Page 91 of Right Place, Right Time
‘Would they, though?’ Adam asks from the corner of the desk where he’s currently perched. ‘In every movie I’ve ever seen about it, something always goes wrong. I’m not sure I’d want to risk getting stuck in the past.’
‘No one is getting stuck in the past,’ I say to reassure him. ‘All we want to do is to be able to choose just where and when those doors open out to. We’re not actually going to go back there ourselves. Just see if we can get Ben back to see his mother.’
‘Fine, but so far we’ve been down here all morning and we haven’t even been able to get this portal working again. Let alone choose where we want it to take us.’
He was right. Every time we’ve tried one of Barney’s ideas – which all seem to be based on time-travel philosophy from TV programmes or movies – all we find when we open the doors at the end of the tunnel is the same brick wall that faced Archie when Dotty disappeared.
Adam refused to go down the tunnel each time we tried something new. I knew why that was, of course – it was dark and cramped, and must immediately remind him of a time he didn’t ever want to return to. So it was just me checking the doors, because Barney’s wheelchair was currently upstairs in Adam’s shop.
As I anticipate, Barney’s latest idea – involving some very complex equations, along with some strange chemicals, a test tube and a Bunsen burner – fails once more.
‘Let’s give this a rest for now, shall we?’ I say as Barney’s face, currently covered in some sort of sooty ash, looks desperately disheartened. ‘Perhaps some fresh air might help?’
Adam carries Barney back up the stairs and reunites him with his wheelchair. Then we all head outside to sit on the bench in the middle of the court.
I haven’t spoken to any of my fellow residents of Clockmaker Court since last night’s revelations by Ben and Orla, but I know I’m going to have to at some stage.
Even though I know why they’ve kept their past lives a secret from me, it still feels like they’ve been lying to me all these years. I know I’m not exactly great at sharing my secrets with anyone, but the difference is they all know my backstory. They knew from the minute I arrived in Clockmaker Court to work with my grandparents. But I still can’t shake the feeling of being let down by those I trust.
Now that we know Ben’s story, so much of what has been going on kind of makes sense – if stories of a timeportal and people travelling from the past can ever really be fully believed or understood.
‘So, what’s next, then?’ Adam asks as we sit in the lunchtime sunshine drinking takeaway cups of coffee from Fitzbillies. Neither Adam nor I want to see Harriet and Rocky today, knowing what we now know. We are both worried about putting our foot in it with Rocky, as he knows nothing about Harriet’s past. ‘Any more bright ideas, Barney? Should we be considering strapping the shop to the back of a DeLorean car and driving it at eighty-eight miles per hour through a thunderstorm until it gets hit by lightning?’
‘Hilarious,’ Barney says flatly. ‘I think you’ll find I’ve mostly based my ideas around scientific formula, rather than Hollywood special effects.’
‘Maybe that’s where we’re going wrong,’ I say, sipping on my coffee as I think. ‘Perhaps we’re basing our attempts too much on scientific reasoning like Dotty and Archie did. Maybe there’s another way …’
‘Like what?’ Adam asks. ‘Should we just stand in the tunnel and request what year we want to go back to? Do you think it’s listening to us …’ He makes a sort of spooky gesture with his hands, then grins.
‘If you’re not going to take this seriously,’ I tell him, ‘then perhaps it should just be Barney and me trying to make the tunnel …the portalwork.’
‘Sorry. But we have to keep this light, otherwise when you think about the seriousness of the situation and some of the things these people were running from, it gets a bit heavy.’
‘I know. I think I’ve been through some trauma in my life, but when you hear these stories, it puts a lot of things into perspective.’
Both Barney and Adam look expectantly at me, waiting for me to say more.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say lightly. ‘You don’t need to hear about my past troubles. We’ve got enough of our own right now.’
‘Perhaps we do,’ Adam says. ‘I told you about my own trauma and I have to admit, it really helped me at the time to talk to someone new about it. Someone who wasn’t a therapist, but a friend. I was caught up in a gas explosion many years ago,’ Adam tells Barney. ‘I was trapped under the side of a house for hours with only a dog for company. It doesn’t sound much now, but it messed me up a bit – guilt that I’d survived when others hadn’t, you know?’
‘I do know, actually,’ Barney says to my surprise. ‘I wasn’t always paralysed from the waist down like this. It was only after the fire that this happened.’
‘What fire?’ I ask. ‘You never told me that before.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Eve. When I was four years old, the house that I lived in with my real parents caught fire – electrical fault, not gas this time,’ he says. ‘They managed to throw me out of my bedroom window, to neighbours below, who were supposed to catch me in a sort of blanket thing. They did catch me, but not firmly enough, so I sort of twisted badly as I landed and I tore my spinal cord. Apparently I never walked again after that. I don’t actually remember it, to be honest, which is probably just as well.’
‘What happened to your parents?’ I ask, knowing from what Barney told us before about being adopted that it was unlikely to be good.
‘Both they and my baby brother perished in the fire. I was adopted by a lovely family, though, and I grew upnot knowing anything different. It wasn’t until they told me when I was older that I’d been adopted, that I realised I’d ever had another family.’
I’m shocked to hear this from Barney. We’ve known each other for a number of years now and until today I had no idea how he’d come to be in a wheelchair. He never said anything to me before and I didn’t want to appear nosey, so the subject never came up.
‘So you don’t remember anything about your first family?’
‘Not a thing. But when I found out what happened, I always wondered, why me? Why did I survive when they didn’t?’
‘That’s exactly how I feel,’ Adam says. ‘Why me? Why did I survive that explosion with no permanent injuries, other than my hearing’ – he taps the hearing aid in his ear – ‘when another person had to die? It just doesn’t seem fair.’
