SHARON GRIFFITHS
Time of My Life

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain as The Accidental Time Traveller by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

This eBook edition published in 2018

Copyright © Sharon Griffiths 2008

Cover design © Diane Meachams Designs 2018

Cover illustration © Shutterstock

Sharon Griffiths asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847560902

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780007287765

Version: 2018-05-18

Dedication

For the Amos men – Mike, Adam and Owen – with love.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

About the Author

Which Decade Suits You Best?

About the Publisher

Chapter One

‘You all right, love?’

The taxi driver was looking at me oddly as I scrabbled in my bag. Mobile … iPod … notebook … Dictaphone … everything but my purse. Ah. There it was, right at the bottom, of course. I pulled a tenner out – I think it was a tenner – and pushed it through the window. Just peering in at the driver really hurt my neck.

‘Here, thanks. Keep the change.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked, swiftly folding the note into his wallet. Maybe it had been a twenty.

‘Yes. Fine. Fine.’

But I wasn’t. Not really. And it got worse.

As the taxi roared off – no one likes to hang around The Meadows longer than they have to – I stood swaying slightly on the pavement. My head was thumping, my eyes were hurting and I couldn’t stop shivering. It was one of those Mondays when I swore I would never drink again. Or have a row with Will …

Right. No time to think about that at the moment. I tried to get myself together. I was here to do an interview for The News. Mrs Margaret Turnbull had been one of the first people to move in to The Meadows when it was built fifty years ago in the days when it was the Promised Land. Bit different now. You’re lucky to come back and find your car still there. Even luckier if it’s still got its wheels.

But The News was doing a special supplement to mark its fiftieth birthday. One of the big TV stations was apparently planning a reality programme where people have to pretend to live in the past – the 1950s house – and rumour had it that was going to be in The Meadows too. So I had spent the morning in the dusty little library at the top of The News building, reading through the bound files of yellowing newspapers from the 1950s – stories of new roads, new houses, flower festivals, pageants, mysterious deaths, and adverts for cigarettes and washing machines, and lots of housewives prancing around in pinnies. A different world.

Meanwhile, back in the present I leant for a moment on the gatepost as my head swam. Tidy gatepost. Neat path and pretty garden with tulips, primroses and violets. This was one of the nicer bits of the estate and a very posh front door showed quite clearly that Mrs Turnbull had bought her council house. Through the window, I could see a grey-haired lady in trousers and sweatshirt, looking up from some knitting, watching out for me.

But as I walked up that path I realised something was wrong, very wrong. My eyesight had gone haywire. The flagstones seemed somehow a long way away. It was hard to find them with my feet. Everything was at odd angles. My head was swirling. I wanted to shake it to clear it, but my neck wouldn’t work properly. There was a pain in my eyes. This wasn’t a hangover, this was something else. I was ill, really ill. I began to panic. I felt as if I was going to fall over. I got to the front door and pushed my hands out in front of me. Somehow, I rang the bell.

I suddenly wished – oh so strongly – that Will and I hadn’t argued, that we’d said goodbye that morning with a kiss instead of sitting in the car in strained and sulky silence. I wished …

Then everything went black …

Things had started to go wrong on Sunday. As well as living together, Will and I work together too – he’s the paper’s Deputy News Editor – and so a weekend when neither of us is working is a bit of a treat. After a good Saturday night out with Caz and Jamie we had a nice – very nice thank you – lie-in, and then Will had gone to play football and I’d pottered around the flat having a bit of a pamper session and sorting out the washing. Just my washing – Will does his own. And his own ironing. You won’t catch me starting down that route. Bad enough doing my own, so hooray for the tumble dryer.

Caz and I got to the pub at the same time. She was wearing a jacket I hadn’t seen before, black and fitted, with fancy frogged buttons. Very romantic. ‘Love it!’ I said, as we made our way to the bar. ‘New?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ she laughed, doing a twirl so I could admire it. ‘This was a coat from the charity shop reject box, because it had a stain on the bottom. So I chopped that off and found the buttons on eBay.’ Clever girl, Caz. A real eye for what looks good.

With that, Jamie’s car pulled up outside. Just that glimpse of Will through the pub’s small window made me smile. After all this time together, I got so excited to see him. He and Jamie breezed in, smelling of fresh air and full of the joy of victory. We managed to persuade them that no, they didn’t really want to play table football, got our drinks, ordered some food and bagged the last table.

So, everything was fine until Leo and Jake came over.

But it wasn’t their fault. Not their fault at all.

‘It’s OK. We’re not stopping. We’ve just called in for some Dutch courage,’ said Jake. ‘We’re off to lunch with Leo’s parents. We have some news for them.’

‘News?’ Caz and I immediately sat up straight and took notice.

‘We’re getting married!’ said Jake. ‘Or civil partner shipped anyway. Midsummer’s Day. Old Shire Hall. Marquee in the rose garden. Lots and lots of champagne. Lovely music. Lovely people too, if you’ll come.’

Caz and I jumped up and hugged and kissed them both. Will and Jamie stood up and shook their hands in a manly sort of way, clapped them around the shoulders and said, ‘Well done’, ‘Great news’, and that sort of thing.

‘Can I get you a drink to celebrate?’ asked Will.

But no, Leo’s parents were waiting. They didn’t want to be late, and didn’t want to be too drunk when they told them. It was an important day.

‘Good luck!’ we yelled as they went out, all pleased and excited.

‘Well,’ said Jamie, after they’d gone, ‘what’s the form for a woofter wedding then? Do we have to wear pink?’

‘Don’t be so silly,’ said Caz. ‘And patronising. It will be good fun. And it’s good they can do it. Makes sense with tax and money and all that sort of thing.’

‘But that’s not just why they’re doing it,’ I said. ‘I think it’s lovely. Public declaration and all that.’

‘Do you really?’ asked Will, and the sharpness of his tone surprised me.

‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘I mean they’re obviously devoted to each other and it’s great that now they can tell the world.’

‘Yeah, guess so,’ said Will, but he looked as though he wanted to carry on grumbling. Then our food arrived and we got stuck into eating. Drinking too. Afterwards we walked around to Caz and Jamie’s place.

‘Yes!’ went Will as soon as we walked in. ‘Oh that is just beautiful!’

Jamie laughed, ‘Pretty neat, isn’t it?’

I was behind them, pulling my boots off so couldn’t see at first what all the fuss was about. Then I padded into the sitting room and saw it was a TV set, one of those huge plasma jobs. It was hanging on the wall like a picture. Caz raised her eyebrows in a ‘Don’t blame me, it’s one of his toys’, sort of expression.

‘That is just mint!’ said Will, standing in front of the set with his tongue practically hanging out. Jamie switched on some motor racing. It looked as though the cars were racing from one end of the room to the other. Impressive, but too much. Much too much. I went through to the kitchen to help Caz dig out some ice cream she’d got from the farmers’ market. More wine too.

‘It’s his latest toy,’ she said.

‘Don’t you mind?’

Caz shrugged. ‘It’s his money.’

‘Gerrrin there!’ Will was yelling at the TV like a kid, he was so excited.

We took the wine and the ice cream back into the sitting room and I curled up on the sofa. My throat was a bit scratchy so I could kid myself the soothing ice cream was medicinal. Then Will said, ‘I think we should get one of these TVs, Rosie.’

‘In your dreams. We haven’t got that sort of money. If we had, we’d be living in a bigger flat.’

This was a sore point. Our flat was actually mine, and it was tiny, which is why I had been able to buy it. When Will – and all his stuff – moved in a few months ago the plan had been we’d try and save to buy a bigger flat together. But you know what it’s like, prices just keep going up and up … Money comes in. Money goes out.

I’m not quite sure on what. But we needed more space. We didn’t need a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of television.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said crossly.

Suddenly a row was in the air. Will had that slightly sulky expression that he has when he doesn’t get his own way. But then Caz came downstairs, holding a photo and giggling.

‘I was sorting out some stuff at my mum’s, Will,’ she said, ‘and I found this.’

‘Oh my God!’ said Will. ‘The outdoor activities week in Year Eleven!’

Oh yes. Will and Caz were in school together. They even had a bit of a fling at one time. About the time that picture was taken, long before I knew either of them.

Actually it was quite a funny photo. They must have been sixteen years old and on an outdoor week in the Yorkshire Dales – all climbing, canoeing and gorge walking. Caz was wearing one of those enormous geek-like cagoules. But she had the full make-up on – three different shades of eye shadow, blusher and lip gloss. Never a girl to let her standards slip is Caz.

In the picture she was gazing adoringly up at Will. Jamie snatched the photo from him. ‘I bet you were hell for the teachers,’ he said – and he should know, he teaches in the local comp – ‘sneaking off to the canoe store for a quick snog. They all do.’

Caz and Will looked at each other very quickly and almost blushed.

Caz grinned. ‘Thank goodness you don’t choose your life partners at sixteen,’ she said. ‘Bad enough working with you, Will, let alone having to live with you. Don’t know how Rosie manages it.’

‘With difficulty sometimes,’ I said, laughing. But I felt a small pang. I had fallen for Will the moment I’d arrived at The News, where he was already a senior reporter. He had to show me around on the first day and I knew, just knew, that he was the one for me. We were both slightly involved with other people at the time and as soon as we untangled ourselves, that was it. We were an item. It was as if we had always been together.

But we hadn’t. And Caz had known him since they were eleven years old. They had a past, experiences, memories, daft jokes I couldn’t share. And sometimes, just sometimes, I felt a twinge … of jealousy, I suppose. Silly. He was with me now.

Jamie and Will started playing on the PlayStation.

‘What about Leo and Jake then?’ asked Caz, passing me some wine. ‘I bet that will be a brilliant day.’

I laughed and started to say something to Will, but he was still gazing at that bloody television.

‘Look, Will, you’ve only just got your new car,’ I said. ‘That’s a nice new toy for now.’

‘Well, you’re the one who wanted to go to New York.’

‘And you’re the one who spent a fortune in Nieman Marcus,’ I snapped back. ‘How many cashmere sweaters does one man need?’ A bit of a cheek coming from me, I know, being no slouch in the cashmere sweater department myself.

Things were getting snippy.

‘Children, children,’ said Jamie. You can just hear him with Year Seven, though at school he probably wouldn’t have the lager can in his hand.

‘Have you not thought,’ Jamie went on, ‘that perhaps if you didn’t buy new cars and fly halfway across the world for a long weekend and a shopping habit, you might just be able to buy a bigger flat, or even a nice little house? Unless, of course, you don’t really want to. And your subconscious is telling you to spend your money on fun and toys instead of being grown-up and sensible and salting it away for your future.

‘Strange, isn’t it,’ he went on, ‘that the only people in our group who are getting married are Leo and Jake? Takes a pair of gays to set the rest of us loose-living reprobates a good example.’

‘Me, I don’t see the point of being married,’ said Caz. ‘We’re fine as we are, aren’t we sweetie?’ she said, patting Jamie’s knee. ‘We don’t need a posh frock and a piece of paper. It might be different if we wanted kids, I suppose. But Jamie sees enough of kids in work. He doesn’t want to come home to them as well.’

‘But what about you?’ I asked.

‘Not a maternal bone in my body,’ she laughed. ‘Anyway I’d be an absolute disaster as a mum. I’d probably leave the poor little bugger’s pram outside the pub. No, my unborn baby should be very grateful to me for keeping it that way.’

Jamie looked baffled. ‘I always thought girls wanted to get married. You know, waiting for their knight in shining armour to come along and sweep them off their feet, rescue them from dragons.’

‘We can fight our own dragons, thank you,’ I said.

‘See?’ said Jamie laughing to Will. ‘This lot have made us redundant. Out of work dragon-slayers, park your charger and hang up your plumed helmet.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Will, now quite drunk and getting stroppy, ‘maybe Leo and Jake have got something to prove. They want to settle down and play houses.’

Then, just like that, as if it wasn’t really that important at all, he dropped the bombshell that nearly destroyed my world.

‘As for me,’ said Will, ‘there’s not much point in tying myself to a house if I’m not going to be around long.’

I was so shocked I gasped, as if he’d hit me. ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’

‘Well, nowhere at the moment. But I might do,’ he said, looking sideways at me. ‘I might go out to work in Dubai, or somewhere. Mate of mine out there says they always want English journos. Plenty of money, easy lifestyle.’

Dubai? This was the first I’d heard of it. ‘And is that what you want? Plenty of money and an easy lifestyle?’ I snapped.

‘Well, it’s what we all want really, isn’t it?’ he said, taking a gulp from his can and sprawling back into the armchair.

I was furious. I was also drunk, which didn’t help. And stunned. I had thought Will and I were pretty solid. Maybe even permanent. Wrong!

‘Look, Rosie,’ he put down his can, ‘I just mean …’

He was probably trying to be conciliatory. I wasn’t.

‘Forget it,’ I snapped.

‘Coffee?’ said Caz, very brightly. Just like the perfect hostess, only she staggered a bit and fell onto Jamie’s lap, which spoiled the effect.

‘No, no, I don’t want coffee,’ I said, angry and flustered and utterly wrong-bloody-footed, ‘I think I want to go home.’ I marched out into the hall, wriggled my feet into my boots and left.

Will came after me, and I didn’t know if I was pleased or not. I could hear his footsteps but he said nothing. His long legs meant he soon caught me up. He walked alongside me, matching his steps to mine, looking straight ahead. And we walked like that, side by side in silence all the way to the flat. My flat.

As soon as we got in, I turned to him. ‘Are you really going to Dubai?’

‘Who knows?’ he shrugged. ‘It’s just a thought, an option, a possibility.’

‘But what about me?’

‘Well you can come too, if you like.’ He hunched his hands into his pockets.

‘If I like? If I like? You make me sound like an optional extra! I thought we had a future together.’

‘Did you? Did you really?’ Those big brown eyes flashed and I didn’t like it.

‘And if you think we have a future together,’ he said, ‘why is it that all I ever hear is what you want? You want to work in London. You want the bigger flat. You bought the bigger sofa, without even mentioning it to me. You pay the bills and just tell me how much to cough up. Fine, fine it’s your flat after all, as you keep reminding me.’

I was stunned. ‘I don’t feel like that. I thought …’

‘What did you think? Come on, tell me, I really want to know.’

‘I was frightened,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to be dependent on you.’

‘Why not? Don’t you trust me?’

‘It’s not like that. No. It’s nothing to do with trust. It’s just that … Well, I don’t know. We’ve never talked about the future, not really.’

And we hadn’t. We’ve planned holidays and weekends away but no more than that, not what you would call a proper, grown-up, till death us do part future. Maybe it was too frightening to contemplate.

‘Well let’s talk about it now. Come on, Rosie, what do you want? What do you want from me? From us?’

‘I don’t know.’ And that was honest. I had sometimes daydreamed of marrying Will. Not the big white wedding, but just being married to him, having him there all the time. He was the only person I’ve ever daydreamed like that about. The only one.

But I had never told him. Because there were times that the same dream could terrify me. The thought of being with just one person for ever. Well, it’s seriously scary, isn’t it?

And Will … well, he wasn’t exactly husband material. I mean, he was nearly thirty and he still acted like a big kid. Away from work all he and Jamie cared about was football and drinking and playing computer games and the bloody grand prix and flash tellies.

‘You don’t know?’ he repeated, still waiting for my answer.

I looked up at him. ‘Will, I love my job and I’m just beginning to get somewhere. I want to see how far I can go.’

‘Fair enough. You’ll go far, Rosie. We both know that.’ Full of angry energy, he was pacing up and down the tiny sitting room. ‘But I don’t know if I’m part of your plan. Frankly, Rosie, I haven’t a clue where I am with you. You want everything your own way.’

‘But it’s not like that …’ I was stunned, struggling to find ways of saying what I thought. And then he nearly floored me with his next question.

‘Tell me, do you see yourself having children?’

‘Hey!’ I tried to joke. ‘You can’t ask questions like that at interviews. Not allowed.’

Will wasn’t laughing. ‘I want to know.’

‘Well yes, since you ask, one day, probably,’ I said. I’d daydreamed about that too. A boy and a girl, with Will’s blond hair and big brown eyes. But not yet. Maybe I’d have them at some vague point in the future.

It was time for me to go on the attack. ‘And what about you? Do you want children?’

‘Maybe, one day. Depends.’

‘Depends on what?’ I asked. And the Devil got into me, because I snapped, ‘On whether you can fit it in between the PlayStation and the plasma TV? Or another new car? You’ve got to be a grown-up to be a parent, Will, not an overgrown bloody kid yourself.’

Of course it all went downhill from there. We’d both had too much to drink and said too many things that shouldn’t have been said and that I’m not even sure we meant.

I called him spoilt, immature and childish, among other things. He called me a selfish, unthinking control freak, among other things. It didn’t get us anywhere. In the end I went off to bed and I could hear Will still crashing around the sitting room, impatiently flicking through the TV channels, until he finally went to sleep on the sofa. My new sofa.

And me? I lay in bed and tried to re-run the row. Did I really want to be married? Yes of course. Maybe. But now? Frankly, the thought frightened me. What if Will went to Dubai? What if I went to London?

What if?

My head was thumping. I hardly slept, and in the morning my head was worse … which is why when we got to The News on Monday morning – in Will’s car, in silence – I’d been hoping to crawl quietly to my desk and just plod through the day – but the editor, Jan Fox, known to all as the Vixen, spotted me.

‘Rosie! A word please!’

The Vixen was standing at her office door, eyes glinting, coppery highlights shining. In one hand she held a large sheet of paper, on which the perfect scarlet nails of the other hand were lightly drumming. It was not a happy drumming.

I realised that the piece of paper she was so obviously hacked off about was a proof copy of the next day’s feature page. A feature on childcare, one I’d written. My heart sank even further. Happy Monday.

‘Do you realise,’ she said, shooting me one of her fierce looks, ‘how incredibly young and silly this makes you sound? It’s written as though everybody in the world has a responsibility to look after children with the sole exception of their bloody parents.’

‘But I was just quoting from the reports and the government spokesman …’

‘Yes, I know you were,’ she sighed. ‘I just wonder about your generation sometimes. You must have had it easier than any other in the history of the world, and it’s still not enough, you’re still asking for more.’

I just stood there, waiting, longing to get to the Ibupro-fen in my desk drawer.

‘OK, I’ve marked up some ideas. Get that done. And then there’s something else I want you to have a go at.’

Just what, I found out at the morning conference.

The News Editor, Picture Editor, Chief Photographer, and others all crowded into the Vixen’s office, with mugs of coffee and piles of notes balanced on their knees. Will was there too, not looking quite as polished as usual. I don’t know if he was trying to catch my eye. I didn’t give him the chance. I just kept staring at the photos of all the old editors on the wall above him. George Henfield, fat and bald, Richard Henfield with his pipe.

We’d whizzed through the plans for the following day’s paper and much of the week’s ideas, but the Vixen was still talking. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now what about The Meadows? It’s fifty years since the first families moved in and I think we should have a good look at it. At the time it was revolutionary, homes of the future, the perfect place to live.’

‘Bloody hell, they must have been desperate,’ muttered Will.

The Vixen, of course, heard him.

‘Will, you haven’t a bloody clue, have you?’ she said in withering tones, which cheered me up.

Will tried to score some Brownie points. ‘We’ve done quite a lot on the way the school’s improved,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a few interviews with the new headmistress who’s working miracles, Rosemary Picton, and we’re always doing picture stories there.’

‘Yes,’ said the Vixen briskly, ‘and I’m sure we’ll be back to her. An amazing woman. But, as you know, they are using one of the houses on The Meadows for a new reality TV series, The 1950s House, so we need a good look at why people were so pleased to move there. What it was like at the beginning. Why it went wrong in parts. Why other parts are flourishing.

‘We’ll want to take a good look at life in the 1950s. It could make a series of features, but I want some meat on it, not just nostalgia. The Meadows seems a good place to start.’

By now I’d finished gazing at the old editors and was working my way around the myriad awards that The News had won under the Vixen. Suddenly I heard her mention my name. I sat up and tried to take notice.

‘Rosie? Are you with us? I said I think this is something for you. If you wait afterwards, I’ll give you some contacts.’

She always had contacts. I swear she knew everyone in town, not to mention the country. As the others picked up their notes and went back to their desks, she scribbled a name for me.

‘Margaret Turnbull was one of the first people to move in to The Meadows, and she’s lived there ever since. Nice woman, good talker. And she’s actually Rosemary Picton’s mother. When you’ve met Margaret you might get an idea of why her daughter’s so determined to help the children of The Meadows. Anyway, here’s her number. She’ll get you off to a good start.’

With that she gave me an odd look. But her eyes, in that immaculate make-up, were unreadable. ‘I think you might find it very interesting,’ she said.

Dutifully, I rang Mrs Turnbull and arranged to see her later that afternoon. Then I took a notebook up to the bound file room, where all the back copies of The News are stored in huge book-style files, and made a mug of camomile tea – all I could cope with – and settled down in the dusty little room. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Caz and certainly not Will.

Was he going to go off to Dubai? Did I care? Well yes, actually, a lot. Could I cope without him? Yeah, course I could. Couldn’t I?

It was probably easier to get on with some work. I felt rough though. My shoulder and neck hurt from lugging those old volumes around and poring over them. And my hands and feet were so cold. Bugger! My car was still in the car park at the Lion. So that’s when I ordered a cab and went off to see Mrs Turnbull. Well, I thought she was Mrs Turnbull …

Chapter Two

Despite the pain in my head, I managed to open my eyes. The woman who opened the door wasn’t the same as the one I’d seen through the window. Come to that, the window wasn’t the same. Nor was the door. Oh God, what was happening?

I slumped against the door frame, my head swirling, trying to make it out. What I really wanted to do was just slide down the wall and lie down … but the woman was asking me something. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Are you the girl from The News?’

‘Er yes, yes I am,’ I said. It was about the only thing of which I was sure.

‘Well you’d better come in.’

I wasn’t sure if I could even walk, but I dragged my body together and followed her into a dark hallway. Something very odd here. I was sure that this sort of house didn’t have that sort of long dark hall, or the sort of kitchen it led to. It had one of those cast-iron stoves, a bit like an Aga, only smaller. I could feel the warmth, which was wonderful. I was so cold. There was a strange smell. It took a while for me to realise it was coal and soot.

‘Here,’ said the woman, ‘sit down before you fall down.’

There was a cat curled up on the chair by the stove. ‘Shoo Sambo,’ she said, pushing him off.

‘You sit there for a minute,’ she said to me, ‘and I’ll make you a cup of tea. You’re as white as a sheet.’

I felt as if everything in my head had slid down to the back of my scalp and was made of lead. Never mind trying to make sense of what was going on. But at least I was starting to warm up. The cat, Sambo – Sambo! – jumped delicately back onto my lap and curled around. I rocked gently, feeling the warmth of the fire and of the cat. The room steadied. I wasn’t feeling quite so sick. I could even begin the attempt to make sense of my surroundings.

The woman perhaps wasn’t as old as I first thought. Difficult to tell, probably only in her fifties, but definitely not from the Joanna Lumley school of fifty-somethings. She was wearing a heavy wool skirt and cardigan, a check apron and the sort of slippers that not even my gran wears any more. The room seemed incredibly old-fashioned. In the middle was a big table covered with a dark green cloth made out of that velvety stuff. Against one wall was a dresser covered with plates and jugs. Above the range was one of those wooden clothes racks that you see in trendy country magazines, but instead of drying bunches of herbs, this had sheets and pillowcases and what looked like old-fashioned vests and thick white underpants.

As the woman moved around the room between the dresser, the table and the range, it was like watching a film. She set out a tray with proper cups and saucers and plates, wrapped a cloth around her hand and lifted a huge black kettle off the top of the stove. She poured some water into a little brown teapot, went out of the room for a second into a scullery beyond and came back again, spooned loose tea into the pot and poured the boiling water onto it. From a hook by the range she lifted a tea cosy like a little chequered bobble hat and popped it on the teapot. She went into the scullery again and came back with a fruit loaf, cut a chunk off and put it on a plate in front of me. Then she passed me a cup of tea. It was strong and sweet – both of which I hate normally – but I drank it and could feel the warmth going through me. It was quite nice really, very comforting.

‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Turnbull,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m not Mrs Turnbull,’ she said.

‘Oh my God,’ I said and tried to stand up. ‘Then I’m in the wrong house. I thought something was wrong. Look I’m really sorry. I’d better be on my way and find Mrs Turn-bull. Is it the house next door? I must have come up the wrong path. I thought …’

‘Sit down, girl,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘I’m Doreen Brown. If you’re Rosie Harford from The News then you’re in the right place. I’ve been expecting you.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. And anyway, your trunk’s upstairs.’

‘Trunk? What trunk?’

‘The things you’ll need for your stay, of course.’

Stay? What stay? What on earth was going on? This was so confusing. I couldn’t get my head around it. What was happening to my head? Maybe she’d slipped something in my tea. That was it. I had to get out. My mum always told me never to go into strange houses. And I reckon they didn’t get much stranger than this.

‘They sent it round from your office this morning. All the things you’ll be needing in the next few weeks.’

I gazed at Mrs Turnbull who was now Mrs Brown and tried to understand what she was saying. My mind was so confused I expected one of those warning notices to flash up, ‘You have performed an illegal operation. This program will terminate.’ And for a screen to go blank.

I felt sick. I promised myself I would never ever drink again. Too much wine, a blazing row and no sleep made a dreadful combination. Never ever again.

‘You just sit there for a moment,’ Mrs Brown said, letting me soak up the warmth of the fire and the cat. It would have been quite pleasant if my head hadn’t been in overdrive.

Where was I? Why was I apparently staying here? What on earth was going on? I took deep breaths and tried my best not to panic.

By now I’d had two cups of tea and I suddenly realised that I really needed the loo. I couldn’t deal with this on a full bladder.

‘Upstairs, along the corridor, down a few steps and on your right.’

I tottered off. It was a bit like walking when drunk, I was almost hanging on to the walls of the passage. But I made it.

The bathroom was freezing. There was lino on the floor in a pattern of big black and white checks. Quite nice really. But the bath was hideous, huge with claw feet, a small brass tap and a big chrome one. It was all a bit Spartan. It smelt cold and clean and of old-fashioned rose-scented soap like one of Mum’s aunties always used.

I got my phone out of my bag and tried to ring Will. I know we’d had a row, but this was really weird stuff. There was no signal. More than that, the phone was dead, as if the battery had gone. I sat on the loo and felt wretched. To be honest, I was frightened. Everything seemed strange. Even the loo paper was horrid. Nasty scratchy stuff. And the loo had one of those big iron cisterns and a chain. Everything was somehow wrong, unfamiliar, just not quite right.

This house seemed to belong to another age. So old-fashioned. Can’t have been touched for fifty years at least.

What was I doing here? There must be some mistake. I had to get out. I stood up quickly. Too quickly. My head swam again and I leant against the door. I mustn’t panic, I told myself. I must stay calm. Stay calm.

After a few moments I washed my hands, splashed some cold water on my face and gingerly made my way back downstairs, holding carefully on to the banisters. I would go downstairs, explain to the woman in the kitchen that, sorry, I had to go, and get out as soon as I could. Yes, that’s what I would do. And as soon as I was outside, I would phone Will and ask him to come and get me. And if my phone still didn’t work?

Stay calm. Stay calm. If my phone didn’t work, I would just walk towards town. It wasn’t that far. Even The Meadows must be safe enough in daylight. There might even be a phone box. And I would be all right once I was out in the fresh air …

I made my way back along the hallway, leaning against the wall for support. I made it into the kitchen but collapsed back into the rocking chair. I would just sit here for a while and get my strength back so I would be able to walk back into town if needs be.

My eyes lit on a calendar on the wall. There was a picture of the Queen looking very young. The calendar didn’t look old or as though it had been sitting in a junk shop for fifty years. No, it looked new and shiny. In a 1950s sort of way.

I stood up. My head didn’t swim. Good. I went through into the scullery to find Mrs Turnbull or Brown or whatever her name was. She was standing by a big stone sink with a wooden draining board, deftly chopping potatoes into a pan.

‘Look, Mrs … er Brown. I think I’d better be on my way,’ I said. ‘There seems to be a bit of a mix-up. I was meant to be meeting a Mrs Turnbull so I think I’d better get back and check with the office. Thank you so much for the tea and cake. I really appreciated it, but …’

‘Oh you can’t go yet, pet,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘You’re meant to be staying. Anyway, Frank and Peggy will be back soon and supper won’t be long.’

Meant to be staying? What was going on? And who were Frank and Peggy?

‘I’ll just get some fresh air, if you don’t mind.’

‘Carry on, dear.’

I picked up my bag and walked back along the hall. My head felt a bit better now. I’d tried to be polite about it, but that hadn’t got me anywhere. I would just have to walk out. I hoped the front door wasn’t locked. Strange. I was sure that when I’d walked up the path there’d been a modern white door, but here was this heavy wooden thing with stained glass at the top. I turned the handle, and opened it.

It was different. Everything was different.

Instead of the wide road of The Meadows with its rows of semi-detached houses and front gardens, parked cars and abandoned vans, the door opened directly onto a narrow cobbled street. Opposite was the high wall of what seemed to be a factory or warehouse. No cars. No people. I stepped back into the house and shut the door quickly again.

Deep breaths. Stay calm.

Slowly, very slowly, I opened the door again. Still a cobbled street. Still an old factory. A light glinted as something caught the late afternoon sun.

I walked slowly back to the kitchen. That calendar. The Queen looked awfully young …

‘Mrs Brown?’

‘Yes dear?’ she was manoeuvring some pans on the top of the range.

‘Did you say my office arranged this visit?’

‘That’s right. And a young man brought your trunk around this morning. That’s why I knew you were coming. All arranged with the editor.’

The editor. I thought back to the morning conference, which seemed a lifetime away. What exactly had the Vixen said? I couldn’t remember. I’d been feeling so lousy and thinking so much about Will, that I hadn’t really been listening. Think, girl, think. Something about The Meadows, of course, that’s why I was here. And a TV programme. A reality TV programme. The 1950s House …

The 1950s House … It couldn’t be, could it? When she’d talked about people living in a 1950s house for a television programme, she hadn’t meant me, had she? She’d mentioned research. That’s why I’d spent the morning in the bound file room. But she hadn’t said anything about being here.

But she could have. I hadn’t been listening. Hadn’t heard. Wouldn’t remember if she had. I had been away with the fairies all through conference.

But she had said in that meaningful way that I would find my visit to Mrs Turnbull ‘interesting’. This is what it was all about. Was I taking part in one of those reality TV shows? I looked around for the cameras. I remembered that glint of light in the factory. I thought it had been sunlight on a window, but it could have been a camera.

A camera! I looked around. Was I being filmed now? Without thinking about it, I realised I had put my hand up to smooth my hair.

But how had they got me there? And how was outside completely different? It must have been something to do with that taxi driver I supposed. He had seemed odd and my head had been so rough I hadn’t really taken much notice of where I was. And he’d followed me up the path.

Maybe somehow he’d made me go somewhere else.

Maybe the path had been a stage set and that’s why it had sent my eyesight funny. A trick, just projected on a wall or something. Maybe it had just been a façade, a front in front of this old house. It seemed a bit over the top, but there – for I’m a Celebrity they parachuted people into the jungle, didn’t they? Walking up the wrong garden path was nothing compared to that.

And that factory. It could be the old rope works on the other side of town. There were a couple of indie TV production companies in there. The Big Brother house was in the middle of an industrial estate. This could just be in a car park. Maybe.

‘All right, dear?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘You’ve got a bit of colour back. You just sit there for a bit while I get supper ready.’

Feeling a bit calmer now I thought I’d worked this out, I sat on the rocking chair stroking Sambo, who purred quietly while I listened to Mrs Brown clattering away in the next room. So this must be the 1950s house and the Vixen must have volunteered me for it. And I was clearly staying for a while. I wondered what the rules were, who else would be there. I was just wishing I knew more, a lot more, when Mrs Brown called out, ‘There we are, here’s Frank and Peggy. Right on time.’

Frank was clearly Mr Brown, middle-aged in a thick suit, specs and moustache. He smiled at me and said, ‘Well, you must be Rosie.’ He shook my hand. A nice handshake.

‘And this is Peggy,’ said Mrs Brown.

Peggy was about my age, maybe a year or so younger. She had curly blonde hair and a pleasant open face that darkened when she saw me.

‘Hello,’ she said. That’s all, and went to hang up her coat.

‘So,’ I said brightly, ‘are we all in this together then? All play-acting in the 1950s? Did you enter a competition to get here? Or were you just volunteered by your boss, like I was?’

There was a silence. Peggy came and stood and looked at me as if I’d totally lost it. Mrs Brown came wandering out of the kitchen with her hands in oven mitts and a baffled expression. And Mr Brown took off his jacket and his tie, rolling it up carefully and putting it on the dresser, took a cardigan off the peg, put that on and swapped his shoes for slippers.

I realised I must have said something wrong.

‘Oh sorry,’ I said. ‘Aren’t we allowed to mention it’s a programme? Do we have to pretend all the time that we’re in the 1950s? I mean, I don’t even know if it’s like the Big Brother house and we’re all competing against each other, or if it’s just to see how we get on. Do you know? I mean, how did you get here?’

The silence continued. They were all still staring at me.

Finally Mr Brown said, ‘We’ve rented this house since before the war. That’s why we’re here. You’re here because our Peggy asked us to have you to stay, on account of you were working on The News. No more than that can I tell you.’

Right, I thought, that explains it. We clearly have to pretend at all times that we are in the 1950s. These three were obviously taking it desperately seriously. Like those people who dress up and guide you around museums and keep calling you ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and pretend not to understand when you ask if there’s a cash machine. These three were clearly In Character in a big way. No sneaking back to the twenty-first century, not even for a bit of light relief.

‘I see,’ I said and tried to enter into the spirit of the thing. ‘Since before the war?’

‘Yes. Our Stephen wasn’t born and Peggy was just a toddler and now look at her.’

I did. She glared at me.

‘Now then, young Rosie,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Tell me all about America.’

‘America?’ I said, not knowing what he was talking about. ‘Well I’ve only been there twice, once to New York and once to Flor—’

‘Now girl, don’t be silly, I know you must be American, wearing trousers like that.’

I was dressed perfectly normally for work. Black trousers and a stretchy silky top. Though my jacket was a nifty little Jilly G. number that I had bought on eBay. Maybe Mr Brown recognised a style snip when he saw one. OK, maybe not.

‘Never mind about that now,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘She’s got plenty of other clothes in her trunk I expect.’

‘Well she can’t wear those to work,’ said Peggy with sarcastic satisfaction. ‘It might be all right in America but it won’t do here. No. Mr Henfield won’t stand for that. No women in trousers in the office.’

‘Mr Henfield?’

‘Richard Henfield, the editor of The News,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Peggy’s his secretary,’ she added proudly.

Henfield … Henfield …

I remembered the Vixen’s office, the wall with the photographs of all the editors of The News that I’d gazed at in conference. Somewhere in the middle of them all I’m sure there was a Richard Henfield.

‘Does he have a moustache and smoke a pipe?’ I asked. ‘I think I’ve seen his picture somewhere.’

‘Well you would,’ said Peggy, ‘he’s very well known.’

‘Never mind that now,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Peggy, come and mash the potatoes for me.’ Mrs Brown was bustling around dishing up supper. She took a big casserole dish out of the stove and put it on the table.

‘Well this looks special for a Monday,’ said Mr Brown, rubbing his hands.

‘Well, seeing as we have a visitor,’ said Mrs Brown, through a cloud of steam.

So I didn’t dare say that I don’t really eat red meat. I’m not vegetarian, but I’m not really a red meat sort of person. And I didn’t want to seem like one of those whingeing, whining contestants making a fuss about nothing, so I ate it up, and it was really quite good. Chunks of meat and thick gravy. Afterwards, from another compartment in the stove, Mrs Brown produced a rice pudding. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had rice pudding, certainly not one that hadn’t come out of a tin. Mrs Brown was definitely in character. Unless they had another kitchen out the back where they had a cook lined up to make everything, so Mrs Brown could just do the ‘Here’s one I made earlier’ routine.

‘So does your mother like cooking?’ asked Mrs Brown.

‘Well yes, I think so. She’s worked her way through Delia and Nigella. I’m not sure she bothers much when it’s just her and Dad, but when my brother or I go home …’

‘Oh, don’t you live at home? In digs, are you?’

‘Digs?’ I groped for a moment, trying to work out what she meant and thinking of Time Team and hairy archaeologists.

‘Digs,’ she said again, ‘lodgings.’

‘Oh, no. I have my own flat.’

‘Oh you are a career woman, aren’t you?’ said Mrs Brown, looking a bit surprised. Peggy simply looked murderous.

‘It’s quite small, but it’s in nice grounds and there’s secure car parking.’

‘You’ve got a car?’

‘Well yes, just a little one. Nothing flash.’

‘Your own flat and a car? Very nice I’m sure,’ said Peggy, accepting another helping of rice pudding. ‘All I can say is it must be very nice to be American. I hope you can manage to slum it with us.’

She really didn’t like me …

‘Look really, I’m not American.’

‘Well you talk like one.’

‘Do I?’

The Browns all had quite strong local accents. I didn’t think I had much of any sort of accent really. I wished they didn’t keep thinking I was American.

I offered to help with the washing up, but Mrs Brown was adamant.

‘No, Frank will help me tonight, for a change. You two girls go and watch the television.’ That sounded like a good idea. A bit of goofing out in front of the box was just what I needed. Some chance. The TV was a huge box affair with a tiny little screen showing a programme about ballroom dancing. It was nothing like Strictly Come Dancing. Somewhere there were a lot of tiny grey figures in grey dresses and grey suits waltzing across a grey ballroom.

Of course, they didn’t have colour TV in the 1950s.

‘Anything on any of the other channels?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Peggy.

Of course, they wouldn’t have Sky. But ITV, Channel 4?

‘This is television. There’s only this one.’

‘Haven’t you got ITV yet?’

‘The one with adverts?’

‘Yes, the one with adverts.’

‘They’ve got it in London, but we haven’t.’

Right.

I looked around the room, trying to spot where the cameras were. There were a couple of pictures on the wall, and they looked innocent enough, but the mirror above the fireplace – that could definitely be a two-way job with a camera on the other side. I looked straight at it and smiled – winningly, I hoped. Mrs Brown came in and picked up a big bag from behind the armchair and took out some knitting. This was clearly going to be a riveting evening.

‘If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to sort myself out,’ I said.

‘Of course, dear. What was I thinking of?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Peggy, take Rosie up to her room, will you please, pet?’

Peggy clearly didn’t want to be dragged away from the grey delights of television, but, sighing heavily, she led me up the narrow dark stairs, along a narrow dark landing, up a few more steps, to a small, icy cold room. It had been quite nice in front of the fire in the sitting room, toasting my toes, but once you went out of that room, the temperature plummeted.

‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘It’s really my brother Stephen’s room, but he’s in Cyprus at the moment.’

‘Oh, lucky him,’ I said, thinking of bars and beaches and all that clubbing.

She stared at me as if I were mad. ‘Two soldiers were killed there last week.’

‘Is he a soldier then?’

‘Doing his national service, isn’t he?’ she said and left me to it.

It was a bleak little room. Lino on the floor and a rug at the side of a narrow bed with a shiny green quilt, a chair, wardrobe, a bookcase with lots of Biggles books and football annuals, and a pile of football programmes. There was a trophy of a cricketer and some model planes, and that was about it. The only clothes in the wardrobe were a school blazer and a few old jumpers. Our Stephen was hardly a style icon, unless he’d taken all his possessions with him.

I looked around for cameras. Nothing obvious. Would they give us privacy in our bedrooms? Surely they would. But they didn’t in the Big Brother house, did they? I looked around again. If there was a camera here, it had to be in the cricket trophy, I decided. Too obvious. Or maybe the model planes … I picked them up and put them in the wardrobe and shut the door. Then I picked up the Biggles books and put those in there too. That felt a bit safer. Now I could look in that trunk beneath the window.

A proper old-fashioned trunk, and on it were my initials RJH – Rose Jane Harford. I lifted up the lid. Clothes! So this is what I was to wear. I rummaged through them excitedly. Oh I do love clothes.

I tried to remember what sort of clothes they wore in the 1950s. I thought of Grace Kelly in High Society … Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. Or even Olivia Newton John in Grease. Oh yes. In my mind’s eye I was already jiving with John Travolta, his hand on my nipped-in waist while my skirt swished and swayed beguilingly …

To my deep disappointment, these clothes were not at all beguiling. In fact, they all reminded me of my old geography teacher. And I mean old geography teacher. There were a couple of heavy wool skirts, one of which had a matching jacket. Some cotton blouses, and cardigans, hand-knitted by the look of them. And a pair of trousers, Capri pants in heavy navy cotton.

There was a dressing gown that looked like my grandad’s. Oh and the underwear! The bras were made of white cotton and looked as though they were designed for nuns. I bet Grace Kelly never wore anything like those. Knickers too -white cotton. I don’t think I’d worn pants like those since I was about three years old. In fact, even at that age my underwear had more style. These were dreadful.

There was a serviceable, very serviceable, raincoat and a bright red jacket like a duffel coat. I quite liked that. It had a matching beret too. I tried them on and did a twirl in front of the rather blotchy wardrobe mirror. Then I hung the dressing gown in front of it. Just in case of cameras.

A very functional wash bag contained a toothbrush, a round tin of bright pink toothpaste, a face cloth, a bottle of White Rain shampoo for ‘normal’ hair, and some cold cream. And at the bottom was a handbag, nice leather but brown and boring. I opened it to find a funny little purse containing money. But not money I knew. There were some notes, orange ones that said ten shillings and green ones that said one pound. One pound notes – I thought they only had those in Scotland – also lots of coins, not like Euros, but big and heavy.

I kept the jacket on. It was so cold in there. Out of the window I could hear the sound of rushing water. There must be a river. I looked out, but the streetlights were so dim I could only see the faint outline of some trees and a bridge. The view could wait till morning. I presumed I would still be here in the morning. I wished I knew exactly what was going on. I felt very unsettled and a bit, quite a bit actually, lost.

I missed Will. I tried my phone again. I have a video on it of Will just walking down the street towards me. It’s wonderful because you can see he’s thinking of something else and then suddenly he sees me and then he has a great big grin. I play it a lot, especially when I miss him. And never missed him as much as in this strange place where I didn’t know what’s happening. But the phone was absolutely dead. Nothing.

There was a knock on the door. Mrs Brown. ‘Rosie, I’ve made a cup of tea. Or you can have cocoa if you like. Come downstairs and get warmed up.’

Cocoa! Such excitement, I thought as I went down into the kitchen. In the dim light, Mr Brown was sitting in the rocking chair, reading a copy of The News – the old broadsheet version, of course, very authentic. But there was someone else in there.

A small girl was sitting at the table. She was surrounded by exercise books. Judging by the dirty dishes near her, she’d also polished off the remains of the casserole and the rice pudding. She was wearing one of those old-fashioned pinafore dress things they had in the St Trinian’s films – a gymslip? – a very grubby school blouse and a stringy tie. Her mousy, greasy hair looked as though it had been hacked rather than cut. And she had specs, the ugliest specs I’ve ever seen and so cruel to give to a child.

But as she looked up at me, I realised she was older than I had first thought – probably about eleven or twelve, and that behind those horrid specs she had a measuring, challenging expression that was a bit disconcerting.

‘Are you the American?’ she asked.

‘I’m not American,’ I said, already weary with that assumption.

‘This is Janice,’ said Mr Brown. ‘She’s very clever, doing well at the grammar school and she comes here to do her homework.’

I must have looked a bit puzzled by this because Janice said simply, ‘I’ve got seven brothers. Two of them howl all the time.’

‘Her mum cleans the post office where Doreen works,’ said Mr Brown, ‘so she always comes here when she’s got homework to do. I used to be able to help her but I think she’s cleverer than me now, aren’t you, girl?’

With that Peggy came into the kitchen and to my surprise, gave the grubby little girl a big smile. Peggy looked really pretty when she smiled.

‘Hiya kid!’ she said. ‘How’s the French? Mrs Stace still giving you hell?’

‘Of course. We’ve got a test tomorrow.’ Janice looked worried. ‘Will you test me, Peggy, please? Perfect tense?’

‘I have given.’

‘ J’ai donné.’

‘He has finished.’

‘Il a fini.’

‘They have gone.’

‘Aha, that takes être! Ils sont allés.’

‘Well done,’ said Peggy.

‘Do you speak French, Rosie?’ asked Janice.

‘A bit,’ I said. ‘I did it for GCSE, but not like that.’

‘Janice is smashing at it,’ said Peggy amiably, almost proudly. ‘One day she’s going to go to France and she’ll need to know how to talk to them all, order her snails and frogs’ legs and wine.’

‘It would be wonderful to go to France,’ said Janice wistfully, ‘wonderful to hear people talking differently.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Peggy – she really seemed quite nice when she wasn’t talking to me – ‘you don’t need to do any more French, you know enough for today. Shall I wash your hair for you? You can use some of my new shampoo.’

‘Oh yes please, Peggy!’ said the little scruff, bundling her books into her satchel.

Soon she was on a stool, kneeling over the big white stone sink in the scullery, while Peggy shampooed her hair and rinsed it using a big enamel jug. She wrapped it in a rough kitchen towel and then combed it out for her quite gently and carefully, easing the comb through the tangles.

‘If you like, I’ll trim the fringe a bit for you,’ said Peggy and went to get her mother’s sewing scissors. She snipped away, looked at her handiwork a bit, turned Janice’s head this way and that and snipped a bit more. ‘There, see what that’s like when it dries.’

It was already starting to fluff up in the warmth of the range. It looked so much better, shinier. There was even a hint of red in the mousy strands.

‘Now now, Janice, Peggy, time to pack up.’ Mrs Brown had come into the kitchen and was getting a cloth out of the dresser drawer. ‘This is a kitchen not a hairdressers. I need that table for the breakfast things and it’s time you were at home and in bed. Here,’ she took a scarf out of a drawer and gave it to the girl, ‘put that over you. You don’t want to be walking the streets with wet hair, you’ll catch your death.’

‘Right-o, Mrs Brown,’ said Janice, taking one last look in the mirror before gathering up her satchel. She smiled hugely at Peggy. ‘It’s lovely, Peggy, really lovely. Thank you. See you tomorrow.’ She slid out of the back door, small and scruffy and still smelly too.

‘She can’t help it,’ said Mrs Brown, noticing my expression. ‘Terrible family. Father’s out of work half the time. Mother’s a willing little woman but has no idea really. All they seem able to do is make babies. There are seven boys and Janice, and two of the boys are simple. Still, Janice is bright and got into the grammar school, so let’s hope it helps get her somewhere. She deserves a chance, poor scrap. Right. Tea or cocoa?’

I had cocoa – for the first time since a Brownie sleep-over when I was about seven – said my goodnights and took it up to bed with me. There were too many things I wanted to think about. I undressed, put on the great big dressing gown, scuttled to the bathroom, scuttled back, popped the dressing gown back over the wardrobe mirror and got into bed. Icy sheets. I reached for my notebook.

DAY ONE IN THE 1950s HOUSE

Very cold but headache better and at least I realise what’s going on. Clearly, our reactions to a new situation must be part of The Test. Initial disorientation all part of this.

Must find out how long I’m going to be here for. What about work? My life? Maybe all will be explained soon.

Find video diary room.

What’s the prize?

Find cameras. Smile at them. A lot.

Be nice to everyone.

Peggy – a test?

Have noticed that all Big Brother, It’s a Celebrity, etc TV shows are never won by the loudmouths, but by the quiet pleasant ones who win admiration and respect from all concerned, doing hard work, solving quarrels, being calm voice of reason all round. This is what I shall do. Practise being calm voice of reason.

I tried to ring Will again, but the phone was still dead. That made me feel really alone and a bit down. But then there was a knock on the door.

‘I thought you might like a hot-water bottle,’ said Mrs Brown, handing one over and giving a strange glance at the dressing gown spread out over the front of the wardrobe. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘Yes fine thank you!’ I said brightly.

The hot-water bottle was wonderful, warm and squidgy. I shoved it down between the sheets, which smelled of soap powder and sunshine and, as I wriggled down between them, with my feet nice and warm, I clutched my phone, the way I used to clutch my woolly cuddly cat when I was little. Even though my head was spinning, I was asleep in minutes.

I wished I’d been able to talk to Will, but if this was a challenge, then bring it on!

Chapter Three

Challenge? I’ll tell them what to do with their nasty, manipulative, heartbreaking challenges. Today has been a nightmare. A glimpse into an alternative universe. I hated it. If I didn’t think it was all a TV show I don’t know what I’d do.

I never even asked to be in this. They cant just dump me here without asking, without any preparation or briefing. Shouldn’t they have had my written permission? Contracts with lawyers? Big fat fees? Get-out clauses? Insurance? Maybe I could sue them for stress and anxiety. What happens if I break my neck on the stairs at The News? Or die of pneumonia from the damp and cold?

Or from a broken heart?

Today was my first day on The News 1950s style. It had started badly. My clothes, my proper clothes, had vanished. Someone must have taken them while I was in the bathroom. Even my own handbag. All I had left was the handbag from the trunk, a dead phone and the notebook and pen from my bedside table. I thought of going down to demand my things from Mrs Brown, but then I remembered the Golden Rule of Reality TV which is Be Nice, Smile, Don’t Make A Fuss. So after a wash – no shower, and I couldn’t even have a bath because there’s only one loo and that’s in the bathroom and people kept banging on the door – I got dressed in my 1950s clothes.

Everything itched, scratched and dug in. There was no Lycra, of course. Dressed in the skirt suit I felt trussed up like a turkey. My suspender belt (when did I ever think they were sexy?) threatened to ping at any minute and my capacious cotton knickers kept disappearing up the crack of my bum. No wonder people in old photos look miserable.

And I still couldn’t get anything on my phone … When I woke up it was on the pillow beside me, and I just grabbed it automatically. Nothing. Just a blank screen. The blank-ness of it just hit me and made me feel so dreadfully alone. Even if they were blocking the signal, you’d think they’d let me look at the stored pictures and messages on it, wouldn’t you? It was a link to my world, my proper world, and Will.

And my hair! No shower, no dryer, no mousse, no straighteners. All I could do was comb it. Great.

After that grim start, the day got no better.

My usual breakfast was yoghurt and banana. Here it was porridge and boiled eggs. Compulsory. By the time I’d eaten it I felt so weighed down I thought I’d never lift myself off the chair. And the coffee … the coffee came from a bottle that looked like gravy browning and tasted like it too.

To make it worse, because Mrs Brown worked mornings in a post office, Peggy and I, who apparently didn’t have to be in work until half an hour later, had to do the washing up.

‘You can wash,’ said Peggy, handing me the porridge pan, with its burnt-on bits. ‘It makes sense for me to wipe up and put away because you don’t know where anything lives.’

‘You could show me,’ I said, but knew as I said it, there wasn’t much point.

Do you want to know what I think of the 1950s so far? Well porridge pans really piss me off. Non-stick hasn’t been invented yet. Neither has washing-up liquid, just disgusting green soap. You have to scrape the congealed porridge off with a knife and then, the real horror is when you have to scoop great blobs of it out of the plughole. That is so disgusting.

And Peggy. Peggy is a pain. Pisses me off even more than porridge pans. I am trying really hard to be nice to her and smile a lot (for the cameras, which I haven’t found yet) but it’s really tricky.

‘Are these clothes all right for work, Peggy?’ I asked.

‘Very suitable,’ she said.

‘Do your clothes make you itch?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, but with such a filthy expression that I’m sure her knicks were stuck up the crack of her bum too. ‘Come on. Time to get a move on.’

She handed me an Oxo tin. An Oxo tin? What was I meant to do with that? I must have looked blank because she said, ‘It’s your sandwiches, for your dinner.’

Off we went. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but it’s very clever. Of course, Peggy led the way. (The more I think about it, the more she must be part of the team setting the challenge.) We went through some narrow streets and across a market square. (It’s clearly a film set.) There was very little traffic, just a few old cars. ( The sort they always have in period films.) And a delivery boy on a bike. (They always have that as well.) And there was a milkman with a horse and cart. (Which I thought was taking it a bit far really, but that might have been the one with the camera in it, so I gave the horse an extra nice smile.) The shops were small with crowded little windows, a bit drab, but the streets were very clean. No pizza boxes or burger trays. (Shows that it must have been all pretend.)

‘Is it far to The News?’ I asked, wondering how we’d get to the industrial estate.

‘No,’ she said. And that was it. No chatty girly conversation. In fact, nothing. Right, thank you, Peggy. But I remembered my winning ways and smiled and tried again. Tricky, because she was walking quite fast and I was struggling to keep up, and not just because of the shoes.

‘Have you worked there long?’

‘Five years.’

‘So what’s the editor like then?’

At this she went a bit pink and turned around to face me. ‘He’s a wonderful man,’ she said vehemently. ‘Wonderful!’

Bit of a giveaway wouldn’t you say?

But now we were at The News. Not just off the ring road. It was right in the centre of town. And the funny thing was that it looked just like the old pictures we have hanging at reception in the industrial estate. A really old timbered building, with leaded windows. There were some big gates at the side, leading into a yard where I could see old-fashioned delivery vans. I don’t know how they did it, but it was very clever.

As soon as we walked in through the door, Peggy changed character and was as nice as you like. Smiles and ‘Good mornings’. She led the way upstairs.

Well, it was a newspaper office, but not as I knew it.

The place was chaos. A warren of small rooms, each one crowded with heavy wooden desks piled high with papers. The windows were small and grubby, and almost obscured by heaps of papers and files. There were papers everywhere. Piles of yellowing newspapers, on the floor, in corners, on windowsills, blocking doorways. Health and safety would have had hysterics. Especially as there was also a thick cloud of smoke. Everyone seemed to be smoking.

One stray fag end in that lot …

Peggy was leading the way along a narrow corridor of bare and battered floorboards. Then she led me into an outer office, hung up her coat and knocked reverentially on an inner door. ‘Good morning Mr Henfield.’ She was almost simpering. ‘I’ve brought Rosie Harford.’

Richard Henfield looked exactly like his photograph. That was a nice touch, I thought, well researched. Middle-aged, specs, moustache and pipe. Nice eyes, weak chin. ‘Ah yes, you’re with us for a few weeks.’

‘Apparently,’ I said with a winning smile. There must be a camera in here.

‘So tell me what you’ve done.’ He leant back in his chair and stared at me. It wasn’t a particularly nice stare.

‘Well, after my degree, I did a post-graduate diploma in journalism and worked on a weekly paper for a while. For the last few years I’ve been a general reporter, then on the business desk, and now I’m a features writer, specialising in social and consumer issues.’ Smile again.

‘Well, aren’t you a clever little girl,’ he said, gazing at my boobs.

Really! My fingers itched to slap his pompous, patronising, sexist face. But smile, Rosie, smile. I smiled.

‘Better see what you can do then,’ he said, standing up to put his arm around my shoulders – not nice, he smelt of stale tobacco and sweat and half-digested meat. Didn’t the man shower? – and led me back along the corridor and into one of the crowded smoky rooms, where an oldish man in a trailing overcoat was sitting with his feet on the desk reading a paper, while a woman talked on the tele-phone. Two other men were picking up their coats as if on their way out.

I ostentatiously removed myself from Henfield’s arm. That smell was taking reality TV a bit too far.

‘Is Billy about?’ asked Henfield.

‘Assizes,’ said the man, hardly lifting his eyes from the paper. Seeing me, his beady eyes lit up too and he gave me and Henfield his attention.

‘OK Gordon,’ Henfield said. ‘This is Rosie. She has a degree and a diploma and knows all about business and social issues.’ He said it in a sarcastic, mocking tone.

‘Very fancy,’ muttered the woman behind him, putting the phone down and lighting a cigarette.

‘She’ll be here for a few weeks and no doubt she has many talents to reveal,’ he leered. ‘And a lot to show us.’ He and Gordon gave each other knowing glances and then both looked me up and down, when, thank God, Peggy came along simpering, ‘There’s a phone call for you Mr Henfield,’ and off he went.

‘Smarmy bugger,’ muttered the woman. Promising. Then looking at me, she added, ‘I’m Marje, by the way. Well, let’s see what you can do then.’

‘Anything,’ I said, all keen and eager and desperate to get stuck into a decent story.

‘Kettle’s over there,’ said Marje. ‘No sugar for me, two for him’ – pointing at Gordon who’d gone back to reading the newspaper – ‘and the cups need washing. Down the corridor at the very end and don’t wait for the hot water, because there isn’t any.’

Did I have a sign saying ‘skivvy’ stuck to my forehead?

Gordon was the News Editor. When he’d stopped eyeing me up and down he had decided I was barely worth considering. ‘You’d better follow Marje around for now,’ he said as he took his tea without a thank-you. ‘She can show you the ropes. There’s a couple of golden weddings in the book. You should be able to manage those between you.’

Golden weddings! I hadn’t done those since my early days on the weekly. But off I went dutifully with Marje. We had to walk to the old people’s houses. There seemed to be only one van for the staff, and the photographers used it all the time. Reporters had to walk.

Marje strode briskly along.

‘Have you been on The News long?’ I asked, with the little breath I had left. She was setting a cracking pace and I was struggling to keep up.

‘Since the war,’ she said. ‘I was on the switchboard and when all the men got called up there was only me and old Mr Henfield left, so I started doing everything.’

The war again.

‘Young Mr Henfield, the one who’s editor now, was in the army. And Gordon and most of the others. John, the Chief Sub Editor, was in the RAF – got the DFC but he never talks about it. The younger ones weren’t, of course. Billy and Phil were just a bit too young, lucky for them. But they’ve done their call-up and their fifteen days since.’

‘Fifteen days?’

‘Yes, you know. Two years’ national service and then fifteen days every year for three years. Don’t they do that in America?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said vaguely, too fed up to argue about this American business. ‘Something very like.’

I was really getting into this 1950s thing. It was almost as if I were really there. But it was a bit worrying that everyone else seemed to have done so much research. Maybe they’d had more notice than I had. That wouldn’t be hard. Ah well, I would just have to wing it. Tricky though. I was trying to get my head around the fact that the war had only finished ten or eleven years ago, because that was as if, well that was as if it had been finishing just when I was doing A levels. Weird.

Walking along, I could see bits of the present town but not many. I had to say that the TV company had been very thorough. You could almost believe you really were back in the 1950s. There were so many more shops, for a start, lots of little ones. Lots of butchers, a couple of bakers. No candlestick-makers, but a fishmonger, two bookshops, lots of tobacconists, a wool shop, toy shop, baby clothes, another couple of chemists, a china shop, a couple of ironmongers. No supermarkets, but grocers’ shops like Home and Colonial, and Liptons … To be honest, it all looked a bit run-down.

Then I could smell it … coffee. Proper coffee …

‘Oh Marje, can I really smell coffee?’

‘Probably Silvino’s is just around the corner.’

‘Silvino’s?’

‘Italian coffee bar.’

‘Oh glory be. We haven’t got time, have we? Just for a quick coffee. I’m longing for coffee …’

‘No time, sorry,’ said Marje and I had to ignore the tantalising smell as we hurried off to the first golden wedding. Nice couple. (Recipe for happy marriage – he always tipped up his pay packet on a Friday night and she always had a hot meal ready for him.)

Luckily, George the photographer turned up to take their picture when we were there. He was only a young lad, in a baggy suit that looked far too big on him, but he seemed to know what he was doing. And he had the van, which meant that Marje and I could squash into the rickety front seat and get a lift to the next golden wedding couple. Eric and Bessie had met in the church choir, still sang in it. They said the secret of a happy marriage was never to let the sun go down on a quarrel. Bessie looked smug and Eric tried to pinch my bum. Randy old goat.

I suppose they were all extras. There seemed to be an awful lot of them. I didn’t realise that the TV company had such a huge budget. Still, I suppose when they did the Castaway series they took over a whole island for a year, so a big film set for a few weeks would be comparatively cheap. Looked very real though, fair play.

Afterwards, while George went off on another job, Marje and I walked back to the office and I remembered about my Oxo tin. I opened it carefully. Inside was a brown paper bag. It smelt of candles and polish and a musty under-the-stairs sort of smell. Inside that was a sandwich made with doorsteps of good white bread, filled with something that smelled a bit odd. I took a tentative bite and tried to work out what it was. It had a sort of fishy taste. Sort of. A bit like cat food.

Then I remembered my gran’s kitchen cupboard, those funny little jars. Fish paste. I was eating a fish paste sandwich. I suppose it made a change from M & S’s poached Scottish salmon with dill mayonnaise and watercress on oatmeal bread. And the bread was nice.

Then Marje had to show me how to type up a story.

What a chew! There was this mucky black paper, carbon paper, that made a smudgy sort of copy. You had to put three pieces of paper together, with two bits of carbon between them, and roll them into a typewriter. The typewriter took for ever. It was so heavy. You really had to bash the keys. And I kept forgetting to push the thing that made it go to the next line, so I kept typing on the roller instead of the paper. And you couldn’t delete mistakes!

‘Bet you wish computers were invented,’ I said to Marje.

‘Computers? Why?’ She looked at me blankly. She was very good at pretending to belong to the 1950s. I think she must have been one of the testers rather than a competitor.

‘Well, you know, quick and easy to type, correct your mistakes, spell check.’

‘Spell check?’

‘Yes, it corrects your spelling for you.’

‘That’s handy if you can’t spell. How does it do it?’

‘Um, I don’t know really. But that’s before you start on the internet.’

‘The which?’

‘Internet. You can find anything you want to know in seconds. About anything. Facts, figures, famous people, shopping. You can go on the internet, find things and buy them.’

‘How does it do it?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s wonderful. And—’

‘You don’t know much, really, do you?’ said Marje, lighting another cigarette. ‘Especially about spelling.’ She turned back to my chaotic-looking copy and carried on swiftly marking up my mistakes. Most of them weren’t actually spelling mistakes you understand, just typing mistakes from using the heavy typewriter.

‘That computer thing must have rotted your brain. Here,’ she handed my piece back to me, ‘you’d better type it again or the subs will go mad. See you in the morning.’ She picked up her string bag of shopping and went home to cook supper for her husband.

I typed up the golden weddings again and, because there were no messengers around, and because I was curious, took it along myself to the subs’ room. The subs, all men, were smoking pipes or cigarettes and sitting around a long table, marking up the copy ready for the printers. As soon as I walked into the room I had that feeling you get in some offices – as though you’d walked into a private club and you’re an outsider. Horrid.

One of the men looked up from the piece of paper he was writing on and whistled at me. Another sat back in his chair. Soon all the men, six of them, were sitting staring at me. The first said, ‘Well, well, what have we got here? Hello girlie, who are you?’

‘Rosie Harford. I’m here for a while as a reporter and features writer.’

‘Features writer eh? We used to have one of those, but the legs fell off,’ said one young man. They all laughed uproariously as if he had made the wittiest remark ever.

Another older man leant across the desk. ‘Well Rosie, you’ve certainly got rosie cheeks. Rosie by name, rosie by nature. If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?’

More sniggers.

‘Watch yourself,’ I said. ‘That’s sexist language.’

They looked shocked for a moment and then the laughter started again. Slowly at first and building up as each man joined in more noisily than the one before.

‘Sex, is it?’ said one, looking around with a broad grin at the others. ‘Well, if you’re offering.’

‘No I am not,’ I said and banged the copy down on their desk, ‘and certainly not with you.’ I turned to walk out.

‘Will you just look at that,’ one of the men said to my retreating view. ‘A backside like two eggs in a hanky.’

I slammed the door but could still hear their laughter through it. My face was bright red. Pigs. Idiots. Stupid ignorant men. Bugger! I realised it was probably a test, to see how I’d cope. Well, I’d really blown that, hadn’t I?

Flustered and feeling stupid, I went back into the newsroom. At least it was nearly going home time. Gordon was there, talking to another man. A tall man with sleek blond hair, standing with his back to me under the yellowing light at the far end of the newsroom.

I recognised him instantly even in the shabby unfamiliar clothes. I would have recognised him any time, anywhere. The set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, the gesture with his hands as he explained something to Gordon. Oh, I knew them all. I didn’t need a second glance. I knew that body almost as well as I knew my own.

Will!

I was so happy I nearly let out a yelp of excitement and only just stopped myself running up and flinging my arms around him. I thought my heart would leap right out of my body with joy and relief. Here, in the middle of whatever strangeness was going on, and those stupid sniggering subs, I knew how much I needed him. With Will here, everything would be all right. He would turn the nightmare into an adventure. It would be a game, a laugh, a great story. Us two against the world. Suddenly it stopped being something strange and slightly sinister. Already, in that split second, it had started being fun.

It was all so wonderfully familiar, so reassuring. If Will was here, then I could cope with anything, from sexist subs to fish paste sandwiches, scratchy underwear and no showers.

‘Will!’ I said, going towards him. ‘Will! Thank God you’re here!’

Will looked around. He looked surprised. He looked straight at me. And he absolutely blanked me.

Will looked at me as though he’d never seen me before in his life.

Chapter Four

The silence seemed to go on for ever, to hang heavy in the air above the heaps of newspapers, the jumbled files and scuffed desks. It swirled with the dust from the overflowing ashtrays, and time slowed down as I gazed desperately at Will. I had stopped breathing, was just waiting for him to respond, to laugh, to step forward and hug me. But he didn’t.

Sure, for a moment there was a flicker in his eyes – but it was that flicker you get in the eyes of any strange man when he sees you for the first time, the quick measuring, appraising look. And then – nothing. Not a hint, not a glint of recognition.

This was worse, much worse than any row. This was nothing to do with anger. Will was looking at me as though he had never seen me before. As though I were a stranger, as if we had no life, no past together. Nothing. And when I saw that blankness in his eyes my whole world shifted, as though the very earth I was standing on had been hollowed out from under my feet and I was in free fall. Without him, there was nothing to cling to. Nothing.

I wanted to run up to him, fling my arms around him. OK, we’d had a row. That was in another world, another lifetime. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was here. But not when he looked at me like that.

‘Will?’ I asked, tentatively, hesitating, terrified that he wouldn’t even acknowledge me. I stood beside the desk, too frightened to move any closer.

Gordon was looking at me oddly. ‘Billy,’ he said to Will, ‘you haven’t met our temporary girl, have you? Rosie’s here for a few weeks. From America or somewhere.’

There was a little spark in Will’s eyes and then he smiled – oh that smile! – and held out his hand. ‘How do you do Rosie,’ he said. ‘Welcome to The News.’

I looked at him, expecting an acknowledgement, a little secret smile perhaps. Anything. But no. I shook his hand. And that’s when I had another shock. His hand was rough, callused. Not at all like Will’s. I looked up at him, puzzled.

There were other differences too. His haircut, of course. Very 1950s, short back and sides. But his face looked different, more hollowed, angular, and he looked somehow older, different in a way I can’t explain. I wanted to touch his cheek, follow those bones and hollows with my fingers, but he was looking at me as if I were a stranger.

I could still feel the impression of his hand in mine. But he had already turned away and was talking to Gordon about the court case he’d covered. It was as if I didn’t exist. I studied him from the back, the way his short haircut went into a little curl at the nape of his neck, how his shoulders looked so broad, yet he seemed slimmer. Must be the 1950s clothes.

But why did he blank me like that? How could he be so cruel? I sat at my desk, a copy of The News propped up in front of me, though I couldn’t have told you a single thing that was in it, while I tried to work it out. Yes. That must be it. We were in this 1950s house, but no one must know how close we were. We must pretend to be strangers. Then we can secretly work together, be a team. Together we could soon sort out what we should be doing and do it. But we mustn’t let on.

It was the only explanation I could think of, and I clung to it.

I knew I had to speak to Will alone – ideally somewhere out of reach of any possible cameras, and the office was surely full of them. But I needed to stay in the office so I could watch him, catch him when he left. Looking at him bent over the typewriter instead of a computer, yet the same pose, the same frown, the same fierce expression as he thought of the next sentence, and then the half-smile as he bashed it out. That was the Will I knew. Even if here he was wearing baggy grey trousers and a rather shabby shirt, instead of the stylish suits he normally wears.

I sat and watched and waited. Brian, the Night News Editor, came in and was introduced to me. At last he and Gordon went out to see Henfield. Will and I were alone in the newsroom and I had to seize my chance.

‘Will,’ I said, standing opposite him in the dusty yellow light.

He didn’t react immediately, just sort of looked up vaguely as if puzzled about who I was talking to.

‘Will!’ I hissed. ‘What are we going to do? What’s this all about? Do you know what’s going on?’

He looked at me, baffled. ‘Sorry, er Rosie, I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. I’m nearly finished here. Have you done all your stuff? It’s time to go home. You’re not doing the late shift are you? No, you were here this morning.’

He looked back to his typewriter, typed a few more words, looked over what he’d written, pulled the papers and carbon out of the machine and folded them over. ‘Have you sent your stuff along? If you give it to me, I’ll drop it off with the subs for you on my way out.’

This was hopeless.

‘Will! We’ve got to have a plan, work out how we’re going to deal with this. Do you know who the other competitors are? Where are the cameras? And is there a video room? We’ve got to find out.’

Now he was lifting his jacket – a heavy, shapeless tweedy sort of jacket with pens in the front pocket and leather patches on the elbows – off the back of the chair and easing into it. ‘Sorry Rosie,’ he said, politely, ‘I don’t think I know what you want. Have a word with Gordon. Or if it’s cameras you’re interested in, talk to Charlie, the Chief Photographer, or young George. Anyway,’ he said, picking up the papers off his desk – and that was another difference, his desk was absolutely immaculate and tidy, very un-Will – ‘I must be getting a move on. I promised my wife I’d be home early. Goodnight. I hope you’ve enjoyed your first day with us. See you tomorrow.’

I didn’t reply. I stood there, leaning against the scarred wooden desk, looking at his desk, and the seat that he had left. He’d promised his wife he’d be home early. His wife? He’d promised his wife? No. I couldn’t believe it. Will didn’t have a wife.

I was still sitting in the office when Brian came back in. ‘Still here, Rosie?’ he asked. ‘I always knew Americans were keen.’

‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘Will, Billy. Is he married do you know?’

‘Billy? Oh yes, love, a real family man. Got a couple of kiddies too. Three of them I think.’ He smiled nicely. ‘You’re wasting your time there, love. Billy’s definitely spoken for.’

Billy. Will. A real family man. Married. Three kids.

No. No!

I gathered up my stuff and headed out of the building and back ‘home’ through town. My mind was going crazy. Will couldn’t be married. Not my Will. Certainly not so very married. Three kids? My skin went clammy with panic.

Calm down, I had to calm down. Think. I tried to think of all the possibilities. This was all pretend. It was a challenge. Like the bush tucker trial in the Celebrity Jungle thingy, only much much worse.

Yes, that’s what it was. It was just another challenge. I had my breathing almost under control. A challenge on a reality TV show. That’s what it was. All pretend. Somewhere in a viewing gallery there were people watching me and laughing themselves silly at my reaction, overreaction. It was only pretend.

Of course Will couldn’t say anything in the office. There were cameras in the office. That’s it. I’d have to get him outside. Somewhere there weren’t cameras. Somewhere where we could talk properly.

I was calmer now. It began to make a sort of sense.

But I couldn’t forget that blank look. That blank look had seemed too genuine. Could Will be that good an actor? I tried to shrug the memory from my mind.

It was a test, that’s all, just a test. But what a test …

Right now, what I needed was a drink, a very large drink. A large vodka would hit the spot. Or a nice rich red Merlot. Just the thought of it cheered me up and made life seem almost normal. I went out into the street and up into the Market Place, looking for a supermarket or an off licence, but there didn’t seem to be one, just lots of little shops, already shut up for the night. It all seemed very dark. No wine bars. No restaurants. No burger joints. Didn’t anybody ever eat out? Plenty of pubs though. Some of them looked a bit rough.

I carried on walking through the town centre. Then I saw The Fleece. Of course! The Fleece must have been a coaching inn centuries ago. It was terribly respectable, the sort of place that the Rotary meets. I bowled into one of the side bars. It was full of smoke and smelt really strongly of beer.

‘Hey you! Get out!’

I made my way past the tables and headed for the bar. The bar was already quite full and I needed some big fat chap to move his chair a bit so I could get past.

‘Excuse me,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I’d like to get past please.’

‘You can just bugger off,’ he said and turned back to his drink, with a grin at his companion.

‘There’s no need for that!’ I said crossly.

‘There’s every bloody need. You shouldn’t be in here,’ he said, still not moving. The man with him laughed – not a nice laugh – and some of the other men joined in.

I wished to God I hadn’t gone in that bar, but I wasn’t going to be bullied. I squared my shoulders and said firmly, ‘I have every right to be in here.’

‘No you haven’t. Now get out.’

I looked over at the barman. Surely he would do something.

‘Sorry, miss,’ he said, ‘but you’re not allowed in here. Men only.’

‘Men only? That’s illegal!’

‘No it isn’t, miss. This has always been a men-only bar. You’ll have to go.’

‘You can’t have bars that are just for men!’

‘Yes you can, miss. And this is one of them. Will you go now, please.’ He made a move as though he were going to lift the counter flap and come around and chase me off.

What else could I do? With my face bright red I left, making my way past all the little tables, while some of the men still laughed. Horrid. Horrid. Hateful. Another test. I tried not to let it worry me. I pushed my way out and in the corridor opposite I saw a door marked Lounge Bar. That would be all right. I walked in, trying to calm myself down.

This room looked much nicer. Comfortable chairs, horse brasses, a log fire and an air of quiet calm. And there was a woman here – a middle-aged couple were sitting in one of the corners beneath a picture of a hunting scene. I’d be all right here. I walked up to the bar and perched on one of the stools. There was a different barman, older. He was wiping glasses.

‘A large vodka and cranberry juice please.’

He carried on wiping glasses.

I waited for a moment. I was still getting myself calmed down from the other bar. But then the barman stopped wiping glasses and started stacking bottles on the shelf.

‘Excuse me,’ I said in my Like-I’m-here-can’t-you-see-me? sort of voice. ‘Could I have a vodka and cranberry juice please?’

This time he did at least bother to look up. He put his hands on the counter and looked around the room, towards the door.

‘You on your own, madam?’

‘Yes and I’d like a large vodka and cranberry juice please.’

He looked at me, not particularly pleasantly.

‘Two things, madam,’ he said. ‘First, we haven’t got any Russian drinks. And second, we don’t serve unaccompanied ladies, madam. I’m sure you understand why.’

I was gobsmacked.

‘No I don’t actually. I haven’t a bloody clue.’

‘Language, madam, please. I can’t serve you and I must ask you to leave.’

I looked towards the middle-aged couple, thinking they’d be sympathetic and help me out here. But they were suddenly intent on the pattern on the table.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I said, getting really angry now. ‘If you haven’t got vodka, then give me a large glass of Merlot.’

He leant forward menacingly and said, ‘I’m not giving you anything, madam.’ Then, in a fierce undertone, ‘Now just sling your hook before I call the manager and get you put out. This is a respectable establishment. We don’t want your sort in here.’

My sort? What did he think I was? A tart touting for custom?

And then it dawned on me. That’s precisely what he did think. The idea was so ridiculous I started to laugh, despite myself. I slipped off the stool and made quite a good exit. But outside I was shaking. It was ridiculous but it was also insulting. I still hadn’t got a drink. And Will had got a wife. Not a good day.

I headed back to the Browns’. I desperately needed to talk properly to Will. This was a challenge too far, no joke. I remembered his blank look and started to panic again, wanted to cry. But no, it was a game, a TV show. It wasn’t real, I reminded myself firmly. It’s not real. We’d sort it all out tomorrow.

I blew my nose on the silly little lace-edged hanky I’d found in my jacket pocket and headed for home. I wasn’t sure of the way but I strode out purposefully and kept my head held high and my expression determined. I even tried to smile – just in case those cameras were watching.

Chapter Five

Oh they’re clever, whoever’s doing this. Clever and crueltoo. But I must not let them get to me. I’m not going to let them. Whatever nasty sneaky tricks they pull.

I thought the 1950s house was going to be about practicalthings – like doing without decent wine and hotshowers, wearing scratchy underwear and not being ableto do my hair. Not psychological warfare. But then Iremembered a piece Caz wrote last year about how cruelreality TV was getting. Every new series pushes thebarriers a bit further. The last one locked people alonein the dark for days on end. They were so disorientatedthey lost all sense of reality and of who they were. Publicexecutions are the next step, Caz reckoned. But I thinkshe’s wrong. I think it’s mind games to see who can copebest. That’s why there was no warning, no preparation.Well, no one’s going to make a victim of me. Certainlynot for a TV programme. Certainly not for a TV programme I didn’t ask to be in. Not even after theirlatest trick.

We marched into work, Peggy and I, walking together, umbrellas up against the suddenly fierce spring rain, neither of us in the best of moods, neither of us saying a word. Not only had I not been able to get a drink last night, but when I got back to the house, supper was liver and onions and congealing cabbage, left in the oven for me, stuck to the plate with skin on the gravy. And that Janice was there again, doing sums about compound interest that stretched for pages and pages.

‘Always get an interest-free credit card,’ I’d offered as an attempt at a bit of cheerful advice, but then had to explain to her what a credit card was. It sounds so stupid when you try to explain it. And all the time my mind was full of thoughts of Will and his wife. And three children. It had to be a trick or a challenge, didn’t it?

It was like that bit in 1984 where Room 101 is full of all the things that people dread most. Well, I realised that what I dreaded most was losing Will. Only I hadn’t realised it until now. Obviously the TV people knew more about me than I knew about myself. Clever and cruel. No wonder I hadn’t slept. My eyes felt raw.

At breakfast Peggy was being a real pain, obviously more than normal as even her dad kept asking her if she was all right, but she only snapped back at him. Anyway, his mind was on other things and Mrs Brown was worried about a friend who was having some problems with her husband. So everyone was a bit distracted really.

Mrs Brown had dashed out even earlier than usual. ‘I want to go around to Joan’s and sort out a few things for her there. Dennis has had one of his turns again. Smashed the kitchen up this time.’

‘Good grief,’ I said. ‘Has she called the police? Is she safe? You don’t have to put up with domestic violence.’

‘He can’t help it,’ she said, gathering up her bag and scarf. ‘It’s them bloody Japs. They worked him almost to death in that prison camp. Before the war he was the loveliest, kindest man you could imagine. Now he gets these rages.’

‘Isn’t there some treatment he could have? Therapy? Counselling? Compensation? How on earth does his wife cope?’

I’d read all the articles on domestic violence, and written a fair few too. I knew the score and the helpline numbers.

Mrs Brown looked at me pityingly. ‘She’s just glad she’s got him back at all. And it’s not as bad as it was. It was fearful at first, like looking after a wounded animal. Now he’s much better, most of the time. But then something will start him off, something will remind him, and she has to sit with him and hold him and talk to him and keep him out of the children’s way. So I’ll just pop round to give her a hand and at least I’ll make sure the kids get a decent meal. You two can fend for yourselves. There’s some ham in the pantry and some cheese and I’ll pop a couple of potatoes in the oven for you so they should be baked when you get home. And there’s some of that treacle tart left.’

‘Right-o, Mum,’ said Peggy, ‘but I might be going out anyway.’

‘That’s nice, dear. In by ten o’clock, mind. You’ve got work tomorrow,’ said Mrs Brown, but she was already halfway out of the door before Peggy could say anything in reply.

I expected her to sound off. In by ten o’clock! Peggy was twenty-six, not sixteen for heaven’s sake. But she didn’t say anything. Staggering. On the other hand, if Peggy’s another competitor then maybe it was a test for her and she’s better at not overreacting than I am.

We arrived at The News offices still in silence, and as we got to the front door, both of us sort of stopped and took a deep breath before we went into the building. I glanced across at Peggy. There was a hint of a smile, a glimmer of recognition and fellow feeling, but not enough for me to ask.

I wasn’t sure about all this at all. If this was a reality TV programme then I should have had some rules, some instructions, some guidelines, some clue about what was going on. And if it was Narnia, then where was a helpful faun or a Mrs Beaver with buttered toast? Or an Aslan to make everything right?

I took a deep breath and went into the reporters’ room, bracing myself for seeing Will. I could cope. Of course I could cope. This was only a TV programme, for goodness’ sake. It wasn’t real life. As I hung my coat up, I took a quick look around, oh so casually, and when I came to his desk, I prepared myself, controlled my expression … but he wasn’t there. I let out a huge sigh. I didn’t know whether from relief or disappointment, but I’d been holding my breath so hard that my chest hurt.

Gordon was talking to the other reporters, Alan, Tony and Derek, allocating jobs.

‘Billy’s over in the district office today, chasing something up, so you can do his jobs,’ he was saying to Alan.

‘Anything for me?’ I asked, keeping a desk between me and Gordon. I was careful not to stand too near to him. Already he had a habit of getting even closer and ‘accidentally’ brushing against my bum or breasts. He didn’t smell too sweet either. Personal hygiene doesn’t seem to have been a big thing in the 1950s. I felt like hitting him, hard, but remembering I had to be all teeth and smiles, I had, so far, restrained myself.

He looked up at me as if wondering who the hell I was.

‘If she does all the shorts today, why doesn’t she do the Prettiest Village feature tomorrow?’ asked Marje quickly, lighting a cigarette. You only ever saw this woman through a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘I’ve booked a photographer but I’ve got a lot on.’

Gordon looked at me again. ‘I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. ‘If you’ve got other things to do, Marje. I suppose if she makes a mess of it, you can do it on Friday.’

The condescension of the man!

‘Right,’ I said, all brisk and businesslike. ‘What does this involve?’

‘You tell her, Marje,’ said Gordon and went back to his desk.

‘Well, now it’s spring,’ said Marje with a wry glance through the tiny grubby window to the rain outside, ‘it’s time to start our village feature. Simple idea, you know the sort of thing. Go along to one of the prettier villages, lots of lovely pictures and then maybe a few words with the oldest resident, squire, lady of the manor, vicar, that sort of thing. Anything newsworthy or interesting. Gets people buying The News and we might dig up a few stories for the rest of the paper while we’re at it. We’ll make a few contacts at least. You should be all right. The postman reckons it’s going to fair up tomorrow. I was going to start with Middle-ton Parva. You all right with that?’

‘Fine,’ I said. It wasn’t exactly cutting edge, but it was a lot more fun than Princess Margaret’s planned visit to the local regiment. There are worse assignments. ‘But how do I get there?’

‘You can team up with George and take the van. But Charlie’s out with it for most of today. So if you can just sort out some of those short pieces while you’re waiting. Or check in the files on Middleton Parva.’

‘No problem,’ I said, quite looking forward to a day out of the office. With that the door opened and an oldish woman came in carrying a long narrow wooden box full of brown envelopes. Everyone stood around her as she gave them out.

‘Rose Harford?’ she said, looking at me.

‘That’s me.’ And I went up to her, like a child going to Santa.

My present was a brown envelope full of money. I was getting paid for this, what a bonus. £8. 12s. 6d. to be precise. In my normal life that would buy a couple of coffees and a sandwich. Here it was meant to provide for a whole week. But judging by what I’d seen of prices, it would buy quite a lot. I put the money carefully away in my purse.

I’d just started my list of NIBs (News In Brief – mainly jumble sales, meetings and talks in the Literary and Philosophical societies), when one of the young messengers poked his head around the door.

‘Billy in?’ he asked.

‘No. He’s over in the district office. Why?’

‘Oh his missus is downstairs wanting him. Probably wanting his money more like. I’ll go and tell her she’ll have to get the shopping on tick.’

Will’s wife downstairs? An opportunity too good to miss.

‘No, it’s all right,’ I replied, before I realised what I was saying, getting up quickly and abandoning the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s performance of Yeoman of the Guard in mid sentence, ‘I’ll pop down and tell her.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said the lad and walked off whistling.

My heart was banging as I clattered down the narrow crowded stairs. I stopped on the turn and hung on to the rickety banister to try and get my breathing under control. IN twothreefourfivesix OUT twothreefourfivesix. Will’s wife. Will’s wife. What would she be like? What sort of girl would make Will give up his freedom? What would she look like, sound like? IN twothreefourfivesix OUT twothreefourfivesix. It was no good. I hadn’t got time to breathe properly. I strode on down.

But, closer to the front office, I slowed down, my steps heavier. Did I really want to meet Will’s wife? Did I want to see who he’d chosen, who he had children – three children! – with? What would I say to her? How painful would it be? What sort of trick was this? How was I expected to play it? Too late, despite myself, I was pushing through the battered door. Whatever she was like, I had to know.

There were only two people in the scruffy reception area, with its old-fashioned heavy wooden counters and scuffed tiled floor – a woman and a small child. The woman was wearing a workaday brown coat. She had her back to me, leaning down to talk to the child, yet there was something very familiar about her. Something I recognised, something I knew almost as well as I knew myself. The hair was the wrong colour, the wrong style but … She turned around.

‘Caz!’

This time, I didn’t get the blank look I had had from Will. Instead there was a moment’s puzzlement and then Caz’s face lit up.‘Hello!’ she said. ‘Are you the American? I’ve heard about you. I’m Carol, Billy’s wife.’

Caz? Married to Will? Somewhere in the universe, someone was playing a very sick joke on me. And it couldn’t be Caz and Will, could it? The two people closest to me in the world wouldn’t do this to me, would they, not even as a joke, not even for a reality TV programme?

‘You? You’re really married to Will?’ As I asked it, I heard the catch in my voice. Were Will and Caz really in league against me?

‘Married to Billy. Yes ’fraid so. For eleven years and counting. Is he in?’

‘No, sorry. He’s had to go out to one of the other offices.’ How did I manage to answer so calmly and politely?

Eleven years? Eleven years? Will was still in school eleven years ago. Why was he married to Caz? Caz of all people. This had to be a wind-up. And if it was, it was a pretty sick one.

‘Oh well, never mind. It’s not important.’ She smiled and turned to leave.

‘Can I give him a message?’

I didn’t want her to go. I needed to keep her there, to talk to her. I needed to know more.

‘No, it’s all right.’ She hesitated. ‘Well yes, go on then. Tell him I’ve got a job. Next term, when this one,’ she indicated the little girl who was staring up at me with a shy smile and Caz’s bright inquisitive eyes, ‘starts school, I do too. I’m going to be a school cook. They told me today. Isn’t that grand?’

Her face was alight with happiness. This was Caz pretending to be delighted about being a school cook? Caz whose idea of sophisticated cooking was putting a bit of parsley on a ready meal? We needed to talk, away from the office, away from any cameras.

‘That’s brilliant!’ I said, entering into the game, for it had to be a game. ‘Why don’t we celebrate? Look, I’ve got half an hour to spare. Why don’t we go to Silvino’s? My treat? I’ve just been paid.’

This world might be pretend, but at least the coffee would be real. And I guessed Gordon wouldn’t miss me from the office for half an hour. Caz – in true Caz fashion – hesitated for less than a split second.

‘Oh yes, if you’ve got time,’ she said and turned to the little girl. ‘Well Libby, isn’t this turning out to be a good day?’

She sounded so like Caz, my Caz, that my heart sang. With Libby holding firmly on to Caz’s hand, we went across the Market Place to Silvino’s, squeezing past the women in their damp macs with bags of shopping and dripping umbrellas. The menu was strong on teacakes and buns and buttered toast, but the smell and the steam was of coffee, proper Italian coffee. And in among the noise of the steam, and the black-and-white-clad waitresses bustling back and forth between the crowded tables, was Silvino himself, I guessed, a tiny round beaming Italian in a long apron and a wide smile. Part of me just wanted to sit back and savour the normality of it, but there was something far more important to deal with …

‘Right,’ I said, once we’d ordered, and Caz was undoing Libby’s coat buttons for her. ‘Come on Caz, tell me what this is all about.’

‘What? The job? Well, it—’

‘No, not the job, you daft bat, this reality TV thing. Where are the cameras? What are the rules? Who else is in it? Who’s running it? Were you just dropped in it too? How do we get out when we want to?’

The smile faltered on Caz’s face for a moment. She sat back from the table, put a hand on Libby’s arm as if to protect her and looked at me, baffled and wary.

Then I noticed that just as Will didn’t look exactly the same as Will in this place, that Caz, or Carol, didn’t look quite like Caz either. Her hair was a different colour. Well that’s no surprise. Caz has been colouring hers for so long that not even she can remember what colour it was originally. But Caz’s hair is always glossy and shiny, this Carol’s hair looked a bit dull. To be honest, it looked as though it needed washing. Caz’s never looked like that. Even when she was ill, the first thing she did was wash her hair because she said it made her feel better.

Then her teeth. Caz has neat, straight, white teeth. This Carol had slightly crooked teeth. And this Carol had lines … the beginning of wrinkles around her eyes and on her forehead. And now she too was looking at me as if I were a stranger – and a slightly mad stranger at that.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure …

I put my head down. I felt utterly defeated.

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you and Will, Billy, look exactly like my closest friends back home. And it’s such a shock to discover that maybe you’re not them after all.’

‘Oh you poor thing!’ said Carol, in such a Caz-like way that I was sure it must be her. ‘How awful, especially if you’re feeling homesick. It’s such a long way from America. Are they nice, these friends?’

‘The best, the absolute best.’

‘Well, let’s just hope Billy and I will do instead,’ she said in a wonderfully cheering, normal sort of a way. ‘Now come on, drink your coffee and have a bit of this teacake.’

She was treating me as though I were the same age as Libby, and for some reason, I suddenly began to feel better, especially when I noticed her eyeing my jacket. Very Caz that. Always keen on clothes. Whether she was Caz or Carol, I needed her company, a friend. I began to relax a little, though I wanted to ply her with a hundred questions – like Why are you married to Will? What’s he like as a husband? Do you really love him? Weren’t you young to have children? And please move along now, because I’m here and he’s mine …

The thought of Caz being married to Will was too huge and horrible to consider. They were good friends, of course they were, had been since they were in school. But married! If the two people closest to me in the whole world were married to each other, then where did that leave me? Squeezed out in the cold and very much alone.

Even if this were pretend, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. At the very least the pair of them must have ganged up to play this trick on me. Thinking that about your two best friends is not a cheering thought.

Yet here was Caz, sipping her coffee, her eyes huge over the rim of the cup, looking just like she had so many times I’d sat with her before. No longer looking worried, she now seemed only concerned for me. Just as if it were me and Caz as we had always been. Maybe there were cameras in here too, and she knew. Maybe this time it was she who was waiting for a quiet opportunity to talk to me and hatch a plot. In the meantime, we would just enjoy the coffee.

It was so what I wanted – to pretend it was just me and Caz having a coffee, like normal. I wanted to forget all this strange stuff that was happening, if only for a moment. So I relaxed and pretended. It was surprisingly easy.

‘Oh look,’ I said, with a mouthful of teacake, ‘they’ve got music here tomorrow night.’

‘Music?’

On the wall was a handwritten notice. ‘Saturday night at Silvino’s. The Skiffle Cats!’

‘I’d heard he was opening up in the evenings to give it a go.’

‘Give what a go?’

‘The skiffle groups. Have you been in the back room?’

‘No, what back room?’

‘There’s another room that you get to from the side alley. Silvino’s got a juke box in there. All the kids go in there to listen to records in the evenings at weekends.’

‘Will you go and see The Skiffle Cats?’

Carol laughed.

‘No, that’s for kids, not people like me. They haven’t even got proper instruments. Just a washboard and a bit of string on a broom handle. No, I tell a lie, I think one of them might have a guitar. I spend enough time with my washboard as it is, without going out at night to watch someone else scrubbing away. But I like to hear a bit of decent music sometimes.’ She looked wistful. ‘I like the juke box. Tell you what’ – and again she sounded just like Caz – ‘I’ll be in town for the market on Saturday. Will you be in town too? I could meet you, say at the cross at eleven-ish and we could get what we want and then go in the back with the kids for a coffee and some music. What do you say?’

‘Yes, great. Why not?’

‘Well that’s settled!’ said Caz/Carol, then she turned to Libby and said, ‘Now we’d better go and do some shopping, otherwise none of us will eat tonight. See you Saturday, Rosie.’

She did up Libby’s coat buttons again, took her hand and manoeuvred through the crowded tables. As they went, Libby turned around and gave a quick smile. She was the image of her mother.

I paid the bill (leaving 3d tip, how confident is that?) and dashed back to the office, teetering between utter gloom and a strange almost-happiness. The thought of shopping with Caz/Carol made me feel more cheerful than I’d done ever since I’d got here. The thought that she was married to Will just seemed so bizarre that I could hardly accept it. It had to be a joke or a trick. Hadn’t it? Maybe I’d find out more on Saturday. That was obviously what she was thinking. And even though she was making out that she didn’t know me, she was still like my friend Caz. At least she was friendly and chatty, not like Will. But I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. Maybe she was trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Maybe this was even more devious …

Will/Billy didn’t come back to the office at the end of the day. Every time the door opened and anyone came into the office, I geared myself up to see him, preparing my calm face while the blood raced around my system and pounded behind my eyes. Then every time it wasn’t him, I slumped again. God knows what all this was doing to my stress levels.

In the end, when it was clear he wasn’t going to be coming back, I went home early for my ham and baked potato. Janice was there again later. I couldn’t help her with her homework – physics – but she asked lots of questions about newspapers.

I still couldn’t believe that Caz was married to Will. That was such a sadistic trick by the organisers. I couldn’t believe that they would have agreed to that. I remembered the silly feeling I had occasionally when I was a bit jealous of their shared past, but they wouldn’t do this. Surely not.

But if I took it at face value, at least Caz was here too and prepared to be friendly. That was something. Not much, admittedly. But right now it was all I had.

Chapter Six

Middleton Parva was a separate village. Amazing. I just thought of it as the bit by the ring road where the new B&Q and Tesco were. But we went out of town, past fields and off the main road and down a country lane to get to it. George’s driving was erratic to say the least.

‘Hey hang on. You nearly had us in the ditch there! You’re on the wrong side of the road!’

‘Sorry!’ yelled George. ‘Habit. Think I’m in Germany still.’

‘Germany?’

‘Yes. That’s where I learnt to drive, when I was doing my national service in the army. On tanks, so the van took some getting used to.’

‘You were in the army?’

Honestly, he didn’t look old enough.

‘How old are you, George?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Did you break any of the Fräuleins’ hearts?’

‘No,’ grinned George – and bless him, he blushed – ‘we didn’t do much of that sort of fraternising. Plenty of drinking though! Those Germans know how to drink.’

Somehow, we got to Middleton Parva. And as we did, so the sun came out, just as Marje’s postman had said it would. It was really pretty. There was a proper village green with trees, a couple of little shops, a very attractive church, which I’d never noticed before, probably because it’s hidden behind B&Q. This couldn’t be a film set, could it? This was something else. Something much bigger. But quite what, I didn’t want to think about just yet. Too scary. Much too scary. My skin went cold and clammy as I tried to think about it. No. Easier to get on with work.

While George went off to scout for pictures, I went to the post office and struck gold straightaway. The postmistress’s family had been running the place since the days when mail came with the stagecoach, so that was a nice easy story to write up. Then I found the vicar, and we did pretty pictures of the church and talked about its history and looked at a few interesting graves.

‘What now?’ asked George.

‘The lady from the post office said the pub was run by a cockney, a chap who came here as an evacuee during the war. He must have liked it to stay. No doubt he’ll have a tale to tell. Shall we?’

‘A pub will do me fine. We’ll get a drink while we’re there. But which one?’

There were two pubs on either side of the green. One, the Royal Oak, was low and squat and old-fashioned. It had small windows, and beams that made it look as though it had grown up out of the ground and would return to it given half a chance. The other, the Rising Sun, was a big flash newer sort of place with a car park. It had beams too, but you could tell they weren’t very old. There was a sign in the window. I went closer to read it.

‘No Gypsies! No Irish!’ it said.

I stepped back, shocked.

‘Can they really say that?’

‘Yes, of course. The fair’s been here recently, that’s what that’s all about. They don’t want gyppos upsetting their posh customers. Is this the pub we want?’

‘No, thank heavens. We want the Royal Oak.’

We went across the green and in through the tiny low door of the pub. It had no signs in its window. Inside there were flagged floors and a small log fire. Two old men, smoking pipes, were playing dominoes. They looked up when we went in, ‘Afternoon,’ they said, and went back to their game.

Since we’d walked in through the door, I’d been holding my breath. I was waiting for someone to shout at me, or say they couldn’t serve me, accuse me of being a tart. Instead, the cheerful young landlord was saying, ‘Right sir, and what can I get you?’

‘Pint of bitter for me please,’ said George.

‘And for the lady?’

I hesitated. I could hardly believe I was actually going to get a drink at last. But I didn’t know what to ask for, what to choose. Apart from the beer pumps, the stock on the shelves looked pretty limited. I could see gin and whisky and lots of bottles of Mackeson and Guinness. An advert on the wall showed flying toucans, watched by some RAF types. ‘Lovely day for a Guinness’ said the slogan. But perhaps not.

‘No vodka, I suppose?’ I laughed, as if I were making a joke.

‘No, this is Middleton not Moscow, miss.’

‘Sorry, I don’t know what to have.’

‘She’s American,’ said George in explanation.

‘Right darling. Why not have a shandy, a lot of ladies like that. Or a drop of local cider?’

‘Cider. That sounds fine. Yes please.’

He disappeared for a moment and came back with a large enamel jug. He placed a half-pint glass on the counter about a yard away and lifted the jug. Cider poured from it in a long arc and fell, perfectly on target, into the glass. It was neatly done.

I took a sip. ‘Cheers!’ I said and nearly choked. ‘God this is strong! What’s in it?’

‘Apples, mostly,’ said the landlord, ‘and a few dead rats of course.’

I trusted he was joking, but boy was that cider good. It hit the spot wonderfully. I remembered I’d left my Oxo tin at the office.

‘Any food on? Sandwiches?’

‘The missus can make you a sandwich if you like. Ham or cheese?’

We both chose ham and while the missus was making them, I told the landlord why we’d come. He was happy to talk, a good utterer, and he spoke in quotes. Easy peasy George did a nice picture of him leaning on the bar, and by the time the sandwiches came, we’d just about finished, leaving Ray, the landlord, to serve his other customers.

George and I took our sandwiches – and a second drink – over to a table by the tiny window. The sandwiches were brilliant. Proper thick bread with black crusts, masses of butter (Diet? What diet?) and chunks of delicious home-cooked ham. Real food. But now we were just sitting down and not actually working or talking about work, I noticed George looked a bit uneasy. It took a while to dawn on me that sitting in a bar alone with an older woman was clearly something he wasn’t used to.

‘It’s all right George, I won’t eat you.’

He smiled uneasily and moved a little further away from me.

‘Did you like the army, George?’

‘It was all right. Once you’d got basic training over. All that bloody, sorry Rose, all that drill and bullsh— all that stuff you had to do.’

‘Did you go straight from school?’

‘No. I was a messenger on The News. Then I used to help Charlie with the developing and printing and things. I told them that when I got called up and I got to work for the information unit. Which was spot on. I worked with the army photographers, so when I came back Mr Henfield took me on as a proper assistant for Charlie, so I was pretty chuffed really. I think Peggy put in a good word for me.’

‘Peggy?’

‘Yes, Henfield’s secretary. Oh you know, you’re lodging at her house, aren’t you? She’s nice, isn’t she? She was always nice to me when I was a messenger. Most people just take the mick all the time, but Peggy never did. She was always kind. She always said that there was no reason that I shouldn’t be a photographer. She always makes you think you can do things if you really want to. And she’s got a lovely smile.’

I have to say this was a completely different view of Peggy from the one I saw. But then I remembered how nice she was with smelly little Janice, and I didn’t say anything. Young George clearly had a bit of a crush on Peggy, and who was I to disillusion him? Anyway, maybe it was just me she didn’t like.

‘Do you like it on The News?’

‘It’s good, yes. And I like driving the van. I’m going to get a car of my own one day. I’ll have a proper wage soon when I’m twenty-one. Then I can take my mum on outings.’

‘Do you still live with your mum then?’

‘Yes. Just me and her. Dad copped it at Dunkirk, so it’s been just me and Mum ever since.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘No harder than for lots of folk.’ He paused, took a long drink and glanced up and out of the window across at the Rising Sun.

‘Looks like Henfield’s popped out for his lunch-time drink. That must be his car. There aren’t that many two-tone Hillman Minxes around here. Maybe he’s meeting one of his floozies.’

Floozy, what a wonderful word. I thought my grandad was the only one to use it.

‘Goes in for floozies, does he?’

‘One or two. Another drink?’

‘George, you’ve had two. You’ll be over the limit.’

‘What limit?’

‘You’re not meant to have more than two pints. You won’t be able to concentrate properly.’

‘Rubbish. I drive better after a drink or two. One for the road.’

As he was getting the drinks – and that cider was good –I was still gazing out of the window. A bus pulled up on the other side of the green, a real old-fashioned country bus. A young woman got out and hurried across the green to the Rising Sun. There was something familiar about her …

I sat up straight and had a proper look. Yes, no doubt about it. It was Peggy – who should have been in work – rushing into the pub, the pub outside which Richard Henfield’s car was parked. She vanished through the door just as George came back with the drinks.

So Henfield liked his floozies, did he? And he and his secretary just happened to be in an out-of-the-way country pub at the same time. Interesting. Very interesting.

Chapter Seven
DAY SIX IN THE 1950s HOUSE

If that’s where I am. I’m not sure any more. I’m not sure of anything.

If this is the 1950s house, why wasn’t I briefed about it? Interviewed, insured, had explanations, and introduced to it?

It’s more than just a house and a newspaper office. It’s a whole town, not to mention the countryside around it, and villages like Middleton Parva. That was no film set. And so many people! No TV company would pay for so many extras. It’s all so real. It doesn’t feel like a film set. I haven’t seen any cameras. No one’s mentioned a video room.

None of the other people seem to be competitors. Mrs Brown was expecting me. My trunk was here. Everyone seems to think I’m here for a few weeks. But where’s ‘here’?

Will and Caz. Ah. This is the really tricky one. Are they Will and Caz? If so, they wouldn’t play such a trick on me, not for so long. Not pretending to be married, with children. They’re my two best friends in the world. They wouldn’t play a trick like that, not even for a minute. They certainly wouldn’t do it for a poxy reality TV show. They just wouldn’t. No. Not even for a ‘psychological test’. They wouldn’t play those sort of sick games.

Because if they would, then how could I trust anyone ever again? And who? Billy and Carol are identical to Will and Caz. But they’re different too. They both look older for a start. What about Caz’s teeth? The wrinkles? Will’s hands? That’s not make-up. But if they’re not Will and Caz, who are they? Why is it all different? What the hell is going on?

When Lucy went through that bloody wardrobe into Narnia she knew straightaway where she was. I don’t. I don’t know where I am or why I’m here.

It’s not really the 1950s is it? That’s impossible. Isn’t it?

But what else is it?

After I’d written that, I seized up. My whole body froze and I couldn’t get air in and out of my lungs. There was just a pain, the pain of panic. I didn’t know where I was. In time or space. I couldn’t trust any of my senses. Nothing was what it seemed.

As I tried to breathe, in great panicking gulps, I tried to get my brain to work, tried to think logically, calmly. Ha!

I had thought this was a reality TV show, yet nothing, absolutely nothing backed that up. This wasn’t a single house, or even a single film set. This was more. This was an entirely different world, a world locked in the past of fifty years ago. I ran to the window and beat my hands on it as if it were the bars of a cage, because it might just as well have been.

I couldn’t have gone back in time, not really back in the 1950s. But where was I?

All I knew for certain, the one sure thing, was that I wanted Will. I wanted his arms around me and his mouth whispering in my ear the way he did when I had nightmares, because this was turning into a real nightmare. I wanted to be home. It was only eight o’clock – on a Saturday morning off, for goodness’ sake, and I’d already been awake for hours. I was still leaning with my head against the cool of the window, taking deep breaths, trying to control my fear and panic, when Peggy came in.

‘You all right?’ she asked, not unkindly.

‘Yes, no … oh I don’t know.’ But then I had a thought.

‘Peggy, you know you asked your mum if I could come and stay here?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘Well who arranged for me to come and work on The News? You’re the editor’s secretary. It must have been arranged through you.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘Well how?’

This was it, I thought, I’m getting close to the truth now. If I knew who’d organised my trip, the clothes and everything, then I’d know just what was going on. There’d be correspondence, letters about it. If I could see those, I’d have cracked it.

‘We had a phone call from Lord Uzmaston’s office.’

‘Lord Uzmaston?’

‘Yes, you know – the proprietor. I’ve never met him, but Mr Henfield has. He’s been to lunch at Uzmaston Hall.’ She said this with a sort of pride. ‘He owns The News and quite a lot of other papers.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Oh it wasn’t him. He wouldn’t ring himself, would he? It was a man, a young man, I think. Just said that they had a reporter who needed a temporary job and that we were to fit her in. I can tell you Mr Henfield wasn’t happy, not with the idea of a woman reporter. But you’ve got to obey orders, haven’t you? Especially when it’s the owner, and Lord Uzmaston does have some funny ways.’

‘Was there any correspondence? Any confirmation in writing? Anything like that?’

‘No. Nothing at all. It was all very strange. Most irregular. That’s why I was glad I’d asked about the rent.’

‘Rent?’

‘Oh yes. They asked if we could find her – you – accommodation. And I thought of our Stephen’s room, it being empty. But before I said that, I asked how much they would pay. And the man said “Whatever is usual. It would be easier if you pay it direct from your office.”’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.