promised himself that whatever their destination, whatever the name of the station this train was taking them to, from that day on he would never live anywhere he couldn’t wake up every morning to see that same dazzling blue light that rose towards heaven like some magical essence.
*
While Max stood on the platform watching the train ride away through clouds of steam, Mr Carver left his family standing beside their suitcases outside the stationmaster’s office and went off to negotiate a reasonable price for the transportation of luggage, people and paraphernalia to their final destination. Max’s first impression of the town, judging from the station and the few houses he could see, their roofs peeping timidly over the surrounding trees, was that it looked like one of those miniature villages, the sort you got with train sets, where the imaginary inhabitants were in danger of falling off a table if they wandered too far. Max was busy contemplating this variation on Copernicus’s theory of the universe when his mother’s voice wrestled him from his daydream.
‘Well, Max. What’s the veredict?’
‘It’s too soon to tell,’ he answered. ‘It looks like a model, like those ones you see in toy-shop windows.’
‘Maybe it is.’ His mother smiled. When she smiled, Max could see a vague resemblance to his sister Irina.
‘But don’t tell your father,’ she went on. ‘Here he comes now.’
Maximilian Carver was escorted by two burly porters whose clothes were splattered with grease stains, soot and other unidentifiable substances. Each had a thick moustache and wore a sailor’s cap, as if this was their uniform.
‘This is Robin and Philip,’ the watchmaker explained. ‘Robin will take the luggage and Philip will take us. Is that all right?’
Max wasn’t clear which one was Philip and which one was Robin, and he wondered if they could even tell themselves, but he chose to keep his mouth shut. Without waiting for the family’s approval, the two men walked over to the mountain of trunks and hoisted up the largest one as if it weighed nothing. Max pulled out his watch and looked at the face with its curving moons. It was two o’clock. The old station clock said half past twelve.
‘The station clock is slow,’ muttered Max.
‘You see?’ his father replied excitedly. ‘We’ve only just arrived and already there’s work here for us.’
His mother gave a faint smile, as she always did when Maximilian Carver had one of his bursts of radiant optimism, but Max could see a hint of sadness in her eyes, that peculiar light which, ever since he was a child, had led him to believe that his mother could foresee events in the future that the rest of them would not even dream of.
‘Everything’s going to be all right, Mum,’ he said, feeling like an idiot the moment he’d spoken.
His mother stroked his cheek.
‘Of course, Max. Everything’s going to be fine.’
Suddenly, Max felt certain that someone was looking at him. He spun round and saw a large cat staring at him through the bars of one of the station windows. The cat blinked and, with a prodigiously agile leap for an animal of that size, jumped through the window, padded over to Irina and rubbed its back against her pale ankles, meowing softly. Max’s sister knelt down to stroke it, then picked it up in her arms. The cat let itself be cuddled and gently licked the little girl’s fingers. Irina smiled, spellbound, and, still cradling the animal in her arms, walked over to where her family were waiting.
‘We’ve only just got here and already you’ve picked up some disgusting beast. Goodness knows what it’s infested with,’ Alicia snapped.
‘It’s not a disgusting beast. It’s a cat and it’s been abandoned,’ replied Irina. ‘Mum?’
‘Irina, we haven’t even got to the house yet.’
Irina pulled a face to which the cat contributed a sweet, seductive meow.
‘It can stay in the garden. Please…’
Alicia rolled her eyes. Max watched his older sister. She had not opened her mouth since they had left the city; her expression was impenetrable and her eyes seemed to be lost in the distance. If anyone in the family was not overjoyed by the promise of a new life it was Alicia. Max was tempted to make a joke about ‘Her Highness the Ice Princess’, but decided not to. Something told him that his sister had left behind much more in the city than he could possibly imagine.
‘It’s fat and it’s ugly,’ Alicia added. ‘Are you really going to let her get her own way again?’
Irina threw a steely glare at her older sister, an open declaration of war unless the latter kept her mouth shut. Alicia held her gaze for a few moments and then turned round, sighing with frustration, and walked over to where the porters were loading the luggage into a van. On the way she passed her father, who noticed her red face.
‘Quarrelling already?’ asked Maximilian Carver. ‘What’s the matter?’
Irina presented the cat to her father. The feline, to its credit, purred adoringly. Never one to falter in the face of authority, Irina proceeded to make her case with a determination she had inherited from her father.
‘It’s all alone in the world. Someone’s abandoned it. We can’t leave it here. Can we take it with us? It can live in the garden and I’ll look after it. I promise,’ Irina said, her words spilling over each other.
The watchmaker looked in astonishment at the cat, then at his wife.
‘You always said caring for an animal gives a person a sense of responsibility,’ Irina added.
‘Did I ever say that?’
‘Many times. Those exact words.’
Her father sighed.
‘I don’t know what your mother will say…’
‘And what do you say, Maximilian Carver?’ asked Mrs Carver, with a grin that showed her amusement at what had now become her husband’s dilemma.
‘Well… We’d have to take it to the vet and…’
‘Pleeease…’ whimpered Irina.
The watchmaker and his wife exchanged a look.
‘Why not?’ concluded Maximilian Carver, who could not bear the thought of starting the summer with a family feud. ‘But you’ll have to look after it. Promise?’
Irina’s face lit up. The cat’s pupils narrowed to a slit until they looked like black needles against the luminous gold of its eyes.
‘Come on! Hurry up!’ said the watchmaker. ‘The luggage has been loaded.’
Holding the cat in her arms, Irina ran towards the vans. The creature, its head leaning on the girl’s shoulder, kept its eyes nailed on Max defiantly.
‘It was waiting for us,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Don’t just stand there in a daze, Max. Move it,’ his father insisted as he walked over to the vans, hand in hand with his wife.
Max followed, reluctantly.
Just then, something made him turn around and look again at the blackened face of the ancient station clock. He examined it carefully. Something about it didn’t add up. Max remembered perfectly well that when they reached the station the clock had said half past midday. Now, the hands pointed at ten minutes to twelve.
‘Max!’ his father’s voice called to him from the van. ‘We’re leaving!’
‘Coming,’ Max said to himself, his eyes still riveted to the clock.
The clock was not slow; it worked perfectly but with one peculiarity: it went backwards.
2
The Carvers’ new home stood at the end of a long beach that stretched along the sea like a blanket of white sand, dotted here and there with small islands of wild grass that rippled in the wind. The town itself, from which the beach extended, was made up of ornate Victorian houses arranged in a long, winding parade of spiky gables and colourful sash windows. Most were painted a soft pastel colour, their gardens and white fences all neatly aligned, reinforcing Max’s first impression that the place looked like a collection of doll’s houses. On their way, they drove
