Sentence The Threehundredandseventyseventh

It was a reporter from The Scotsman, the paper her cousin Tammy worked for before she went

 

AWOL in the 13^th century, who had tracked her down to Aunty Crist's house in Melrose – well, High Cross Avenue; which connected with Darnick, and was almost a village in its own right, a village with no pubs or shops, but two Churches, neither of which she delivered any of her occasional sermons in, the one being the Episcopal Church and the other, a former Church of Scotland but now well used by the Roman Catholics of Melrose; “I just wanted to ask,” she began – the reporter that was, her voice having that characteristic echo which indicated that she was speaking inside a car, probably a flivver from the pool – “how you are able to communicate with the thirteenth century, and your relatives who are stuck there,” and Teri almost spilt her morning coffee, the extra-strong brew favoured by the Syrians who were still domiciled there; “I don't have to,” she said, “they are perfectly able to communicate with me,” and she was aware that she had sounded uncharacteristically truculent, and could swear she heard the reporter almost choke on her own coffee; and after a pause, in which she could hear tissues being drawn from a box and the distinct sounds of them being rubbed on a fabric – her trousers, thought Teri – before the voice was back in her ear: “but how?” she asked, “it seems so bizarre, communicating directly from the thirteenth century!” and Teri felt like going back to bed with that voice, murmuring in her ear, now that would be Heaven on Earth, and then she realized the reporter was waiting for an answer to her question; “how far away are you?” Teri asked, and was surprised by the reply: “just outside, in my car,” could it really be true? so she invited her in, just to be sure – she practised the lie to herself – the spelling was right; and now she opened the kitchen door to admit a delicious red-head with pearlised skin so fresh and soft she could smell the

soap that she had showered or bathed with that morning, this morning, oh, how time flies, and now she was putting cup into the girl's hand and admiring the nails, so well tended that Teri wanted to plunge her own hands deep into her pockets, until she tried to and remembered that her pyjama trousers had none; and when some of the Syrian children came in she had invited Siobhan back to her room, where it would be quieter – and much more private; “what a lovely name,” and she felt herself blushing to her roots, and thought that she was so out of touch with the modern game and was probably at least ten years older than the girl, who was speaking now: “yes, my parents are so keen on the Rebus books and named me after one of the characters and, oh, my goodness, what a lovely room and, what a view, and from the bed,” she threw herself onto the bed, Teri's bed, and plumped up

the pillows and leaned back against them, “right to the top of the hill,” yes it was true, Teri's room at the back of the house did have that view, and Teri joined Siobhan on the bed and they sort of lay back, propped up slightly by the pillows, freshly plumped by the reporter, and gazed up at the North Eildon, both aware that shielded by it from their gaze was the 'Crime Scene' where police officers and

SOCOs would be conducting fingertip searches among the grasses and Teri was burning with a desire to conduct a fingertip search through Siobhan's lovely hair, and under her clothes and was only stopped by the girl reporter's repetition of her question: “how are your uncle and cousins able to communicate with you, how do you even know where they are, do you have some sort of passage that connects you through time and space, a wormhole?” and Teri stopped her fantasies and asked the girl a question of her own: “how can a reporter in 1916 or one yesterday, communicate with you?” and Siobhan was stumped, her brows creased in concentration – not phones, not emails, well not the 1916 one anyway, she was almost counting off the negatives on her fingers as she thought of them – and then Teri placed a finger on Siobhan's red lips, and said “shall I show you?” and Siobhan nodded eagerly, like a child, and from underneath her bed – for she had them placed there in readiness, Teri drew out two bundles of folded paper and she unfolded them before Siobhan's wondering eyes, was she expecting some device which enabled time travel, but no – when they were juxtaposed, one showed the front page of The Scotsman 24^th of April 2016 and the other for 24^th of April 1916 and

she gasped, “the papers, of course, but what were the papers in the 13^th Century, I don't think ours was around then,” and she actually took out her iphone and started tapping keys, so Teri laid a hand on hers and said; “stop!” and Siobhan had the good grace to stop tapping and blush to her roots, her pink face contrasting sweetly with her vivid hair, “what a stupid idea, I'm sorry, I'm not normally so idiotic,” and Teri smiled, “don't worry, my point is that something written is a message from that particular 'present-day' to the future, whether the passage of time is minutes, hours, days or even centuries,” and Siobhan's eyes lit up, and she looked genuinely excited: “they left you a message?” and Teri nodded, slowly: “not one message, not an account of everything that happened, but a series of messages, coded, and I am still working my way through them,” and Siobhan's eyes gleamed: “where on earth did you find them?” and Teri saw no point is dissembling, “in The National Library, in a bundle of letters which had been in the possessions of an ancester of mine who had bequeathed them to the Nation, but I don't think anyone had ever looked at them before me, well me and Jasmine Juniper-Green, she's an Archivist, and we do a kind of 'total football' thing, we each do a translation

to work of the account for a day and then defend our version against the other's challenges, and eventually agree on a kind of merger, which so far as we are concerned is reasonably accurate, and that's why I'm not able to publish them every day, we both have to be satisfied, and because we don't know which of the three is doing the writing, the handwriting changes quite a lot, usually it's pretty much a scrawl, so we end up with a third person account” and Siobhan gasped: “are they here? can I see them?” but Teri shook her head, “not the originals, they are still in the Library, but I have photocopies, which is what I have been working through, one day at a time,” and Siobhan asked: “can I write this all up?” and Teri saw that the reporter was hungry for a scoop, so she said: “yes, but you must do one thing for me first!”