The Time Bubble Box Set 2, стр. 292
“Like what?” she said scornfully, as if I couldn’t possiblyhave anything to say that she would be interested in.
There was no point messing around with any convolutedexplanations about how I had come to be where I was, I just needed to get itout, concisely, before she interrupted me again.
“Mum, if you don’t stop drinking, you are going to die. I’vetravelled here from the future to warn you. In three years’ time you’ll bediagnosed with liver cancer and die in agonising pain.”
She laughed brazenly, right in my face.
“Is that really the best you can do?”
She turned towards the kitchen cupboard, opened up the door,grabbed a wine glass, and then reached for an unopened bottle of red wine inthe criss-cross-shaped wine rack that sat on the kitchen surface next to thekettle.
“Well, if I’ve only got three years left, I’d better get startedthen, hadn’t I?” she remarked, reaching for the screw top of the bottle.
“Mum, please, listen…” I began, attempting to reason withher.
“Listen to your imaginary stories?” She laughed. “Grow, upAmy. You’re twenty-two, not two.”
She wrenched the cap from the bottle and filled the glassalmost to the brim. Then she defiantly took a huge swig, right in front of myface.
I turned away, unable to stomach seeing any more. Thishadn’t worked. I was doing no good here whatsoever. I still had a plan B, whichwas to give her Wednesday’s lottery numbers as proof I knew the future, butwould that make any difference? My sister’s death had set her on a course ofself-destruction, and she was already past the point of no return.
Abandoning my lottery plan, it was clear that there was onlyone course of action left open to me now.
I had to save Rachel.
Chapter Fifteen
2004
It was New Year’s Eve, 2004, and I was in the livinghell-hole that was Phuket, Thailand. It was five days after the catastrophictsunami that had claimed so many thousands of lives, including my sister’s.
I had been steeling myself for this moment for the past fewdays, knowing where I would find myself. Even so, coming back here after solong still brought it all back home to me. From the moment I arrived, I wasfilled with emotions as raw as I had felt first time around, twenty years ago.
I had tried to enjoy my previous two trips but the knowledgeof what was to come had weighed heavily upon my mind.
On the day before I turned twenty-one, Kelly and I travelleddown to London to see Kylie Minogue in her Showgirl concert. I had been lookingforward to this ever since I had found the faded ticket in my biscuit tin, andit didn’t disappoint on any level.
I had been a fan of Kylie’s ever since I was tiny. Icouldn’t remember her being in Neighbours, though I knew she had beenbecause Rachel had told me all about it.
When Kylie rose out of the stage dressed in her pinkShowgirl outfit and began belting out Better the Devil You Know, thewhole crowd, me included, went crazy. This had been one of my very earlyfavourite songs, coming out as it did when I was about four years old. Shecouldn’t have picked a better song to open with, and the night just got betterand better from there.
In 2005, nothing notable had happened around New Year, whichwas hardly surprising considering I had lost my sister and my father in thespace of just over a year. So this time I decided to take the opportunity to gotravelling again to see in 2006, realising that it would be just about my lastchance. My adulthood was coming to an end.
As I regressed back into my teens, my financial muscle wasbecoming seriously diminished. I had got my first credit card as a student atthe age of nineteen, so this would be the last year I would be able to make useof it. The limit on it wasn’t great, just £1000, but it was enough to get medown to the Canary Islands for one last mini-holiday as I prepared for myarrival in Thailand.
As I lay by the pool on my twentieth birthday there was noescaping the truth that my time was running out. I was now halfway through thisjourney, and I was going to have a lot less control over what happened to me inthe second half.
Soon I would have no money. I would officially be a minor,under the care of parents and teachers. Sure, in my teens it wouldn’t be toobad, but what happened when I got even younger? I would have less and lessfreedom with each passing year.
I also worried about what was going to happen to my body andmy mind. The physical changes were inevitable, but how would my mind react?Would my thoughts still be those of an adult, or would I revert to a childlikestate, almost like becoming senile in reverse?
All of that was still to come, but for now I had to put itto the back of my mind and focus on the task in hand, which was the verypressing need to do something about Rachel.
Unlike many of my recent trips from so far back in the past,I was pretty confident about exactly where I was going to find myself when Imaterialised in Phuket on the morning of 31st December 2004. As mymind took possession of my body from twenty years ago, I realised I was right.I was exactly where I had expected to be. It was where I had spent every day inthe immediate aftermath of the disaster.
I was down on the beach, in front of the café where I hadbeen taking breakfast on the morning the tsunami had struck. I had been inThailand visiting my sister and it was the first time I had travelled abroadalone, aged just eighteen.
Rachel had spent six months travelling the world sincegraduating the previous summer, and had invited me to come out and spend sometime with her. I had been very fortunate to be able to get a cheap flight overto spend two weeks with her over Christmas and New Year. My parents weren’t particularlykeen on me travelling all that