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you be an artist if paint makes you sick, I’d like to know. Maybe you should have another drink of water. Are you going to throw up?’
    Eloise shook her head and stumbled out of the summerhouse. The sun from the pool dazzled her eyes, searing bright. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she scrubbed them away.
    She heard Anna’s voice behind her, an anguished wail. ‘Don’t go away! You can’t go yet!’
    But then Anna’s voice and all the other noises faded into the familiar well of silence, and Eloise’s eyes opened onto the empty pool, the neglected garden. And when the shrill of the cicadas burst over her, it sounded like jeering.

6
    T he day after that was a scorcher, baking hot and windy. Mo’s radio in the kitchen muttered about fire danger and total fire ban , and when Eloise opened the back door, the hot wind buffeted her face like a dragon’s breath.
    ‘You’re not riding a bike around in this,’ said Mo firmly. ‘You’ll get heatstroke.’
    Reluctantly Eloise shut the door. Anna might be upset if she didn’t come. But then, if the two times did run at different speeds, maybe Eloise could skip a day in her own time without missing one in Anna’s . . . It was very confusing.
    Also, she’d left her backpack and her hat behind in Anna’s time. She’d taken them off in the summerhouse and when the time-wave caught her, she’d been dumped back in her own time without them.
    The worst thing was that her sketchbook was in the backpack; being without that was like missing her hand. If she went back to the summerhouse now, in her own time, would she find the hat and the backpack still there, decayed and rotting and coated with cobwebs? But Anna would have moved them, wouldn’t she? Would she – Eloise went cold all over – would she look at Eloise’s drawings? Would it matter? What would she see? Her own house falling down. Her own garden overgrown with weeds. The faces of strangers. Were there secrets from the future that Eloise had drawn, things that a child from the past shouldn’t see? Well, there was nothing she could do about it.
    Mo was shut inside her study, writing about sea voyages. Her typing sounded like the pecking of angry birds. Eloise drifted from room to stuffy room. She slouched in front of the TV for a while, but Mo only had three channels and one of them was cricket. It made her think of Dad; he was always too impatient for cricket. Eloise clicked the TV off. She wondered when Dad was coming back.
    Books tottered in towers in every corner and spilled from shelves against every wall. But reading was hard work for Eloise. Words were slippery to handle, and she often lost interest in a story before she could struggle to the end. Mum used to help her, but now Eloise had fallen behind at school. She loved to look at pictures, but Mo didn’t seem to have any books with pictures in them.
    When the phone rang, Eloise jumped. The telephone was in the kitchen, an old-fashioned handset hung on the wall. Eloise realised she’d never heard it ring before.
    Of course she couldn’t answer it. She stood in the hallway while the bell shrilled. Mo came out of the study and stood there too, with her hand on the wall. She didn’t move to pick it up; she seemed to be waiting for it to stop. But it didn’t stop; it went on and on ringing. Eloise realised that Mo didn’t have an answering machine to cut in and make it stop.
    At last Mo swore under her breath, strode past Eloise and snatched the phone off the wall.
    ‘Yes?’ Mo glanced at Eloise. ‘It’s your father,’ she said.
    Eloise took the handpiece and pressed it to her ear.
    ‘Hello, El for Liquorice!’ Dad sounded even heartier than usual. ‘How’s tricks? Keeping out of trouble? Things are going well here, really well. Got some really promising investors lined up, well . . . potential investors. One who’s genuinely interested; we’ve had several meetings . . . Shouldn’t be away too much longer. I’ll be back before