculiar.’
‘What do you mean, peculiar?’ I bristled.
‘Sort of not quite there,’ Eddie said, looking at me sideways.
I raced to the mirror and squawked with fright. I looked all misty and insubstantial, like a ghost. I scowled at the mirror but it was quite clear and Eddie certainly looked real enough. I pinched myself then made Eddie pinch me. He admitted he could hear me, just, but said he couldn’t feel me at all. I moaned as his hands seemed to pass through my arm.
‘I must have died on the way back. I’m a ghost,’ I wailed.