Chapter 11: Best Laid Plans

Sally coughed politely as she opened the door.

"Sorry to interrupt, you two. Breakfast!" She giggled delightedly. "It's all right, Russie! Finish what you were doing."

"He wasn't doing anything. He was just lying there like a ... what was it you call them in 1999, Sal?"

"Idle sod? Lazy toad?"

"Toad, that's right. You're a toad, Russell. Making a lady do all the hard work." She flung her hair back and prodded down at his chest with a stiff finger.

"No, not there! It tickles..."

"He's ticklish, Sal. Where's the best place to tickle him?"

"How would I know? I've never got that far with him. Not yet, at least. Try lower down."

"Down here?"

"No!"

"Lower! Down there!"

"Sally, no! Ethel!"

Sally watched fondly as the lovers settled into a comfortable embrace, still joined beneath the sheet. "Can you manage a bacon sarnie in that position? What do you call that position, anyway?"

"It doesn't have to have a name," Russ scolded her, wriggling more upright and taking the sandwich the girl offered him. And you're not old enough to need to know such things."

"Tear it in half and share it," Sally advised. "I've got plenty more in the kitchen. As I found with Herbie, it makes you starving." She patted her tummy and smoothed her sweater down over it, biting her lower lip. "I've put on a bit of weight in the last three weeks. Either that, or I'm preg..."

"Sally! Think about this. If you've been ... I mean ... if you're..."

"I'm not! I was only joking. I'm not pregnant. I don't think so, anyway."

She dodged the flying pillow and giggled as she escaped into the kitchen.

"Little madam," Ethel laughed. "Not so little." She finished the last of the bacon sandwich and wiped her fingers on Russ's chest hair. "I wonder what will happen, if I'm really pregnant. What about my chest, I mean?"

"Happen to it?"

"Won't I get bigger? I can start wearing a bra again, now you're back, but if I get bigger, Sally's aren't going to fit me any more, are they? We'll need to let the woman who makes Sally's make some for me as well." She sat up and grinned, then pinched his cheek. "So I'll have to come back with you, won't I!"

"Oh, no! Not that. It's going to be complicated enough trying to explain where I got to last night. As for Sally, has she been away one night, or three weeks?"

"Or six. I still think it might take another three weeks to get back. Hey, I've just thought of something. If you occasionally find you take three weeks longer when you come back in time, it would work the other way for me. If I come back with you, I could arrive back here three weeks before I'd left. I'd get younger and younger each time I did it."

"Don't, Ethel. My head hurts enough as it is."

"I don't want that to happen, though. Just think, if I went to 1999 and got back three weeks ago, or six weeks ago, I wouldn't be pregnant any more! We wouldn't want that, would we?"

"Wouldn't we?"

"Absolutely not, as Sally might say. I want your baby! Although it might be fun making him again and again."

"We will take you back one of these times, Eth. I'll persuade him, don't worry!"

"When will you be coming back?" Ethel was struggling to hold back the tears. She toyed with the bell on the counter of the shop, trying to keep her hands from trembling.

"We'll have to give it a couple of days while we work things out." Russ patted the pockets of his coat, checking for car keys, business cards...

"And when Herbie comes in today, to see Mr Spreadbury... ?" said Sally.

"It will be all right. I shall put in a good word for him. There's lots of things for him to do. He can start work straight away."

"You'll be okay? Yourself, I mean. Do you know a good doctor?" Sally leaned on the counter and touched Ethel's fingers.

"It's all right. I'll be ... okay? Dr Armstrong will look after me. He's Scottish and everybody thinks he's a bit of an ogre, but he's a great big pussycat."

"Armstrong?" Russ looked haunted for a moment, then shook away the thought. There must be thousands of Dr Armstrongs. Or Doctors Armstrong. Whatever. "Take care, Ethel. See you soon, okay?"

"Soon. Okay. Now go. I don't want to be all red-eyed when Mr Spreadbury comes in. Go on. And don't look back. It will bring bad luck."

The door closed behind them with a soft tinkling of its bell. The nanny rounded the corner at the bottom of Archdeacon Street and started the climb, the baby carriage bouncing gently over the cobblestones. She coo-ed softly to the baby as she approached, then looked away as she passed Russ and Sally, suddenly embarrassed.

"Funny girl, that nanny. Sometimes she speaks, others she doesn't."

Sally giggled. "I think it's me that puts her off. I mean, look at me. Not exactly 1920s chic, am I? Not with a fifty-four inch bust! She's never seen anything like me in her life. Come on, let's see if your car's still there. If Ethel's theory is right, we might have a long journey ahead of us. It could take us six weeks to get home to your girlfriends."

Did she really say 'girlfriends' in the plural?

The street was glistening in the misty sunlight as they paused by the cast iron street sign on the wall, held hands tightly, then stepped over the threshold of the 1920s into the present. Or was it the future?

"It's still there. I left you a message on the roof. That's still there, too, look!"

It was. Indistinct now, but traceable in the dust, the letters were just visible in the condensation.

"You know what that means, Russie? It must have rained in the past three weeks. Or six."

"So we haven't been away that long, after all. Just one night." It was a huge relief.

"I dunno what you're grinning about, lover-boy. I'm looking forward to hearing you try to explain to my mother what you've been doing to her extremely busty younger daughter all night long!"

"It's all very well your taking Sally away for a night of lust, Russell, dear," laughed Delia as soon as Sally had left the room. "I'm just wondering how you're going to explain it to Claire."

"I can't even explain it to you, Dee. At least, some of it. It defies explanation."

"Lust doesn't defy explanation! Our Sally's a lovely and determined young lady. And since you're obviously a tit man..."

"I'm not a tit man... !"

" ... I can't compete with her on tits, but I do have a great deal more experience." She paused for breath. "What are you going to do about Claire?"

"Do?"

"Now you've made it, now you've had the mother and both daughters, where does Claire stand? Doesn't she deserve some consideration?"

"I'm going back there now."

"You'll tell her everything? The truth, the whole truth... ?"

And nothing like the truth. "It's not as simple as that."

"It's pretty simple, Russ. Claire's an understanding and forgiving girl. She knows about us, and she's prepared to..."

"She knows? About us?"

"Of course! She's not blind. Your best bet is to give it to her straight." Delia smirked lewdly. "No, let me rephrase that. Your best bet is to tell it like it is. Tell her you went to bed with Sally, and you realise it was a mistake..."

"It wasn't..."

"So it wasn't a mistake, you can still tell her that. But you have to tell her..."

"I didn't sleep with Sally."

Delia sniffed. "More fool you, then." She turned dismissively to the washing machine and started stuffing clothes into it. She slammed it shut and it began churning away. End of conversation. Russell closed the back door quietly behind him.

As he started the car, he didn't even see Sally's curtains twitch.

It wasn't going to work. He had toyed with the idea of explaining everything to Claire: even introducing her to one or two of Sally's books, showing her the possibilities of the effects of getting somewhat mislaid in the time spectrum. No chance. She couldn't begin to get her head round such an idea. Not Claire. Wrong sister.

Wrong sister, indeed. Explain that one, Russie.

"Hi," she said dully. "Good night, was it?"

"Not really."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I've got to go up to London. I may stay with Cindy and Simon. We're meeting up with Caz and Roz and Lulu and the crowd from Parsifal, Renfrew, Garbutt, Mountfitchett and Pryce. Basically, it's..."

"I thought that was next week?"

"It is, actually, but Cindy suggested I came up a few days early. What with the twins, and Bogdanov and everything..."

"Oh." Russ felt, not for the first time, that Claire must be making it all up. Who were all these people she had worked with in the past?

"I'd hoped you'd have been in sooner, to give me a lift to the station. I'm catching the 10: 51. Slow as far as Billingthorpe, then non-stop to London. Si's meeting me and we're going straight to Rumbold's." She had a bag already packed.

"I'll give you a lift. How long are you staying?"

Claire darted into the front room and came out with a suitcase. "I'll call you when I know how it's going. All next week, for sure. It's a shame I didn't tell you sooner, really. You could have stayed a few more days wherever you went." She picked up the smaller bag and weighed it in her hand. Evidently deciding it wasn't yet heavy enough, she opened the top drawer of the kitchen cabinet, took out a fat envelope and tucked it into the top of the bag. She smiled brightly. "All ready! You don't have to tell me, you know, but it would have been nice."

The ride to the station was strained, to put it mildly. Claire decided to use the opportunity to brief Russ about forthcoming events at Parsifal, Renfrew, Garbutt, Mountfitchett and Pryce - whoever they were. They sounded like a bunch of old buffers in starched collars and pinstriped three-piece suits. Or perhaps they were braying twits with pigtails.

She refused his efforts to help her with her baggage. And when she had gone five yards, and had to put the suitcase down because the handle was cutting into her fingers; he tried to help again and he was in the way. "It's all right," she insisted, lugging the case to a wheeled luggage trolley and steering it erratically into the station concourse. "You'd better move your car before that traffic warden puts a sticker on it."

And by the time Russ had persuaded the officious jobsworth female in the peaked cap that he was stopping only for the purposes of picking up or setting down of legitimate and bona fide ticket-holding rail travellers, the London train had been and gone, bearing Claire on her way to Parsifal, Renfrew, Garbutt, Mountfitchett and Pryce, and Si and Rumbold and Cindy, the twins and Bogdanov. And everything. I'll call you.

"How'd it go?" Sally grinned at him. "Mum's gone out." The girl had changed into jeans and a baggy sweater, except it wasn't remotely baggy. "She told me to make you some coffee."

"She knew I'd be coming back here?"

"Where else would you go, if Claire's run off and left you?" Sally shrugged as she deployed the mugs.

"She hasn't run off and left me."

"Not permanently, no. Just long enough to teach you a lesson. You know, Russie, since you're in the shit anyway, you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb." She leaned back against the kitchen counter, not particularly thrusting out her breasts, but aware of the fact that they were occupying most of the space between her and Russ. Behind her, steam from the kettle rose in infernal clouds. "I mean, if Mum thinks you were fucking me, and Claire thinks you were fucking me, it doesn't really matter, does it? Besides, after practising with Herbie for three weeks, I'm quite good at it now." She suddenly blushed and turned her attention to the coffee.

"No school today?"

"Half term." She handed him a brimming mug. "Hey, if I kept going back to Herbie, at three weeks each time, I wouldn't have to go to school again! No more maths for three whole weeks. Or I could go back and stay..."

"You couldn't..."

"I know. I was dreaming. It has to end sometime, I know. But that three week glitch thing is fascinating. If we could find out how it works, we could slip away for three weeks and come back after one night. You could have three weeks with Ethel, and I'd have Herbie, or ... or anything." She buried her face in her mug and went for a walk round the kitchen to cool her burning face.

"We shouldn't go back again. Not at all."

Sally was staring out of the window. "You know that, and I know that. But can you leave Ethel, not knowing if she's going to have a baby? And if she is, whose is it? I've thought about this. You know how if we go back we mustn't, absolutely mustn't do anything that would affect the future? But if, just say if, Eth's having your sprog. It must be possible to go back and swop things around so it's not yours, it's Herbie's. You'd just have to go back and make sure you were there in time to not have it off with Ethel."

"Sally, how? We don't know enough about it even to know how long we're going to be each time we go back. How can we even think of going back three weeks or six weeks earlier, just to avoid making love with Ethel this time. Anyway, I'm not sure I could avoid it..."

"Now you know how I feel," Sally came over and laid her head on Russell's shoulder. "With Herbie, I mean," she added in a whisper. Far too softly for him to hear, with the washing machine going into its spin cycle.

"God, are you two at it again?"

They hadn't heard Delia's car. She bustled into the kitchen with two laden carrier bags. The guilty lovers sprang apart.

"We were just having coffee," Sally explained, trying to wipe the spilled drops from her sweater. It caused lots of interesting movements inside.