On Saturday, after a morning spent laying out tables and chairs, napkins and glasses, bottles and food, the guests started arriving at about midday. There were a lot of them – elderly relations like Tom’s Great-aunt Sarah from Northumberland, neighbours from all along the street like Mrs Murphy, friends that Mrs Baxter had known at school and college …
And of course there was Alan.
Except that Alan wasn’t really one of the guests. As he watched his mother welcoming people and offering them drinks, Tom noticed that Alan was doing the same. And when it came to dishing out food and passing round plates, Alan was doing that as well.
As the party progressed, Tom saw how his mother would talk to someone and then take them to meet Alan. A few minutes later, she’d get someone else and bring them over … to meet Alan. This wasn’t a party to celebrate his mum recovering from agoraphobia, Tom realized. Its real purpose was for all her friends to have a chance to meet Alan.
‘What do you think of him then?’
Old Mrs Murphy had appeared beside Tom and was nodding in Alan’s direction.
‘Your mother’s young man. I think he’s rather nice.’
Tom did not answer.
‘And she deserves someone after all this time, she really does.’ Mrs Murphy peered short-sightedly across the grass to where Alan was at work on the barbecue. ‘What does he do for a living, do you know?’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t know anything about him.’ And he turned and went indoors.
Up in his bedroom, Tom found Dunstan sitting at the computer. He didn’t look up or speak as Tom came in, simply carried on with his game, and Tom lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.
At this moment, he thought gloomily, Geoff and Paige would be in London. In his mind’s eye he could see them sitting in Aquila, swooping around the sights of the capital city, laughing, enjoying themselves …
As it happened, Geoff was not in London at that time, and nor was he enjoying himself as much as he’d hoped. His day had not gone the way he had planned.
The plan had been to fly to Norway, pick up Paige, take her to London and spend the afternoon showing her the sights and letting her do some shopping. Unfortunately, that was not what had happened.
To start with, Miss Stevenson had rung Geoff’s parents the evening before to say that she would be back from her course by lunchtime on Saturday and could give Geoff his extra reading lesson at two o’clock that afternoon. It meant the time Geoff could spend in London with Paige was severely shortened. By the time he had flown her to and from Norway, they would have barely an hour and a half.
Then, when Geoff arrived at Paige’s house in Stavanger at the arranged time, there was no sign of Paige. He waited twenty minutes, and was debating whether he should go up to the house and knock on the door, when she came tripping down the garden in a dressing gown and slippers. He climbed out of Aquila to meet her and Paige explained that she had got to bed very late last night and had only just woken up.
‘But I am so looking forward to this!’ she said. ‘I just need to get dressed. Give me two minutes!’
She returned thirty minutes later – how anyone could take thirty minutes to get dressed was a mystery to Geoff – and did a little twirl on the grass.
‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Is it all right?’
‘Is what all right?’ asked Geoff.
‘The outfit!’ Paige was dressed in pink that day, with matching shoes and hair-band, and a large expensive-looking bag slung over her shoulder. ‘Does it look OK?’
‘Yes, it’s fine,’ said Geoff. ‘Can we go now?’
Crossing the English coast somewhere over Norfolk on their way to London, Paige asked if there was anything to eat or drink.
‘Only I missed breakfast, you see,’ she explained. ‘In all the rush.’
Geoff produced a can of drink and a packet of crisps from his backpack, but when he opened the can, the contents fizzed out and splashed over Paige’s trousers.
Geoff tried to tell her that it didn’t matter, but apparently it mattered to Paige, who said determinedly that she was not going anywhere until she had had a chance to clean up.
Geoff changed course and flew to the Eyrie, where he found a bucket of water and a towel, but Paige was still not happy.
‘You mean you don’t have any cleaning products here?’ She looked around the Eyrie in disbelief. ‘Are you serious?’
Geoff said they seemed to manage without, most of the time.
‘OK,’ said Paige. ‘I guess I’ll just have to get changed.’
‘We don’t have much for you to get changed into,’ said Geoff. ‘I think Tom may have left a sweater here, but …’ He stopped, noticing that Paige had reached into her bag and taken out a pile of clothes. ‘Right …’ he said. ‘I’ll go and stand over here.’
He retreated to the back of the Eyrie, wondering what sort of person went out for the day with a bag containing a change of clothing, and it was while he was there, carefully studying Tom’s collection of mountain peaks, that Paige called out to him.
‘It’s trying to say something.’
‘What?’ Glancing over his shoulder, Geoff could see there were words flashing in the air above the dash in Aquila. ‘What does it say?’
‘It’s asking if it can …’ Paige paused a moment before reading the words: ‘… revanigrate the hydromorphic energizers. What does that mean?’
‘Ask it if it thinks it’s a good idea,’ said Geoff. He was a little reluctant to come back to Aquila until Paige had finished getting changed.
‘It says yes.’
‘OK.’ Geoff nodded. ‘Tell it to go ahead.’
Aquila often asked permission to change a setting or adjust a control and, as long as the lifepod said it was a good idea, they usually let it do what it wanted.
When Paige told him it was all right and he could come back, Geoff found she was now wearing a yellow dress, and that she had changed both the band in her hair and her shoes, so that they matched the new outfit.
‘Right.’ He climbed back into Aquila. ‘Let’s try again.’ He reached out for the controls and that was when he noticed that most of the lights on the dash had gone out.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What did you do?’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ said Paige. ‘I was just sitting here getting changed!’
Geoff pressed the small green light, third in from the left, and the words ‘HI! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?’ appeared rather faintly in front of him.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
More words flashed up. A lot of words.
‘Oops,’ said Paige as she studied them. ‘That’s not good, is it?’
Lying on his bed, listening to the noise of the party coming up from the garden, Tom became aware of another sound – of someone hurrying up the stairs, then along the landing towards his room. Whoever it was, he thought, and whatever they wanted, he would tell them to go away and the words were forming in his mouth as the door burst open.
‘You’ve got to come quickly!’ Geoff’s face was pale and anxious. ‘Something’s happened to Aquila!’
‘What?’ Tom swung his legs off the bed. ‘What’s happened?’
Geoff was about to tell him when he noticed Dunstan. ‘I’ll tell you outside,’ he said. ‘Come on!’
On the way downstairs, Geoff gave Tom a brief account of what had happened at the Eyrie.
‘I knew this’d happen,’ Tom muttered as he followed Geoff out of the front door and round the side of the house to where Aquila was parked in front of the garage. ‘She’s broken it, hasn’t she?’
‘I keep telling you, I didn’t do anyt
hing!’ Paige stood up so that the top part of her body appeared in the air above an invisible Aquila. ‘I was just sitting there getting changed.’
‘She’s right,’ said Geoff. ‘It wasn’t her fault. Really. But something’s happened. It won’t go faster than a walk now, however hard you push the button. It took us ten minutes to get here …’
Tom swung himself into Aquila, pressed the small green button and asked what had happened. The explanation that scrolled up on the screen in front of him was a long one and contained sections about how ‘the hyper field output has been temporarily bypassed until the toroid balance has been restored to its optimal setting …’, which Tom did not understand at all. The overall meaning, however, was clear enough.
‘Well?’ asked Geoff urgently when he had finished.
‘Well,’ said Tom, ‘as far as I can tell, Aquila is giving itself a sort of service, and it had to turn off a lot of its functions while it’s doing it. But it’s not too bad. Everything should be back to normal in a couple of hours.’
‘A couple of hours!’ said Geoff. ‘Are you serious? How am I going to get Paige back to Norway?’
‘You can fly her there,’ said Tom. ‘Just not for two hours, that’s all.’
‘If I’m not back by three thirty,’ said Paige, ‘my mom’ll start screaming.’
Tom looked at his watch. ‘That should be all right. How long does it take to get to Norway? Twenty minutes?’
‘It’s too late,’ said Geoff. ‘I have my lesson with Miss Stevenson at two, and if I don’t turn up for it Miss Taylor’ll want to know why. And we can’t have her asking questions. Not again.’
Both Paige and Geoff were looking expectantly at Tom, and it was a moment before he realized why.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No. Absolutely not. I’m not taking you anywhere.’ He turned to Geoff. ‘She’s your problem, not mine …’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘You have to take her,’ said Geoff. ‘There’s no other choice …’
‘I guess there is one other choice,’ Paige suggested. ‘I could fly Aquila myself, couldn’t I? I mean, all I have to do is tell it where to go, right? Then, when I get home, I can tell it to fly itself back to you. It can do that, can’t it?’
The image flashed into Tom’s head of Paige flying off in Aquila and that being the last they ever saw of it.
‘No,’ he found himself saying. ‘No. I’ll take you.’
Geoff gave a sigh of relief. ‘OK! Great! Well, I’ll take Paige back to the Eyrie and then you can …’
‘Is that a barbecue?’ Paige’s delicate nose was sniffing the air. ‘Do I smell food?’
‘Mum’s giving a party,’ Tom explained, ‘but you can’t …’
‘I am so starving!’ Paige was already out of Aquila and walking round the side of the house to the back garden. ‘Geoff was in such a hurry this morning, I didn’t have any breakfast.’ A moment later she was in the garden staring around at the guests. ‘Which one’s your mom?’
‘She’s over there.’ Tom pointed. ‘But like I said, you can’t …’
But apparently Paige could. She was already making her way through the guests towards Mrs Baxter, and all Tom and Geoff could do was follow her.
Tom’s mother was delighted to see them. She knew Tom had not been enjoying himself and was relieved to see that Geoff had persuaded him down from his room.
‘I thought you couldn’t come today,’ she said. ‘Tom said you were out with a friend.’
‘That’ll be me.’ Paige extended a hand. ‘Paige Legrand. I hope you don’t mind my tagging along!’
‘Any friend of Geoff’s is welcome here!’ Mrs Baxter beamed. ‘Have you known each other long?’
‘We met on holiday,’ said Paige easily. ‘And now I’m touring England for a bit. Are you sure it’s all right for me to gatecrash like this?’
‘Of course it is!’ said Mrs Baxter, warmly. ‘Come and get some food. And you can tell me where you got that lovely dress …’
Paige was good at parties. Watching her move around, chatting to different people, laughing and looking completely relaxed, you’d have thought she was with people she’d known all her life. Everybody seemed to like her and even Mrs Murphy came over and told Tom how lucky he was to have such a nice girl for a friend.
An hour later, when it was time for Geoff to go to his lesson with Miss Stevenson, it was Paige who solved the problem of explaining why Tom needed to go with them.
‘Would it be OK,’ she asked Mrs Baxter, ‘if Tom took me back to where I’m staying?’
Tom was half expecting his mother to say no, and that he was needed to keep an eye on Dunstan. But she didn’t.
‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed. ‘That’ll be fine.’
‘That is so great!’ Paige produced a dazzling smile. ‘And will it be OK if he stays for an hour or so? To meet my parents, and say hi and that?’
Mrs Baxter assured her that would be fine too, and Tom found himself wondering if anyone ever said no to Paige.
They flew to Miss Stevenson’s house first, to drop Geoff off for his lesson, and then Tom took Paige back to the Eyrie.
At the water tower, there was still half an hour before Aquila came back online and they could fly to Norway and, given that Tom had made it clear he didn’t much like Paige, this could have been a rather awkward time.
Paige, however, seemed completely unembarrassed. She walked around the Eyrie, examining the contents of the shelves and chattering away exactly as she had done at the party. She loved the Eyrie, she said. She loved the way they had decorated it and she wanted to know all about Tom’s collection of mountain peaks. Almost despite himself, Tom found himself drawn into conversation. He told her how they had used Aquila’s laser to slice off the sections of rock, and then found himself telling her about school, and Miss Taylor, and even about his mother.
‘And what about your dad?’ Paige asked. ‘What does he do?’
‘He left,’ Tom told her, ‘when I was three.’
‘No kidding!’ Paige was sitting on the sofa, her knees tucked up under her chin. ‘Same age mine left me! Do you hear from him at all?’
‘I get a card and some money,’ said Tom. ‘At Christmas and on my birthday.’
‘Me too.’ Paige nodded. ‘So did your mom get married again?’
Tom shook his head.
‘What about this Alan guy? Looked to me like they were kinda close.’
Tom admitted it was beginning to look that way to him, and then found himself telling Paige about the day he had first found Alan in the sitting room, and hoped he was just a friend but how events had slowly made it clear that he was more than that.
‘Been there!’ Paige nodded sympathetically. ‘Been there and done that more than once.’ She chuckled briefly, then looked serious. ‘And you know the worst thing? This person walks into your life, into your home, where you’ve been living quite happily, just the two of you, and you want to say, Hold on a second! Don’t I have a say in this? But apparently you don’t.’
‘Yes!’ said Tom. ‘Yes, that’s it exactly!’
‘And the next thing you know your mom’s talking about getting married and you don’t really know anything about the guy. I mean, he could be a bank robber for all you know – and now he’s coming to live with you!’
Tom said he knew exactly what she meant. ‘Is that what happened to you?’ he added.
‘Three times,’ said Paige.
Tom was interested, despite himself. ‘Did you mind?’
‘I did the first time.’ Paige sniffed. ‘I was only seven. Second one I never actually met – that only lasted six hours – and the one she�
�s got now … Dan … he’s OK. What about this Alan guy, is he all right? What does he do for a living?’
‘He cleans toilets,’ said Tom.
‘Are you sure?’ Paige frowned. ‘That suit he was wearing was kind of expensive for a janitor.’
‘I don’t know if that’s all he does,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t really know anything about him. I don’t talk to him unless I have to.’
‘Ah …’ Paige nodded. ‘I tried that with Number One. Big mistake.’
‘Was it?’
‘Thing is,’ said Paige, ‘situations like that, you need all the information you can get. It’s no good giving him the silent treatment. It’s not going to work. You want to ask him lots of questions – and I mean lots. You need to find out what he does, where he works, what he likes … You want to know everything.’
Tom considered this.
‘And the other thing you need to do,’ Paige went on, ‘is watch what he’s like with your mom. I mean, does he make her happy? Does he make her laugh? Because if he does, then you might as well not bother fighting, because you’re not going to win. You’re better off working out if there’s anything in it for you. I got a complete new wardrobe out of Dan.’
Sitting the other end of the sofa, Tom looked at Paige with a new respect. He was beginning to understand why Geoff had flown all the way to Norway to see her.
At twenty-eight minutes past two, all the lights came back on in Aquila. Tom asked if everything was back to normal and the words ‘ALL FINE AND DANDY, THANKS!’ flashed up in front of him in bright letters. Paige gathered up her things and Tom took the controls.
He rather enjoyed the flight to Norway. Navigating to Stavanger was simple enough as Geoff had given him the course and the co-ordinates he needed, and although they ran through a thunderstorm somewhere off the coast of Lincoln, the skies cleared as they crossed the North Sea, and racing over the water at a few hundred feet with the sun glinting on the waves below was rather exciting.
They talked the whole way. Paige told Tom a long and embarrassing story about how a diary she kept had been discovered by her mother and Tom told Paige how he had kept a diary about finding Aquila that had been discovered by Miss Taylor – who fortunately didn’t believe it. Then they swapped more stories about schools and parents, which all seemed to involve a lot of laughing, and when they finally found themselves hovering above Stavanger and Paige was pointing out her house – which was bigger than anything Tom had seen in his life – he was almost disappointed that the trip was over.
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