“Who’s dare? Who’s dat?” he asked.
“I’m just bringing your little friend back,” Molly said. She stared into the hypnotized Molly’s eyes and, as she did, she thought of her red crystal and made them hover in time so that she could lock some instructions in to stay there forever.
“You, little Molly, will forget anything frightening that happened to you when the nasty giant took you away. You will forget about him, too. Do you understand?” The little girl nodded. Molly continued. “And this order to you is locked in with the words ‘Jumping Jellyfish.’” Molly snapped little Molly out of the trance she was in and landed them back in the world. As soon as the three-year-old saw Rocky, she shouted and started laughing.
“Rocky! What ya do in’?”
Molly put her down in the cot with him. The children gave each other a clumsy hug that resulted in them both falling over, and there the older Molly left them. She decided not to tamper with the little Molly’s other memories about India, as these would soon merge into her dreams and Mrs. Trinklebury would only say, “Yes, dear,” if ever she talked about riding on an elephant.
As Molly shot back to the future again she wondered whether Lucy Logan would have been happy if she’d been presented with the three-year-old Molly as her daughter. The little Molly was so sweet, she surely would have loved her. With these thoughts in her head, Molly returned to the truck.
‘“Mission three-year-old’ accomplished,” she said, smiling. “Now for six-year-old Molly and little Petula.”
Rocky helped the younger Molly out of the truck cab, and Molly took the puppy. They traveled back in time. It was an autumn day, and the leaves were brown and orange on the trees. Molly led the hypnotized girl around to the side of Hardwick House. Inside she could see ugly Adderstone moving from room to room.
Quickly Molly spoke to the little girl.
“Now Molly, you and Petula are back. But I don’t want you talking to anyone about being in India. In fact, you will forget that you have been there, except that sometimes you can have dreams of the lovely things you saw there. You can keep the memories of laughing on the road. You won’t remember any of the scary things. And you certainly won’t remember the giant man. But one day, when you are eleven, and back in India, all your memories will return.” Now Molly took them into a time hover. “And I lock these instructions in with the words, ‘Hairy Hippie.’” Then she made the world move. The puppy Petula began sucking a stone. Molly supposed that young puppies don’t remember much, so she didn’t worry about Petula.
Adderstone came out of the back door of the orphanage with a distinctly sour expression.
“I’ll have you know this is private property,” she began. Spotting the six-year-old, she uttered a gasp of disgust. “Oh! That child. Are you from a family that wants to adopt her?” Then she added, “Girl, I’ve told you not to play with my puppy! And what ridiculous clothes you have on!” Molly realized that Adderstone had already forgotten that the six-year-old Molly had been missing, just as she’d been instructed to.
“No adoptions today, thank you,” Molly replied. She glanced down at the tender face of her younger self and a horrid homesick feeling rushed up through her. Molly couldn’t bear to leave the past as it had been. She had to do something—just something small—something to make life a little bit better for all the children there. She stared into the old woman’s beady eyes, and Adderstone was automatically under her spell.
“Miss Adderstone,” she said, “today you will treat this child kindly, and for the next few years, whenever you are really drunk, you will be kind to the children in your care. Is that clear?”
“Yes. I’m only a little drunk now,” the thin spinster replied.
Molly leaned over and whispered in the six-year-old’s ear, “And you, little Molly, will always remember that however horrid your life is in this place, one day it will change for the better.”
Then Molly led her inside, to a room where she could hear Rocky’s voice.
“In a moment, Molly, you will go to see Rocky. When you see him, you will no longer be hypnotized. If he asks where you have been, you will say you can’t remember. You will forget about ever seeing me.” The child nodded, and Molly nudged her toward the sitting room.
Molly returned to Adderstone and clicked her fingers in front of her eyes, waking her from her trance.
“Where’s the child gone?” she asked, stretching her neck with jerky movements like a confused ostrich.
“She’s inside.”
“BAAARRPP!” Adderstone let out the most enormous burp. “Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?” As she put her hand to her mouth, a raspberry noise blasted through her tweed skirt and a revolting stench of old meat and cabbage that had been through her wrinkly old digestive system filled the air. Molly stepped back. The smell was disgusting. Nevertheless, she was impressed that the hypnotic instruction she’d left for Adderstone to fart and burp in company was still working.
“I’m going now.” With that, Molly disappeared. A BOOM filled the air. All that was left were footprints on the wet lawn.
Miss Adderstone looked dumbfoundedly about and, seeing the indentations on the grass, lowered herself to her knees.
“GHOSTS!” she cried, patting the ground. Then, to herself, she said, “No, Agnes, it’s the drink!”
Molly was spinning through time again. She had collected her ten-year-old self and was now taking her back where she belonged.
They landed on a cold night in November. The front door was locked. Molly pushed the sitting-room window open.
“In a minute you will creep upstairs and climb back into your bed. Tomorrow, when everyone asks you where you have been for a week and a half, you will say that you were ill and that you don’t want to talk about it. And you won’t talk about it. You will think that you’ve been at the hospital and that you slept most of the time. You will think that you read a long story all about India, but you won’t be able to remember the story very well, and you’ll think that this is because you were ill. One day when you’re eleven, and back in India, your memories will return, but not until then. And Molly, keep going to the library.” Molly bit her lip. She mustn’t give herself clues or she might actually stop her ten-year-old self from finding the book of hypnotism. “You will now go to bed, and when you wake up, you won’t know how you got there. You will forget me and that I hypnotized you. All this is locked in“—Molly took her younger self into a time hover—”with the password ‘Wheel of Time.’” Molly landed them back in the correct time. “And remember, Molly—something special is going to happen to you very soon.”
Molly took one last look at her ten-year-old self and wondered whether Lucy would have liked her. Probably not, Molly reckoned. Perhaps Lucy had a problem with bigger children. She sighed and tried to think about something different, but this was difficult, as Molly knew that today she would see Lucy again and the usual disappointment would be written plainly across her face.
Thirty-eight
“So, I see you changed a few things back there,” Rocky said as Molly appeared. “I got some new memories—like Miss Adderstone taking us to the cinema when she was drunk and throwing popcorn around.”
“Couldn’t resist it,” Molly said as she jumped back into the lorry. She gave Rocky a huge hug. “Yee hah, Rocky, I can’t believe it, but it’s done! MISSION COMPLETED!”
“Yee hah!” echoed Ojas.
“Groovy,” agreed Forest.
“Groovy, Forest?” said Molly, turning on him. “Is that all?”
“Okay, okay… it is a psychedelically fabulous and cosmically awesome relief.”
“Wooooooorahrf!” Petula agreed. And Amrit poked her trunk into the cabin of the truck, wondering whether there was a toffee or two that she could pinch while everyone was celebrating.
The lorry half slid down the icy lane back onto the Briersville Road. “Okay, time to see how the stale doughnuts are getting on.” Molly didn’t know quite why she called he
r mother and father that. Maybe it was because, deep down, she felt about as excited about meeting them again as she might feel about the prospect of eating two stale doughnuts. Rocky understood her.
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting her hand. “You don’t have to automatically be the perfect daughter, you know. In fact, you have every right to be just friends with them, if you like.”
“I’m not sure if I want to be friends with Lucy Logan,” Molly said as Forest put on the brakes to avoid hitting a pheasant. “She wasn’t exactly happy to discover I was her daughter. I was disappointing. But you know, Rocky, I can’t help it if I’m not automatically, obviously nice, like you.”
“Molly, you shouldn’t take it to heart. There’s probably a good reason she behaved like that.”
“Yes, she didn’t like me.”
Forest drove the lorry onto the main road that passed through Briersville town.
“It’s strange not having the little Mollys with us. I miss them. I hope they’re all right,” Molly said.
“Man, that is the craziest thing you have ever said.” Forest began laughing like a hyena. “Of course, they’re all right. They’re in you, Molly!”
“I guess they are.”
Ojas’s nose was still glued to the window. “So this is the future!” he gasped as they passed a farm with big corrugated barns in its yard.
“That’s just a farm,” said Rocky. “You wait till you play a computer game. That is going to blow your mind!”
“Blow my mind…” Ojas experimented with the new phrase.
Petula sat up and tried to see out. She could smell the llamas of Briersville Park. She began to twitch with excitement. She couldn’t wait to run around the lawns there. She wondered whether her special stones were still all safely buried in the places she’d left them.
She shivered and for a moment thought of the lovely heat in India. It had been quite a trip, she thought. That peacock pie had been delicious, and the beauticians at the palace had been very nice. Her claws were still pink with nail polish. Still, she couldn’t wait to chase some rabbits.
“And what about your parents? What are they like?” said Ojas.
“They’re not really my parents,” said Molly.
“No?”
“No. I mean, their parents were my grandparents, but I’ve only just met them. They don’t know me, and I don’t know them.”
“Do you like them?”
Molly thought. “Well, they’re a bit weird. You’ll see. They’re both a bit muddled, I suppose. But they’re not scary or anything.”
The truck rumbled on along frosty country lanes and finally came to the black gates of Briersville Park. Soon they were driving up the long, winding driveway, past pastures of grazing llamas, with animal-shaped bushes in the fields.
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll like Amrit,” Ojas said. He pointed at an elephant-shaped bush.
“Well,” Molly explained, “those bushes were actually all put here by my uncle. His name is Cornelius. By the way, at the moment he thinks he’s a lamb. Look, there he is!” Forest slowed the lorry down.
Cornelius Logan, dressed in a ski outfit, was standing in a meadow with a flock of sheep.
“I suppose,” said Rocky, “Cornelius was hypnotized by Waqt to behave the way he did.”
“Poor Cornelius,” agreed Molly. “Waqt got to him a long, longtime ago. I remember Cornelius said he was jealous of his twin sister Lucy all his life. Waqt must have hypnotized him when he was a small boy. Poor, poor Cornelius. I mean, to be hypnotized all your life, starting when you were three or something—that’s freaky. If I unlock Waqt’s hypnosis, Cornelius might go mad from the shock. He looks so happy there, nibbling that grass.”
“Yes, but he’s in prison. He’s in a hypnotic prison,” Rocky said. “He has the right to know his real life.” The engine of the truck grumbled as it idled.
“One day you’ll discover Waqt’s password,” Forest reckoned, changing gear and driving on. “Then you can go back and free Cornelius and those maharajas.”
“I’m going to do it—well, probably next week,” said Molly. “But the password is going to be a problem. ‘Pock,’ ‘key,’ and ‘pea’ don’t work. There must be other words. It’s like some mad gobbledygook spell. All I know is that it ended or started in ‘pock’ or ‘key’ or ‘pea.’ It’ll be practically impossible to guess the rest.”
Forest pulled into the graveled forecourt of Briersville Park. As he did so, Ojas slipped into the back of the truck to prepare Amrit for her arrival.
The tall, mahogany front doors opened wide. Primo Cell put the palm of his hand to his forehead and squinted in the cold sunlight, wondering why a huge truck was pulling up in front of Briersville Park.
“Molly, Rocky, Forest,” he shouted worriedly, “is that you?”
Petula jumped out of the cabin. She was extremely excited to be back. As she bowled up the steps, Molly, Rocky, and Forest stepped down from the truck.
“Um, we’re back!” said Molly, as calmly as if she’d just been out to the shops for a pint of milk.
“Lucy!” Primo shouted. “They’re back. They’re all back.” He ran down the steps and seized Molly and Rocky. “God, we thought we’d never see you again!” he said, hugging them both, one with each arm. “We thought you were… were…”
“Dead? No way, man. Death courted us but it didn’t date us,” quipped Forest.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Primo Cell buried his face in Molly’s and Rocky’s shoulders. Rocky winked at Molly as if to say, “I think he likes us.”
And then Lucy Logan came rushing out of the house. She faltered at the top of the steps and then came running down. She didn’t hug Molly and Rocky. Instead, she smiled and smiled and her forehead was a mass of surprised horizontal lines. Molly avoided catching her eye.
Primo laughed. “So where have you been?”
“It’s a long story,” Molly began. Slightly embarrassed, she edged her eyes toward Lucy. Primo noticed.
“Lucy is much better now,” he said. “We’ve talked a lot and got to the bottom of why she was sad.”
Molly’s heart gave a jolt. Had they talked about all the reasons why Lucy found Molly so disappointing?
“Oh, Molly!” gasped Lucy, shocked to see nervousness written all over her daughter’s face. “You were probably dreading seeing me!” She clasped her hands together and implored her. “Don’t worry. I promise I won’t be the washed-up person I was again.” Then she exploded. “I’m so sorry, Molly. I was like a sad, wet biscuit! When we found each other I should have been really happy, but I couldn’t help turning over and over in my mind what I had lost. I just couldn’t accept my past. I kept wishing that it had been different. I kept wishing that you and… and… hadn’t been taken from me.” Molly was half listening. She was buzzing with a mixture of anger and fear of what Lucy was going to say next.
“Lucy,” said Primo, twisting his mouth awkwardly, “I think we should wait to tell Molly. She’ll be as shocked as I was. Here on the drive doesn’t seem—”
“Yes, sorry, it just slipped out. Later.”
“Later for what?” Molly asked, ignoring Petula, who was jumping up at her. She reran in her head what Lucy had just said. “You kept wishing that me and what hadn’t been taken from you?”
“I kept wishing that you and… and…”
“Cornelius?” Molly guessed. “We know that Waqt took him. That isn’t news. We know.”
“Waqt? Who’s he?”
“You don’t know Waqt?”
Lucy shook her head.
“He’s the man who had taken Petula,” said Molly.
“A man called Waqt took Cornelius? What do you mean? How?” Molly found herself in a sticky situation. She had decided not to tell Lucy about Waqt hypnotizing Cornelius as a little boy. She glanced at Forest and Rocky. Both were looking uncomfortable, staring at their feet. They’d all thought it best not to tell Lucy yet, because the news would be so distressing for her. But now ha
lf of it had slipped out. Which was what Lucy had just done—let something slip out.
Molly tried to change the subject. “You first. You tell me what else was taken from you,” she said, biding her time.
Lucy shook her head and looked at Primo for guidance.
“Tell her,” said Primo.
There was a long silence as Lucy plucked up the courage to tell Molly why she had been so very sad. Molly began to see that this other thing was something fairly big. And now she really began to wonder what it was.
“You know, Molly,” Lucy began, tears welling up in her blue eyes, “that Cornelius is my twin.”
“Yes,” said Molly, frowning as she tried to guess what Lucy was trying to say.
“Yes, well, as you know, I was a twin—and twins run in families—and… and… and so…” Lucy put her hands over her face.
“And so were you, is what she’s trying to say,” said Primo. “So were you.”
“So was I what?”
“A twin.”
“What? I have a twin?” Molly said dumbly. “A twin? But where is she?”
“He.”
“He? He? Where is he?”
“We don’t know, Molly,” said Primo. Lucy beside him was wiping her eyes with a yellow hankie.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d finished crying about this, but it’s difficult to… to accept without being overwhelmed with…” She stifled a sob. “… with tea-aa-ars!”
Molly stared at her. “A brother?” was all she could say.
Suddenly images of a boy a bit taller than her, standing there with her, filled her head. She looked at Rocky. “Did you ever see him?” Molly asked Lucy.
“Yes, before… before someone came and took him.”
“Cornelius really doesn’t know what happened to the child,” Primo said. “It’s been a terrible blow to us both not knowing where he went, or whether he is alive or not. We just don’t know what happened to him.” Primo looked more serious than Molly had ever seen him before. His lower lip quivered. “Oh dear, this was really the wrong time and place to tell you this,” he said, running his foot along the step.