Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier Read Free Book Online

have to tell your mum right away. You’d better go straight back home. It could happen again any moment!”
    “Scary, right?”
    “Very. Okay, I’m online now. First off I’ll Google Newton. And you just go home! Any idea how long Selfridges has been there in Oxford Street? Could have been a deep pit in the old days, and you’d fall twelve yards down!”
    “My grandmother will freak right out when she hears about this,” I said.
    “Yes, and then there’s poor Charlotte … well, just think, all these years she’s had to give up everything, and now she gets nothing in return. Ah, here we are. Newton. Born 1643 in Woolsthorpe—where on earth is that?—died 1727 in London. Blah blah blah. Nothing about time travel here, just stuff about infinitesimal calculus—never heard of it, how about you? Transcendence of all spirals.… Quadratics, optics, sky mechanics, blah blah—ah, here we are, here’s the law of gravity.… Tell you what, that bit about transcendental spirals sounds kind of closest to time travel, don’t you think?”
    “To be honest, no,” I said.
    A couple standing next to me were discussing the yogurt variety they were going to buy at the tops of their voices.
    “Are you by any chance still in Selfridges?” shouted Lesley, who had obviously overheard the yogurt orders. “Go home!”
    “On my way,” I said, waving the yellow paper bag containing Great-aunt Maddy’s sherbet lemons in the direction of the exit. “But, Lesley, I can’t tell them this at home. They’ll think I’m crazy.”
    Lesley spluttered down the phone. “Gwen! Any other family might well send you to the loony bin, but not yours! They’re always talking about time-travel genes and chronometers and instruction in mysteries.”
    “It’s a chronograph,” I corrected her. “The thing runs on blood! Is that gross or what?”
    “Chro—no—graph! Okay, I’ve Googled it.”
    I made my way through the crowds in Oxford Street to the next traffic lights. “Aunt Glenda will say I’m just making it all up to look important and steal the show from Charlotte.”
    “So? When you next travel back in time, at the very latest, she’s going to notice that there’s been a mistake.”
    “And suppose I never travel back again? Suppose it was just the once?”
    “You don’t believe that yourself, do you? Okay, here we are, a chronograph seems to be a perfectly normal wristwatch. You can get them by the ton on eBay, ten pounds and upward. Oh, damn … wait, I’ll Google Isaac Newton plus chronograph plus time travel plus blood.”
    “Well?”
    “Nothing that helps us. At least I don’t think so.” Lesley sighed. “I wish we’d looked all this up earlier. The first thing I’m going to do is find some books about it. Anything I can dig up on time travel. Where did I put that stupid library card? Where are you now?”
    “Crossing Oxford Street, then turning down Duke Street.” Suddenly I had to giggle. “Why? Are you planning to come here and draw a chalk circle just in case our connection suddenly breaks? But now I’m wondering what good the silly chalk circle was supposed to do Charlotte.”
    “Maybe they’d have sent that other time traveler after her—what was his name again?”
    “Gideon de Villiers.”
    “Cool name! I’ll Google it. Gideon de Villiers. How do you spell it?”
    “How should I know? Back to the chalk circle—where would they have sent this Gideon guy? I mean, what period? Charlotte could have been anywhere. In any minute, any hour, any year, any century. Nope, the chalk circle makes no sense.”
    Lesley screeched down my ear so loud that I almost dropped my mobile. “ Gideon de Villiers. Got him!”
    “Really?”
    “Yep. It says here, ‘The polo team of the Vincent School, Greenwich, has won the All England Schools Polo Championship again this year. Celebrating with the cup, from left to right, headmaster William Henderson, team manager John Carpenter, team captain Gideon de