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He was backing away from me the way someone does when they've come face-to-face with something dangerous or bizarre or mad.

And then I could hear my voice trailing off into a thin little thread the way someone's voice does when he's just realized that a brilliant situation might not in fact be that brilliant after all.

He was shaking his head.

He swiped his hand through his hair.

“All right,” he said. “Let's get this straight: I haven't the foggiest notion who you are. But whoever you do happen to be, I am definitely not your granddad. I'm nobody's granddad. I'm Kevin. Kevin Lawless. I'm sixteen.”

He breathed in, and the fog crept up into his nose.

Even though his voice was gentle, he definitely thought I was the greatest nutter that had ever lived. I wasn't stupid. I could see that.

“There's not many who would believe a story like the one you're trying to tell me,” he said.

“I know . . . I guess . . . I mean, I suppose it would sound kind of strange if you weren't expecting it,” I said.

“Yes. It would,” he said.

“Okay, then. Please listen.” I walked toward him, holding my arms out in front of me, but he backed away even farther then.

“Hold on, steady now,” he replied. “Keep your distance if you don't mind.”

The whole time I couldn't stop thinking how young he looked and how strong he was and how he had whole big decades of his life still in front of him. Years and years
and years that he hadn't even started to live.

Very few people ever get to see their grandparents like that. Not even in their imaginations.

Neither of us said anything for more or less ages. We kept staring at each other, until I whispered: “You really don't have a clue who I am, do you?”

And just as quietly he said, “No, sir. I don't.”

It didn't make a difference which stupid time zone I was in. Granddad Kevin didn't know me in either of them.

You don't have to be recognized by every single person you've ever met. Wanting that would be egotistical. But there are one or two people in your life who should always know who you are. You'll probably never know how important that is unless one of those people starts to forget you.

I sat down on the wall. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I might have started crying a bit. He came over then and sat beside me. The wall was kind of damp, and we looked up at the stars, which were bright and twinkling even though the cold fog still moved, like the ghosts of snakes, in between the trees and around our feet.

He took a big crumpled white cloth out of his pocket and he handed it to me. I blew my nose.

“Good man, that's it,” he said.

He sounded as if he was trying to cheer me up, the way you might if you wanted to stop a very small child from
being sad or lonely or scared. I didn't need him to feel sorry for me. I didn't like him thinking I was the world's most pathetic loser.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and it sounded as though he really cared.

I sniffed, and I said, “Yeah, I'm grand, don't worry about me.”

We got to chatting. I asked him what kind of work he did in this place.

He told me that he worked in the stables. He said that he was learning to be a farrier, but that the person who was teaching him had gone off to the war, like a lot of people who used to work here, and he wasn't sure when he was going to be back. He started explaining that farriers were people who fix and mend and mind horses' feet, as if I didn't already know that.

I told him that, as a matter of fact, I had a lot of equine-related skills myself, and he said, “Is that right?”

And I said that yes, it was.

And he asked me had I ever shod a horse, and I said I was practically an expert.

He asked me was I a good rider. I said I wasn't bad.

He wondered if I knew how to attach horses to a cart, and I admitted that I didn't. But I told him that I was very good at talking to horses and keeping them calm and getting them to trust me, and he said, “Well, that's half the battle, no matter what you're trying to do.”

We were quiet then for a few minutes.

I told him I'd better go home because there wasn't much point in sticking around. There were millions of things I wanted to tell him—important advice that would make a massive difference to us all, but I couldn't really think of a way of saying it without sounding like even more of a weirdo than he'd already taken me for. I told him I was sorry for trespassing and that I hadn't meant to cause any trouble. He said it was nice to meet me, and I said, “Yeah, right, thanks.”

I started walking toward the gates. But I could feel my heart getting cold because I knew the bizarre chance that I was walking away from. So I stopped walking and I turned. My young granddad was still looking at me.

“Listen, maybe I could stay for a little while,” I suggested. “I mean, only for a few days. And maybe we could hang out.”

He asked me what “hang out” meant, and I told him it meant spending time together, talking and suchlike. And for a while he didn't say anything, and I thought my chance was going to disappear, so then I did my best to think on my feet.

I said, “Is there anything that I could help you with, would you say?” It turns out that that's quite a good question to ask someone who doesn't trust you yet.

“Well, you know, in actual fact, now that you say it . . . yes. Yes, there is.”

We were both shivering by then because a wind had
started to blow, and it was making the trees shudder, and it was getting harder to hear each other.

“Come with me,” he said.

I followed him, and his feet were solid and strong and we ran up the driveway, and again I could hear the crunch of his footsteps. They sounded like the beating of someone's heart.

Chapter 7

IT'S NOT as though I'd forgotten about my old grandparents and Uncle Ted, and it's not like I wasn't worried about how mental they were definitely going to go when they got up the next morning and nobody could find me. Fifteen minutes was well up. The enchanted taxi guy of delight with the brilliant people skills had probably gone ages ago anyway, with the money in his pocket. There was a while there when I thought I probably should've run back to tell him I'd gotten a bit delayed. But when you find yourself seventy years or so out of your normal time zone, you're not necessarily thinking too straight.

Blackbrick Abbey was like a house, only much, much bigger. It sat at the end of the driveway, looking like it was more or less growing out of the ground. A shiny black door twinkled in a huge stone doorway, and there were steps leading up to it that glinted and flashed. My young granddad walked past the steps and tiptoed along a path that twisted its way around to the back. He kept looking over his shoulder, checking that I was still there. We crept through a small archway, shady and gray. Leaning from the wall, a weak flickering lamp lit the way.

“Stay close, move quickly, be quiet.”

I did stay very close and I did move quickly and I was very quiet. We went in through another door. This one was squeaky and warped. And once we were in, everything smelled of smoke and leather. I followed him down all these ramshackle corridors.

We walked and walked for ages, and it got warmer the whole time until we were in this big cave of a kitchen. There was a massive table in the middle that at least twenty people could have sat around. There were big jars on counters in rows with labels on them saying
FLOUR
and
SUGAR
and
OATS
and
GOOSEBERRY PRESERVES
and stuff like that. Tons of wooden spoons stuck out of blue-and-white stripy pots, huge saucepans hung from pegs on the wall, and a load of sacks, full of potatoes, were lined up in one corner on the black stony floor.

He dragged a couple of chairs beside a gigantic hot stove. He leaned down to a wide bucket and he picked up rocks of coal, and then with an iron bar he lifted a round disc on top of the stove and an orange glow shone out of the hole, and he threw the bumpy, fist-size lumps into it. Then he clapped his hands together. A black cloud hovered around him for a second.

There was a huge kettle that my young granddad had to lift with both hands to put on the stove. The tea he made was strong and brown, and when he took a sip, he sighed and said, “Ah, fantastic.”

Being a stable boy at Blackbrick was the first job he ever had. They'd taken him out of school when he was young so he could help take care of the horses. I told him that was the most excellent thing that could probably happen to anyone.

He said that the only reason I thought that was because I didn't know how much work was involved, especially now that all the farriers had gone off to the war.

I pulled Ted's black notebook out of the bag and asked my young granddad if I could take a few notes as long as it was okay with him. He said I could if I wanted, it was all the same to him.

And the whole time I started to warm up. It was mainly because of the stove and the tea. But it was also because of how I knew I was going to be able to give my old granddad a full briefing when I got back home, where he needed to be reminded about a few things, and he'd definitely pass Dr. Sally's test and would be able to stay at home with me and my gran. All I had to do was keep my head and remember everything, and not panic and try not to think about how weird the whole situation was.

“So, you want to help me?”

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

“Well, that's grand, because there's an errand that I've been wanting to run for quite some time, and it requires getting out of here on two horses and a cart someday soon and then coming back, without anyone knowing.
Would you be interested in giving me a hand with that?”

It sounded pretty easy, so I said, “Sure, no problem at all.”

And then he was delighted, like someone who was realizing something that they hadn't realized before. He shook my hand and kept saying, “Well, sir, that's good news. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed.”