Laura held out the Key on its chain. “Is this what you want? Then get it!” She threw the Key back over her head, high in the air.
“No! It’s mine!” The Minuteman barrelled forward, eyes raised, trying to get under the Key’s flight.
But it was falling just where Laura had thrown it—straight into the nuclear pool. It hit the surface making barely a ripple, and then sank into the fizzing blue waters.
And the Minuteman was moving too fast to stop. His chair tipped off the edge, and chair and man descended into the water with an immense splash. The water boiled around him.
He came up once, screaming. His flesh was peeling from his face. Laura looked away.
When the chair thudded into the bottom of the pool, the lights flickered.
Joel came running up. Laura was amazed to see Billy Waddle at his side. They were breathing hard, and Laura saw that Billy’s knuckles were bleeding.
“Bern!” Joel yelled. “Are you all right?”
Bernadette said, “You two took your time.”
Billy panted, “I’m sorry.”
Bernadette smiled at him. She reached up and stroked Joel’s cheek.
And Mort was standing before Laura. His face was flushed, his tie half ripped off. He had his pistol pointed squarely at Laura’s face.
“The Minuteman was right,” he said. “You are a witch. You’ve ruined everything. My life. My plans. The whole future.”
Mum came running. “Mort, no!”
But Mort just held up the flat of his hand and pushed her away. The pistol never wavered.
Laura stared back at Mort, determined not to show weakness.
Mort said, “Now I’m going to put an end to you, once and for all, in this and any other future—”
There was a tap on his shoulder. “I beg to differ, old chap.”
Mort turned. And Dad’s right fist slammed into his jaw. Mort went spinning back and clattered to the ground.
Dad picked up his pistol. “Right, safety on. And I think we’ve had enough of you. Cooper, arrest this American buffoon. Now then, where were we?” He grinned. “Hello, chicken.”
“Dad!” Laura hurled herself at him, and let his strong arms wrap around her.
Mum was here too, and Dad spared an arm for her.
“Dad, you came. I knew you would.”
“Well, better late than never. But I can see you’ve coped pretty well without me. You’ve kept everybody alive, and avoided starting a nuclear war. Not a bad day’s work.”
There were greetings all round now. The Woodbines gathered around Nick, belting him on the back. “Mind the bonce,” he protested.
Laura looked around for Agatha. In the confusion, she’d vanished.
The lights flickered again, and there was a drop in the tone of the air-conditioning fans.
“Look!” Bernadette yelled. “They’re legging it.”
The gunfight was still going on. But the Hegemony staff were running towards the time portal. As each of the technicians ran into the portal, he or she just disappeared.
Joel said, “They’re trying to get back to 2007 before the portal shuts down. But which 2007…?”
The portal was flickering, like the lights.
“It’s the power,” Bernadette said. “You’ve just shorted out a nuclear reactor, Laura.”
“On any other day,” Nick said dryly, “that would be quite a stunt.”
Miss Wells reached the portal. She looked back once at Laura. She shouted, “You little fool. You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Laura yelled back, “I know I’ll never be you. That’s enough for now.”
Miss Wells looked wistful, just for a moment. As if she wished she could swap places with Laura, in her dad’s arms. Start her life all over again.
And then she walked into the portal, and disappeared.
“Let me get this straight,” Nick said. “That’s a doorway to the future, right?”
“So we’re told,” Bernadette said.
Joel said, “But we don’t know which future. If there’s not going to be a Hegemony everything’s changed—”
Nick grinned. “I’ll take my chance. I never did fit in round here.” He grabbed Billy Waddle by the ears and gave him a kiss, full on the lips.
Billy stepped back, gasping.
“That’s what you’re missing, Billy Waddle. Remember me!” Nick called. And before anybody could stop him, he ran across the chamber, and disappeared through the portal.
The power finally gave out, and everything went black.
Chapter 29
Monday 10th June 1963. 7:45 a.m.
Another Monday morning, yuck.
School’s back to normal. I’ve got to think about my O-levels next year. Et cetera. You’d think Miss Wells had never even existed.
Miss Wells. We had the worst winter for years. Snow on the ground until March, packed down to ice. The milk froze in the bottles on the doorstep every night. Miss Wells didn’t like the cold. She would have hated the winter. Ha ha.
Mondays are the worst days for Joel.
Bern was taken out of school at Easter, when her bump started to show. We don’t know where she went. Joel has had to follow her progress in his head. “Now they’ll have put her in one of those mother and baby homes with the nuns. Now she’ll be in hospital, a public ward where the nurses look down their noses at you.” On and on.
And he reads me horror stories from the “News of the world” about back-street abortions. “Irish takeaways,” he calls them. That’s why Mondays are so grim for Joel, because he reads awful stuff in the Sunday papers.
The thing is, Bern should have had her baby by now. Or got rid of it. I think it’s driving Joel crazy not knowing, one way or the other.
I’ll take Joel down the Jive-O-Rama this afternoon.
No call from Dad today.
“Shillin’.” Little Jimmy’s grin was wide.
Joel ruffled his hair. Laura paid up, and added a threepenny bit as a tip.
Little Jimmy being brought back from his evacuation and reunited with his dad had been one of the happiest moments of the unravelling of the war panic. Little Jimmy just lapped it up. And he was making good money out of all the tips.
The Jive-O-Rama was back to normal, crowded with teenagers, noise belting out of the jukebox. But Jimmy had kept the nuclear fall-out shelter he’d built out of doors and mattresses. It was a feature now. It was painted in crazy colours, and there were floor cushions and lamps underneath the doors, where you could have a quiet ciggie. But he’d had to buy new doors to fill all the empty doorframes in his house.
Everybody dressed a bit differently now. The lads wore their hair brushed forward with a straight fringe, “Beatle haircuts,” and collarless jackets and Cuban-heeled boots, just like the “Fab Four.” It had all taken off for the Beatles since Christmas. Right now “From Me To You” was hammering out of the jukebox, their second number one. But the Beatles only rarely played the Cavern these days.
There was a buzz in the air, Laura thought. They’d been spared the war, and the sixties were going to be an exciting time.
They bought espressos. The girl who served them, with a small, pinched face under a towering beehive, wasn’t Agatha, who nobody had seen since October, though Laura looked for her every time she came here.
And here, sitting around a table, they found three Woodbines: Bert Muldoon the rhythm guitarist, Paul Gillespie the lead guitarist, and Mickey Poole the bass player.
“Well, well.” Mickey Poole grinned as he pulled up chairs. “We haven’t seen you two since we all got shot at in that underground lair.”
“We got shot at?” Bert Muldoon was still buried on his huge sheepskin jacket. “What underground lair?”
Paul, as ever, didn’t say a word.
Laura felt unreasonably glad to find them. “I never thought we’d see you lot again. You went off to London.”
“Everybody did,” Mickey Poole said. “All the record companies wanted gro
ups from Liverpool.”
“And Cilla,” Bert said.
“Who?”
“You know, that girl who took the coats in the Cavern. She can sing. Good luck to her.”
“But,” Joel said carefully, “not you lot.”
Mickey sighed. “We had two problems.”
“Our lead singer is lost in time,” said Paul.
“And our drummer’s gone back to be a joiner in the bottle factory in Bootle,” Mickey said.
Bert snorted. “ ‘Joiner.’ That’s what he says. Billy’s just a can-lad.”
Mickey said, “We tried out others. Never the same. The Woodbines are going to be nothing but a glorious memory, I think.”
Laura asked, “So what will you do?”
Paul shrugged. “Look for a job.”
“Have a bath,” said Bert.
“Go into engineering,” Mickey said unexpectedly.
“Really?” Joel asked.
Mickey shrugged. “It’s a family tradition, with the Pooles. Always fancied it, even though I’d never admit it to my parents. I’m a year behind now, but I can do my A-levels at college next year. I’m going to stay with my brother Jack in Manchester.”
Bert sneered. “Once a Manc, always a Manc.”
“Better than the bottle factory,” Mickey said.
“Good luck,” said Laura.
“We all miss Nick though,” Mickey said.
Joel said, “I’m going to put a quid in a bank account for him. By the time he gets to 2007, thanks to compound interest it will be worth a fortune.”
“I wonder what 2007 will be like,” Mickey said. “Flying cars? Robots to do the hoovering?”
Bert said, “I’ll be happy if they’ve just filled in the bomb sites in Liverpool.”
Laura wondered what would happen to Nick. A 1963 teenager, lost in 2007! Maybe she’d find out when she got to the future herself, the long way around, one day at a time.
A car horn sounded, just audible over the music.
Big Jimmy came to find them. “Laura, your mum’s outside.”
“Mum?”
“Come to pick you up. Something to do with Saint Bernadette.”
Joel and Laura looked at each other, eyes wide.
“They found her,” Joel said.
“Mum doesn’t drive,” Laura said.
They said their goodbyes to the Woodbines, and raced out of the cellar.
At the top of the stairs, Mum and Dad were waiting.
Laura hadn’t seen Dad since November. He hadn’t even been home for Christmas. She just threw herself at him.
Mum said simply, “We found your friend.”
Chapter 30
They all piled into Dad’s car. It was his precious new Ford Cortina. Joel and Laura sat in the back. The car smelled of Mum’s perfume and hairspray, Dad’s aftershave, the sweet stuffy smell of their cigarettes.
Dad drove off towards the city centre. It was about five, rush hour, and the traffic was heavy.
Laura stared at the back of Dad’s neck, shaved down to the usual crisp stubble. She could hardly believe he was here, that they were all in the car together like this.
Joel was full of curiosity about Bernadette. But he tried to be polite. “Nice car, Mister Mann.”
“Thanks,” Dad said.
Laura said, “I thought you were going to sell it.”
It was a consequence of the Separation. Dad wouldn’t have needed a family car any more.
“No need.” Dad flashed her a grin, then turned his eyes back to the road.
Laura didn’t want to get her hopes up. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been busy,” Dad said. “All that fuss about Cuba took some sorting out even after the crisis was over. Well, the Russians have packed up their missiles and subs and planes and gone home. And the Americans have come out of Turkey. I have a feeling Kennedy and Khrushchev might handle their next problem a bit more sensibly. And then there was all that other funny business to sort out.”
“The invasion from the future,” Joel said.
“If that’s what it was.” Dad had always been sceptical. “All we actually found, when the dust settled, was a global conspiracy within the military. People plotting to topple governments and take over the world.”
“People like Mort,” Laura said.
“Yes. The usual idiots. Well, it took us some time to root them all out, but we’ve got them all now, the whole shower.” He said with satisfaction, “We’ve seen the last of Lieutenant-Colonel Giuseppe Mortinelli the Third. Got him for treason, among other things. Banged up for forty-four years, and good riddance.”
Laura did the sums in her head. 1963 plus forty-four years came to 2007. The year Miss Wells claimed to have come from. She felt a flicker of unease. But it was just a coincidence of dates. She put aside her worry.
“Time travel’s perfectly sensible,” Joel said. “The BBC are making a show about it, that will be on telly in the autumn.” Joel always knew about that kind of thing. “Called Dr Who. There will be this old man and his granddaughter, and a time machine.”
Dad cut him off. “I’m not interested in all that nonsense. Never was, never will be.”
Which was why, Laura thought, nobody was ever going to be told the full story of what had happened, during those few days in October. Because officially it had never happened at all.
Laura had helped save the world, but nobody was ever going to know about it. She grinned. She quite liked the idea.
“Anyway,” Dad said, “now all that ruddy business is done and dusted, I can think about what to do next.”
“Dad, your career is in the air force.”
“Yes, but look here, I’ve fought in one world war and helped put a stop to another one. I rather think I’ve done my duty, don’t you? Quite enough nights away from home for one lifetime. Now I’m planning to buy my way out.”
Joel asked, “So what will you do?”
“Well, old chap, I rather fancy getting back in the air again. Those shiny new VC-10 airliners won’t fly themselves, you know.”
Laura said carefully, “So you’re staying in Liverpool.”
“Looks like it.”
“Will you move in with us?”
Dad glanced at Mum. Mum just sat silently. Dad said, “That’s the current plan. Now look here, chicken, you’re old enough to understand how, umm—”
“Complicated,” Mum said.
“Complicated, yes, that’s the word. How bally complicated these things are. Compared with sorting out a marriage, debunking a global conspiracy is a piece of cake, believe me! But we’re going to give it a go. Aren’t we, Veronica? That’s the plan.”
“That’s the plan,” Mum said.
Laura left it there. You could never fix a family, at best it just sort of limped along like an old banger. At least there was a chance.
Joel, silent, was grinning at her.
The car pulled up. They were outside a big old building with bleak, grimy stone walls. There were bars over the narrow windows, and high railings around the grounds.
“Ugh,” Laura said. “It’s like a prison.”
Dad switched off the engine and turned to face them. “Now, listen to me, you two. We know how attached you were to Bernadette O’Brien. So we did a little digging at the school. After Miss Wells and all that nonsense, they owed me a few favours. I spoke to your Mrs Sweetman. Nice woman. She said Bernadette had been sent here. Couldn’t cope at home, it seems. We thought you’d like to see her before—”
“Before what?”
“Well, before the baby gets taken away for adoption.”
Joel’s face went slack.
“It’s for the best,” Mum said. “I know it’s hard. But a girl of fifteen with a baby! Bernadette’s whole life would be ruined before it even started. And what about looking after the kiddie? With no support, how would she pay the bills? They find good homes, you know. People who’ll love the baby.”
“But it won’t be with
its mother,” Joel said.
Dad said, “Go on, you two. Half an hour. That’s all you’ve got, I’m afraid. We’ll wait for you.”
They got out of the car.
The baby was a boy.
He was called Patrick, after Bernadette’s granddad. He was wrapped up in a blanket that smelled of carbolic soap.
“He looks like Winston Churchill,” Laura said.
“Better than looking like Billy Waddle,” Joel said.
“Don’t knock Billy,” Bernadette said. “He actually showed up, once. The nuns made him say a confession. He said he’d send me money.”
Joel snorted. “Do you believe him?”
“He’s had the stuffing knocked out of him, has Billy. We’re not getting married. We’re not even stepping out. But he’ll help, I think.”
Joel stared at the baby with longing.
Bernadette handed him the baby. “Here. You’re worse than my aunties.”
A grin spread over Joel’s face, like the sun coming up.
They were in a sort of lounge, with a cold wooden floor, high walls, and narrow windows that barely let in the light. There was no telly, but there was a huge crucifix on the wall from which hung a very realistic dead Jesus. In one corner a Catholic nun in a long black habit brushed the floor.
“The whole place is like this,” Bernadette whispered. “Worse than a church. Mass every morning at seven. Confession twice a week. The nuns have you washing the floors.”
“I bet you fit in well,” Joel said dryly.
“On my first day I chucked a cup of tea over the Mother Superior. Had to clean the floor with a toothbrush. Seven months gone, I was.” She grinned. “It was worth it.”
Bernadette, without a trace of make-up, looked as if she had been scrubbed with carbolic herself. But she didn’t take her eyes off the baby.
“When I went into labour they took me to Broad Green Hospital. I was put into this big ward with a load of other women. Half of them had their babies already, and they sat there grinning with their kiddies. The rest of us couldn’t even have visitors. All we had was the nurses glaring at us because we were all bad girls.
THE H-BOMB GIRL Page 21
