Troy said. “So I came back and the strand took me through the house for some reason. Mercer’s on the phone in the hall. He’s telling Uncle Jolyon all about the game.”
“Isn’t that all we need!” Harmony said. She scooped the cards, the markers and the clock into her coloured bag and snapped the table together. “Everyone go and put their stuff in the trophy cabinet. It’ll be open for you. Tollie, you’ll have to leave that egg there and hope Uncle Jolyon doesn’t notice it. Troy, Hayley, come with me. We’d better find Aunt May.”
Aunt May was hurrying out of the house as they came to it. She let Tollie, followed by the crowd of Tighs and Laxtons, rush indoors past her and stopped Harmony, Troy and Hayley.
“Quick,” she said. “Jolyon’s on his way here already. I wish Mercer wasn’t so damn dutiful, but Jolyon is his father, you know. Jolyon had no idea that Hayley was here with us, and he’s furious. We’ve got to get her away.”
“Does he know about the game?” Harmony asked.
“No – if he knew she’d been playing that, he’d go berserk!” Aunt May said distractedly. “But I’d get her away even if she hadn’t been. Hayley, you’re a darling and you saved us from the flood and what’s been done to you is a shame. Harmony, Troy, think what to do, quickly.”
“We were supposed to be taking her to Mum when we left,” Troy said. “To go to school in Scotland, Pleone said. We could take her now.”
“Yes, yes, take her to Ellie. At once,” Aunt May gasped. “Go upstairs and pack your things, all of you.”
Troy and Harmony wasted no time. They dashed indoors and raced up the stairs in long strides. Aunt May, looking perfectly distracted, with her hair unrolling in long lumps, seized Hayley’s hand and rushed her upstairs in a rattle of necklaces. When they reached Hayley’s room, Aunt May dragged Hayley’s little suitcase from under her bed, shook her head – causing more hair to unroll – and hunted in a cupboard until she found a big duffel bag. Into this she crammed all Hayley’s new old clothes as fast as Hayley could pass them to her. She was just forcing Hayley’s brush and comb in on top of Hayley’s washing things, when Troy and Harmony arrived at a gallop, Troy with a huge backpack and Harmony carrying a bulging airline bag.
“Got everything?” Aunt May said.
“Not quite,” Harmony said. “I had to leave my good dress. Can you hang—?”
She was interrupted by the crunching of wheels on the driveway outside.
“Oh, my God!” gasped Aunt May. “He’s here already!”
She tore aside the blowing white curtains. They all looked down from Hayley’s window at a taxi drawing up by the front door and at Mercer and Tollie going out to meet it, followed by Aunt Alice, Aunt Geta and Aunt Celia. Somehow they all managed to look like important people coming to meet a visiting president. Mercer actually bowed as the taxi door slammed open and Uncle Jolyon climbed out. Uncle Jolyon’s blue eyes glared and, among his white beard, his mouth was almost a snarl. Hayley had never seen anyone look so thunderously angry. She backed away as Aunt May gently let the curtain fall back across the window.
“I’ll go down and hold him up as long as I can,” Aunt May said. “Do your best, Harmony.” Necklaces clashing, hair flying, she ran out of the room.
Hayley listened to Aunt May’s slippers thudding away down the stairs and wondered what they could do. At the very least, Uncle Jolyon was going to send her back to Grandma. But now she knew some of the things Uncle Jolyon had done and could do, she was quite sure she was going to be punished in a worse way than that.
“It’s too late to get to the back door,” Troy said. “He’ll see us coming downstairs.”
“I know what,” Harmony said. “We need a science fiction strand. Find me one, Troy, quickly.”
“The one I came back on just now,” Troy said. “It was all futuristic stuff. Some of it’s out on the upstairs landing.”
Harmony said, “Right!” and seized Hayley’s hand. Troy heaved up the duffel bag and they all three scurried out of the room and up the next flight of stairs. There at the top, almost exactly where the waterfall had started the night Hayley had arrived, stood a tall glass thing like a telephone box – or, even more, like a shower stall. Harmony pulled open its door and helped the other two to cram themselves and their luggage inside with her.
“A transportation booth?” Troy said. “Clever!”
“More than that,” Harmony said, pressing away at a set of buttons beside the glass door. “It’s a time booth too. I hope neither of you mind missing two days. We’re going to catch the plane we were going to catch anyway and I hope we can do it before Uncle Jolyon realises. I’m hoping he doesn’t know how good I am with the mythosphere and spends the next two days hunting for us. There!” Harmony said, pressing the large green button marked ENTER.
Without any feeling of change or movement, the view outside the glass door became the busy airport concourse that Hayley remembered from when she came to Ireland with Cousin Mercer. Troy slammed the door open and they ran. From then on it was all running, to the check-in, then up to Security and through the X-ray machine, on into the departure lounges and from there a race to the gates. As Harmony explained, waving their boarding passes as they pelted to where a loudspeaker was telling them that the flight to Edinburgh was now boarding, she had brought them here at the last minute to give Uncle Jolyon the smallest possible chance of finding them.
“And let’s hope he’s not waiting at the gate,” she panted.
Hayley was terrified. Though she didn’t at all understand why, it was clear to her that she was the one Uncle Jolyon wanted to catch. She was so frightened that she somehow put on comet speed and arrived at the desk in front of the gate long before the other two.
“They’re coming! They’re just coming!” she told the man behind the desk. Then she was forced to wait, hopping from one leg to the other and anxiously scanning the little rows of seats and the wine shop opposite, in case Uncle Jolyon came storming along to get her. She was not happy until Harmony and Troy arrived and they were all allowed to hurry through a gangway and on to the plane itself. Then she did not dare move from the doorway until she had looked along the length of the plane and made sure that Uncle Jolyon was not sitting in one of the seats, waiting.
An embittered-looking stewardess hurried them along to the front, where there were two pairs of seats facing one another. Harmony and Troy sat together with their backs to the pilot’s cabin. Hayley sat opposite them, next to the empty seat, beside the tiny window. While the plane thrummed and hummed and started slowly rumbling out towards the runway, Hayley kept looking at that empty seat, expecting any moment to see Uncle Jolyon sitting in it. While the pilot spoke to them – something about going north to avoid a thunderstorm over the Irish Sea – Hayley could hardly listen.
Then, to Hayley’s terror, the plane stopped, waltzing in place somewhere out in the middle of the airport. The stewardess came and stood by their seats and told everyone how to use the oxygen and the life jackets. Oh, go, go, go! Hayley thought, clenching her hands so that her nails
