Frozen in Time (17 page)

‘Freddy,’ Polly touched her brother’s shoulder. ‘We don’t even know that he’s … that he’s alive.’

He brushed her off. ‘Of course he’s alive! I know it! I can’t believe you’d even say that!’ And he stomped away from them all and then sprinted up the stone steps.

They followed him up, feeling flat. The research hadn’t really helped at all, thought Ben. They were no nearer getting an answer, even after more than an hour of staring at the whooshing screen and feeling slightly motion-sick. While Polly and Rachel went to join Freddy, as he sat on the stone steps outside, Ben went to find the librarian. She was back at her desk, on the phone. She seemed to be speaking another language, in quite a low voice. She looked up and gave him a little wave, still looking a bit flushed, thought Ben. Maybe she really
didn’t
get many kids in doing research these days. She covered the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘You all done now, down there?’ She smiled.

‘Yes, but I didn’t know how to switch it all off,’ said Ben.

‘Not to worry—I’ll nip down and sort it out. Did you find out what you wanted to know?’

‘Not really,’ sighed Ben.

‘Well, do come back again and tell me more about it,’ she said. ‘I might be able to help.’

‘Thanks, we might do that,’ said Ben, but she was already talking again to the person on the phone. Ben realized now that she was the lady who had come to their house late last year on a mission to sign up more children to library events and stayed chatting to their mum for quite a while over a cup of tea. They never had gone along to any events, even though Mum had said they should. Ben wandered back outside where Rachel was promising Freddy something unbelievable.

‘A whopper?’ he said. ‘Why would I want you to get me a
whopper
? A whopping what?’

‘You shouldn’t tell fibs,’ admonished Polly. ‘You tell whoppers and the truth will always find you out.’

‘Oh, do stop talking like a Sunday school teacher!’ snapped Rachel, clearly also the worse for the microfiche session. ‘It’s a kind of burger, you dummies! We’ll go back past Burger King and get you some food. And look—do you think you could try to stop all the gasping and goshing for just five minutes? It’s making my head ache.’

‘Come on.’ Ben put his arm around Rachel’s and Polly’s shoulders and gave Freddy a friendly nudge with his foot. ‘We’re all hacked off and hungry. Rachel’s got the right idea. Let’s stuff ourselves on glorious twenty-first century junk food.’

Polly and Freddy both began to query: ‘Junk f—?’

‘No goshing!’ cried Rachel, yanking Polly along, around the corner to the Burger King. Minutes later they were walking back to the park, eating Whoppers from their cartons and holding cups of Coke in the crooks of their arms.

‘Junk food?’ said Freddy, uncertainly.

‘Oh, just eat it!’ wailed Ben.

‘Eating while you walk isn’t ladylike,’ said Polly.

‘You’re
not
a lady,’ said Rachel. ‘Get it down you before I tip my Coke over your head!’

At the park they sat down near their bikes and finished the remains of the burgers. Polly and Freddy were quiet, intent on finishing every last scrap in their cardboard cartons. Then they stuffed down all the French fries in the battered paper bag Ben opened up, dipping them eagerly in the little punnets of ketchup. They sucked up the last of their Coke with a slight fluttering of their eyelids. Then they lay back on the grass, smiling and slightly glassy eyed.

‘Do you eat this all the time?’ asked Freddy.

‘No—just once a month or so,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s rubbish really.’

‘It’s
heavenly
,’ said Polly.

Ben laughed. ‘That’s just the monosodium glutamate talking.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Polly, with a yawn. ‘But I’m
not
going to gosh.’

She closed her eyes and Rachel grinned at Ben, guiltily. They had introduced two pure 1950s children to junk food. It was bad. But very funny. She leaned back against the fence and decided they could have a bit more of a rest before hurrying back to Bessie. Then Freddy wiped his face with his napkin and dropped it into the empty burger carton and Rachel felt sick all over again. On the napkin was something she wished was ketchup. But she knew it wasn’t.

The Russian president’s perspex face shield steamed up as he let out an excited gasp inside his protective suit. He had only visited Chernobyl twice before, and then far from the fall-out zone of the old, pulverized power plant. Both times he’d been surrounded by press, photographers flashing, as he shook the hands of the victims of the nuclear disaster who were still alive twenty years on.

Today he was deep in the wasteland zone, accompanied by just three other men—hand picked—including the young intern, Ivan, who had been present earlier that year when his leader had impatiently ripped open the letter addressed to The Leader of the Soviet Union, 2007. He had received it late, but its contents still stopped him in his tracks. It had taken some months’ careful manoeuvring to get to this desolate place without being tracked by either their own or the rest of the world’s press. Anything to do with Chernobyl rarely passed unnoticed.

‘This is it,’ said Gregor, as they arrived on the concrete bunker’s lowest level. He hit a green button beside the thirty centimetre-thick iron door and to everyone’s surprise, it worked.

‘He’s been here for fifty-two years?’ muttered the president. ‘Just waiting for me?’

‘In the depths of his best research,’ smiled Gregor.

At Darkwood House, Bessie was in transports of delight to see them back. She’d drunk most of her water, gnawed through Ritzy’s other leg and made thorough use of the newspaper they’d laid down for her.

‘Ooh, Bessie, what a frightful pong!’ Freddy held his nose and looked disgusted as Bessie leaped up at him and licked his knees.

‘Come on,’ said Ben. ‘Let’s get this cleared up before Uncle J sees it. He’ll have a fit!’

‘What JJ? No! He’s a darling!’ said Polly and Rachel and Ben nearly went into a ‘goshing’ session themselves. They’d never heard Uncle Jerome called
that
before.

As it happened, Uncle Jerome wasn’t around to complain. He’d left them a note to say he’d gone up to London to sort a few things out. ‘
I’ve left some money in the breadbin in case I don’t get back for a day or two,
’ Ben read, from the note on the kitchen table. ‘
Spend it on school clothes for Frederick and Pauline, and do be sure to brief them as thoroughly as you can about what they should expect. I’ve already delivered a letter to your head teacher, to expect them next week. I used your hippy commune cover story, so you’d all better work on that too. I’ve called them Robertson, not Emerson—just in case there’s anyone old enough on the school staff to remember. Hopefully I shall have some convincing papers and documents with me when I come back, so there won’t be any questions asked. Tell them not to worry—I won’t be giving anything away to anyone—but I might be able to sniff out a bit more detail about Professor Emerson. Will try out the thirty year rule. Thought I might try to look up Freddy and Pauline’s “Uncle Dick” character too.

See you all soon,

Uncle Jerome (JJ)’

Freddy read the note and nodded. ‘I just hope he’s careful,’ he muttered.

‘But, Freddy, whoever came from the government and “cleaned up”—if what old Percy says is true—well, they’re probably long gone by now, aren’t they?’ said Ben. ‘Nobody’s going to be remembering you and Polly and your father now. It’s long, long ago. I mean, even me and Rachel had half forgotten it—and we’ve
lived
in your old house for five years!’

Rachel was putting her bike back into the shed when Freddy came out to put his in too. She didn’t know what to say to him. She was desperately worried about what she’d seen in the park. Freddy glanced over at her as he wheeled his old black machine up against Ben’s. Then he looked again, harder. ‘What’s up, Rachel?’

She gulped and smiled and said, ‘Nothing.’ But as she went to walk away he stood in front of her, folded his arms, and put his head on one side, regarding her with his dark blue eyes narrowed.

‘What
is
it? I’m not an idiot, you know. I’ve seen you staring at me since we left the park.’

She fumbled with her bike lock, feeling her face get hot. She didn’t want to say what she’d seen. She didn’t
have
to.

‘You saw the blood, didn’t you?’

She looked up, startled. ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

‘Game of you not to say anything.’

‘Game? What’s
that
supposed to mean? I am
going
to say something! You could be ill—you could be …’

‘Dying. Yes. I know. But you’re not going to say anything.’ His eyes were steely now and he was pressing his lips together.

‘But—but what if it
is
… you know, like the rats and things?’

‘Look—I’m fine. A little nosebleed after fifty-three years in suspension, well, it’s not a bit surprising really, is it? You’d have to expect a few que—peculiar—things to happen! I’m
not
going to spend days on end in some sanatorium, having tests done. I’m
not,
I tell you. If you’re my friend, you won’t tell anyone!’

‘But what if it gets worse?’

He looked down at his hands and then back up at her. ‘If it gets worse … well, then everyone will know about it anyway, won’t they? But Polly hasn’t noticed yet—and I don’t want her getting scared. Nor has Ben. Will you keep this secret? Will you?’

Rachel sighed. She did not like this
at all.
‘All right,’ she muttered.

‘Swear!’

‘I swear!’

‘Hands where I can see them—and swear again!’

That afternoon Ben and Rachel began to teach Polly and Freddy about 2009. They laid out newspapers and magazines they’d bought earlier in town and put the radio on again. It was fascinating and exhausting—there was so much to get through and Freddy and Polly were excited and amazed one minute, shocked and appalled the next.

As they flipped over the pages of the
Daily Mail
and
Now
and
Top Gear
magazines (publications they would never have dreamed of bringing home before) Rachel covertly watched Freddy and Bessie for any more signs of bleeding. There were no signs.

‘So—an i-Pod … what’s that?’ Ben was testing them now.

‘A robot?’ said Polly (she was clearly a bit fixated on robots, thought Rachel).

‘Noooo—it’s the little box that holds recordings of tunes. Really small. About the size of a matchbox sometimes,’ said Ben. He smiled patiently. ‘It’s like a tiny, tiny jukebox!’

‘How many tunes can you fit in?’ asked Polly.

‘Oh, I dunno—hundreds—thousands sometimes.’

‘In one little box? That’s ridiculous!’

‘But true.’

‘But I thought you said all music was on discs now?’ said Freddy.

‘Well—yes—CDs too. But you can download tunes, too, from the internet.’

‘Right-oh!’ said Freddy, his eyes beginning to glaze over.

Rachel sighed. ‘Look, I think we should work on their cover story. If we make that really good then everyone will understand why they don’t know anything.’

‘Yes, good idea,’ said Ben. ‘The hippy commune …’