The Time Bubble Box Set 2, стр. 305
He still had that strange device with him, which I waspretty sure was what he must use to travel through time. That would suggest he hadat least some element of control over what he was doing, unlike me.
If so, why hadn’t he come back to help me before? How couldhe have let me go through all I had over the past two months when he could havecome to rescue me straight away?
Admittedly, much of my adventure had been fun. It had givenme opportunities to relive some great and some not so great moments of my life.It had also allowed me to see old family and friends I thought had goneforever. Then there was saving Rachel, of course.
Despite all of that, it had still been a pretty frighteningexperience, largely because of the impending death sentence that had beenhanging over my head the whole time.
Now that I had made contact with him, would he do anythingabout it? Could he, even? Many hours had passed since our encounter in the parkand there was no sign of him. If he was going to whisk me back to my own time,would he not have come to do it by now? If he could time-travel, then he couldhave returned at any time during the day to rescue me.
I had made the assumption that he would be able to find me,but I was beginning to have doubts about that. I hadn’t given him my address oranything else other than my name. I was a Reynolds, but these were my maternalgrandparents I was staying with and their surname was Spencer. That didn’thelp. But I couldn’t give him any more details because of Gran snatching meaway.
I couldn’t blame her for that. Ever since the Moors murders,there had been a growing fear of child killers and paedophiles, and any strangeman talking to a child in a park would be viewed with suspicion. It was the waythe world was going now and would get far worse in the next century as allmanner of past abuse cases came to light.
Thinking about all this was exhausting and I felt sleepcoming to claim me. Just before I fell asleep I offered up one final prayerthat something good might come out of what had taken place today.
Chapter Twenty
2025
I knew almost instantly that I was back. As soon as I openedmy eyes, I noticed three things simultaneously.
Firstly, the curtains were open and it was broad daylightoutside. I could see right away that I was back in my room in the flat I sharedwith Lily and Phoebe.
Secondly, my body felt different and I quickly looked downto check. The first thing I saw were my breasts, back in place, full, roundedand not quite as firm as they had been at my peak. They were exactly as theyhad been on the day I had left in my thirty-nine-year-old body.
Finally, there was a familiar-looking man sitting on the endof the bed looking at me.
I sat up, pulling the quilt up around me, the way actressesdo in films. I was acutely aware that I was naked.
“Better now?” he asked.
Although I had recognised him straight away I couldn’t helpnoticing that he looked much older than when I had last seen him.
“Doctor Gardner?” I enquired.
“Call me, Josh,” he replied. “And as I think we may haveestablished before, I’m not actually a doctor.”
“Well, Josh,” I began. “I hope you’ve got a bloody good explanationfor all of this. One that’s good enough to justify sneaking into a nakedwoman’s bedroom uninvited!”
He grinned and said, “Well, it might take a while, andyou’ve got to be at work in two hours, but yeah, I’ll give it a shot. I imagineyou’ve got a lot of questions.”
“Haven’t I just,” I replied, peering closely at him. Hereally was a great deal older, almost of pensionable age.
“You can start by telling me why you’re so much older thanwhen I last saw you,” I said.
“That’s one of the easy ones,” he replied. “It’s taken me anenormous long time to sort out the mess I created that day in the hospital. Alarge part of that was figuring out how to get your mind back into your properbody at the proper time. It’s taken me nearly twenty years, to be precise.”
“Well, I suppose I should be grateful,” I replied. “Though,to be fair, this was your fault in the first place. It’s only right you shouldsort it out.”
“That’s alright, I enjoy the challenge of trying to solvethese problems,” he replied. “Alice, that’s my wife, was trying to get me togive up all this time-travelling stuff. Knowing that you needed rescuing gaveme a legitimate reason to continue my experiments.”
“I guess I should say thank you for coming to rescue me,” Isaid. “How did you find me anyway?”
“Well, this helped,” he said, producing a faded and crumpledletter from his pocket and handing it to me.
“It’s the letter I wrote to Professor Hamilton!” Iexclaimed. “So you know him? Why didn’t he reply?”
“He was my mentor at the university,” replied Josh. “He didreceive your letter but didn’t do anything with it. He couldn’t do anythingwith it because he never discovered how to time-travel. It ended up filed awaywith all his other correspondence. He didn’t make the connection to me, despiteyou referring to me as Doctor Gardner, because I hadn’t started working withhim then. I was also in my early twenties, not fifty, as you stated in theletter.”
“That’s time travel for you,” I replied. “People aren’talways the age you expect them to be.”
“Indeed,” replied Josh. “After you called me Doctor Gardnerin the park, it struck a bell because I remembered him mentioning your nameyears and years ago in one of our many conversations about time travel. Yourswas one of many letters he had received, all of which he had concluded werefrom fakers. I realised after you approached me in the park that your lettermust have been genuine. As soon as I got the chance I went back through