8

Fortunately, when I got home, Wanda was so wrapped up in her new pet that I don’t think she’d have noticed if I’d staggered in and told her I’d been abducted by aliens. Which was fine by me; the last thing I wanted was to start explaining about my recent foray into time travel in front of Teddy.

‘Look, sweetie!’ Wanda called from the kitchen. ‘I want to introduce you to someone.’ I went through and she was holding up this tiny grey fluffy kitten and talking in a voice that was so high pitched, I’m surprised her crystal ball hadn’t shattered. ‘Who’s a beautiful little kitty then? Yes you are. Yes you are. You’re gorgeous.’

Teddy was sitting in the rocking chair by the range looking as though he only needed a pipe and slippers and he’d have been set up until retirement. Talk about too much time travel - it was as though I’d come back half a century early and landed in the cosy domesticity of the nineteen fifties.

‘Hi,’ I said, mentally debating whether I should congratulate him for surviving the entire evening with Wanda, or warn him to get his feet out from under the table on a first date. Normally, Wanda’s off the starting block like an Olympic athlete if she thinks things are moving too fast. (OK, when I say an Olympic athlete, that’s probably not the best analogy as the only Olympic events that would remotely interest Wanda would be the hundred metres macramé or the freestyle Feng Shui - but I’m sure you get my drift.)

When it comes to men, I don’t think Wanda has ever got over my dad. She met him while she was touring The States on a greyhound bus. When the coach pulled into the bus depot in Kansas City, she tripped over her hippy skirt and fell straight into the arms of Gordon Goodfox, a shaman of the Pawnee Nation. Apparently it was the longest toilet stop in history; nine months and one week to be exact. Then she slung me in a papoose on her back and moved on.

And she’s been moving on ever since - especially if someone starts to get too close. So in the interests of my future in Whitby, the last thing I wanted was Teddy thinking he was on to a sure thing. Pleased as I was that my match-making had been a success, I needed to cool things down a bit.

Wanda held the kitten up towards me. ‘I’ve called her Mushka,’ she cooed.

‘Brilliant idea,’ I said. Mushka was the name of this little old lady who lived in the apartment next to us in St Petersburg. Her hair was practically the same colour as the kitten’s. I took the kitten from Wanda and allowed her to nuzzle into the palm of my hand. Teddy had scored full marks on the kitten front as well as the whole ponytail/ casual image thing. In fact, I only needed to sort out some manly fragrances for him and, who knows, he could be Wanda’s Mr Right. But, if he was going to be in there for the long haul, I really needed to persuade him to play a little hard to get.

‘Well, goodnight then, Teddy,’ I smiled.

‘You off to bed, sweetie?’ Wanda asked, taking Mushka from me.

Which was not what I’d intended at all. ‘Oh, I thought Teddy was leaving,’ I said in my most disingenuous voice, hoping he might take the hint.

Teddy looked startled and made to stand up. ‘Er...right then. I’ll be off. Thanks for the nettle tea, Wanda. It was just the ticket.’

‘No need to go,’ Wanda offered. ‘Stay and have another cup. It’ll do wonders for that touch of rheumatism in your knee. I’ll give you some Reiki afterwards too, if you like.’

Teddy sat down again like a shot. ‘By, that would be grand.’

Oh Teddy - I was getting that sinking feeling - this was way too much, way too soon. I really needed to talk to him about the whole Zen philosophy of less is more. But right at that point, I wasn’t going to argue. I was totally whacked, so I obliged Wanda and went up to bed.

The following morning I was late for college again but as soon Milly and Amanpreet saw me in the corridor, they were on to me like an inquisition.

‘Come on then, tell us what happened.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘What did you do?’

‘Whoa!’ I put my hands up and adopted the back off pose. ‘This is worse than when Wanda and I got arrested in Tibet.’

Milly dropped the interrogation and her mouth fell open. ‘You’ve been arrested?’

I shrugged. ‘A few times. But Tibet was the worst. I mean, how were we supposed to know that busking wasn’t allowed by the occupying Chinese militia?’

‘Well...’ Amanpreet began.

But I cut her off. ‘It was a retirical question.’

They were both looking at me in this weird way like I’d got spinach stuck in my teeth.

‘You mean rhetorical?’ Milly asked.

‘Whatever.’ I flapped my hand. ‘But, you know, we had to earn a crust somehow,’ I explained, to try and stop them looking at me as though I was one of the Great Train Robbers. ‘It wasn’t like Wanda could pop into the local Lhasa Job Centre or anything. Although, I did tell her I thought Love will set you free wasn’t the most diplomatic song in her repertoire.’

‘Maybe that’s why they arrested you,’ Milly suggested. ‘But still, being a political prisoner is cool.’

Amanpreet looked positively awe-struck. ‘Wow! What was it like?’

I cleared my throat. ‘It sort of went... Loooove will set....’

‘No, not the song!’ she interrupted. ‘Being arrested; did they torture you?’

‘Neh! Just deported us. But, put it this way - if you two had had an angle-poise lamp and a pair of handcuffs, you could easily find work in the Drapchi Prison.’

‘Oh, ha-ha,’ Milly grinned. ‘Come on, seriously, tell us what happened last night?’

I went as cold as a polar bear in the Arctic! How could they possibly have found out about last night?

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, sheepishly rummaging in my bag to avoid looking at them.

‘With you and Kameran,’ Milly persisted.

‘Oh that!’ Phew - I thought they’d somehow found out about the whole ghost/smuggling/time travel thing. ‘How’d you know about that?’

‘I saw Kevin Dobson at the bus stop this morning and he told me that you and Kameran had gone out last night.’

Oh dear Lord! There are tribes in the Amazon rainforest whose jungle telegraph is less efficient than this lot. But worse still, just when I was starting to make some headway on the Milly and Kameran love front, she’d got the totally wrong idea and seemed to think that I’d been on some sort of date with him. This was awful.

‘Nothing happened,’ I said - probably a bit too quickly to sound convincing. ‘We just went for a walk and had a bag of chips.’

‘Yeah right!’ laughed Amanpreet.

‘No, really!’

But, just as I was denying that there was anything going on between me and Kameran, the voice of Mr Spiggins, the head of year, screeched along the corridor. Mr Spiggins is a small, scrawny man with a toupee that looks about as natural as if he’s got Basil Brush glued to his head. I’m in his group for Geography and he has serious self esteem issues. He’s one of those teachers who would pretend not to notice two bullies punching each others’ lights out but then give the most innocuous person in the class a detention for breathing too loudly.

‘Kameran Dhillon! Don’t run.’

See what I mean? Almost everyone else was pushing and shoving their way along the Technology block corridor, but he picks on Kameran.

‘Sorry sir,’ I heard Kameran shout back. The next thing I knew, Kameran had grabbed my arm and, without even acknowledging Milly and Amanpreet, pulled me over to one side of the corridor.

‘Listen,’ he said urgently, ‘can you read palms or anything that doesn’t need your cards?’

‘Of course,’ I replied, trying not to sound too peed off that he had to ask.

‘Brilliant! Meet me behind the sports hall at lunchtime. I’ve got some more clients for you. Got to go, we’re late for Technology.’ And he and Kevin shot off.

‘Still say nothing’s going on?’ Amanpreet giggled as she and Milly headed off towards the Resistant Materials room. ‘See you at break!’

Oh dear, things were not going at all as I’d planned on the romantic liaison-front. At home, I’d got Teddy going way too fast and at school, I’d got Kameran playing way too hard to get. This was going to require some pretty skilful handling.

I was wandering along the corridor towards the Food Technology room, contemplating how I was going to convince Teddy to back off while persuading Kameran to dial it up a bit with Milly, when I heard a stifled shout. There was no one else about so I stopped and listened. Suddenly Joel Chapman, Kameran’s friend who’d come to me for a reading the previous day, almost fell out of the boys’ toilets and landed on his knees right in front of me.

‘Hi, Joel. You OK?’ I asked.

But before he could answer, the door opened again and a backpack was lobbed out after him, spilling books and pens all across the floor.

I bent down and picked up a notebook for him.

‘It’s OK. Just leave it.’ He looked flustered. ‘Thanks,’ he added as an after thought.

Then the toilet door opened and a large boy with horribly familiar piggy eyes came out. He kicked the backpack and sent it spinning along the corridor.

‘Pack it in, Eddy,’ Joel said, standing up and eyeing the other boy in the chest. ‘I’ve said I’ll get it sorted.’

Now I might have been putting two and two together and coming up with a number in double figures, but I was fairly sure this must be Eddy Proudfoot, the boy who two-timed Milly and stole twenty pounds from his mother’s purse.

‘You’d better!’ Eddy threatened.

I stepped forward. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m sure it can be sorted out in a non-confrontational way.’

‘Oh look! If it isn’t the Freak Fairy!’ Eddy sneered. ‘Rack off weirdo! Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage round here already? You and that psycho mother of yours.’

Whoa! Look who’s talking when it comes to the psycho mother bit - I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Eva Proudfoot was one of Wanda’s clients and it wouldn’t look good to start slagging her off - especially to her own son.

‘Come on Joel.’ I picked up some more of Joel’s things and pulled him towards the Food Technology room.

‘That’s right, get a girl to fight your battles for you.’ Talk about sexist! I was liking Eddy Proudfoot less and less. ‘I’m warning you Chapman, you’ve got one week,’ he yelled after us.

‘Quaking in my wellies!’ Joel said casually as he and I headed down the corridor away from Eddy.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked.

‘He wants me to teach him Kung Fu,’ Joel laughed, slashing the air and making weird ha-so type noises. He looked and sounded less like a martial artist and more like a stick insect with an adenoid problem, but I didn’t want to disillusion him. ‘I told him; Eddy, my son, no amount of provocation will persuade me to divulge the secrets of the ancients.’ Joel tapped the side of his nose knowingly, then made a massive sweep of the air with his arms and kicked open the door to the Food Technology room with the side of his foot.

Unfortunately, Ms Oliver was standing right at the other side and she was propelled sideways into one of the cookers. Uh oh! This was my first introduction to Food Technology and I couldn’t help thinking it could have gone a lot better.

Ms Oliver stood up, rubbing her elbow and glared at us. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, purposefully looking at her watch. ‘Kind of you two to drop in. You can spare me your pathetic excuses for the moment - you can write them down for me over break, which, by the way, you’ll be spending with me,’ she went on. ‘Now, we’re working in twos today, so it looks like the pair of you have both drawn short straws - you’re together.’

Ms Oliver thrust a sheet of paper at us, which said that we were supposed to be thinking up ideas for a range of luxury fast foods for busy people who enjoy entertaining but don’t have much time. Which, actually, I thought sounded pretty cool. I love cooking and if I’d known it was going to be this much fun, I’d have got here earlier.

‘OK, I make a mean butternut squash and sunflower seed risotto,’ I said to Joel, excitedly. ‘We could have that for one of the main course meals. And, you should taste my pecan pie. That could be one of the deserts.’

‘Oh sorry,’ Joel said, cheekily. ‘I thought the brief said luxury.’ He held the paper up to my face and ran his finger along the word. ‘Oh yes, so it does. That rules out your ideas - unless we’re planning a range of foods for busy rabbits!’

‘Very funny!’ I must admit, although I hardly know Joel, I’ve always wondered why Kameran is friends with him. He always strikes me as a bit of a light weight. You know the sort - can’t take anything seriously and is always fooling about.

‘I suppose you’d rather plan some ready meals for a Neanderthal? Let’s see, we could have kebab soup for the starter and some roast kebab for the main course with kebab sorbet for pudding.’

Joel looked at me and then screwed up the paper. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking more along the lines of using local produce so it would be a seafood based range. My dad used to own his own seafood restaurant in the Old Town and I want to go to chef school when I leave here and do the same.’

Wow! Now I felt really guilty for thinking badly of him. You see - this is why I should never judge people. You never know what’s going on in a person’s life. And, the more I talked to Joel, the more I realized that there was so much to take seriously in his life, there was no wonder he was always fooling around. It was probably the only way he could cope. It turns out that his dad died when Joel was a baby and cooking’s never been his mum’s forte, so the business went bust. Then, to make matters worse, his mum’s not well either. She used to be a nurse but she hurt her back lifting a patient and hasn’t been able to walk properly for over a year. Joel used to work two paper rounds to try and help out with the money but then the school complained because he was always tired, so his mum made him give up and now they’re so behind with their rent that the landlord’s threatening eviction.

‘That’s awful!’ I was shocked. ‘Can’t social services help?’

‘Oh yes,’ laughed Joel. ‘They’ve offered us a flat on the ninth floor in a block in Scarborough - great help!’

‘I hate to interrupt this little tête-à-tête.’ Ms Oliver was standing over us with a face like a carbuncle that was about to burst. ‘You two have obviously finished the task, so perhaps you’d be good enough to share your ideas with the rest of the class. Alternatively, you can stay behind at lunchtime and do the work you’re supposed to have done in the lesson.’

Oh great! I’d already got one detention tonight with Mrs Twigg and our break this morning had been cancelled. Unless we could come up with something pronto, my lunch time sitting with Kameran’s new clients would be in jeopardy too. Prison camp has nothing on this place.

But, the good thing about working with someone as quick-thinking as Joel was that when it comes to winging it, he’s an absolute eagle! So even though we’d done hardly any work, he stood at the front of the room and blagged it, selling our product - Fishtastic Feasts - till even penguins would be queuing up for seconds.

‘You were amazing,’ I said as we left the room at lunchtime. ‘Any time you want another reading, you can have one for free,’ I offered. ‘Why don’t you come to the back of the sports hall now? And if your mum wants me to come and do some healing on her, I’ll do that too.’

Joel smiled. ‘Cheers but we’ll be OK. Anyway, I’ve got to go and earn some money to pay off Eddy Proudfoot.’

I looked at him, questioningly. ‘Pay him off? What for?’

Joel raised his eyebrows, surprised that I didn’t know. ‘He’s the one threatening to evict us - well, his mam is. She’s our landlord.’

Oh no! This was too awful. Last night I’d had to witness Josiah Proudfoot bring about the downfall of Isaac Chapman and now I was hearing that two hundred and fifty years on, history was repeating itself.

I had to do something - and I knew just the person to help me. But where was Quill when I needed him?