NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is taking up all my time this month as I try to do 2000 words a day - average so far is 1948.
So as a bit of a cheat, here's an extract from Time After Time to give a flavour of Kev's continuing sleuthing efforts - only this time it's a tad more personal.
Enjoy!
Star-date: 6/6/88
Mission: Secondary recon
Objective: Verify
Thanks to the sheer brilliance of an inspiration which had Kev checking the calendar in the nursery before rolling the dice for his second sojourn, he had complete confidence in several hours of uninterrupted sleuthing. Nevertheless, inbuilt caution had him checking the front drive to confirm the lack of vehicles and pausing on the landing, listening for any signs of other people in the house. After a few minutes he reckoned the calendar entry was valid and his folks were indeed at the hospital as it indicated. It all stacked up with what he remembered of his ma – she definitely had health problems, so severe no one ever mentioned it. Possibly as a result of her misuse of drugs in her teens. As he retrieved the hook and pulled down the attic hatch, he speculated about the likelihood that his anger issues might have been triggered or even caused by this. From what Georgie said, Isaac’s stunned growth was the direct result of his parent’s drug-misuse.
His first thought on entering was how dark his folks’ attic was – and much smaller than he remembered. But then he only had Isaac’s enormous space to compare it to. Memories flooded back of many years providing the muscle for his ma, usually in retrieving the Christmas tree and decorations on November 30th and returning them on January 6th. A single, low-wattage lightbulb made a half-hearted job of piercing the blackness, so he used his phone torch to read the labelled boxes.
As the low battery warning beeped, he cursed, trying to remember which direction hid the most-likely stack of personal memorabilia. Despite Ma’s infrequent attempts to bring some sense of order to the space, too many things barely made it more than a step from the top of the ladder before being dumped. He’d probably been the worst offender when he lived there, and now he understood the implications of his laziness as he stumbled over things cluttering his path. No doubt a result of his da’s similar failure to do the job properly.
Right now, two decades prior to his excursions into the attic, he saw no evidence of areas reserved for suitcases and camping gear, obsolete furnishings or outgrown toys and games. Even the Christmas stuff was scattered around – the boxes instantly recognisable due to the square of his ma’s favourite wrapping paper taped to the outside. The purple and silver baubles on a pink background had always seemed incongruous – not a holly leaf in sight, let alone the traditional red, gold and green.
But Ma had never been one to conform – probably where he got it from. Although she did have the same logical reasoning. The thought did the trick, leading him to the furthest corner from the ladder – the most obvious place for her to store something she didn’t reckon on accessing often.
With time – or at least his ability to search – running out, he wasted no effort on the boxes labelled school and uni stuff. His instincts said they probably did what it said on the can. Then his torch picked out exactly what he expected: the equivalent of his memorabilia box, larger than a shoebox and covered in girly wrapping paper. The lid sported a picture of some obscure 70s band he didn’t recognise, lovingly covered in once clear plastic, now slightly opaque after so many years.
He paused before opening the lid; this was a massive invasion of his ma’s privacy. A female voice – not quite Georgie’s or Jen’s, but somewhere in between – asked how he would feel if someone rifled through his private stuff. His knee-jerk reaction was that he had nothing to hide; his life was an open book. Another, much more honest, voice, reminded him it hadn’t always been that way. Maybe back then, when he had things he wasn’t proud of, he’d have minded. But he certainly wasn’t daft enough to keep barely-concealed evidence. And neither was his ma.
This thought spurred him to lift the lid and, as he might have expected from her superior organisational skills, the thing was full to bursting with neatly-packed bundles. Switching off the battery-hungry torch on his phone, he took the box over to the lightbulb.
Using memory tricks, he memorised the position of the inevitable stash of mix tapes, bundle of heart-strewn valentine’s cards tied with a red ribbon, and a small pile of letters. How many of these bore German stamps on the thin, pale-blue paper? The return address, in strong, neat handwriting he recognised as male, belonged to a lad who signed himself Helmut with a Munich address. He never knew she had a German pen pal. Why would he? Underneath these were a couple of diaries from 1973, and 76, and an A5 scrapbook, the front of which had a crazy montage of pictures of two girls, one skinny scarecrow with a cheeky grin, the other a dark haired beauty in a leotard.
The sound of the front door slamming made him jump, and he nearly lost his grip on the box.
Wtf?
“Only me.” The distinctive voice of his grandma Edie had him choking back a gasp. She mustn’t find him here. Peering out of the opening, he couldn’t see enough of the staircase to pin-point her exact whereabouts, but he knew enough to figure she’d not come empty-handed, and her first destination would be the kitchen. Sure enough, the noises coming from that direction suggested cupboards being opened and goodies being stashed. When she finished that, she had only to glance up the stairs to see the loft-hatch open and the ladder hanging down. That would be game over; she’d know someone else was in the house.
He had two choices: try to return the box and scramble down the ladder before she came out of the kitchen, or pull up the ladder and wait it out till she’d gone. Either way would result in the risk of her hearing the dreadful graunching sound the loft ladder made when it was stowed. And the second option would result in the hook hanging down in plain sight. Unless he ran down and got it before hauling the ladder up. He knew the racket increased the further it was from its regular lubrication – could he take a chance on it being recently oiled? His memory refused to supply the information about how loud it had been when he pulled it down.
A startling din from the kitchen had him revising his options. Edie had obviously decided she was on her own and had put the radio on full blast, singing away to a tune he recognised:
Come on Eileen. With a scoff, he remembered it as one she’d always dance to at weddings or any other family get-together.
The gulp past the blockage in his throat reminded him it was the song they played as the curtains enclosed the casket at her funeral. A total rebel, she’d have been around 50-something in 1988, but the energy emanating from the closed kitchen door, said there was plenty of life in the old girl. Hopefully, she’d have made herself a cup of tea – or something – so he’d have a short stay of execution.
A sniff had his mouth watering at the unmistakable aroma of frying onions. Do what? It could only mean one thing – she’d come round to prepare something yummy for his parents’ dinner. A host of memories flooded his mind: his gran’s home-made cottage pie, spag bol and chilli con carne. Staples of his childhood, along with succulent steak and ale pies. In fact, any sort of pie – her melt-in-your-mouth pastry was to die for. Ditto the thick, dark gravy enriched with her own secret recipe of onion and herbs. And yet none of them ever got fat on her generous portion sizes, mainly because nothing artificial had been used in the making of their food. Each dish had fresh ingredients, cooked from scratch. Bygone days indeed.
He padded down the ladder, box in hand, putting it on the landing windowsill where it wouldn’t be obvious to a casual glance from downstairs. Gingerly, he folded the ladder up a couple of rungs, listening for the tell-tale graunch of metal against metal. As he’d hoped, it had been recently oiled, giving him better options. He stowed the ladder and detached the hook, returning it to the restraining clips next to the bathroom door.
Creeping down, he paused as the song finished, to be replaced by the equally raucous
Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The kitchen door was open a crack, and he peered through to see his gran topping up a glass with red wine before adding a generous slosh to the pan sizzling on the hob. The not-so-secret ingredient of all her delicious dishes. With a grin, he retraced his steps.
After Georgie had nagged about making as few ripples as possible, he decided the best course of action was to return everything to the state in which he found it. But with Edie suitably engaged in her culinary arts, he reckoned he’d have more than a couple of moments to peek inside the diaries and scrapbook. What he found had him desperate to take at least one of them back to his present day to study further, but he had no idea if that was even possible, and preferred not to take a chance on it not working.
If you want to read more, checkout Time After Time, the fourth Time Doctors story.
