The Time Travel Diaries

by Caroline Lawrence

  We were all quiet for a moment. Dinu was rooting in his pockets and Nurse Jean handed him a tissue. He used it to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

  ‘Forty-two is a ripe old age for those times,’ said Dr Sophie. ‘And she had children.’ She looked at us. ‘It may even be that one of us in this room is her descendent.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Dinu. ‘I was born in Romania.’ He blew his nose again and added, ‘I wish we could have brought Lollia back to our time. I think she would have lived long time here.’

  Nurse Jean patted his hand.

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ said Mr Posh. ‘At best she wouldn’t have been able to go through the portal. At worst she might have drastically changed all history at the moment of her crossing from the past to the present. That could have meant that none of us was born or that the Mithraeum was never replaced on its original site. It could even have caused the universe to collapse … That madman Solomon Daisy has been playing with something a billion times more dangerous than the most powerful bomb.’

  At that moment a door opened and Martin limped in.

  Mr Posh stood up and introduced him. Then he invited Martin to sit in the sixth chair.

  For the next hour Mr Posh and Dr Sophie and Nurse Jean questioned him closely about his three visits to the past.

  My theory had been correct.

  Martin had never even peeped out of the Mithraeum. In fact, he hadn’t really seen or heard that much about the mysterious goings on in the temple. Just about the masks and the clicking and some other strange noises.

  ‘You made up all that stuff about a knife-seller named Caecilius with a shop near a pee laundry?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted with a rueful shrug. ‘I saw a documentary about ancient Rome once and never forgot that fact, that they used pee to clean clothes.’

  ‘And I suppose you got the name Caecilius from the Cambridge Latin Course?’ I said.

  Martin shook his head. ‘No, from Doctor Who – the episode where he goes back to Pompeii.’

  ‘Did you know that Caecilius was a real Roman?’ said Dr Sophie. ‘He was a banker from Pompeii.’

  The door opened and the tea lady came in with a fresh tray.

  Martin said, ‘When I came in you all looked like someone had died.’

  ‘Only the whole universe,’ I said, and added, ‘Nearly.’

  ‘You did the right thing by staying put,’ said Mr Posh to Martin. ‘You were far more sensible than these two.’

  ‘Really?’ said Martin, and for the first time he seemed to relax.

  Mr Posh nodded grimly. ‘The good news,’ he said, ‘is that, like in Doctor Who, your time travel doesn’t seem to have disrupted the present.’

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ murmured the tea lady, who had been frozen by our discussion. She put down the new tray and took away the old one.

  ‘Forget about destruction of universe!’ cried Dinu. ‘Here are salt-and-vinegar crisps!’

  Sure enough, in addition to a fresh round of sandwiches there were three packets of crisps. Dinu and I each grabbed one.

  The others seemed to have lost their appetites, but we grinned at each other and eagerly tucked in.

  Mr Posh began to tell us some boring legal stuff about how the three of us had to check in regularly, and contact them urgently if we noticed any changes to our bodies.

  ‘I’m almost thirteen,’ I protested. ‘I’m hoping for quite a few changes to my body.’

  It was starting to get dark outside when the lights came on in the round room. They told us we were almost done.

  We only had to sign about a dozen forms, including one called the Official Secrets Act, which is why I haven’t given you the real names of Mr Posh or Dr Sophie or Nurse Jean from social services.

  ‘Solomon Daisy recruited your headteacher with a cool three mil in an offshore account,’ said Mr Posh, ‘I believe he promised you a great deal of money too. But as you know, he’s been arrested and it will be a long time before he or his assets are free again.’

  ‘So no five million?’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Mr Posh, and reached into his jacket. He pulled out two envelopes and tossed them onto the table. ‘I’ve put some money from petty cash in those envelopes, just to cover your expenses.’

  ‘Two hundred pounds!’ said Dinu, counting his out. His face shone.

  ‘Of course you can keep your new clothes too,’ said Mr Posh. ‘Also –’ he slid two smartphones across the polished surface of the table – ‘always keep those with you in case we need to get in touch. If you remember anything important or suffer any sickness, nightmares or panic attacks, don’t hesitate to call me.’ He stood up, rested both hands on the table and leaned towards me and Dinu. ‘I particularly want you to get in touch at once if you notice anything different about the world now compared to what it was before your trip. You are the only two who will know if actions in the past affected our current world. My number is already in your contacts list under Uncle Harry.’

  ‘I’m Aunt Jean,’ said the social worker.

  ‘And I’m Dr Sophie,’ said Dr Sophie.

  ‘Remember,’ said Mr Posh, ‘you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act. You can’t tell anybody what you saw in the past, not even your parents or guardians.’

  ‘But we can talk to each other, right?’ said Dinu.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Posh. ‘Now, who would like that last packet of crisps?’

  Dinu and I both lunged for it, but Dinu was faster.

  He pulled it open and hesitated.

  Then he grinned and offered the pack to me. ‘No more bully,’ he said. ‘We share?’

  55

  Hashtag Snowpocalypse

  It was snowing the next day. The whole country freaked out over a few centimetres of cold white stuff. People were calling it #Snowpocalypse and posting film clips of their dogs going bonkers, or Photoshopping ginormous Walkers from Star Wars stalking the streets of sleepy English villages.

  They closed our school that Monday. They declared it a #SnowDay. Dinu came round and the two of us tried to kick a football up on the common. But it was too slippery, so we built a snow zombie outside my block of flats and then attacked it with snowballs.

  When Dinu first arrived at my house he was wearing a thin windcheater, so I lent him my dad’s old puffer jacket. It fit him perfectly, and when we came in laughing and stamping the snow off our feet, Gran said he could keep it.

  He was so pleased that he gave her a hug, so she invited him to stay for dinner. Dinu phoned home to ask, and his mum said he could as long as he was home by nine.

  The flat was warm and cosy. Gran’s multicoloured hippy lamps made the old Turkish carpet look new. Her ferns seemed to glow from inside, like emeralds or something. She even turned on the little gas fire with the fake coals that looked like rubies.

  While Gran made good smells in the kitchen, Dinu and I played the latest zombie game on my old PlayStation. For a while it was fun, but soon we turned it off and talked about Lollia and Plecta.

  ‘I really liked her,’ said Dinu. ‘I wish we had brought her back.’

  ‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘Both of them. We could have taken them to a dentist and got their teeth cleaned.’

  ‘Let them try pizza and chocolate,’ said Dinu.

  ‘And taken them to school as our girlfriends,’ I added. ‘Their balance-beam double act would be a sensation on YouTube.’

  Gran came in carrying a casserole dish. She was using the Darth Vader oven mitts I had got for her last birthday.

  We sat down and tucked in. Dinu loved the giant beans in tomato sauce. He had three helpings and told us about a pet goat he used to have in Romania. It was called Vlad and it ate everything in sight.

  ‘You should have called him Vlad the Inhaler,’ I said. Dinu didn’t get it, but Gran laughed so hard she almost fell off her chair.

  After dinner she challenged Dinu to a game of backgammon.

  While they were playing I d
id the dishes and then thought I might as well do Saturday’s chores as I had been otherwise occupied that day. So I put on my rubber gloves, grabbed the bathroom cleaner and sponge scourer and went at the bathtub.

  I polished the old chrome taps until they came up as shiny as silver. The turquoise tub gleamed, and when I turned on the showerhead to rinse off the soap I had a revelation. As a spray of clean hot water came out I realised that the richest Roman could never dream of the luxury of this bathroom in our little two-bedroom flat.

  Then I opened the medicine cabinet and looked at the treasures within. Paracetamol for a headache or bad sprain. Savlon to stop a cut from getting infected. Toothpaste with fluoride to strengthen my teeth and keep them pearly white. Gran’s disposable contact lenses so she could see without wearing glasses. The prescription medicine that had added maybe two decades to her life. And a spare roll of puppy-soft Andrex for wiping your bottom.

  A rich widow or wealthy merchant from Roman Londinium would probably give everything they owned to possess the contents of this cabinet.

  ‘Hey, Wimpy!’ came Dinu’s voice from the other room. ‘I just beat your gran at backgammon. Now I challenge you.’

  ‘You’re on!’ I yelled back. ‘I’m going to crush you.’

  ‘I’m making hot chocolate,’ called Gran from the kitchen. ‘With whipped cream on top.’

  I closed the mirrored door of the cabinet and told myself, ‘You’re not wimpy. You are Eros, the god of love.’

  Then I gave the bathroom a final fond glance. Later that night I would take a mango bubble bath and clean every inch of my body. Then I would wash my hair with coconut-scented shampoo and pineapple-enhanced conditioner before rinsing it with lovely warm water. Finally I would slip in between crisp sheets with a goose-down duvet to keep me toasty warm.

  But for now there was hot chocolate, a board game and a good friend waiting.

  The end

  … or is it?

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In case you are in any doubt, this story is made up. It never happened. However, some of it is based on real facts, especially the parts about the girl with the ivory knife. Archaeologists really did find her bones on Lant Street in Southwark, a few minutes’ walk south of the Tate Modern. DNA analysis really did tell us her eye colour and stable isotope analysis indicated the place where she might have grown up. The ivory knife, wooden box and little glass bottles were all found buried with her. We know she had bandy legs that were getting better. We don’t know her name, her story or how she died. I made all those things up.

  One fact I bent a little is the location of London’s recently re-opened Mithraeum. Although it is very close to the original position, it is off by a few metres.

  You could take the same facts about the Mithraeum and the Lant Street Teenager and make up a completely different story.

  One of the differences between an archaeologist and an author is that an archaeologist has to stick to the facts, but an author can use their imagination to create a story. The report on the bones or the DNA of the girl with the ivory knife is fairly dry, and there are lots of gaps showing what we don’t know. But I am very grateful to the scientists and lab technicians who gave us the reports, and especially to bioarchaeologist Dr Rebecca Redfern.

  I would love to go back 1800 years to Roman London and meet the girl with the ivory knife and find out her real story. But time travel will probably never happen, so in the meantime our imaginations are the best portals we have to the past.

  Caroline Lawrence

  Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries books were first published in 2001 and have since sold over a million copies in the UK alone, and been translated into fourteen languages. The series was televised by the BBC in 2007 and 2008 with ten half-hour episodes per season. Filmed in Tunisia, Bulgaria and Malta, it was the most expensive BBC children’s TV series to date.

  Carline says: ‘I want to know everything about the past, especially the exciting things. Also the sounds, smells, sights and tastes. I write historical novels because nobody has invented a Time Machine. And I write for kids because eleven is my inner age.’

  Visit Caroline’s website: www.carolinelawrence.com

  Look out for the next adventure in

  series

  Coming in January 2020

  And don’t miss …

  Coming in August 2019

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  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

  PICCADILLY PRESS

  80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Roman Mysteries Ltd., 2019

  Illustrations by Sara Mulvanny/agencyrush.com, 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Caroline Lawrence and Sara Mulvanny to be identified as Author and Illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84812-801-9

  Piccadilly Press is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk