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spinning… or being sucked down a long dark windy tunnel. But still I wanted to go.
    It was dark.
    “Help!” I cried, but ‘Help!’ stuck in my mouth.

7
    The rest, you could say, was history. I ended up in a broom cupboard begging for a wee maid to set me free. I kicked her bucket. She flung open the door and out I stumbled, blinking, my heart pounding. I pelted along a gloomy corridor with that same wee maid yelling how she was going to set the housekeeper on me.
    I could see ahead that the corridor opened onto a hall under a big sweeping staircase. Would Agnes be somewhere in this house too? I wanted to call out her name, but couldn’t risk anyone else here knowing where I was. The wee maid had gone, probably to get the giant housekeeper she’d talked about. I was running past closed doors towards the lighter hall ahead. I didn’t know if it was day or night, winter or summer. Maybe it was 1914, maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know what the Hun was. I didn’t know anything.
    Before the hall, the corridor widened a bit and there was a small high window in an alcove. I stopped, stretched onto my tiptoes and looked out.
    Then I knew something. Out there was the garden of our den and in the middle stood the yew tree. That was our yew tree, and our garden! The garden looked much neater and more flowery and not an overgrown total wilderness, but it was still the same place. The yew tree was exactly the same. A shiver crept over my skin.
    Seeing the yew tree, I remembered the feeling of pressing Mum’s gold wedding ring against the bark. I glanced down,worried I might have lost the ring time travelling, but there it was, dangling on my pinkie. I pulled it off. It was bad enough that I had ‘borrowed’ it; it would be ultra-bad if I lost it in history. I stuffed it deep in my jeans pocket for safety.
    Where now? Up the stairs maybe? The door behind me had initials on it:
    W. C.
    I had been here before – in the future. Playing hide and seek. It had only been yesterday for me, I think, but already time was feeling too messy to be sure. I shuddered, remembering how the house was a ruin then, with craggy bits still standing – like this room. Different time, same place. I pushed open the door and looked in. There was the cast iron bath. But it wasn’t rolled on its side like it had been last time I saw it. It was upright and had legs like claws. And the place wasn’t thick with dust. The toilet wasn’t cracked, and there was no gap in the ceiling.
    I took a hesitant step towards the bath, thinking ‘This is crazy.’ But then I heard a giggle. I knew that giggle. This enormous relief flooded through me. Agnes lifted her head and peered out over the rim of the bath.
    “What took you so long?” she asked, clambering out and darting her eyes around the place like a stowaway. She smiled at me, lifted her ‘be prepared for history’ rucksack out of the bath and swung it onto her back. “Am I glad to see you, Saul. I thought I was going to have to do this alone.”
    I shrugged and smiled back. “I wouldn’t let you do that, Agnes. I’m the gang leader, don’t forget.”
    Agnes winked at me. “This is the house,” she said, excitedly. “I would know that bath anywhere.” She laughed and I slammed my finger to my lips, meaning, ‘Shhhhhh!’
    “We have come to the right place,” she whispered. “It’s soexciting, Saul. It actually worked: the earth and vapours and antique song and gold. I heard a buzzing and my head felt dizzy. It all went dark, then next thing I knew, I was in the bath. With a spider! Where did you end up?”
    “In a broom cupboard,” I whispered, and suddenly it all felt like a great joke.
    “Oh, Saul, what an adventure! But do you think we’re in 1914? Have we come to the right time?”
    I thought about that wee maid’s voice, little cap, apron, long black dress, her talk of shillings and spies. I was no expert on the history of fashion, or money, but I reckoned we were more or less