The Last Beginning

by Lauren James

  “What you learnt is that my puns are powerful, obviously.”

  > Was that sarcasm? I must inform you that I am not able to identify such humorous devices.

  “No, it wasn’t sarcasm − shut up. Get back to work. I want to see what you’ve come up with.”

  While she waited, Clove scrolled through some of the images Spart had found so far. He’d saved all his results in a folder called “Folios”, sub-dividing them by year and giving each document a number. There were already more references to the lives of Kate and Matt than Clove could possibly hope to read – the Folios folder contained four-hundred entries. Unfortunately, none of the data would be any help in finding her birth parents as it was full of documents from before they’d disappeared.

  The picture and video results were getting more accurate as Spart learned to control the search parameters, but there were still no photos that were definitely of her parents. There was one image that made Clove stop scrolling hopefully, but it turned out to be a screenshot of the actress who had played Kate Finchley in the film.

  Clove clicked on the trailer, curious. It had been a long time since she’d watched the movie. The voiceover played in a dramatic narration.

  NARRATOR

  (in a deep, intense voice)

  Ten years ago besotted teenagers Kate and Matt stumbled across a terrible secret…

  A young couple run hand in hand across a meadow, laughing. They stop to kiss lovingly.

  Cut to the same couple entering an abandoned building. Corpses fall out of the open door, rotting flesh dropping from their bones. Screams reverberate from under the pile of bodies.

  NARRATOR

  … so they made a blood oath to reveal the truth to the world.

  The teenagers slice open their palms by a campfire and shake hands in a solemn promise. The liquid inside a vial, its glass etched with a skull and crossbones, is lit by the firelight to a putrid lime green.

  NARRATOR

  But the English government will stop at nothing to keep it secret.

  Rapid flashes of scenes, including a car chase, a firefight, soldiers throwing grenades, and a handcuffed prisoner dressed in orange walking to the electric chair.

  NARRATOR

  Coming to a cinema near you this summer is …

  THE BACTERIA CONSPIRACY

  Don’t let it infect you.

  A woman cowers over a pile of rotting corpses, tears streaming down her cheeks. She holds up the vial with the skull and crossbones in one shaking, red-stained hand. There is a terrified scream as the image turns to black.

  Folios/v8/Time-landscape-2049/MS-26

  File note: Transcript of the trailer for bestselling Hollywood blockbuster The Bacteria Conspiracy (cinematic release date: August 2049)

  Clove stopped the video. That was so … wrong. All of it. It wasn’t even trying to maintain a thread of accuracy. It didn’t mention her great-aunt either, who had led her mum to make the discovery about the bacteria in the first place. And it looked so cheesy. She couldn’t believe she’d loved it so much as a kid.

  Instead of watching the full movie, she decided to look up her great-aunt and -uncle. She was surprised to notice that they looked really similar to her birth mum and dad. Eerily similar, actually. Both women had the same red curls, and the men looked identical. That was seriously weird, wasn’t it? And even stranger was the fact that Kate and Matt had fallen in love, just like their namesake aunt and uncle had.

  It was like they were … connected. In a way that was different from only being related.

  Clove worried that the odd coincidence might get in the way of the search. Half of the results might turn out to be for her great-aunt and -uncle rather than her parents. She was about to warn Spart to factor that into the parameters when Jen called for her. “Clove, come and lay the table, please! Dinner’s ready!”

  “Coming,” she called, guiltily shoving the empty crisp packet into her schoolbag. She left Spart to his search, and didn’t see his latest message on the screen.

  CHAPTER 7

  > CLOVE, please confirm the birth dates of your parents KATHERINE FINCHLEY and MATTHEW GALLOWAY. I have detected multiple records which suggest a 95.6% probability of identifying as your parents. However, logic suggests that this is not possible, as many of the records are outside of the expected time range.

  > The earliest dates back to 1745.

  ST ANDREWS, SCOTLAND, 2056

  Dessert was interrupted by Clove’s watch ringing – Meg was calling her. “Be right back,” Clove said to Tom and Jen, stabbing her fork into her apple crumble and answering the call. “Hey.” She walked into the hallway and sat on the stairs.

  “Clove!” Meg screeched, voice gleeful with excitement. “You’ll never guess what happened!”

  “What?” Clove was already grinning.

  “Alec asked me out!” Meg bellowed, and then let out a half-hysterical cackle. “We met up in the park and he’d made me cookies! It was the sweetest thing! Clove, I’ve got an actual boyfriend!”

  Meg carried on talking, but Clove stopped listening. Alec and Meg were dating. Alec and Meg were dating? How could Meg do that to her? Didn’t she realize that Clove—? Had Meg thought about anything but herself?

  “You know, I have my own stuff to deal with right now,” Clove burst out, interrupting Meg mid-giggle. “I just found out I’m adopted, in case you’d forgotten. I don’t care about your stupid dumb boyfriend.”

  “What? Clo—”

  Clove hung up, and fell back against the stairs, staring at the ceiling. She was furious and devastated. Rubbing her eyes hard, she watched the light flicker under her eyelids. Phosphenes, they were called − the sparks of colour that lit up your vision, the stars that appeared in the darkness.

  When she opened her eyes, Jen was standing in the dining-room doorway, watching her. “What was all that shouting about?”

  Clove shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Jen was silent. Clove tried to ignore the way the stairs were digging into her back.

  “Was that Meg on the phone?” Jen asked.

  “Yeah,” Clove said quietly.

  There was another silence. Clove felt sick.

  “Why don’t you come and finish your crumble?” There was no room for refusal in Jen’s voice.

  Clove stood up reluctantly and followed her into the dining room. She picked up her fork and mashed the crumble into the apple until it was a mess. Tom and Jen watched her like she was about to be interviewed in a police murder case.

  “What happened with Meg, Clove?” Tom said. His voice was gentle, as if he was afraid she was going to break or flee. “What were you shouting about?”

  “Why do you care?” Clove mumbled.

  “We’re worried about you,” Tom said. “You’ve been through a lot recently.”

  Clove bit off an angry response about them being the ones to put her through a lot recently, and instead said, “Meg’s dating Alec.”

  “And that upsets you?” Jen asked carefully.

  Clove moved her shoulders in a half-hearted, sullen shrug. “I don’t care if she gets a boyfriend. We aren’t dating. She can do whatever she wants.”

  “I know what it’s like to love someone you can’t have,” Jen said. “It hurts, and it feels like the world is ending when they meet someone else. You have a right to be upset, but punishing Meg just because your feelings have been hurt by something that isn’t her fault is not the right way to deal with this.”

  “I don’t love Meg.” Clove folded her arms and avoided their gaze. Weren’t her parents supposed to be on her side?

  “Darlin’, you—”

  Suddenly the sound of Tom’s tender voice was grating. Clove wasn’t made of cotton wool; they didn’t have to treat her so delicately. Why couldn’t they just talk to her like she was an adult?

  “Mum. Dad. I’m serious. I don’t care if she goes out and kisses every boy in school. It’s none of my business. I don’t care about anything she does. She obviously
doesn’t care about me.” Her voice was tight. She tried to school her face into something expressionless as an angry tear trickled down her cheek.

  “I don’t—” Jen began.

  Clove cut her off. “Mum, I don’t want to talk about this any more. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

  Jen let out a disbelieving sigh and looked at her in resigned frustration. It was an expression she’d seen a lot. Clove knew she could be stubborn.

  “I promise I’m fine,” Clove said.

  “All right.” Jen rubbed her forehead.

  “Can I go now?”

  “Tom?”

  “Jen.”

  There was a short, communication-filled silence. Clove didn’t bother looking up to see them stare at each other. Instead she watched her hand tap out an arrhythmic beat on the table, wishing she’d thought to grab her knitting. After the week she’d had, Meg’s emerald-green scarf was getting very long.

  Clove stood up. “I’m fine. End of conversation.”

  She ran upstairs. Then, after locking her bedroom door, she fell onto her bed. There was a message waiting for her from Spart, but she flicked it away. She didn’t have the energy to read it right now. She wished desperately that Kate was here, so she could talk to her real mother. She was sure she would understand. Kate wouldn’t blame her for things that weren’t her fault. Clove pulled out the letters and began reading through her mother’s words yet again, while rubbing her thumb over the smooth head of her fox ornament.

  * * *

  The next morning, Meg came round while Clove was eating breakfast. “What’s going on?” she asked in a fragile voice when Clove answered the front door. “Are you mad at me?”

  Clove shrugged.

  “Is this about Alec?”

  Something in Clove’s expression must have changed, because Meg stepped closer, touching her arm. “Oh, Clove. You know you’re much more important to me than any boy. You’re the most important person in my life.”

  Those were the words Clove had wanted to hear since she’d first realized she felt more for Meg than just friendship, almost a year ago, when Meg had reacted so kindly to Clove coming out.

  “I am?” Clove spoke softly, not wanting to disturb the tight thread of something that she could feel strung between them.

  Meg dipped her head to try and meet Clove’s ducked gaze. She could feel Meg’s breath on her cheek.

  “Yes,” Meg whispered.

  Clove’s breath caught in her throat. Meg was hers. It didn’t matter what else was happening. She always had Meg. She leant forward and pressed her lips to Meg’s, a light fleeting touch that was just long enough to feel the warmth of her skin. Clove exhaled. She pulled away, mind in a cloud of drifty joy.

  It had finally happened. She’d kissed Meg. It had been— Oh, no.

  Meg was staring at her, eyes wide and—

  Clove swallowed. Meg hadn’t kissed her back. Clove watched the surprise on her best friend’s face turn slowly into discomfort. Clove knew Meg’s every expression, and right now Meg looked like she did when the teacher asked her a question and she didn’t know the answer.

  Clove felt tears pushing behind her eyelids. Without saying a word, she stepped back and slammed the door shut, and then she fled upstairs before she could hear her best friend – the girl she loved most in the world – say she liked her but not like that.

  Clove threw herself on her bed. She’d ruined everything. She was such an idiot. She couldn’t believe she had actually kissed Meg, when Meg had just been trying to comfort her.

  She felt sick. She could feel the mistake she’d made pressing against her skull, itching under her skin. She wished she could change everything about the last five minutes – or even the last few weeks. If only she could go back to the way things had been. She wished that the time machine was working. Then she could go back to before Meg had ever met Alec, to before Clove found out about her birth parents. Clove wanted her old life back.

  After a while Jen came in. When she sat on Clove’s bed and touched her shoulder, Clove turned and clung to her desperately. She’d lost Meg already − she couldn’t lose anyone else, even if Jen wasn’t her real mum.

  Clove tried to speak, but the words clumped in her throat. She couldn’t believe it had actually happened. It all felt like a bad dream. A disaster. Eventually she cracked out the words, utterly humiliated, “I kissed Meg.”

  Jen took so long to answer that Clove was beginning to think she was so appalled that she couldn’t even summon up a response. “Oh, my dear. You know that Meg loves you, don’t you? It’s just a different kind of love. You are very important to her. Just because it isn’t romantic doesn’t make it any less precious. She’s going to forgive you, and be your friend for your whole life. Don’t you think having such a strong bond is better than spoiling it with a relationship that might end in losing her for ever?”

  Clove muttered sullenly, “She’s not going to forgive me. I’ve lost her anyway.”

  “Of course she is! It might be a little awkward for a while, but she’s not the sort of person to stop being friends with you just because of a little thing like this.”

  A little thing! Jen was completely clueless. “You didn’t see her face, Mum. She looked like she hated me.”

  “She was naturally shocked. If someone kissed you out of the blue, you’d probably be a bit surprised too. That doesn’t mean she’s always going to feel that way. Give her time to think it over, and she’ll be fine. People make mistakes like this all the time and manage to get past it. I once kissed my physics professor! Imagine how mortifying that was when she turned me down.”

  “It’s not the same—” Clove broke off mid-sentence. Her mature, wise mother had kissed a teacher? “Why have you never told me that before?” Clove sniffed, wiping away her tears.

  Jen shrugged. “Because it’s embarrassing. I felt exactly like you are feeling now − except I had to get my essays marked by her for the rest of the semester.”

  Clove couldn’t help but giggle when Jen said, “She didn’t even give me an easy A out of sympathy.” Jen’s laugh turned into a snort when she added mournfully, “I only wish I didn’t work with her now. It does make coffee breaks awkward.” Jen was quiet for a moment and then, stroking Clove’s hair back from her face, she said gently, “You know you will meet the girl who’s right for you.”

  “Right,” Clove said, somewhere between tearful and scoffing. “But that might not be for years and years. That doesn’t help me now, does it?”

  From: Ella

  To: Clove

  Subject: thx for the walk of shame BABE

  Date: 3 July 2058 08:28:55 GMT

  Clove,

  I just got home and I already miss you. I’m so pathetic.

  I have literally nothing to say to you in this email. Nothing has happened in the intervening seventy-four minutes since I last spoke to you which is the slightest bit newsworthy.

  JOKE, of course I have news. I always have news.

  NEWS FOR MY SWEETIE (AKA A LIST OF THINGS I HAVE DONE IN THE LAST HOUR):

  1. I came up with another idea for the perfect murder.

  Sidenote: I did write it out for you, but I immediately regretted putting it in writing, just in case someone commits a murder in precisely that fashion and the police implausibly stumble across this love letter* in their investigation and hold me responsible and then I go to prison for ever and die old and grey with only my extensive criminal prison gang to comfort me in my old age. So I deleted it.

  2. I got a coffee from my favourite coffee place.

  This ends your news update from me, your sugar plum dumpling,

  Ella

  P.S. I MISS U AND LIKE YOU A LOT BB.

  *WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT CAN’T BE A LOVE LETTER IF IT’S ABOUT MURDER? This is why your love letters are subpar, Clove. There, I said it. MORE GORE AND VIOLENCE WHEN ROMANCING ME, PLEASE.

  File note: Email from ELENORE WAL
KER to CLOVE SUTCLIFFE, received on 3 July 2058. (From the Clove Sutcliffe File Archive, which was made public as part of the Earth Digital History Initiative in 2638)

  CHAPTER 8

  Work Experience Diary

  Name: Clove Sutcliffe

  Form: S5:9

  Briefly describe your placement with details of the duties you performed each day as well as any training you were given. Identify any skills you have developed, such as teamwork or independent problem solving.

  Day 1:

  My placement was in the Physics and Computer Science Department at the University of St Andrews. I was introduced to the time-travel technology in the morning. In the afternoon I was assigned the job of sorting and backing up old student coursework. I also made approximately 50 cups of tea and microwaved 9 frozen pizzas for professors.

  Day 2:

  56 cups of tea, 7 pizzas, 1 bag of popcorn, defragmented 6 hard drives.

  File note: Work experience diary completed by CLOVE SUTCLIFFE from 17–21 July 2056

  UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS CAMPUS, SCOTLAND, 2056

  Clove spent the entire day filing old coursework in the physics office and waiting for Meg to contact her. She knew she couldn’t fix what she’d done, but she was still hoping that Meg would send her a message − something that would dull the awkwardness and repair the friendship that Clove had ruined. But whenever Clove checked her watch, she had no new notifications. The only message was from Spart.

  > CLOVE, we must talk about the Folios, they—

  “Not now, Spart,” she said, and flicked away his reply without reading it.

  At lunchtime Clove sat in a cafe on campus and stared at her watch, waiting for a message from Meg. After plucking up all her courage, she finally decided to send her own.

  LuckyClover 12:09:36 Are you online?

  LuckyClover 12:11:58 Meg?

  ✓Seen by Nuts_Meg

  Nuts_Meg logged off

  Spart tried to get her attention again.

  > CLOVE? May we discuss—

  “Not today, Spart.”