Read Ruby Red for Free Online Page A

breath, I went up to the front door.
    The steps seemed, in an odd way, both familiar and strange. Automatically I felt for the bell-push, but there wasn’t one. Obviously electric bells hadn’t been invented yet. Unfortunately, however, that still gave me no hint about the exact date. I didn’t even know when they’d found out how to use electricity. Before or after steamships? Had we learnt that in school? If so, I couldn’t remember it now.
    I found a handle hanging from a chain, like the one that flushed the old-fashioned toilet in Lesley’s house. I pulled it, hard, and heard a bell ring behind the door.
    Oh, my God.
    One of the domestic staff would probably open the door. What could I say to make him or her take me to a member of the family? Maybe Great-great-great-great-great-uncle Hugh was still alive? Or already alive. Alive, anyway. I’d simply ask for him. Or Fat Annie.
    Footsteps were coming closer, and I plucked up all my courage, but I never saw who opened the door, because once again the strange feeling swept me off my feet, flung me through time and space, and spat me out on the other side.
    I found myself back on the doormat outside our house again, jumped up, and looked around. Everything seemed the same as when I’d left just a little while ago to go and buy Great-aunt Maddy’s sherbet lemons. The buildings, the parked cars, even the rain.
    The man in black at the entrance of number 18 was staring across the road at me.
    “And you’re not the only one to be surprised,” I muttered.
    How long had I been gone? Had the man in black seen me disappear at the corner of the street and then appear again on our doormat? If so, I bet he couldn’t believe his eyes. It served him right.
    I rang the bell frantically. Mr. Bernard opened the door.
    “In a hurry, are we?” he asked.
    “Maybe not you, but I am!”
    Mr. Bernard raised his eyebrows.
    “’Scuse me, I forgot something important.” I made my way past him and ran upstairs two steps at a time.
    Great-aunt Maddy looked up in surprise when I raced through the door. “I thought you’d already left, my love.”
    Out of breath, I stared at the clock on the wall. It was now exactly twenty minutes since I had left the room.
    “I’m glad you’re here, though. There’s something I forgot to tell you. They have the same sherbet lemons at Selfridges but sugar-free, and the packaging looks just the same. But don’t buy the sugar-free sherbet lemons, whatever you do, because those give me … well, diarrhea.”
    “Aunt Maddy, why is everyone so sure that Charlotte has the gene?”
    “Because … oh, ask me something simpler, can’t you?” Great-aunt Maddy was looking rather confused.
    “Have they tested her blood? Couldn’t someone else have the same gene too?” My breathing was slowly calming down.
    “Oh, Charlotte is definitely a gene carrier.”
    “Because it’s been found in her DNA?”
    “My little angel, you’re asking the wrong person. I was always useless at biology—in fact, I don’t even know what DNA is. I was no good at maths either. Anything about numbers and formulas goes straight in one ear and out the other. I can only tell you that Charlotte came into the world on the very day calculated for her hundreds of years ago.”
    “So your date of birth decides whether you have this gene or not?” I bit my lower lip. Charlotte had been born on the seventh of October, and I’d been born on the eighth. We were only a single day apart.
    “More like the other way around,” said Great-aunt Maddy. “The gene decides the time of the carrier’s birth. They’ve worked it all out.”
    “Well, suppose they made a mistake?”
    One day’s difference! It was that simple. Someone had mixed the dates up. It wasn’t Charlotte who had this wretched gene, it was me. Or maybe we both had it. Or else … I sat down on the stool.
    Great-aunt Maddy shook her head. “They didn’t make a mistake, my little angel. If there’s one thing