Chaos Clock Read online

  “Send Kate to fetch David so that we have a moment to talk.”

  When he was sure she was out of earshot, he went on:

  “I am dying, Gordon. What happened in the museum weakened me too much to withstand this.”

  “No! There must be something. I’ll go and get help.”

  He grasped Gordon’s wrist with surprising strength even now. “There is nothing to be done. I have known all along that this would happen. It should have happened during the first battle here, all those years ago. Listen to me. You must look after the children. Take the car. Get them home. Then bring the car back and leave it here. Later, they will need to talk to you about everything; you are the only one who will understand now. With the rip in time healed, no one but us will remember what has happened tonight.”

  Kate arrived with an arm around David’s shoulders, too stunned to speak.

  He turned his head towards them. “Thank you, both. No one else could have done what you did tonight. David, I know you have paid a terrible price. If there had been any other way…” He paused for breath, speaking now with more effort. “Go with Gordon now. You will not see me again. Accept what you hear about me.”

  “No,” said Kate. “We won’t leave you alone here. We’ll get help.”

  He raised a hand and briefly touched her cheek. “Dear Kate. I have told Gordon already, I am dying. It is part of the price for our success. Truly, I don’t mind. I have lived for a very long time.

  “Go now. Goodbye. Thank you.”

  He closed his eyes.

  AFTERWARDS

  Gordon pushed open the creaking gate and unlocked the front door. The hall was warmly welcoming after the December chill outside.

  The big clock stared silently at him. He’d accepted now that no repairer would ever set it going again. It had died with John Flowerdew that night.

  He was getting used to the idea of calling this place home, although the terms of the old man’s will hadn’t put it quite like that. A “life interest” he had, “holding it in trust until such time …” Such time as what, he still didn’t know.

  It was almost a week now since he’d seen the children. He sensed they were all drawing back from each other a little, trying to heal. No one else seemed to notice anything odd about them. Another part of John Flowerdew’s legacy, he supposed.

  To everyone else, he’d died of a heart attack; a good age, no need to mourn too much. His funeral had been well attended, for he’d had many friends. Two funerals he’d been to in that same week. Poor Andrew Nixon was the other one, murdered outside his house in Cramond by some madman with a sword, they said, and the police with no idea who’d done it.

  When Gordon had been asked to go to the reading of John Flowerdew’s will he’d been surprised, and when he’d understood why he was there, shocked out of speech for a while. Kate’s mother and David’s father had been there too, for there had been bequests for the children: a little money and a memento for each of them, he didn’t know exactly what.

  He’d weathered the inevitable comments and speculation at work; that was nothing, compared to what he’d been through.

  It was still strange to go into the museum and find everything serene and normal: no shattered glass, no rumours of animals and no hint that such a thing as the Duddingston Hoard had ever existed. Another cache of relics filled the place in the round chamber, and the Ballachulish figure stood, as usual, in its cage of twigs.

  He often looked at the clock, seeking a hint that he hadn’t imagined everything, but the monkey stared ahead with inscrutable wooden eyes and gave no clue.

  ***

  Kate drew her bedroom curtains, yawning. Tomorrow was Saturday, so if Ben didn’t wake her by bursting into her bedroom there was a chance of a long lie. Not too long though: football practice to go to.

  Just before she got into bed, she opened, as she always did now, the little box that used to hold Grandma Alice’s gold necklace. Mum had been terribly angry at its loss for a while, but now it was as if she’d forgotten about it completely. Kate lifted out what the box held, and tilted it to catch the light. It was the little carved sea otter, the twin of the one in the museum. Mr Flowerdew had left it to her and when she held it, she felt somehow that he wasn’t far away. Her memory of that dreadful night was being smoothed out a little as time went on, but she sometimes felt very old, not eleven at all.

  She put the otter back in the little box and turned out the light.

  ***

  “Bedtime, David.”

  “Okay. Hang on a minute. I’m just having some toast.”

  He brought the half-eaten slice through to the sitting room and flopped on to the sofa beside Alastair.

  “Football tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Kate’s coming round at half past nine.”

  Alastair looked up at the painting on the opposite wall.

  “I wish I’d known him better. He obviously knew us.”

  David too was looking at it. It still made his heart ache every time he did.

  The painting was his legacy from Mr Flowerdew. It showed David as he now was, and his dad, and Mum was with them, in her red fleece, happy and healthy and smiling. With them … forever.

  Copyright

  Kelpies is an imprint of Floris Books

  First published in 2003 by Floris Books

  This second edition published in 2013

  Copyright © 2003 Gill Arbuthnott

  Gill Arbuthnott has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced without the prior permission of Floris Books, 15 Harrison Gardens, Edinburgh

  www.florisbooks.co.uk

  British Library CIP Data available

  ISBN 978–086315–989–3