A Handful of Time by Kit Pearson Page A

run down after all. But the pocket watch had stopped. She pressed it to her ear, but there was no sound.
    Patricia lay down on her back on the bed, her fingers running along the watch’s gold chain. She sat up again with excitement as the solution came to her.
    It was the watch. She had wound it up and it had taken her back to 1949. It had carried on ticking away the seconds and minutes and hours of the time it had kept when it was last wound. Then it had run down, so the other time had ended and her own time, 1984, had started again where she had left it—at two o’clock.
    It was a logical explanation; all except for the reason it had happened. But Patricia was too exhilarated to worry about why. She knew it had happened—her wet hair was proof. And it could happen again. She was certain that, if she wanted to go back to Ruth’s time, all she had to do was rewind the watch.
    She couldn’t do it yet, although she knew she would later. Right now she needed some time to recover. At least she had plenty of it. She’d spent about seven hours in the past, but in the present she still had the whole afternoon to lie and think.
    She curled up and pondered every detail of the adventure. Her grandparents, Pat and Andrew. (Why not Wilfred?) Her uncles, Gordon and Rodney. Her aunt, Ginnie. And especially Ruth, her mother. Ruth’s anger and isolation and unhappiness. And old cars and wood stoves and pumps and the canoe and the strange call of a bird … Patricia closed her eyes.
    Ding! Ding! Ding! The clear peal of a cowbell startled her awake. Feeling very tired and confused, Patricia checked her wristwatch: five o’clock. She was here, in the present, and she had to meet Kelly and Trevor and pretend she’d been with them the whole afternoon.
    First she had to hide the pocket watch. She lifted it off her neck and caressed its smooth surface for a second. She didn’t want to return it to the cavity beneath the floor-board in case Uncle Doug put down the new tiles. Glancing around the room, she quickly thrust the watch under the mattress of the bed she’d been lying on. She balled up the yellowed cotton and pushed that under the mattress, too. Then she ran out of the cabin.
    Patricia yawned all through dinner. “Are you all right?” Aunt Ginnie asked her. “What did you three do this afternoon?”
    Her aunt looked surprised and pleased when her niece grinned at her. It was impossible to believe Aunt Ginnie was grown up, she still looked so much like her four-year-old self. “We … ummm … built a fort,” Patricia answered, noting Kelly’s relieved expression.
    Aunt Ginnie sent her to bed early. She stretched, luxuriously alone, in the cosy sheets. This had been Ruth’s room, too; maybe even her bed. It was a comforting thought.
    T HE NEXT MORNING Patricia again contrived to go to the Main Beach with Aunt Ginnie. As they waited for the others to join them, she cleared her throat and asked a tentative question.
    â€œAunt Ginnie … about my grandmother’s husband …”
    â€œCall her Nan, Patricia!” laughed her aunt. “I know you haven’t seen her for years, but she’d want you to call her what the others do.”
    â€œYes, well … Nan’s husband. What was his name?”
    â€œAndrew.”
    â€œWhat was his middle name?” Surely it was Wilfred.
    â€œHe had two: Thomas and Hughes. Andrew Thomas Hughes Reid. Father was quite pompous. Having three names suited him. But why do you want to know?”
    Patricia babbled an answer. “I just wondered. He died before I was born, didn’t he? What was he like?”
    She barely listened to Aunt Ginnie’s reply because she already knew what he was like. But she still didn’t know who Wilfred was.
    â€œFather could be terrifying. He made a pet of me when I was little, but later on I was frightened of him. He was one of those people who grow