THE H-BOMB GIRL by Stephen Baxter (beach books txt) 📕

a kind of dream, between the waking-up of wars.

She found Bernadette and Joel waiting for her outside C&A, as they’d promised.

Bernadette shot at her, “You’ve got a face like a farmer’s arse on a frosty morning. I don’t know why we bother with you.”

“Neither do I,” Laura said defiantly. “Haven’t you got any other friends?”

“None as interesting as you,” Joel said. “H-Bomb Girl.”

Nobody liked a misery. She’d learned that at her old school, when her parents had started to go through the Separation. Unhappiness was a bad smell people ran away from.

So she smiled, and linked their arms. “Let’s hit the shops.”

Joel snorted. “Yeah. And gawp at all the stuff we can’t afford.”

They started off in C&A Mode, a fashion department. Bernadette nearly wept over a leather coat, three-quarter length and chocolate brown. But it cost seventeen pounds, more than a good weekly pay packet. Still, she tried it on, and for two minutes walked around like a movie star, while Joel wolf-whistled.

Bernadette looked terrific, Laura thought. She was tall enough to pass for a few years older, and her face, while not beautiful, had good cheekbones and a strong mouth. Her make-up was bold and skilfully applied, and her blonde hair was swept up in a neat beehive. She was pale, though, under her make-up, and Laura remembered her throwing up earlier in the week.

They went to a Wimpy Bar for lunch. There was actually a queue outside, and they had to wait for a table. It was a fun place, all Formica tables and brightly painted walls. On the table was a wipe-clean menu with pictures of the food you could buy, and a plastic squeezy tomato that you could squirt ketchup out of. Pop music blared out of speakers in the ceiling, Adam Faith and Cliff Richard.

There was nobody over about twenty in here. Everybody seemed to like the new American-ness, compared to the drabness of most British stuff.

They ordered hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Pepsi Colas, and Laura thought she might have a knickerbocker glory to follow.

Nick O’Teen strutted in. He sat down and sipped Joel’s Pepsi. “Ugh. That’s so flat they should sell it in envelopes.”

“Buy your own,” Joel said.

Laura looked at Nick curiously. Today he wore a long, threadbare frock coat, cowboy boots and drainpipe trousers. He looked a classic Ted, but not aggressive. He was too neat for that, too clean, too intelligent-looking. But the waitress, a big woman with arms like Henry Cooper’s, glared at him. We don’t want any trouble.

Joel watched Laura watching Nick. “She fancies you,” Joel said, teasing.

That made her blush.

And Nick and Bernadette exchanged a glance, a small smile. If Laura had secrets, so did they.

Actually, she thought, looking at Nick’s thin, handsome face, she didn’t fancy him, not like that. He was good-looking, but something about him made her feel more as if he was a brother, say.

She asked, “How was your concert on Sunday?”

“We got chucked out. We all leap about, you see. The groups picked it up in Hamburg. Like the Beatles, and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. You play for eight hours at a stretch, in front of the drunken sailors and the Anytime Annies. They shout at you if you’re boring. ‘Mak show! Mak show!’ That’s before the bottles start flying.”

“He didn’t stay long in Hamburg,” Bernadette said slyly. “Couldn’t stick it out, could you?”

“I got addicted to Prellies.”

“To what?”

“Preludins. Slimming pills you pop to keep yourself awake. Otherwise I was living off beer and fags. Not healthy, really.”

“I heard,” Bernadette said, “that somebody broke your heart out there.”

“Shut it,” he said mildly. “So what are you losers doing sitting here?”

“We’ve got a secret,” Bernadette said.

“Oh, yeah?”

Laura glared at her, but Bernadette rummaged in her bag. “Oh, come on, it’s Nick. We can tell him. Look at this.”

She put the phone gadget on the table. She had them all huddle close so nobody else could see. Then she opened up the lid, and the little numbered buttons glowed blue.

“Wow,” Nick said, impressed. “What is it, a toy?”

“We think it’s a kind of phone,” Joel said.

“You think that,” Bernadette said.

“There are radio phones,” Nick said. “Walkie-talkies, like the police have. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Joel pursed his lips. “I think we’ve got an idea about that.”

“Which is?”

“It’s from the future.” And he ran Nick through their evidence that Miss Wells wasn’t just a lookalike or a long-lost auntie, but was, somehow, a version of Laura from the future. “How wacky is that?”

Nick sat back and looked at Laura. “You keep surprising me, H-Bomb Girl. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or burst out in pimples.”

“So you don’t believe it,” Laura said.

“I didn’t say that. It’s wacky, but we live in a wacky world.” He pointed to a speaker. The record playing was a pacy instrumental, full of electronic noise. “That’s the current number one. ‘Telstar’, by the Tornadoes. A record with a made-up sound, about a satellite in space that is going to let us watch what’s going on in America or Japan, live on telly.” He touched the phone gadget. “This doesn’t seem so fantastic to me.”

He was that bit older than Laura and the others. Somehow having him take this seriously reassured Laura.

“But still,” Bernadette said. “Time travel?”

Nick drummed on his teeth with his fingernails. “Have you ever thought why Miss Wells is called Miss Wells?”

Bernadette said, “She couldn’t call herself ‘Miss Mann.’ Bit of a giveaway.”

“But why Wells?” He looked at Joel, letting him work it out. “You’re the science fiction fan.”

“My God. Herbert George Wells.”

Bernadette asked, “Who?”

“You know. H.G. Wells! He wrote The Time Machine, the most famous time-travel story ever written.”

Bernadette said, “Isn’t that a bit obvious?”

“It fooled you,” Joel shot back.

“Miss Wells is arrogant,” Laura said. “She thinks she’s smarter than us. So she can play little games like this, thinking we won’t understand.”

“Yes,” Nick said. “I know a lot of people like that. They tend to make mistakes. But, arrogant? You don’t like yourself very much,