 
Lazy Daisy

by Lynne Roberts

Published by Liberty Publications at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts

ISBN 978-1-927241-10-3

Smashwords Edition, License Notes  
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11
Chapter 1.

I said afterwards that the very worst part was when Aunt Daisy came to stay. Eddie said that of course it wasn't. He said that there were much worse bits than Aunt Daisy, and that it was typical of a girl to focus on one thing. I resent that. Not being a girl, of course, but being thought typical. So then Eddie said,

'Why don't you write it all down, Poppy. Then you'll see that Aunt Daisy wasn't the worst part.'

'Why don't you write it down, if you're so keen?'

Eddie didn't say anything but he gave me that hurt puppy dog look he's so good at and, naturally, I gave in. So here goes.

My name is Poppy Amelia Arlington and I am twelve. Eddie is my little brother and he had not long turned nine when the trouble started. Eddie is fairly small and skinny with heaps of freckles and bright red hair. He gets the hair from my grandfather although Pop's hair was mostly white by the time he died a couple of years ago. I am fortunate enough to take after Mum with unremarkable brown hair. I guess the red hair makes Eddie stand out, which is why the bigger boys tended to pick on him. Most red-haired people are supposed to have really bad tempers to match but Eddie is quite a gentle sort of kid for a boy. He's crazy about anything to do with cars and he is a whiz at Maths. Dad is a sports fanatic and I think he would have preferred a son who was good at sports. I mean, you can't run up and down a sideline cheering on someone for calculating sums or working out Maths problems. Dad tries to make Eddie go and play sports and Eddie goes along happily. He's really not too bad, either. That makes it worse, as when Dad thinks his son is going to be the star of the match, Eddie sees something really interesting like a car driving past on the road. This is inevitably the moment he could have caught the ball or hit the ball and covered himself in glory. Dad gets exasperated and yells at him, but Eddie doesn't seem to care very much though, and grins back.

But Eddie had gone all quiet, even for him when the trouble began. He'd been bullied at school in a minor way for ages, mainly because he was so small, and stood out with his red hair. He shrugged it off and whoever was doing the bullying got sick of it and stopped. Then a few weeks ago it was Friday the thirteenth and his bad luck started with a vengeance. A new kid, Tyler, arrived at the school and went into Eddie's class and things went really bad very quickly. Tyler was big and chunky and not very bright, but he was cunning and always managed to slither away if there was a risk of being caught or punished. So he got in a fair few thumps on Eddie and managed to grab his bag and drop it in puddles on wet days and other stupid mindless things like that. Eddie got quieter and quieter at home and at school. I told him what to do.

'You should hit Tyler as hard as you can then he'll leave you alone.'

Eddie looked appalled. 'That wouldn't work,' he muttered. 'He'd just laugh and hit me harder.'

I thought about it and had to admit he was probably right. And with Eddie's luck, he'd be the one spotted fighting by the teachers, and then he'd really be in trouble.

So Eddie was drooping around being small and miserable and I was storming around being angry on his behalf, which is why neither of us took much notice of Mum. Maybe that's what caused the trouble. I'll never know.

Our parents are fairly normal, at least we think so. Dad works in an office doing something complicated that involves lots of work on a computer and heaps of phone calls to other people in offices all over the world. Mum writes books. Not the reading kind, although you do have to read them. She writes recipe books. Before she married Dad, Mum used to be a cook in a restaurant and she came up with amazing recipes for meals. The restaurant became famous and was not happy when she left and started having children. They wanted her to go back but Mum said she couldn't face it after all the work looking after us. That makes me cross. I don't think Eddie and I are much work at all. She made it sound like we were a couple of badly trained chimpanzees.

But anyway, Mum decided she would work from home instead and write recipe books. First she had to try out all the recipes on us. That could be great, especially if it was a dessert, but it could get tedious as well. There was one chocolate pie thing that she made every day for three weeks, trying to get the ingredients exactly right. Only Eddie lasted the whole time. Dad and I gave up after ten days and ate an apple for dessert instead.

Some of the spicy casserole things Mum made occasionally were awful, even though Dad usually liked them. We always regarded anything new with great suspicion and Mum encouraged us to comment on whether we liked the food or not.

'It's really good feedback,' she'd say. 'After all, children go to the restaurant as well so I have to know what they will eat.'

'Stick to hamburgers and chips then,' Dad advised, but Mum looked shocked and started going on about nutrition and balanced meals.

She served up what looked to be a fairly ordinary stew one night, only it smelled a bit strange.

'What's that stuff?' Eddie asked, wrinkling his nose.

'I haven't actually named it yet. But do try a little bit, children,' Mum said encouragingly. 'If you truly don't like it I will let you have a cheese sandwich instead. I think it could be a little on the hot side.'

Eddie and I looked at each other dubiously but I thought I'd give it a go. I took the smallest possible spoonful and popped it into my mouth. I immediately wished I hadn't. 'Ugh!' I gagged, and hastily gulped a glass of water, trying to cool the fire in my mouth.

'I'm not even going to try it,' Eddie said obstinately, as Mum offered him the spoon. 'Look at what it's done to Poppy.'

I sat there red faced and wheezing, gasping for breath, with streaming eyes and a burning mouth. Dad passed me the bread with a sympathetic smile and Mum scribbled a note to herself and muttered something about 'reducing the cayenne pepper.'

Like I said, Dad ate most of the stuff that Mum cooked without complaint but we all balked at the salads.

'Do you think I'm a rabbit?' he demanded one night after Mum dished up the sixth meal of carrot salad in a row.

'It's very good for you,' Mum said soothingly. 'I think I almost have it right this time. This is the vegan version. Please taste a bit and tell me what you think.'

Dad grudgingly took a mouthful and even more grudgingly admitted that it was okay. I could see he actually really liked it but wasn't going to give Mum the satisfaction of telling her.

'That's great,' sighed Mum. 'I'll type it up tomorrow. Does anyone want to name it for me?'

That was another good thing about Mum. She used to ask us to help her name her recipes and sometimes we came up with some really good ones. There was a yummy creamy dessert that she called Poppy's Delight, because I loved it so much and Eddie had called one of the spicy casseroles Comet Surprise. The names Dad suggested were gross but really funny and Mum would never use them in her recipe books but they made us laugh. Some of them became our private family names like Sliced Socks for eggplant savoury and Chinese Toenail Clippings for fried rice with bean sprouts.

Other kids used to love coming to our place to play because Mum always tried out new biscuit or cake recipes on them. We didn't mind having a Mum like that too much, although lunches were a bit of a trial. We never knew what to expect when we opened our lunchboxes at school. My friend Becky used to watch me open mine every day and it nearly drove me mad.

'Look, it's only lunch. It's not that big a deal. Wouldn't you rather sit somewhere else?'

'But I love watching you open your lunchbox. You make such funny faces and it's so exciting seeing what your mother gives you. My lunch is so boring. It's always egg and tomato sandwiches.'

'So why don't you ask your mother to make different ones,' I asked.

'But I like egg and tomato sandwiches,' Becky explained. 'Besides, if I complained about them, she'd make me get my own lunch.'

I sighed and opened the lid, wondering what I was going to find. Mum used to send me off with pots of food and a spoon every day. When I came home in the afternoon she wanted to know what I had thought of each one. She could generally tell by what had been eaten – a pot that was licked almost clean was a good sign. But after the first term at school when I realised that other people didn't bring test pots of food for lunch, I always insisted that mum made me sandwiches. Of course that way she piled on exotic combinations of stuff or leftover meals, so I was still doing the tasting, but at least my friends couldn't tell what peculiar stuff I was eating. Mum usually did the decent thing and put in extra for our friends, particularly of any baking she had done, so we were fairly popular at lunchtimes.

One day Becky was disappointed to see I had the same boring old sandwiches as hers, until I took a bite and yelped.

What is it?' Becky asked eagerly.

I swallowed and gasped. 'It tastes like strawberries mixed with egg. It's terrible.'

Fortunately the lemon muffins were okay and the chocolate chip biscuits almost made up for it. And the apple. You can't muck up an apple.

The day things began to go wrong I was in the bedroom, trying to find my boots. The weather was getting colder and I knew I had chucked them in the back of the wardrobe last winter, but I couldn't find them anywhere. Isabella Wallford had turned up at school the day before showing off her new boots and all the girls had oohed and aahed over them. All except Becky and me. We decided that Isabella definitely needed taking down a peg and so we were going to wear our own boots to school. Then, we could casually say, 'these old things? I've had them for ages,' when anyone remarked on them. To be perfectly honest, my boots only looked good because I had hardly worn them. I had nagged Mum into buying them for me last winter but they were not very comfortable. I mean, they looked really good but they pinched my toes. However Becky and I agreed it was worth a few pinched toes to put Isabella Wallford in her place.

Eddie was mooching around kicking his soccer ball over and over at the fence and pretending it was Tyler's head. Mum was in the herb garden, at least, I supposed she was there. If she's not in the kitchen trying out recipes, then she's usually in her garden planting or picking plants and stuff. She is a firm believer in fresh ingredients and grows all her own herbs. I had finally found one of my boots and was trying to pull it out from under a pile of books when Eddie burst into my bedroom.

'Mum's gone,' he gasped.
Chapter 2.

'Poppy, didn't you hear me? I said Mum's gone,' Eddie blurted out.

'Don't you ever knock,' I snarled.

Eddie gulped and banged on the door with his hand.

'Well, it's a bit pointless now you are actually in here,' I pointed out. 'What do you want anyway?'

'Mum's gone,' Eddie repeated.

'Gone where?' I grunted as I heaved a boot out of my wardrobe. The pile of old books tottered and almost fell. I saw the toe of the other boot sticking out beside a tennis racquet and gave it a tug.

'I don't know where she went. She's vanished,' wailed Eddie.

'So?' I pulled at the boot, then yelled in dismay as the entire contents of the wardrobe cascaded over me onto the floor. I picked up an armful of books and furiously tossed them into the corner of the wardrobe. 'Don't just stand there. Help me shove this stuff back,' I snapped at Eddie, who was standing there with his mouth open like a dimwitted goldfish.

'But Mum has gone,' he bleated.

I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. After all, Mum is a grown-up and if she wants to go shopping or something then she doesn't need to ask our permission first. But Eddie was standing there gulping great mouthfuls of air and he finally burst into tears. That got my attention. Eddie hardly ever cries. Even when he is being bullied really badly he just goes quiet and sort of pulled into himself.

'She's gone, Poppy. She's really gone,' he sobbed.

I patted his back awkwardly and made 'never mind' noises, with an inner resolve to find that Tyler kid the next day and give him a good thump. Eddie must have been really upset if it made him cry.

Once Eddie reached the sniffing stage I fished out a clean tissue from my drawer and handed it to him.

'Come here,' I said, patting the bed beside me. Eddie obediently flopped down beside me. Okay, tell me what the problem is,' I said in my best big sister voice.

'It was awful, Poppy,' Eddie hiccuped. 'I was kicking the ball and it went towards Mum. She was sitting there on the swing and I yelled out to her to duck. I didn't mean to kick it at her. It just sort of slipped. Anyway, she ducked to one side and then the next moment she sat up and fell though a crack in the air and vanished.'

I was completely taken aback. This wasn't what I had expected to hear at all. I felt his forehead but it wasn't hot so he didn't have a fever. And Eddie doesn't usually make up stories, he's far too practical for that. I've always been the one with the imagination.

'She'll be back in time for dinner' I said cheerfully, thinking that if Eddie was having some sort of massive mental breakdown, then the least I could do was to humour him.

'Do you think so?' Eddie asked eagerly, turning his big brown eyes up to mine.

'Yes, of course,' I said soothingly. 'Now why don't you go and watch TV or read a book or something. Mum will call you when it's dinner time.'

Eddie nodded and obediently went to the living room where I heard the theme music of Space Monster start up. It's a perfectly dreadful programme that all the little kids watch, but naturally I have outgrown it. I quickly stuffed everything back in my wardrobe in a big untidy heap and pushed the door shut before unenthusiastically turning to my social studies homework. We are each doing a project on a different country and I'd been given Fiji. It was quite interesting actually, and there was tons of information in all the books and pamphlets I'd collected, but I couldn't get into it. Eddie had really rattled me. I even went down to the garden and looked around but Mum wasn't there. 'She probably went to the supermarket for something and wouldn't take Eddie with her,' I reasoned. 'She'll be back soon.'

I didn't realise how wrong I could be. Dad came home from work and grunted at us before settling down in the living room with the newspaper. He told Eddie to turn the TV down a bit then after a while he asked, 'Where's your mother?'

'She's gone,' Eddie mumbled, without taking his eyes from the screen.

'What do you mean, gone? Gone where? The car is still there. Did she walk somewhere?'

'Dunno,' Eddie shrugged.

Dad looked a bit peeved and muttered about 'that not being like Jean,' meaning Mum.

We waited and waited but Mum still didn't come back.

'Maybe there's been an accident,' I suggested at last. I was starving and even if Mum came back soon, tea would be really late.

Dad looked alarmed and turned the TV over to the news. They have a segment of local news each night when they talk about road accidents and anything else that has happened. But this must have been a boringly normal day for everyone and the best they could do was an interview with some old guy who wanted a tree cut down because the leaves kept blocking the gutters on his house. Dad muttered a bit more and finally said, 'It looks as if your mother must have been held up somewhere. We'd better get tea for ourselves.'

Now Dad can't cook, and Mum never lets Eddie and me into the kitchen in case we muck up her recipes. We have been known to helpfully add something unexpected or else use up the expensive ingredients she was keeping to try out for something special. So Eddie and I put on our most hopeless faces, although Eddie is much better at that than me. Dad felt sorry for us and sighed. 'It had better be takeaways, I suppose. Your mother will complain that it isn't good for you but I guess the occasional meal won't hurt us.'

So we all piled into his car and went to the fish and chip shop. When we came home again, licking the salt from our greasy fingers, the house was cold and empty. Mum still wasn't back. We ended up going to bed really late while Dad rang round Mum's friends and even Grandma, to see if she was there. That made me realise he was desperate as he doesn't get on with Grandma at all, and never talks to her willingly if he can avoid it. He always says that his parents did the decent thing and died so they wouldn't be a problem for their children but that Mum's mother was an interfering old so-and-so. However no one seemed to know where Mum was and I finally fell asleep hearing the phone crash down as Dad tried yet another unsuccessful number.

The next morning was awful. Dad had tried the hospitals and even the police who had said she hadn't been gone long enough to be a missing person and asked if Dad and Mum had been arguing lately. Dad gave us some money to buy lunch at school and dropped us off there on his way to work.

'Where do you think Mum is?' I asked him. I was starting to have a hollow feeling inside and things didn't feel right.

'I don't know, Poppy. Hopefully she will come home today and tell us where she's been.'

He sounded harassed and Eddie had hardly said anything. He turned his gloomy face to me when I asked him if he had everything he needed.

'Have you got your pencil case and a clean hankie?'

Eddie nodded and slumped down in the seat looking miserable.

When Eddie and I trudged home after school, we knew Mum hadn't come home. The house seemed cold and unfriendly. I tried asking Eddie where Mum was but all he said was, 'I already told you' then went all stubborn and quiet.

Dad was really frantic when he came home from work. He rang the police again and this time he kept shouting at them.

'Of course I don't know where she is. That's why I'm ringing you. No, she would not have gone off with someone else!'

He slammed the phone down and went white. I've never seen a grown-up look so upset before. I could see he was making a huge effort to be calm and reasonable as he asked us where we thought Mum was. He wanted to know if she had talked about going away or if there had been any men hanging about the place lately.

'Mr Collins came to fix the dishwasher,' I said helpfully.

Dad grunted and went to the phone. I listened shamelessly to his end of the conversation. You could tell Dad was really embarrassed and he was trying to tactfully find out if Mum had run off with Mr Collins the repairman. I didn't think that was likely because Mum doesn't even like him much, even though she is always polite to him. I knew that because she was always too polite, if you know what I mean?

Dad hung up at last and ran his hands through his hair. The police arrived then and we realised that it was real. Not a joke or a misunderstanding but real. Mum had gone.

There were two policemen; one old balding guy, Sergeant Stubbs and a young, quite pretty woman with dark hair tied up in a bun under her hat. Her name was Constable Alice. I think that was her first name as her badge said A. Bingham but Sergeant Stubbs told Eddie and me to go into the kitchen with Constable Alice while he talked to Dad. Eddie wanted to hang round looking at the police car and I could see he was dying to get inside it and try the siren so I kept a firm grip on his arm. Constable Alice was okay. She was quite brisk and efficient and made us a cup of hot chocolate, even though we could have done that for ourselves if we'd wanted to. We were at least capable of some things in the kitchen.

Constable Alice smiled at us with her big white teeth. I noticed she had a tiny chip off the corner of one of them and wondered if she had done it on one of her hairclips. Grandma is always telling me not to open my hairclips with my teeth in case I chip them. It hadn't stopped me but I didn't like to ask if that was what Constable Alice had done.

'When was the last time you saw your Mum?' she asked.

'Yesterday when we came home from school,' I said. 'She was getting in the washing and she called out to me to eat some fruit and not to touch the cake as she was going to try a new type of icing on it.'

I looked a bit guilty here, as Eddie and I had carved great chunks off the cake half an hour before this and it looked definitely the worse for wear.

'Did you see your father at all?'

'No, he didn't come home from work until dinnertime.'

'Where did your mother put the washing?' Constable Alice asked.

'I guess she put it into the hot cupboard in the hall,' I said. 'I didn't actually see her because I was in my bedroom.'

'She went into the garden then,' Eddie said helpfully.

Constable Alice suddenly looked a lot more interested. 'What part of the garden,' she wanted to know.

'She sat on the swinging seat,' Eddie told her. 'It's in the herb garden and Dad made it for her as a birthday present last year.'

'Yes, yes, go on,' instructed Constable Alice.

Eddie shrugged. 'That's it. I didn't see her after that. She vanished.'

Constable Alice gave him an odd look and scribbled something in a little notebook she took from her pocket. She made us show her the swinging seat and the herb garden and told Eddie to stand where he had been when he saw Mum. Constable Alice looked at the spade, which was still lying next to the swinging seat, and then at the garden. I thought for one awful moment that she suspected that Dad had done away with Mum and buried the body in the garden, but there was no sign of any fresh digging, which was probably just as well. Then she took us back inside and looked in the hot cupboard at the pile of washing, which I thought was a bit nosy. After that she led us into the living room and made us tell Sergeant Stubbs what we had said. Sergeant Stubbs was being very cheerful at us. He ruffled Eddie's hair, which he hates, and made him repeat exactly the last thing Mum had said. That was 'mind the camellia bush, Eddie. I'd like at least some flowers this winter.'

Constable Alice wrote this in her notebook and then Sergeant Stubbs asked Eddie again what happened next. Eddie was getting a bit sick of being questioned by now and turned sulky.

'She vanished in a crack in the air. She went invisible,' he said defiantly.

Dad shook his head in despair and Sergeant Stubbs and Constable Alice looked at each other over Eddie's head. Then they patted him gently on the shoulder and told him to go outside with me and play. I thought that was totally unfair. They obviously didn't believe us and we were being got rid of while they talked about the important stuff. We couldn't even hang around and eavesdrop because Constable Alice came with us and made sure we went right to the end of the backyard. It is really hard to play when someone tells you to and we chucked the soccer ball back and forth a few times in a dreary sort of way. We both kept missing catches as we were more interested in what the police were saying to Dad and kept looking away at the vital moment. We finally couldn't bear it any longer and began walking back to the house. At the same time we saw Constable Alice and Sergeant Stubbs coming out the front door and down the steps.

As soon as their car drove off we rushed inside. Dad looked awful, as if someone had hit him. A bit like Eddie really, when Tyler has had a go at him.

'Um, er, we think your mother has decided to have a little holiday for a while and forgot to tell us she was going,' he explained.

That was such an obvious lie it was pathetic. Dad looked really uncomfortable as he said it but we could see that he wasn't going to tell us anything else. Mum never forgets anything and she wouldn't have gone off without telling us first. In fact, she probably wouldn't have gone anywhere without taking us with her. Eddie and I looked at each other but we didn't say anything to Dad. There wasn't much point. We knew that something must be terribly wrong, especially if Dad was lying to us, and we thought that things couldn't get much worse than this.

We were wrong.
Chapter 3.

When it became obvious that Mum wasn't coming back anytime soon, Dad decided he had better work from home so he could keep an eye on us when we came home from school. At least, that's what he told us. Maybe he was hoping Mum would come back to the house, I don't know. We said we were perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. Eddie said he could go and play with friends after school until Dad came home from work.

'I go to soccer practise on Wednesday afternoons and I suppose I could learn judo or go to gymnastics or something on the other days.'

Dad frowned and looked unconvinced.

'I can go to Becky's house,' I suggested.

'I'm sure Becky's parents don't want you there every day,' Dad muttered.

'Oh well, in that case I can go down and hang around the mall,' I said brightly. 'Heaps of kids do that. Eddie could come with me.' I could see that Dad didn't think this was a great idea either, as he started looking even more harassed.

'What about asking Grandma to come and stay,' Eddie suggested.

'No way,' Dad shook his head. 'You know her legs are bad with arthritis and she can't walk too well these days. Anyway,' he added in a mumble, 'she'll be far too busy with those other old witches she hangs around with.'

I thought that Mum would definitely not have been pleased to hear Grandma's bridge partners talked about like that, but knew better than to argue.

'Maybe we could go and stay with Grandma,' Eddie suggested uncertainly.

'No,' Dad snapped. 'That is not satisfactory at all. I'm going to work from home and that's my last word on the subject.'

I suspect that Grandma would have agreed with Dad on this, at least. She lives in a tiny unit in a group of other units where all the people are really old and they have nurses who keep an eye on them and help them do stuff. The only times we ever visit, we have to be quiet and not make any mess or even play any games. And, as Dad had pointed out, Grandma had trouble walking and so staying with her really wasn't an option.

Dad moved all his files from his work into the living room, and dragged in the computer desk from the little alcove in the end of the hallway. He brought his laptop home from work but said he needed to use both computers, which we thought was totally unfair. Actually it didn't bother me too much but Eddie was really annoyed. He loves playing all those mindless games where you shoot aliens and blow up planets and stuff like that. The disadvantage of Dad working in the living room was that he shouted at us if we wanted to watch TV. Then he'd feel guilty for shouting and go all quiet and kind so it got that we didn't know where we were with him.

The laundry situation was pretty dire. I'd never really though about washing clothes before. I mean, we tossed stuff in the laundry basket when we remembered or else Mum picked it up and washed it for us. And of course Eddie and I had helped by pegging out or taking in the washing from time to time but we'd never done the whole thing. When I ran out of knickers one morning I had to stay home from school and wash them. It was terrible. There were piles of clothes in the laundry, all falling out of the tub and over the floor. Eddie's room was a nightmare and Dad's room wasn't much better.

'We have to get someone in to do the washing, Dad,' I complained. Dad could see the sense in that. He was furious that his white shirts were all a delicate shade of pink because I had washed them with one of Eddie's red t-shirts. And my best sweater had shrunk when I tossed it into the drier one afternoon.

'We need someone to change the sheets as well,' Eddie said sadly. 'Mine have got crumbs all over them and it makes it really scratchy to sleep on.'

'Can't you change your own beds?' Dad asked.

'We can, but we don't really have time, what with washing everything else and trying to do meals as well,' I said pitifully.

The meals were horrible. They were okay for the first couple of days because Dad bought takeaways or frozen pizzas. But after that he decided we were being totally unhealthy and tried to cook us proper stuff and it was dreadful. He couldn't even manage to heat up those packet meals you get from the supermarket. He burnt things until they were dark brown and nasty, or else they were partly frozen and raw in the middle. He forgot to get milk quite a lot of the time and one morning we had blackcurrant cordial on our cereal, which was surprisingly nice. But it was all a bit peculiar and we longed for Mum's food. I'd thought that I'd eat carrot salad for a month without complaining if only she'd come back.

Dad always made a huge mess in the kitchen and we would have to clean it up.

'Do the dishes please, Poppy' he would mutter as he disappeared back to the living room. I would look around in horror. There would be about six times as much stuff as Mum ever used and it looked as if Dad picked up a new spoon or saucepan every five minutes.

'It's not fair. I feel like a slave,' I spluttered.

'I'll help,' Eddie offered without enthusiasm.

'Good. You can load the dishwasher while I tidy away the rest of the mess.'

Naturally the dishwasher decided it was going on strike at all the work it had to do. We begged Dad to get Mr Collins to come and fix it but he refused.

'I think he's too embarrassed to have him come here, after practically accusing him of having run off with Mum,' I told Eddie furiously. He shrugged and started to fill the sink so we could wash the dishes by hand. That didn't improve either of our tempers and we bickered all evening after that.

I was sure Mum had gone off with someone else. After all, that is what had happened to lots of kids at school. Their parents had split up and their Mum or Dad had a new partner. It had always seemed to be something exciting that happened to other people and we discovered that it wasn't nearly as exciting when it was us. Eddie still stuck to his 'vanishing' story and that led to all sorts of fuss and botheration. We did a lot of listening at doors and discovered that the police thought that something bad had happened to Mum. They thought Eddie must have seen it happen and his mind had blanked it out by making him forget it and making up the vanishing story. So poor Eddie was interviewed by a psychologist who made him answer all sorts of dumb questions. At least, Eddie said they were dumb. Then they made him go to counseling. I had to go too, much to my indignation. I felt they should all be out looking for Mum to see where she went but instead we had to go to Mrs Witherspoon. She was quite an old lady and she kept trying to be friends with us and to make us do creative art stuff and play with dolls. I am far too old to play with dolls, particularly when someone else is watching.

'Now why don't we have a pretend birthday party,' twittered Mrs Witherspoon, handing me a blonde doll in a bright pink dress. 'What do you think Dolly would like?'

I was going to wind her up by suggesting dissecting her with a sharp knife or throttling her with a noose but decided it might end up with even more counseling, so I kept my mouth firmly shut.

I sneaked a look at our files one day when Mrs Witherspoon went off to the toilet and it said that I was 'repressing my emotions' and that Eddie was 'withdrawn and obviously traumatised.' Duh! Anyone would be traumatised if their mother walked out of their life with no warning.

After a while the fuss died down and we stopped going to counseling, thank goodness. About that time Dad got really ratty. He was angry about having to work from home and he had convinced himself that Mum had left him for someone else. So he bellowed at us because we were there and she wasn't.

'Your mother might as well be dead,' he complained one day.

'Maybe she is,' I sniffed. 'Maybe she's dead and never coming back. I hate you.'

I slammed the door and stormed to my room.

After that, Dad was stiff and polite to me and never mentioned Mum's name again. I couldn't bear the thought that she had preferred living with someone else to being with us so I decided to think of her as dead. That might sound callous, but it was easier really. If friends asked where our mother was I'd say, 'she's dead.' They'd gulp and change the subject, which was such a relief.

Eddie didn't say she was dead. He didn't say anything. He still thought she'd vanished and that maybe some day she'd come back again. I gave up trying to change his mind after a while. Eddie started sitting on the swinging seat and staring vacantly into the air, which was a bit freaky. It seemed harmless enough, though, so Dad and I left him to it.

About the time Dad got really angry, he decided he'd better do something about the food situation. We were trying our best. Eddie could fry eggs and bacon and I could make a chocolate pudding in the microwave, but we were all too mixed up and cross to enjoy eating like that for long. So Dad advertised for a housekeeper and Mrs Jennings arrived to look after us. She was big and motherly and Eddie and I hated her. She'd pick up all our stuff and keep our rooms tidy and we'd drop clothes on the floor straight away on purpose. She'd cook boring nutritional meals that Dad ate in an absent-minded way. He'd gone all vague and uncaring once the anger wore off. But the worst was that Mrs Jennings felt sorry for us.

'Poor little boy,' she'd say pitying, as Eddie walked past her pretending she didn't exist.

'So sad,' she'd quaver at me, when I shrieked at her to leave me alone.

I came home early one afternoon from school. We'd been having a really boring sports exchange and our team had been wiped out early on, so the teacher took pity on us and said we could leave earlier than usual. I arrived home to hear laughter coming from the dining room. I knew it couldn't be Dad, as he never laughed at anything any more. I didn't think it was Mrs Jennings, unless she was a lunatic and laughed to herself. Come to think of it, that might even have been possible. But then I heard talking, so I sort of slunk past the corner of the house and listened outside the window. I risked a quick look inside to see Mrs Jennings with two other women, who I guess were her friends. She was telling them all about our family and how Dad was 'the strong and silent type and obviously in need of a good woman.' Then, while I was gasping at the sheer brass nerve of her, she went on to say that I was a problem child who needed taking in hand. That's what was making them laugh, thinking of ways of sorting me out.

'And that poor little Eddie, it's such a shame. He's touched of course, not right in the head,' Mrs Jennings remarked. Her friends nodded and murmured agreement. I was so furious I started shaking. I stamped in through the door and stood there glaring at them.

'Oh Poppy, you're home early,' said Mrs Jennings nervously.

'Get out,' I howled. 'You're sitting in my mother's seat and that's her favourite coffee cup.' The women all leapt to their feet and Mrs Jennings nearly spilt her coffee. 'Go away, we don't want you here,' I screamed at Mrs Jennings. She stood there with her mouth hanging open, looking at me.

'I won't be spoken to like that,' she bristled.

The next minute the door swung back with a crash as Dad stormed in.

'I can't work with all this noise,' he thundered.

There was a moment of silence then suddenly we all began talking at the same time. Mrs Jennings was complaining about my manners, her friends were apologising for being a nuisance and I was bellowing to Dad that he had to get rid of Mrs Jennings because she wanted to marry him and I didn't want her for a mother.

'Enough!' Dad roared.

We all went quiet and one of the ladies went pale and started trembling.

'Mrs Jennings, kindly leave this house and take your friends with you,' Dad went on icily.

Mrs Jennings looked affronted but did as she was bid, while I burst into tears of relief.

'I don't like her,' I sobbed. 'She's not part of our family.'

Dad looked stricken and bolted for the living room. He hates it when I cry.

So it was burnt toast and baked beans for the next few nights while we all settled down again. The only good thing that happened at that time as far as I could tell was that Tyler had finally been spotted taunting Eddie and had been told off. So Eddie at least wasn't having a hard time but he didn't seem to care. He was nearly as vague and apathetic as Dad was.
Chapter 4.

Over the next couple of months we tried a succession of housekeepers. None of them lasted more than a few weeks. One of them, Mrs Cassidy, drank all the time and the rubbish bin was full of clanking bottles and cans. She was quite nice, actually, and was happy for us to do whatever we wanted to. She even managed to keep the place tidy after a fashion which suited Eddie and me quite well. She tipped all the clean washing in a huge pile in the hallway once a week for us each to sort through, which meant that we left it there and would grab stuff as we needed it when we walked past. We thought that was a really good idea although Mum would have had fourteen fits at the sight. The meals were a bit haphazard though. Mrs Cassidy started off with nice things like roast dinners with apple crumble for dessert, but after a couple of weeks the pile of bottles in the bin grew and we were lucky to get cheese on toast. And that was usually burnt. Dad put up with it until he found her passed out on the kitchen floor one afternoon. She had spent all the housekeeping money on a large bottle of cheap gin and then finished the bottle. He waited until she recovered then told her not to come back. I think he was using an agency to find these people and I didn't fancy being the person he spoke to on the phone about it. When Dad did stop being apathetic he tended to get very loud and angry with people who annoyed him.

The next housekeeper had a bratty little pre-schooler with her who made more mess than her mother cleared up. Her name was Gloria, the kid I mean, and she got into everything. She ruined half a dozen of my books by scribbling on them with felt pen and even tried writing on the walls. Fortunately that wiped off but her mother didn't even tell her off for it. She said Gloria was being 'creative.' if I went around being creative like that I would have been grounded for six months. Gloria became more creative every day and we got into the habit of shaking our shoes upside down before we put them on after Eddie found a half eaten marmite sandwich in his one morning. Gloria's mother shifted all the stuff higher out of reach, which meant that we couldn't find anything. Even Dad was annoyed when he spent half an hour looking for the toothpaste one night before discovering it on the bathroom windowsill. But he would probably have put up with that if Gloria hadn't been creative with Dad's work papers and computer one day. He'd had to go out to meet someone about a work thing and Gloria climbed onto his chair. She deleted a heap of stuff on the computer and crashed it completely by playing with the buttons and turning it on and off. She then drew scribbly pictures over his carefully typed notes. This made Dad so furious that he gave her mother notice on the spot when he came home and it was baked beans again for the next few nights.

Miss Morrison was the last straw. She was a timid, scrawny woman with big thick glasses on a thin beaky nose. She used to jump if she heard a loud noise and cringed if we raised our voices. She crept around the place quietly and didn't upset anybody. She even kept the house clean despite the mess we all made. But she couldn't cook at all and the meals were nearly as bad as Dad's. Her specialty was a thin grey stew that was boiled so long it no longer had any flavour. We politely made suggestions for other meals.

'What about macaroni cheese and steak, Miss Morrison? That would be a wonderful meal.'

'Or meatloaf.'

'Mum has heaps of recipe books she wrote herself. You could try making some of those.'

Miss Morrison would sigh, 'Oh dear, that does sound like a good idea. I'm not sure if I could manage it, though.' Then she'd cook stew again. Sometimes she made dumplings but they were so heavy they sank like stones in the stew and looked so grey and tough that even Dad refused to try them.

'At least she doesn't drink gin so the housekeeping bill hasn't gone up,' Dad said gloomily one night.

'It's awful, Dad. I think I'll stay and have tea at Becky's house every night. I can't stand this,' I protested.

'You can't do that,' Dad fumed. 'I don't want Becky's mother thinking I can't afford to feed you.'

'Well I'm not coming home to this muck every day.'

Dad sighed and Eddie nodded in agreement. We put up with Miss Morrison until the end of that week then finally she left of her own accord. I think it was because Eddie had started jumping out at her from behind doors saying 'boo.' Miss Morrison would scream and clutch her chest before smiling weakly and scuttling away.

It was quite a relief when she had gone and we lived on takeaways for a while and our clothes all got filthier and filthier as no one was prepared to do the washing. One day Dad suddenly made a decision.

'I'm going to ask your Aunt Daisy to come and stay,' he said briskly, in a rare moment of efficiency. 'I'm not getting any work done and we'll all end up in the poorhouse at this rate.'

'Who on earth is Aunt Daisy?' I asked. Neither Mum nor Dad has any sisters and this was the first we had heard of her.

'She is more a sort of cousin by marriage,' Dad explained. 'She wrote to me the other day saying that her house is being demolished to make way for a motorway project and she wants time to look around for somewhere else to live. She ought to go into an old people's home but she doesn't feel ready for that. So having her here will be doing her a favour as well as helping us out.'

'Good idea,' I agreed. I had visions of a dear little old lady who would cook us wonderful meals and shower us with affection.

'I'll help you move your things into Poppy's room,' Dad said to Eddie.

We both gaped at him.

'What? Why?' yelped Eddie.

'Because we need the room for Aunt Daisy. You and Poppy can share and there's nowhere else.'

Eddie and I were both furious about this. Not because we minded sharing a room with each other so much, but on principle. We had always had our own bedrooms. When I tried to explain this to Dad he wouldn't listen.

'It's either that or you will share with Aunt Daisy,' he told me firmly.

'I'd rather have Eddie,' I said dubiously.

For once I made the right decision so Fate isn't always unkind.

Aunt Daisy arrived on a Saturday morning. Dad had gone to pick her up in the car and they turned up right on lunchtime. Eddie and I went out to the car to meet them and immediately wished we hadn't. Aunt Daisy was horrible. She looked like a sweet little old lady, complete with flat black old-lady shoes and a sensible grey skirt and pale blue cardigan. She even had improbably silver-blue hair and spectacles, but when you looked closely you could see she had piercing little beady eyes that bored into you like gimlets. Actually I don't know what a gimlet is but if it sounds horribly painful then that's what Aunt Daisy was like. She looked all around her and sniffed as if to show us that our place wasn't up to much. She insisted on holding onto my arm as she climbed out of the car and that's when I first realised she was nasty.

She pinched my arm and said, 'not much muscle there. You'll get fat one of these days, my girl.' That made me loathe her instantly. She tweaked a piece of Eddie's hair and jeered, 'far too long. You look like a girl.' That didn't exactly endear her to Eddie, either.

The worst part was that Dad thought she was okay. From the minute Aunt Daisy arrived she could do no wrong and we were the ones who were constantly in trouble. If Aunt Daisy quavered that lifting the groceries was an awful strain then Eddie was told off for not doing it for her. If Aunt Daisy murmured that she'd really prefer our beds to be made each day then I was the one sent to make them.

Eddie and I couldn't understand it.

'It's like she's some awful witch and she's put a spell on Dad,' Eddie complained.

'I think it's because she's old,' I told him wearily. I've noticed that. When anyone says something rude everyone is appalled but if it's an old person they're allowed and everyone thinks they're eccentric. Or they excuse it by saying, 'old so-and-so is too old to change. You'll have to put up with him or her, they don't mean any harm.'

But Aunt Daisy was truly ghastly. She liked nothing better than to read the death notices in the paper and cackle over all the ones she knew. She would hang around the gate waiting for the paper boy to arrive then snatch the paper and scurry back to the house with it.

'I see Maude Moorhouse has died. I never liked her and now she's dead and I'm still alive. That will teach her to criticise my garden. I have outlived her! Hah!' she'd gloat, from the best armchair facing the TV. Not that it mattered where she sat. Aunt Daisy didn't like TV, which meant that the rest of us hardly ever got to watch it. That suited Dad fine. He'd pushed bits of furniture around to make a sort of cave at one end of the living room and he slunk in there every day and half the night to work. He even had the phone in there with him and our friends very rapidly cottoned on that we couldn't talk on the phone any more. My tentative request for a mobile met with a snarl and I had no hope of buying one myself. Dad hadn't given us any pocket money for months and went all injured and poor looking if I asked for money for school trips.

Aunt Daisy was hard of hearing. At least, she claimed to be hard of hearing, but we reckoned she only used it as an excuse when it suited her. She could hear the fridge door open from three rooms away and tell us off. She could hear us if we tried to sneak outside when we were supposed to be doing our homework or tidying our rooms. But she couldn't hear us if we asked her to do something.

'Aunt Daisy, my PE gear is still muddy and I told you I needed it for today.'

'I'm afraid I didn't hear you, dear.'

She was also highly qualified in the art of complaining. She'd say to Dad, 'I don't wish to complain, but...' and then go on to complain about something we'd done or hadn't done. Dad would apologise to her and tell us off which made us mad.

'I don't wish to complain, but Eddie hasn't made his bed this morning. Of course I will do it myself but I'm not getting any younger and I may not manage to cook the tea as well.'

'Eddie! Go and make your bed at once.'

'But Dad...'

'Do as you are told, Eddie.'

Aunt Daisy complained to the postman about the way he put the letters in the box and if he was even a minute later than she thought he should be. She complained to the milkman so much that he refused to deliver stuff any more and Eddie and I had to buy the milk on the way home from school. She complained to the council about the noise if there were any roadworks near our house and complained to the police about the speed of the cars that went down our street. She complained to the neighbours that their TV sets or children made too much noise and generally made herself unpleasant to everyone.

Aunt Daisy didn't appear to get on with anyone so at least there weren't any other old ladies cluttering the place up, but she never went out much either. She ordered the groceries by phone, the same every week. She complained to the delivery people about the price but fortunately they grinned and ignored her so at least we were fed. But the meals were so boring. We knew what day it was by the smell. Monday mutton stew, Tuesday sausages, Wednesday meat loaf and so on. We would have known what was for tea anyway, as we had to peel all the vegetables and cut up the meat and do everything under her critical eyes. Then she sat back and took all the credit for cooking the meals and slaving over a hot stove. Eddie and I thought that was totally unfair. We tried to point out to Dad that we were doing all the work but he didn't want to know.

'I'm glad you are helping Aunt Daisy,' he muttered and dived back to his computer.

At least Eddie and I learnt how to cook. I reckoned I could make meatloaf and stew in my sleep after awhile and Eddie was a dab hand at chicken casserole and baked potatoes. After tea Dad made us do all the washing up, which annoyed us, as the dishwasher was still broken.

'There's nothing wrong with washing a few dishes,' Aunt Daisy cackled. 'When I was a girl we had to chop up a pile of firewood and heat the water on the coal range before we could wash the dishes. And what's more, we did it with a smile.'

I suggested that if she enjoyed it so much I would be happy for her to do my share but Dad frowned at me and Aunt Daisy immediately went all feeble and said she was getting too old for that sort of thing now. She was good at using her age like that. Dad kept telling her what a marvel she was whenever she did anything and she went all pathetic and old looking if there was any work to be done while we were around. Especially vacuuming. She would heave a great sigh and say things like,

'I'm not as young as I was. This cleaner is very heavy.'

So Eddie and I would be told to vacuum our own rooms then Aunt Daisy would insist we did all the rest of the house as well. We never had any spare time any more, what with school homework as well as housework. Aunt Daisy claimed to be too old to hang out washing or even to iron the clothes. If we asked her to do anything she said,

'I might be dead this time next year.'

This made whatever we'd asked her seem totally unreasonable, so naturally we ended up doing it ourselves, but we privately christened her Lazy Daisy, which seemed to sum it up.

Aunt Daisy made a fuss about being old and feeble but she could move faster than I could if she wanted to answer the phone or the door. She was such a busybody. I gave up having friends home to play because she practically gave them the third degree asking questions about everything they did. Then she'd embarrass me by telling them what I was like as a baby.

'Oh are you going to eat another pear, Poppy?' she said one afternoon, when Becky had come over to play. 'I remember when you were little that they gave you awful hives. Maybe you'd better show me your chest so I can see if you're getting any more.'

'Horrible old witch,' I muttered, as Becky nearly choked trying not to laugh.

'And I don't think you'd better eat that banana,' she'd tell Eddie kindly. 'I remember the time you ate a banana and vomited all over the floor. You wet your bed that night, too. You were a very difficult child.'

Eddie gave up having friends over as well.

Aunt Daisy made no secret of the fact she thought children ought to go to boarding school. We thought if Dad heard that too often he might cave in, so we stayed out of the way and tried to be good.
Chapter 5.

It is hard to be good all the time, as the rage seems to build up until you think you're going to explode with the sheer force of it. One day I woke up and no matter what I did, little spurts of fury kept coming out. I hit Eddie twice and shouted at Dad. When I finally lost it and swore at Aunt Daisy, Dad sent me from the table. I stormed to the back yard and threw myself down on the wooden swinging seat in the herb garden. The garden had become a jungle. The plants had grown tall and spindly and the bigger ones had gobbled up all the low growing ones, except right at the edge. I sat there moodily swinging myself backwards and forwards and listened to the swing creaking. It was soothing in a horrible sort of way and I understood why Eddie had spent so much time there. Mind you, since Aunt Daisy had come, neither of us had any spare time any more.

'I do not... _creak...._ like Aunt Daisy _... creak...._ I hate her' _...creak._

Eddie came slumping along the overgrown path and gave a sort of gasp when he saw me.

'What do you want?' I demanded rudely.

'I thought you were Mum for a moment,' he spluttered.

I was going to say something really mean and cutting when I saw he was truly upset and all pale and shaky.

'It's okay. It's only me and I'm in a foul temper,' I confessed. 'Come and join me.'

I patted the seat beside me and Eddie sat down. We creaked back and forth companionably for a few minutes. 'Eddie, what did happen to Mum?' I asked idly.

'I told you and you didn't believe me. She was sitting on the seat like we are and she was swinging and holding some green stuff in her hands and then she simply vanished in a fold of the air.'

Same old story! 'What sort of green stuff?' I asked without interest.

'I don't know. Small stuff like that.'

Eddie pointed to a patch of thyme, which was struggling to grow onto the path. I reached down and plucked a handful. 'Like this?'

I held the thyme up to my nose and breathed in the herby smell of it. It made me sad and reminded me of roast dinners and warm kitchens.

'Exactly like that,' nodded Eddie.

We swung together.

_creak.... creak.... creak...._ went the swing.

As it creaked for the third time there was a sort of shimmer in the air in front of us, like a heat haze on a really hot day. The air seemed to open a crack, no, truly it did. I can't describe it properly. It's the sort of thing you have to see for yourself. But in the crack we could see a sort of steamy window, then it cleared and there was Mum. She was wearing an apron and standing in some sort of kitchen stirring something in a pot. Her lips were moving but we couldn't hear her.

'Mum!' we both shrieked as she looked up and looked straight at us.

Eddie and I jumped up and stumbled to the crack. But as we reached out, the mist swirled back over the window and she was gone.

'That was Mum,' I breathed incredulously.

'I told you she vanished into a crack,' Eddie croaked.

Both of us started crying then. Well, you can't blame us because the worst thing of all was that though Mum had looked right at us, she hadn't seemed to recognize us.

One thing we both agreed on, when we stopped crying, was not to tell Dad. It had upset us so much I couldn't inflict that on him. Especially as we had no idea where Mum was or how to get her back. We didn't think Dad would know either.

'And whatever you do, don't tell Aunt Daisy,' warned Eddie. 'She'd be bound to think we were both loopy. I'd get sent to a mental home instead of a boarding school.'

'Me too,' I agreed shakily. 'But where on earth is Mum? How can we get to her? We have to get her back.'

'Maybe she's not on earth,' breathed Eddie. 'Maybe aliens have taken her and she's on another planet.'

'You've been watching too much Space Monster on TV,' I scoffed, although I had to admit he had a point. It certainly hadn't looked like any place I'd ever seen but the possibility of aliens was way too scary to consider.

About then we heard Dad calling and I had to go back and apologise to Aunt Daisy for being so rude. Part of me was singing inside, I was so happy. I was so pleased to have seen Mum that I said 'sorry' very nicely and part of me even meant it. I could tell that Aunt Daisy was miffed that she didn't have any excuse to punish me – bed without tea was her favourite. Not that it mattered, as whichever one of us it was, the other would smuggle in biscuits or sandwiches at bedtime. If we were both sent to bed without tea, then we took turns to stand guard while the other sneaked into the kitchen. We had to wait to do this until the house was dark and then grab something from the pantry. We had some really peculiar meals that way but at least we didn't starve.

Eddie and I stayed awake talking about it half the night and decided we had to make finding Mum our top priority. We decided that Mum must have been in a different world (okay, I gave in to Eddie on that point) or even a different time from us somehow. Eddie is a whiz at computers as well as at Maths and he said he'd use the school computer to look up everything he could about different worlds while I took out all the books in the school library about magic.

'Because it has to be some sort of magic,' I insisted. I was hoping rather vaguely for fairies although the sort of fairy that would send a person's mother away probably wasn't in the fairy godmother category. More the 'fatten you for supper' type but I didn't want to dwell on that thought.

Eddie was sure there would be a scientific explanation for it and we argued about that for a while but we figured between the two of us we would come up with something. We both rejected the idea that maybe what we'd seen wasn't real. At least I know I did. I guess if we'd told someone like the psychologist that Eddie went to, he'd have said it was an hallucination caused by emotional trauma and sent us off for more counseling.

By the end of a month I was absolutely saturated with magic. I'd stayed up late reading every night until my eyes felt as if they were standing on stalks. I reckoned what I didn't know about Narnia, Hogwarts or Hobbits wasn't worth knowing. I'd read books about flying carpets and genies in bottles and lamps and every sort of wizard and witch that anyone could dream up. I read about dragons and swords with magic powers and precious objects disguised as everyday things that gave you wishes, even though they were invariably tricky and ended badly. I had even spent one weekend ploughing my way though a long and extremely boring science textbook which was cunningly titled 'The Magic of Time and Space.' I was disgruntled to find that it wasn't about magic at all, but decided to read it anyway. It was better than having to sit and listen to Aunt Daisy complaining or even worse, finding me housework to do.

Eddie and I had gone down every day to sit on the swing, except when it was so wet and rainy we wouldn't have seen anything there anyway. We hadn't seen so much as a glimmer, which depressed us rather.

One Saturday afternoon we pooled our knowledge. That's a fancy way of saying that I wrote down everything I could think of that might be relevant into an old exercise book while Eddie told me everything he'd found out. Then we studied it. We read and re-read it. We looked at everything up, down and sideways but by Saturday night we were no nearer finding out what had happened.

'We didn't see a dragon so at least we don't need to find a magic sword,' I said gloomily. 'In fact, we didn't see anything much at all.'

'It did look like a kitchen, a bit,' Eddie said doubtfully.

'Maybe it was a laboratory where they do scientific research,' I suggested, although what Mum would be doing in such a place was hard to fathom.

Maybe it was because I was so swamped with information that I had a really weird dream about frogs that night. I was supposed to kiss all of them so they would turn into princes and I spent hours running away from them down never-ending passages. Despite this, I woke up late the next morning with the beginnings of an idea. Eddie was already up and I could hardly wait until after I'd had breakfast to tell him about it. Aunt Daisy, naturally, decided that we should spend the day cleaning windows.

'I don't wish to complain, but the windows are so dirty I am ashamed,' she said gently, while her beady little eyes darted at us, daring us to oppose her. 'You two need some exercise after being shut up in your room all yesterday. And it is not good for you to sleep in, Poppy. You should get up early every morning and go for a brisk walk instead.'

Eddie was going to leap to my defense, but I frowned at him and he muttered to himself instead.

'Actually, Eddie and I are going to do some gardening today,' I announced virtuously. 'That will be heaps better exercise than cleaning windows.'

Eddie looked surprised but had the good sense not to say anything.

It took the wind right out of Aunt Daisy's sails. She couldn't stop us doing something that was even harder work than the windows and which needed doing even more urgently. Dad, when appealed to, wasn't interested in any of this but grunted,

'Good idea.'

Aunt Daisy rather nastily said she would come down and inspect what we had done so Eddie and I had to lug the spades to the herb garden and dig a few token holes to show we were working.

'Why did you say we'd dig the garden?' complained Eddie.

'We don't have to. I wanted us to be here. I have an idea.'

Eddie brightened at this and listened.

'You know how I told you about that science book I read?'

'You mean the one you complained about because you thought it was about magic and it wasn't?'

'That's the one. Well there was one chapter about a scientist who had a theory that time was in folds and you ought to be able to jump from one fold to the other.'

Eddie looked at me intently as I took a deep breath.

'Well, I reckon he's right. I reckon there are places where the folds are sort of thin or touching closer than others and you can slip through. What's more, I reckon that's what has happened to Mum. She's gone to a different bit of time, which is why she has disappeared.'

'She must have gone into the future. Like Rip Van Winkel who thought he'd been asleep for all those years when he came back,' nodded Eddie.

'Yes, only I think if we want to get to the same bit of time then we have to do something to make it happen.'

'What, you mean like doing exactly what Mum was? We know she was on the swing but we've tried and tried and it has never worked again,' Eddie pointed out.

'I think it's like Mum's recipes,' I explained. 'You have to have all the right ingredients in the right amounts and in the right order to get the results. Now think. What did we do that time when we saw Mum?'

Eddie frowned. 'You were holding the thyme and we were on the swing.'

'Yes and the swing was creaking. I'm sure it's something to do with the sound. Sound can change stuff. You know, like Joshua destroying the walls of Jericho with trumpets in the Bible. If we get the right sound and have the right smell, that's the thyme, then it might work for us.'

Eddie was impressed. 'Let's try it,' he grinned at me.

'This time we'd better jump off quick when we see the crack,' I told him.

We each picked a bunch of thyme, although it was so tangled with other plants that we ended up with a few other things as well. We sat down and I pushed us off on the swing with my foot.

_creak...._ went the swing. The herb garden waved lank and tall in the breeze.

_creak...._ a bee buzzed as it shot past my face.

creak....

There was a misty haze over the garden. Eddie and I crossed our fingers, hardly daring to breathe. The mist cleared and we could see a long crack in the air in front of us. Grasping Eddie's hand I called 'now,' and together we jumped for the crack.
Chapter 6.

There was mist all around us and I felt Eddie grip my hand hard. It was icy cold, and just when I thought we would freeze to death the mist lifted enough for us to see two long narrow openings.

'Which way do we go?' I whispered to Eddie. My teeth were chattering and my legs were so cold that I couldn't even feel them from the knees down. Eddie shrugged and looked scared.

'You choose,' he stammered.

'The left one then,' I told him bravely. 'Come on, let's see if we can find Mum.'

We stumbled through the opening and the air immediately warmed up so we could feel our feet again. The mist slowly cleared as well and we looked around to see that we were standing in a mossy clearing in the middle of some bush. A warm sun was shining and for a few minutes we simply stood there, soaking up the warmth and letting it penetrate down to our bones. It was very quiet, apart from a few birds singing in the trees and the far off sound of water trickling. The air smelt really fresh, sort of earthy and clean. Eddie and I looked around with interest.

'I can't see Mum,' Eddie frowned.

'Maybe there's a house or something somewhere,' I said. 'We did see Mum in a kitchen, remember.'

'That was ages ago, though. She might not be there any more,' Eddie said in a small voice.

We were scared to make too much noise. Everything was so peaceful that we somehow felt it wasn't a good idea to talk. We stood there watching the trees waving lazily in the soft breeze, feeling a bit lost and bewildered. It was the sort of place you wanted to lie down in and daydream and not think about anything unpleasant at all.

'I'm going to explore,' Eddie said suddenly, and started to walk towards a gap in the trees.

'I'll come with you.'

We walked into the bush between a couple of large trees. A narrow track meandered around for a while and we walked down it, brushing leaves from our faces and trying to catch a glimpse of the many birds we could hear singing in the trees around us. We stopped at a narrow trickle of water where it cascaded down a ferny bank and ended in a clear pool edged with stones. Eddie reached down and scooped up a handful of water.

'Stop. Don't drink that,' I screeched.

'Why not?' Eddie asked me. 'I'm thirsty and it looks perfectly clean.'

'There might be all sorts of horrible bugs in it,' I said.

Eddie looked at the stream. 'I can't see any,' he said indignantly.

'You can't see bugs. I mean, not that sort of bugs.'

'I don't care. I'm thirsty.' Eddie drank a quantity of water and splashed a few handfuls over his face. I stood there watching him enviously. It looked cool and refreshing and I was thirsty too.

'Oh what the heck. I'm sure it won't kill us,' I said crossly, and bent down to take a drink. The water was wonderful. It was cold and clear and tasted a tiny bit of earth and trees and well, life. I flicked a few drops at Eddie as I stood up. He immediately splashed me back and we had a loud and extremely satisfying water fight, which ended with me running away shrieking as Eddie tried to push a wet fern frond down the back of my T-shirt. I pounded along the winding track and only stopped when I came up against a huge fallen tree that blocked my way. There were vines climbing all over it and hanging down from nearby trees as well. Eddie and I tried hanging from them and swinging the way monkeys do but it was much harder than it looked, as the vines wouldn't swing properly. There was too much other bush growing in the way. We wandered on and climbed a steepish bit for a while. I was hoping we would get to a hilltop or something so we could see if there were any houses around but there was bush all around us.

'We could climb a tree,' Eddie suggested.

'Can't be bothered. Anyway, we'd have to climb awfully high to see over this lot.'

We slumped down on a patch of leaves in the shade and listed to the birds. We tried to identify them but as the only birds we recognised were Tui and Morepork we didn't have much success. It was not likely we'd see a Morepork in the daylight anyway. I felt my eyes growing heavier and I could see that Eddie had fallen asleep. I yawned and decided to get up in a few minutes.

A lot later, Eddie shook me awake. The sun had moved and our shady place was feeling distinctly chilly.

'Poppy, we have to look for Mum.'

'I don't think she's here,' I said, as I stretched my arms. 'Ow. My leg has gone all tingly. I must have been lying on it.'

'Stand up then,' said Eddie irritably. 'What shall we do?'

I thought for a while but my brain was all fogged up from sleeping in the daytime and I couldn't think straight.

'Maybe we should go back and try the other doorway,' Eddie suggested.

'Good idea.' I took a couple of steps towards one of the trees then stopped. 'Eddie! I don't know where we are!'

We stood and looked at each other stupidly. We could not remember which direction we had come from. There was no sign of our footprints on the fallen leaves and I turned around a few times, trying to remember which direction we had been facing.

'Listen for the stream,' Eddie said, with a note of panic in his voice.

We listened and argued about where we thought it was. Eddie insisted he was right so we set off again with him in front. He led the way confidently until we came to the water. We found that this was a totally different stream, which dripped and gurgled down the hillside away from us. Our one had run quite swiftly though a rocky channel but this one was only a trickle, nearly hidden beneath overgrowing ferns.

'We're lost,' Eddie said blankly.

'It is all my fault,' I croaked. 'We don't even know which direction the opening is in. I'm so stupid. I should have marked it with my sneaker or a stick or something.'

Eddie looked at me in horror. 'But we have to get through,' he whimpered. 'I want to find Mum and she must be in the other doorway. And even if she isn't, we need to know where the crack is so we can go back home again.'

'Maybe we are close enough to work it from here,' I said soothingly, hoping that I was right. 'I still have the bunch of thyme in my pocket.'

I took it out and looked at it doubtfully. It still looked okay, although a bit ragged around the edges from being in my pocket. 'Now all we need is something that squeaks.' I looked at the trees and bushes with a sensation of hopelessness.

'Maybe we could make the squeaking sound ourselves,' Eddie said after a while.

I felt a bit doubtful about this but decided we didn't have anything to lose. We both began screeching at the tops of our voices. Five minutes of this and nothing had happened except that our throats were sore and we scared off every bird in earshot. We sat down on the ground in disgust.

'Lazy Daisy will be furious. She will have to cook the tea all by herself tonight. And do the dishes,' I said in an attempt to cheer Eddie up. He looked at me and shrugged and we both sat silently, trying to figure out a way out of the mess we were in.

'I guess Dad will think we are dead as well,' Eddie muttered after a while. I tried to think of something cheerful to say in answer to this but was forced to admit he was probably right.

We sat for what felt like hours. The birds all began singing again and it would have been a lovely peaceful spot to rest if we hadn't felt so awful inside. I was trying to put on a brave face so Eddie wouldn't realise I was actually terrified and I suspect he was doing much the same thing. I wished I had done the sensible thing and prepared for a journey instead of leaping through the crack like that. I could have brought all sorts of useful stuff, including a compass. That way we would have known what direction to go in. But it was too late for that.

'I'm hungry,' Eddie said finally.

'Me too. I don't know what we can do about it, though. I haven't got any food with me. Have you?'

Eddie searched though his pockets and came up with a lollipop that looked rather old and uninviting. The stick was bent and the cellophane wrapping was torn and covered in fluff.

'You can have half if you want,' he said doubtfully.

I shuddered. 'No thanks. You can eat it, if you're sure it's not too dirty even for you. Where did you get it anyway?'

'I swapped it to Toby for a pencil sharpener. I was saving it for an emergency.'

'I guess this qualifies as an emergency,' I told him.

Eddie tore the cellophane off and crunched down the lollipop.

'Where do you reckon we are, Poppy?'

'I think we may have gone back in time,' I said hesitantly. 'There are no sounds of cars or planes or even people talking. I'm sure we only changed time and not place, so that must mean this is what our street looked like years ago.'

Eddie looked around with interest. 'Cool,' he said. 'I wonder if this is where the school is.'

He walked over to a small manuka bush and tossed the lollipop stick at it.

'Don't do that,' I said automatically. 'You should put it in a bin.'

'There isn't one,' Eddie pointed out. 'It's only cardboard stuff and that comes from trees so it doesn't matter anyway.'

'It might,' I argued.

'How?'

'It might change things so that in a thousand years time there is something different here.'

Eddie scoffed at this. 'I don't think one lollipop stick is going to change the school into a shopping mall.' His eyes lit up. 'And even if it did, that would be an improvement.'

He tossed the cellophane wrapper onto the ground and piled leaves over it. I watched him dismally, wondering if we were fated to spend the rest of our lives in this place and wishing I had paid more attention in class when we studied early New Zealand. I wouldn't know how to find edible berries and I had a horrible feeling that birds and fish would be a major part of what was available for food. I was wondering whether I would ever be hungry enough to eat a bird raw, even supposing I could catch one, when there was a rustling in the bush. Eddie stepped back smartly.

'It's okay,' I said, sounding braver than I felt. 'We didn't have any large or dangerous animals in New Zealand years ago. Actually we still don't unless you count pigs and I don't think they are dangerous.' I stood up and walked over to Eddie.

'I don't know about that. It sounds fairly large to me,' Eddie whimpered.

He was right. The rustling noise grew louder and as we watched in horror an enormous bird came crashing though the undergrowth and into the clearing.

'It's a dinosaur,' I moaned.

'No, it's not. It's a moa,' gasped Eddie.

I didn't care what it was. I have never liked birds at the best of times and this one was enormous. It was far too big for my liking, and as it turned its head towards us with interest I grabbed Eddie by the hand and ran. I could hear Eddie calling, 'It's only a moa. Stop running, Poppy. It's only chasing us because we are running. It won't hurt us.' But I didn't care. I was beyond reason and I ran through the bush as fast as I could, dragging Eddie along behind me. Leaves slapped at my face and arms and vines and tree roots tried to trip my feet. We came to the fallen log and scrambled over it, heedless of grazed arms and legs. I was too terrified to turn and see if the moa was following us, and concentrated on pulling Eddie grimly onwards. We burst though the trees into a clearing and I paused to catch my breath.

'I've got a stitch in my side,' Eddie gasped.

'Shh,' I whispered desperately. 'Be quiet. It will hear you.'

I was too late. With a rustle of feathers the moa ran into the clearing behind us. I began to scream and waved the bunch of thyme in the air. The moa took a step closer, looking at me with interest and I screamed louder. There was a sudden shimmer and a crack in the air opened. With great presence of mind, I grabbed Eddie and pulled him through it, as I sniffed the thyme and thrust the bunch in his face. The air immediately turned cold as we saw a narrow doorway in front of us. Eddie giggled rather hysterically.

'That was the right sound, anyway.'
Chapter 7.

I was shaking too hard to talk and my legs were freezing again. I aimed for the right hand opening and before I froze completely I dragged Eddie through it. We stopped abruptly. We were standing in some sort of weird room. There were doors all around us in some sort of shiny colour that wasn't quite silver and wasn't quite gold. There were flat, glistening black slabs stretching out on blocks of silvery stuff and other slabs so white that it hurt your eyes to look at them. The air had a faint smell of cleaning stuff – not the flower scented stuff but the disinfectant one. It was very sterile, like a hospital, and completely empty.

'We made it,' I said to Eddie. My voice didn't even echo, as you would have expected it to in that place. Instead it sounded dull and flat.

'We'd better find Mum,' murmured Eddie.

I held his hand for moral support and he didn't even object, which showed that he was at least as scared as I was. 'Which do you suppose is the door?' I asked him. We looked around blankly. All the walls looked the same, with doors in every direction. Eddie patted the one nearest to him.

'There are no handles,' he said in surprise. 'How do they open?'

I felt completely helpless. He was right. All the doors were smooth shiny blanks.

'Maybe they push,' I suggested.

We tried tentatively pushing at the nearest doors then, when that didn't work, we resorted to kicking them. After about half an hour we were hot and bothered and extremely cross but still stuck in the room. I even kicked the floor, which was a shiny grey plastic stuff, but that didn't help either.

'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse, or even a moa,' groaned Eddie. Turning to the nearest door he thumped on it with his fist. 'Open up, you stupid thing,' he shouted.

There was a hissing sound and the door slid across to reveal a long white corridor stretching out in front of us. Our mouths hung open in amazement and we felt rather foolish.

'Okay, so now we know all we have to do is ask,' I grinned nervously.

Eddie gave me a shaky smile and we ventured out into the corridor. I think that was a mistake. The floor started moving as soon as we stepped onto it and we clung to each other in surprise.

'I guess it's one way to travel,' Eddie said after a while.

I nodded. It was an eerie feeling travelling silently and smoothly down the long white corridor. Eddie tried calling out 'open' at intervals to see if there were any other doors in the corridor but nothing happened. The floor seemed to pick up speed after a while so we sat down and decided to see where we would end up.

The end came unexpectedly. One moment we were yawning with boredom looking at the white walls, and the next moment the floor seemed to drop down, taking us with it. My stomach did flip-flops and Eddie grabbed my hand again. The floor lurched and tilted and we yelled as we were thrown into a curved pipe. The sides were too high to see over, even if I could have stood up and we were travelling much too fast to do that. I shrieked as a large lumpy thing bounced into the tube beside us. It was as big as my head and seemed to be some sort of dirty mossy stuff but Eddie hissed at me not to touch it.

'It might be poisonous,' he warned me.

I shuddered. No way would I want to touch something like that anyway. There was a clang and hiss and occasional popping sound as other strange shaped objects tumbled into the tube, then we were swept over and dumped onto another flat plastic conveyer belt in an enormous room.

Eddie screamed and so did I. It was terrifying. There were great machines everywhere, rattling and creaking. The noise was appalling. Some metal tube things were pumping up and down like pistons while large sharp looking pincers came down from above us and picked up some of the mossy lumps. Eddie and I clung to each other as we were tossed and buffeted past these machines. At one stage there was a flash of orange light across us then we were tumbled onto another conveyer belt.

This one led to a quieter area, thank goodness, as my head was beginning to pound with the noise. It was also a lot slower but that was worse as it gave us time to see what was ahead of us. The belt stretched into a black hole where machines made a terrible grinding sound. It was a bit like the noise the cat makes when it eats a mouse under the bed and crunches on the bones. I felt sick.

'We have to get off here,' I whimpered. 'I'm not going in there. It's going to chew us up.'

Eddie looked green. 'We can't,' he moaned. 'There's nowhere to go.'

I crawled to the side of the belt and peered over, with Eddie holding onto my ankles. The belt was suspended in the air and below was a drop for what looked like kilometres with a foggy sort of darkness below it. I put my hand out over the edge of the belt and jerked it back with a gasp.

'It feels like an electric fence,' I said indignantly. 'My bones have gone all wobbly.'

'Must be a forcefield,' nodded Eddie, who has played every sci-fi computer game ever invented. 'We must be in the future.'

'It's not going to be a very bright future for us,' I wailed, wondering where our dead bodies would end up. 'Do you suppose this happened to Mum?'

Eddie didn't answer this, as with a whoosh he was suddenly sucked away from me into the hole. I lost it completely then. I screamed and screamed and kept screaming as I was sucked away into the dark hole with a blast of air. Then I was frozen silent in terror. A flash of green light lit me up and a metallic voice said,

'Garbage. Garbage. Life ... potential? Assessment Area Four.'

I heard all this in bewilderment before I was blown down into a green tube. It was like one of those water slides at the pools only with warmish air instead of water. I dropped down and around curves, to end with a bump beside Eddie. We were on a perfectly ordinary looking bench seat. You know, the sort you get in bus shelters that are all hard plastic and not quite comfortable. I was thankful that at least it wasn't moving after all the churning around we'd had already, but my sigh of relief came too soon.

'We're moving again,' Eddie called, rather unnecessarily, as I could see the walls gliding by beside us.

'Maybe it will scoot us right back to the swinging seat,' I suggested hopefully.

'But then we wouldn't find Mum.'

Eddie's voice was sounding a bit wobbly, so I bit my lip and tried to think positive thoughts.

The journey was a bit like sitting in a train and from time to time we passed open doorways. We peeped inside but they were incredibly weird. One was all strange lights flickering while the one next to it was all misty with a booming sound coming out of it. Another looked like a glasshouse with rows and rows of green stuff growing on trays. Shortly after that, the seat stopped by an open door and a machine came gliding towards us. It was shaped like a big rectangular box about as high as my waist, and had things like camera lenses all over it that went in and out with a whirring sound. The machine came up to us and said, 'descend now,' in a thin squeaky voice.

'It's a robot,' Eddie yelled excitedly.

Now in all the Sci Fi movies you see, the robots are really cute. They strike up friendships with people and perform all sorts of amazing antics. This robot obviously hadn't seen any of those movies. It was about as cute as your average refrigerator and, what's more, had several menacing metal pincers that it waved at us.

'Descend, descend,' the robot repeated.

We obediently climbed off the seat, although I have to say I was a bit nervous.

'Occupation?' demanded the robot.

'What?' we goggled.

'Occupation?' it demanded again.

'What does it mean?' Eddie whispered to me.

'It wants to know what sort of work we do,' I whispered back.

'We are children. We don't work,' said Eddie loudly. I don't know why we felt we had to talk loudly to it. It was probably just as good at picking up our whispers but it made us feel a bit braver.

'Occupation?' repeated the robot.

'We don't have one,' I protested. I might as well have saved my breath. The robot stood solidly in front of us and waved its pincers again.

'Occupation?'

'Oh this isn't getting us anywhere. Housework. We wash dishes and cook meals,' I shouted.

'What did you say that for?' Eddie asked me indignantly.

'It was only going to keep saying 'occupation' at us and it's true. We've been doing most of the housework ever since Aunt Daisy came to stay.'

As Eddie muttered that he hoped that didn't mean we'd be put to work washing dishes, the robot turned away from us. 'Follow,' it instructed and we trooped behind it as it rolled through an open door. It was such a relief to see an almost normal room. There were two beds in the middle and along one wall were two chairs in front of a green screen that looked like a TV. The robot said 'rest' and glided out the door, which shut behind it.

'Let's explore,' said Eddie. 'Maybe we can find some food in here somewhere.' He put his hand on all the walls in turn saying, 'open.'

Quite a few of them did and we discovered racks of clothes, a bit like shapeless pyjamas, and some sort of warm soft covers which we guessed were for the beds. One door opened to a small bathroom that we were both pleased to discover worked normally, as long as you told things what to do. If you asked for water the tap would turn on, and Eddie spent at least ten minutes making it turn on and off and go hotter and colder just for the fun of it.

A burst of static came from a speaker on the wall and made us jump.

'Assignment of duties. Food tasting,' a voice droned.

'Food tasting! Thank goodness for that. I'm starving,' grinned Eddie.

Now that he had mentioned it, I realised I was ravenous. I'd been too churned up with all the travelling round to notice it before, but as soon as I heard the word 'food' I felt totally empty inside. There was a 'ping' and two white containers dropped out of a hatch beside the TV screen, a bit like one of those candy bar dispensers you get at shopping malls. We grabbed the containers and ripped them open. In each one there was a small plastic spoon and a blob of purple jelly stuff. I had a sudden thought about the duties of a food taster. They were used in the old days by kings and emperors to taste the food before it was served up. If the food taster didn't die, then it was a fairly safe bet the food wasn't poisoned then the king could eat it. I hadn't seen any sign of a king, but that didn't mean there wasn't one, and I guess we could be considered expendable.

'Yuck,' I said. 'We shouldn't eat this. It might be poisonous. Don't touch it.'

Eddie poked at his jelly doubtfully. It wobbled lethargically and looked even less appetizing.

'We want more food, I mean, different food,' I said to the screen.

Nothing happened.

Eddie prodded his jelly again. Then he said, 'I'm sure it's not poisonous. I mean, why would they bother? If they'd wanted to kill us they could have squashed us up in that garbage compressor machine.'

What he said made sense and I watched in trepidation as he defiantly took a mouthful of jelly. 'It's not too bad,' he said cautiously. 'Go on, try it.'

I took the smallest spoonful I could and touched my tongue to it. It tasted bland and bit like soap. 'I'm not eating it,' I told him, and firmly put both containers down on the bench beside the hatch. The screen lit up with 2 round glowing buttons. One was red and one was yellow.

'Do you suppose we are supposed to push one?' Eddie asked me.

'I don't know. Maybe,' I answered cautiously.

Eddie reached out and pushed the red button. The screen gave a beep and the word 'rejected' flashed up.

'Oh,' I said, as it dawned on me. 'We have to judge if the food is any good or not. Let's try pushing the yellow button next time.'

I don't know if the machine heard me, but the next minute the containers of jelly dropped down a chute and about thirty seconds later there was a 'ping' and two more containers appeared. These ones had a green stuff that looked like broccoli in them, although it tasted a bit like candy floss. Eddie and I both ate those then I pushed the yellow button. It flashed up with the word 'accepted,'

'I was right. It does want us to judge the food samples. I wonder why?'

'Maybe there are machines like the robot making it and they can't taste it so they need real people,' Eddie suggested.

It sounded reasonable to me so I grinned at him as we watched the samples go down the chute the same way as the first two. Over what felt like the next hour or so – Eddie's watch had stopped and I wasn't wearing mine – about a dozen different containers appeared. A couple of them were really nice and we ate them thankfully while one grey gritty one was so bad that the machine promptly gave us big cups of clear water to drink as we gasped and gagged. We pushed the reject button really quickly that time.

Finally we were too full to be interested in even opening the containers and the screen went dead as the last lot vanished. In fact the whole room went dark and Eddie and I decided that would be a good time to go to bed.

'We haven't done anything about finding Mum,' I whispered as we snuggled under the soft covers.

'In the morning,' Eddie replied sleepily. 'We'll find her tomorrow.'
Chapter 8.

When I woke up the next morning it was very quiet. I lay there for a moment half asleep, expecting to hear Aunt Daisy nagging at me to get up and help with breakfast. Finally I opened my eyes and yelped with shock. I could see Eddie in the bed next to me and we were still in the future. Part of me had hoped it could be a dream but no such luck. I nudged Eddie to wake him up and he groaned when he saw the room. We sat there disconsolately, wondering what was going to happen, when 'ping' went the screen and out popped the food containers. That went on for what felt like hours. Eddie and I took breaks and prowled around the room trying to find a way out, but the door we had entered by seemed to have vanished. There were cupboards with more pyjama things in and we changed into them as our own clothes were getting fairly dirty by then. We stuffed our own things into a small cupboard in one corner, so we could get at them easily if we had to.

When the screen went dark, we figured it was break time.

'What shall we do?' Eddie asked.

'I don't know,' I shrugged. 'It's not as if there are any toys or anything here.'

The room was fairly boring although we did discover a box of small balls in different colours in one of the cupboards. We tried playing marbles with them on the hard floor in a half-hearted sort of way, and then Eddie suggested I Spy. That was hard when most of the stuff around us looked the same and we didn't have a clue what it was anyway. We decided that this must be how prisoners felt and wondered why more of them didn't end up as screaming madmen from the sheer boredom of it.

The screen pinged to signal a new batch of containers. We tried to ignore it but the pinging just went louder and shriller until our ears hurt. It stopped as soon as we sat down so I grimaced at Eddie and said we might as well get on with it. We opened the containers with a distinct lack of enthusiasm then gaped in shock. Inside each container was a piece of cake that looked and tasted exactly like one of Mum's.

'Mum must have made this!' Eddie looked as if he was going to cry.

'We want more cake,' I screamed at the machine, as we bolted it down and pressed the yellow button.

The next ping brought a boring piece of stuff that looked like cardboard and tasted like the sort of oatmeal biscuit that Mum wouldn't have made in a hundred years. Eddie did start crying then and I was so furious I kicked the machine. It gave a loud, unpleasant screech, then evilly sent us two more containers. These held a substance that looked like chocolate cheesecake but tasted like mud and I lost my temper completely.

'This food is terrible. Even I can cook better than this,' I shouted, as I hurled the containers against the screen. There was a splat and gray globs of muddy cheesecake dripped off onto the floor. The screen turned orange and started blinking slowly, all the time emitting a low rumble.

'I think you've made it mad,' Eddie remarked in a shaky voice, as the rumble turned to a rising and falling whining sound. The next minute a door opened in what I swear had been a blank bit of wall. The robot glided in and said 'follow.'

We did as we were told. Anything was better than staying in that room and tasting all that strange food. We obediently sat down on the bench seat and it started moving again, not very far, to another doorway.

'It would have been quicker to walk,' Eddie pointed out.

'They don't seem to do much walking around here,' I answered, then we both exclaimed in shock as the robot led us into a huge kitchen. At one side of the room we could see Mum, who was standing and stirring something in a big bowl.

'Mum,' we screamed, and ran towards her. I grabbed her and hugged her and tears were streaming down my face. Eddie was giving excited little yips like a puppy and he was hugging Mum so hard on the other side that it was a wonder she could breathe. I kept expecting Mum to pat me on the back or say something, anything, but there was silence. I looked up and she was standing there looking bewildered as if she had never seen us before. It was horrible.

'Mum, it's us. Poppy and Eddie. Mum, I'm your daughter. Don't you remember?'

I looked up at her desperately as she brushed me aside and went on muttering and stirring. Eddie and I fell back in despair.

'Mum,' I called loudly. Mum turned her back and kept mumbling.

'She doesn't know who we are,' Eddie croaked at last. His breath was coming in big gulps and he looked as if he was going to howl at any minute. 'Someone must have wiped her memory.'

'We will just have to make her remember then,' I said savagely. 'Mum! Look at me.'

Mum turned that vacant look on me again then turned away. All this time the robot had been standing beside us chanting, 'follow, follow,' and we'd ignored it. Now a big metal pincer came out from its side and grabbed me by the wrist.

'Ow, it's got me. Help, Eddie,' I shrieked.

Eddie rushed over and the robot shot out another pincer and grabbed him as well. It towed us across the floor to a clear space by a bench, then released us. I felt so miserable and dejected that I wished I was dead. After a while I focused on the world again and heard the robot saying something different. 'Cook, cook,' it said.

'We have to cook something, Poppy,' sniffed Eddie.

I blew my nose on the tissue I'd stuffed in my pyjama pocket and looked around properly. It was a big, rather strange kitchen, with containers of different food things, empty bowls and spoons and a round purple thing that looked as if it might have be an oven.

'I don't see any eggs and bacon,' I said, giving Eddie a watery smile. 'So it had better be chocolate pudding. Which do you reckon is the flour?'

The next half-hour would have been fun if we hadn't felt so shaky and wobbly from crying. And especially if we hadn't been able to see Mum busily cooking something down the other end of the kitchen. Together Eddie and I found ingredients that we were sure were the right ones for chocolate pudding and we mixed them up. I poured it into a large basin and gingerly opened the door of the purple oven.

'Are you sure it will cook things?' Eddie asked doubtfully.

'I have no idea,' I admitted, 'but what else do we do?'

I shut the door and pushed a large black button beside the oven. This was evidently the right thing to do and after a few minutes the door opened with a beep to show a perfect chocolate pudding. I wondered if we could eat it, but the answer to that was 'no' as the robot glided up and took it away in one of its pincers.

'Maybe it goes to someone else to taste it,' Eddie said despondently. It had looked really tasty and chocolate pudding had always been his favourite.

'I can always make another one, I guess,' I reassured him.

'That's okay,' Eddie shrugged. 'Let's try and talk to Mum again.'

We went over to Mum and tried to get her attention but she just didn't want to know. She was busy creating food and even when she'd been at home she would be cross if we interrupted her. Here she simply ignored us. She knew we were there as Eddie stood right in front of her and she had to walk around him to get stuff out of one of the cupboards. But she didn't say anything to us. She was muttering, 'a pinch of salt, I'm sure it needs a pinch of salt.'

I handed her something that looked like salt and she took it from me silently and tasted it on the tip of her finger before putting a little in the mixing bowl. I decided to make her notice me. I picked up the tube of salt from the bench again and tipped half of it in the mixing bowl.

'There. Now you'll have to say something. The mixture is ruined,' I cried.

But to our dismay, Mum simply put the bowl to one side and began mixing up another lot.

'You might as well give up,' Eddie said hopelessly. 'She knows we are here but she isn't noticing us properly. It's almost like she is asleep'

'There has to be a reason for it,' I insisted. 'Why would she ignore her own children?'

'I guess we'll have to wait and see if she wakes up properly sometime,' Eddie sighed.

We hung around the kitchen for a while and explored. We found a tray of freshly baked apple pies that Mum had made and Eddie cut us each a large wedge out of one of them. Mum ignored that too. We were licking our sticky fingers and wondering what to do about Mum, when the robot came back and said 'follow.' We plodded dismally after it out of the kitchen, with one last look at Mum who was decorating an enormous orange layer cake with little rosettes of icing. The robot led us into a room with a plain bench in it and told us to sit. We sat and waited to see whatever else was going to happen to us in this ghastly place.

We didn't wait long. A door swished back and a large trolley glided in. on it was lying the fattest man we had ever seen. I mean, he was huge. His face was round like a balloon and he had so many layers of chins it was hard to tell where his head finished and his body started. The fat was all puffed up so his eyes were only tiny slits and his fingers were like big fat sausages at the ends of his hands. I don't know how old he was because his hair was only a flat grayish fuzz on his head and he was too fat for any wrinkles to show. He was wearing huge yellow pyjamas that rose in a great mound over his distended belly. We sat and stared. The man stared back at us, with his chins wobbling.

'Welcome,' he said at last. His voice was small and squeaky and really odd coming from someone like that.

'Who are you?' Eddie asked rudely.

'My name is Sal,' wheezed the man. He seemed to have trouble talking, as if all the fat was squeezing his breath out of him over his chest. 'Your food preparation is satisfactory and as long as it continues you will cook for me.'

'Where are we? Why is our Mum here? What are you doing to us? I want to go home,' whined Eddie.

Sal flapped one hand dismissively. 'Take your orders from the robot. It will tell you what you need to know,' he sniffed. Then he pressed a button on the side of the trolley and glided out of the room.

Eddie and I looked at each other. 'Man, was he ever fat,' Eddie said in astonishment.

I nodded. I was trying to work out what we should do. The robot came in and said, 'follow.'

'Hang on a minute,' I blurted out. 'We need to ask some questions.'

The robot stopped and three little camera things swivelled to look at me. It was a bit off-putting. 'What is your question?' the robot droned.

'Where are we?' I asked.

'This is the residence of Sal 879#4B in the Year 2276, in the method of counting you are accustomed to. You have come here though a rent in the fabric that adjourns your time. Your duties are to prepare food that is suitable and palatable for the master and his servants. In return he will clothe you, house you and feed you. Many people are happy in his employ. We hope that your years with us will be contented ones.'

All this was spoken in a metallic monotone. Eddie and I exchanged appalled looks. 'What do you mean years? How long do you expect us to stay here,' I croaked at last.

'As long as you live,' said the robot, turning away.
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 the 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.
Chapter 10

It was obvious that something had gone terribly wrong. We looked though the house and there was no sign of any of my things. Nothing. No clothes or shoes or even my schoolbag. No dollshouse or roller skates. There were no old fairy tale books lying at the back of the bookshelf and Eddie appeared to have a heap of stuff that nether of us had ever seen before. He was very taken with a flash computer which was obviously new and I had great difficulty in dragging his attention away from it. I think if I'd let him he would have happily played computer games and forgot I even existed. We even looked though the photograph albums, at least, Eddie looked though them while I peered over his shoulder.

'I'm not in them,' I wailed.

'I didn't think you would be,' Eddie said calmly. 'You don't seem to exist here at all.'

'Well don't sound so pleased about it,' I screamed at him.

'I'm not pleased. It's just that it's a bit odd having you hanging around drooping over my shoulder. You feel like a cold patch in the air,' Eddie explained.

'You'd feel cold too if you were a ghost,' I sulked.

Eddie frowned, and started to say something, but just then Mum called him to tea and when we walked into the dining room there were only three places set.

'What about me?' I said indignantly. Mum and Dad totally ignored me, and I mean, totally.

'What about Poppy?' Eddie asked.

'No dear, I haven't put poppy seeds on the buns. I know you don't like them much,' Mum answered.

'No, not seeds. Poppy. She's a girl.'

'Who is Poppy? Is it a new friend you have made at school?' Dad asked him.

'Did you want to ask her to tea some time?' Mum added.

'He means me,' I shouted. The smell of the food was making my mouth water and I was terribly unhappy.

Mum and Dad ignored me. I tried going up and waving my hands in their faces but they didn't even know I was there. I tried pulling Mum's arm but my hand went into it with a squirmy warm feeling, which made me shudder.

'This is all your fault. You chucked that rubbish away and it changed things. I hate you. I'm going to my bedroom,' I shrieked at Eddie, and walked clean though the closed door. That really freaked me out and by the time Eddie finished tea and came to the room I was nearly out of my tree.

'Calm down, Poppy. There must be a mistake. I can't believe you are a ghost. We must have done something wrong when we came back. A lollipop wrapper wouldn't have done this,' Eddie said soothingly when I had finished having hysterics.

'I don't like this,' I bellowed. I didn't want to be calm and reasonable. I wanted to have my parents recognise me and to sleep in my own bed. It didn't even seem to exist anymore and I was feeling more and more panic-stricken by the minute.

'Let's think about it logically,' Eddie said. 'We made the right note and sniffed the thyme and Mum and I came though the crack okay. So what was different with you?'

'I don't know. Nothing.'

'There must have been something,' Eddie insisted.

'I can't think of anything,' I wailed.

Eddie spent a few minutes calming me down again. 'There must have been something different, Poppy. Now think, what happened to you when we came through the split.'

'The robot grabbed my jacket,' I sniffed.

Eddie looked at my back and gave a cry of surprise. 'That's it. The back of your jacket is missing. There is a small misty piece on your back. I bet that you are anchored in the future by it and until you get it back you will be stuck half here. Can you see the future place at all?'

I looked at him aghast. 'I don't think so,' I muttered.

'Try,' urged Eddie.

I sighed and decided to humour him. I had nothing to lose anyway and no better idea of what to do. I found that if I concentrated and half shut my eyes I could see a sort of shadow of the robot and the kitchen.

'I can see it, but it's all a bit misty.'

'That's it,' said Eddie excitedly. 'Now all you need to do is go back and get that piece of jacket and you will be able to come back properly.'

'I can't go back there, I can't.' I started shaking. Eddie tried to pat my back but his hand went right through me, which freaked both of us out.

'Maybe if you took the jacket off that would work instead,' Eddie said hopefully. That sounded a much better scheme to me. I started to pull off my jacket but as soon as I tugged it there was an agonising pain in my back as if someone had stuck a red hot knife in it. I shrieked and lay down, or rather sort of hovered above the bed, while Eddie went pale and watched me with concern.

'Are you okay?' he said, when my moans had died down.

'Of course I'm not okay. Half of me is in the future,' I said bitterly. 'And now I have to go back there.'

'I'll come back too,' Eddie said bravely.

'No.' I shook my head. I could see that what we had done in the future had somehow affected the present and there was no place for me here any more. 'I have to do it myself. Anyway, I need you to be here so if something goes wrong you can come and rescue me.'

'We will make sure it works properly then,' Eddie told me sensibly. We went down to the swinging seat and Eddie picked a bunch of thyme, which he laid on the seat beside me. It was easy to find this time as the garden was all neat and tidy. I couldn't pick it up but I could lean over and smell it. I had to concentrate to keep sitting on the seat in the right place as it was easy to drift through it to the ground and it must have looked really spooky.

'When you get to the misty place the thyme should be real for you,' Eddie said encouragingly. 'If it's not, you'd better come straight back and I'll go with you.'

He also put his whistle on the seat and told me to blow that to get the right note for splitting the time window when I came back. I thought that was brilliant and tried to thank him but I was crying fairly hard by then and it was difficult to get the words out.

'If it doesn't work I will never see you again,' I sobbed.

'I'm sure it will work,' Eddie said and pushed the seat for me. 'Otherwise I will come and get you. Now try and stay on as I push you.'

_Creak_... the seat swung up as Mum called from the house. 'Come inside, Eddie.'

_Creak..._ 'In a minute,' called Eddie. 'Smell the thyme,' he urged me.

_Creak_...I leaned over and breathed in the fragrance as the time split shimmered in front of me. Taking a deep breath I plunged though it and into the future again. I knew that if I stopped to think about it I would never have had the courage.

I found myself in the corridor beside the kitchen, and sent up a silent prayer. I don't think I could have taken the conveyer belts and machines again. There was no sign of anyone about. I whispered 'open,' to the kitchen door and crept in, stuffing the thyme in my pocket and holding the whistle tightly in one hand. I looked around, but the kitchen looked as it always had. There was no sign of the robot or of my piece of jacket. I sank to the floor, feeling weak and wobbly and tried to think what to do next. That's where the robot found me some time later. It didn't seem surprised but told me to follow. I trailed after it and surprise, surprise, I was put into the bedroom again and it was back to food tasting.

That lasted about three days before I was taken to the kitchen to cook. With Mum gone, the meals must have been terrible so even the things I could cook would have been an improvement. I spent weeks working in that kitchen and every chance I got I searched for my piece of jacket. I went though all the cupboards and then tried jamming my shoe in the door to my room to leave it open so I could explore further. But the robot was obviously keeping a close eye on me this time and would quickly whip the shoe out and return it to me saying, 'that is not permitted,;

I was getting very frustrated. I needed that piece of jacket. I hoped that it hadn't been put into the rubbish, or the recycling machine, but couldn't think what else to do. I could have taken the rest of the jacket off and left it there but I was worried that doing this might change the future as well.

'If I left the jacket behind I might find that Mum and Dad and even Eddie don't exist when I get back to my own time,' I reasoned. 'I have to get the piece of jacket back.'

I refused to change my clothes and I knew they were getting filthy but I didn't care. They were my only link with home. One morning I woke up and found myself dressed in pyjamas. There was no sign of my clothes anywhere, even though I looked in all the cupboards and even the bathroom. I was absolutely furious and felt cold all over at the thought of the robot taking my clothes off me while I was asleep. The only thing I was thankful for was that I had been in the habit of putting the whistle and by now rather ratty bunch of thyme under my pillow each night.

'Where are my clothes,' I demanded, as the robot came to take me to the kitchen.

'Your attire has been laundered for hygiene reasons,' the robot answered. 'It will be returned at a later date.'

I cried and yelled and even swore. I kicked the robot on its shiny silver wheels and I crossed my arms and refused to cook.

'I'm not working until I get my clothes back,' I said mutinously.

The robot whined and beeped a bit but eventually gave up and shut me back in my room. I waited there, seething with impatience until a much smaller robot, one that looked a bit like a toaster on wheels, scuttled in and laid the pile of washed and dried clothes on the bed. Now while I had been waiting I'd had a brainwave. If I couldn't find the piece of jacket, then maybe the robot could. I pounced on the clothes and held up the jacket accusingly. 'This has a piece torn out,' I said sternly. 'Take it away and mend it.'

The little toaster robot beeped at me apologetically and took the jacket as it scuttled out the door. I crossed my fingers and hoped my idea would work. I was congratulating myself on my quick thinking for about the sixteenth time when the toaster robot came back with a cheerful beep a few minutes later. I nearly cheered when I noticed with a gasp of joy that my jacket had been mended perfectly. The original piece was stitched on again with shiny metal thread.

'Right,' I said to myself. 'Tomorrow I get out of here.'

The next day I meekly followed the robot then began to cook. I cooked buns and pies and complicated casseroles while the robot watched. It asked me if I had finished and after the sixth time I said 'no,' it wandered away out of the kitchen. This was my chance. I took out the thyme and breathed it in deeply and blew on the whistle so loudly my ears popped. The robot came zooming in from somewhere and screeched towards me with its buttons blinking madly. The air in front of me shimmered into a split and I leapt through, careful not to catch my clothes on anything. With a sigh of relief I saw Eddie standing by the swinging seat.

'It worked,' I cried joyfully. 'At least, did it?'

'Yep,' grinned Eddie in relief. You look just like normal. You were quick, though. I've only been waiting five minutes.'

'What do you mean, five minutes? I've been away for weeks,' I said indignantly.

Eddie looked puzzled. 'Time must go at different speeds sometimes,' he said wisely. 'Now let's go and see if you exist here properly again.'

We walked to the house. Mum glanced up as we came in the door and said, 'Poppy, I was hoping you would help me. Would you mind bringing in the dry washing, please? I have to stir this for at least ten minutes or it will go lumpy.'

'That's fine,' I said happily, especially as I could see some of my clothes on the washing line. I was obviously real again.
Chapter 11.

So life went on pretty much the same way it had been before. It wasn't exactly the same, though. There had been some changes and Eddie and I argued about whether it was his lollipop that had done it. My bedroom was decorated in a different colour, but as it was a rather nice shade of lilac instead of pale green, I wasn't going to complain about it. Eddie and I were amazed to discover that time had done a switch on us and we were back about three months before Mum had gone missing. It was weird living things over again. One bonus was that we knew what schoolwork to expect, although it wasn't as much of an advantage as you would have thought. I still had to do the project on Fiji and my Maths wasn't any better the second time around. We had both missed heaps of school stuff when Mum had gone missing so we had to learn it all again anyway. Eddie said we should use our knowledge of the future to bet on something and make lots of money.

'We're too young to bet, even if we had the money to begin with,' I told him scathingly. 'And anyway, I can't remember anything that happened that we could bet on.'

Eddie had to admit that he couldn't either.

'It's Friday the thirteenth,' Dad remarked one morning at breakfast. 'I hope that doesn't mean the computers will crash all day. Some idiot is bound to have sent a virus round.'

Eddie gave a yelp of surprise and went pale.

'It's not that big a deal,' Dad said soothingly. 'We do have technicians who sort out that sort of thing for us.'

'It's not that,' said Eddie, then sat at the table scowling until it was time to walk to school.

'What's wrong?' I asked him.

'I've just remembered. This is the day that Tyler arrives at the school,' Eddie said wretchedly.

'Well now you have a chance to change things,' I pointed out.

'I'm not sure how,' Eddie replied gloomily.

'You could do all sort of things,' I told him encouragingly. 'You could go up and thump him really hard when he wasn't looking.'

'Er, he might thump me back. In fact he probably will.'

'Yes I know, but you would have done it first,' I explained.

'I can't see that it would make a difference and I'd be bound to get into trouble.'

'Well then, you could pretend you go to karate and tell him he'd better not come near you.'

'It wouldn't take him long to see through that. There are no karate classes anywhere near here.'

'Oh well, if you don't want me to help you I won't bother.'

Eddie went quiet then stuck out his lip mutinously. 'I'll think of something myself,' he muttered.

I found it hard to wait until after school to see what had happened. Eddie looked about as cheerful as he always did when I met him outside the gate, although he kept chuckling to himself, and finally I couldn't wait any longer.

'What happened today. Did Tyler come to school?'

Eddie laughed. 'Yes. You won't believe this, but Tyler arrived and this time she is a girl! She even looks a bit like him but she is quite shy. Things have totally changed this time around.'

Eddie didn't stop grinning all afternoon but then Mum and Dad made an announcement that wiped the smiles from both our faces. We were sitting at the tea table after one of Mum's fantastic dinners when Mum and Dad told us they'd had a letter from Aunt Daisy.

'She's an old cousin of mine,' Dad said. 'Her house is being demolished as part of a motorway project and she doesn't want to go into an old people's home just yet. So we thought she could come here and stay for a while.'

'No way,' Eddie howled.

'No, no!' I screamed.

Mum looked taken aback. 'Why you haven't even met her. I'm very disappointed in both of you. You are being very selfish and unkind,' she said in a hurt voice.

'It wouldn't hurt you to be a little more charitable,' Dad agreed.

Eddie and I groaned. It didn't matter what we said, Mum was convinced Aunt Daisy would be a sweet little old lady. We couldn't tell her otherwise without explaining about the time shift and we didn't think she would believe that either. She seemed to have lost that experience totally from her mind although Eddie and I still woke in the night occasionally remembering some of the worst bits of it.

'It might not be so bad,' Eddie said thoughtfully. 'Tyler changed into a girl this time so maybe Aunt Daisy will turn out to be really nice.'

'I certainly hope so,' I said with feeling. 'I don't think I could bear it if she was horrible.'

'Let's keep our fingers crossed for a sweet little old lady then,' Eddie suggested.

So we kept quite and waited patiently until one Saturday, a few weeks later, when Aunt Daisy arrived. We were appalled to find she was just as horrible as ever. She told Eddie his fingernails needed cutting, and told me I would get pimples if I ate pudding.

'That's only so she could eat my share as well as her own,' I told Eddie in outrage, as we got ready for bed that night. He was sleeping in my room again after we had helped to tidy his one ready for Aunt Daisy.

He was sympathetic. 'You don't have to tell me how awful she is. I only hope Mum and Dad see it soon and get rid of her.'

But to our horror, Mum and Dad thought Aunt Daisy was wonderful. She went all helpless when Dad was around and then pathetically grateful when he lifted her sewing basket for her or took her to the park in the car. Mum cooked all sorts of special treats for her and we got used to hearing, 'don't touch that! It's for Aunt Daisy.'

Aunt Daisy was skilled at making us seem in the wrong. If we did anything even faintly noisy like watching TV or listening to the stereo she would grimace and clutch her ears and say, 'oh my poor ears. They can't take this noise. But don't let that worry you, dears. You carry on and I'll go to my room.' Then of course we would be told off and have to stop. Or she would say, Jean can you fetch my cardigan for me? I would ask Poppy only I can see that she is far too busy to be bothering with an old woman like me.'

So I'd get told off for being inconsiderate.

Aunt Daisy liked the house hot. She complained about draughts if we opened the doors or windows and it was like a steam bath inside the house. Eddie and I would have to strip half our clothes off when we got home from school just to be able to breathe. Mum and Dad told us off for complaining.

'Old people feel the cold. Their blood is thinner. You can always go and play outside if it bothers you,' Dad said unsympathetically. We reckoned he and Mum must be getting old as well if they could put up with that heat, although I did notice that Mum sneaked the window open in the kitchen whenever she was working in there.

Around that time Mum got sick of hearing Eddie and me moan about Aunt Daisy whenever we could get her on her own. She decided she needed a break and took a part time job at the restaurant, which meant that Aunt Daisy looked after us when we came home from school each day. It was horrendous. She would interrogate us about our homework and banned us from the kitchen. We had to take turns at distracting her while the other sneaked in and grabbed whatever food was in reach. Then Aunt Daisy would greet Mum with a whole string of complaints against us and Mum would look all hurt and sad and tell us off.

Then Aunt Daisy would go helpless and old and Mum would rush round doing things for her and neglecting us. We always seemed to be hungry, with Aunt Daisy being so horrible about food. She'd say sweetly, 'I'm not surprised Eddie hasn't had much tea. He ate such a lot of cake this afternoon. It's not good for his teeth, you know.'

Eddie would protest that he hadn't even touched the cake, which was true. Aunt Daisy had scoffed it herself. But it was no use. Mum and Dad believed everything Aunt Daisy said and we were the ones in the wrong. One day Mum was working on a recipe for a little blueberry pie. She'd made one to try and was leaving it to cool on a rack on the table. She warned us not to touch it on pain of death. Aunt Daisy ate it then said it was Eddie. Poor Eddie got into big trouble and whatever he said only made it worse.

'It wasn't me. It was Aunt Daisy. She's just blaming it on me.'

Aunt Daisy gasped. 'Oh dear. That boy has real problems with the truth. Don't you think he'd be better off at boarding school?'

Mum went all tight-lipped and cross and Dad sent Eddie to our room where he gave him a big lecture about lying. Eddie moaned about it when I smuggled a bread roll in to him at bedtime.

'She's horrible. I can't bear it. We have to do something about it.'

'I know.' I was getting frustrated as well. My room wasn't really big enough to share properly. Eddie and I had dragged a bookcase in the middle so each of us had a space we could call our own but it was very cramped. I was tired of knocking my elbow on it when I got dressed, yet every day Aunt Daisy seemed to have become more of a permanent fixture in the house.

'We should kill Lazy Daisy and bury her in the garden,' Eddie muttered darkly.

'The garden. That's it!' I sat bolt upright in excitement. 'Eddie, why don't we send Aunt Daisy to the future?'

There was silence as Eddie digested this then a huge smile broke across his face. 'Do you think we could?'

'I don't see why not. We could get her to sit on the swinging seat with some thyme and give her a push and hope for the best.'

'They'd make an awful fuss if she went missing,' Eddie said thoughtfully.

'But she doesn't have to go missing, at least not as far as Mum and Dad are concerned. What we'll do is pack up her bags and toss them on the seat with her. Then we can say she went off on a holiday and no one will ever know.'

'It might work except for one thing. She never goes down to the garden,' Eddie objected.

'We'll have to make sure she wants to,' I said fiercely.

That was the hardest part of all. We reckoned once she was there we could easily throw some herbs at her and shove her off but it was getting her there in the first place that was the problem. We tried being super nice to her.

'Aunt Daisy, it's a lovely day. Would you like to walk down to the herb garden with Eddie and me?'

'Oh no, dear. It's far too cold for me out there. But if you and Eddie are feeling energetic I have some letters that must be posted today.'

So we had to trail down to the post office and buy the stupid stamps for her letters and that wasted the entire afternoon. It wasn't as if they were even important anyway. They were only complaining letters that she wrote to all the factories that made things like food or soap or paper tissues. She used to complain that she had bought something and it wasn't satisfactory. Then the factory would send her a free sample back. It was a bit dishonest because it was Mum and Dad who had bought the stuff in the first place and it wasn't even true because there was nothing wrong with it. But it did mean Aunt Daisy had a string of parcels arriving nearly every day.

We tried bribery.

'Aunt Daisy, there are heaps of raspberries ripe and Eddie and I are going to go down the garden and eat some. Would you like to come?'

'I'll have mine here, dear. You can pick a bucketful then your mother will be able to use them for jam. I'll have a bowl with a little cream. You don't need any. You'll get fat. And Eddie won't eat his tea so he'd better not have any either.'

So we picked a bucket of raspberries and ate handfuls of them to spite her. Of course that gave us each a bellyache which didn't improve our tempers one bit.

Finally I had a brainwave. 'I know how to get Aunt Daisy down to the garden.'

'How?' Eddie wanted to know.

'Watch me. You'll see.'

I spent the next couple of weeks on the swinging seat whenever I had a moment to spare. Whenever I was called inside I would say, 'I've been sitting on the swinging seat, reading a book... or doing my homework, or whatever.' I told Eddie to tell Aunt Daisy I was on the swinging seat whenever she asked for me. Eventually it worked. Aunt Daisy decided that if the swinging seat was such a great place to be, then she would be the one to monopolize it, not me. For a couple of days I would say things like, 'I'm going down to sit on the swinging seat, but first I will put my bag away.' Then Aunt Daisy would trot down there and plonk herself down so that when I arrived she could look all virtuous.

'I'm resting my weary bones, dear. The fresh air is so good for me. Run along and tidy your room.'

One afternoon, when we knew Mum would be working late, we waited until Aunt Daisy was sitting on the seat then I cunningly asked her about the herbs. She loved to show off what she knew and never tired of instructing us in anything she thought we were ignorant of.

'What's this herb called, Aunt Daisy?'

'Let me see, give it here. Why, that is thyme. Fancy not knowing that. Your mother has neglected your education.'

Meanwhile Eddie rushed back to the house and hastily packed Aunt Daisy's bag with all of her clothing he could find. He arrived back panting and gave me a thumbs-up.

'Now, Eddie,' I called. Eddie tossed Aunt Daisy's bag onto the seat beside her and together we gave the swinging seat an enormous shove.

_Creak_ went the seat as it swung high in the air.

'Stop that at once,' cried Aunt Daisy. 'What is my bag doing here?'

Creak

'Stop pushing me. I am far too old for these games, you naughty children.'

Creak

'That is far too high. I will get your father to punish you when he comes home. Good heavens. What on earth is that? Oh!'

And with a final exclamation of surprise, Aunt Daisy vanished. Eddie and I lost no time in racing back to the house. We ran into Aunt Daisy's bedroom and packed up the last of her things. I knew Eddie would have forgotten to look in the bathroom and nobody leaves without his or her toothbrush. We filled a rubbish bag with the stuff we collected and quickly shoved it under my bed.

'I'll get rid of it on Tuesday when the rubbish collectors come,' I said with a sigh of relief.

'We've done it. We got rid of Aunt Daisy,' Eddie exclaimed.

'And there is no way she can get back,' I sniggered.

Eddie and I giggled and I had to sit down because my legs had suddenly gone all wobbly.

Mum and Dad were a bit surprised that Aunt Daisy had gone off without saying goodbye.

'She was in a real rush. She had the chance to go on a holiday at the last minute,' I explained.

'Well I suppose she had become a little eccentric in her old age,' Mum excused her. 'You'd better move back into your room again, Eddie. Did Aunt Daisy say if she was coming back soon?'

'I don't think that's very likely,' I said confidently, as Eddie smothered a chuckle.

'Do you suppose she'll be a food taster?' Eddie asked me as we pulled the sheets off his bed.

'Maybe they'll make her work in the kitchen.'

'I guess we'll never know.'

But we did find out one day. Mum came rushing in from the garden looking quite pale.

'I have just had a vision,' she said. 'I was sitting on the swinging seat and I suddenly saw Aunt Daisy through a faint mist. She had grown enormously fat and was being pushed along on a trolley by what looked like a robot. Isn't that peculiar?'

'Amazing,' I agreed. 'Maybe you should start writing Science Fiction books instead of recipe books.'

Mum smiled back. 'Oh, no. I'll leave that to you, Poppy. You're the one with all the imagination.'

So I did.

