“Cheers, mate!” I shouted, and leapt off the bus and ran upthe High Street as fast as I possibly could. It was 5.03pm. If he was there, Ihoped he’d wait. My nineteen-year-old legs covered the ground in no time, andas I reached Magpie Lane on the left, I sprinted across the road and up theshort alley that led to the Radcliffe Camera.
Exhausted and out of breath, I looked around me, desperatelytrying to see if I could recognise the face that I’d last seen over 30 yearsago.
There had been railings around the large, circular buildingin the future, but they were gone now, and there were tourists sitting on thesteps. A young blonde girl and a boy in a denim jacket were sharing a bottle ofwine and laughing in the sunshine. But I could see no one who looked like Josh.
What an idiot I was. This was a complete waste of time.
Then a man caught my eye, middle-aged with greying hair andglasses and the beginnings of a pot belly. What was noticeable about him wasthat he was holding some sort of wand-like device that looked like somethingout of a science-fiction film.
It certainly looked out of place in 1990. He looked like hewas looking for someone. Could this be him? He looked so old. I had nothing tolose by approaching him.
“Josh?” I asked tentatively, afraid of looking like an idiotif it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.
He turned to look at me, and I could see that it was thesame man. The face was older, lined with age, but it was unmistakeably him. “Ohmy God,” he said, “Thomas. You know, I really didn’t expect for one minute thatyou’d actually be here.”
“Same here,” I said. “I’m so glad you are, though. Youwouldn’t believe what I’ve gone through to get here today.” And I told him thestory about my race against time to get back to Oxford against the odds.
“We need to go somewhere to talk,” he said, and we headedback to the High Street and walked down to the Queen’s Lane Coffee House.
“I can’t get over how young you look,” he said. “Last time Isaw you, you looked like…well I guess you probably looked a bit like me. Howold are you now?”
“I’m nineteen,” I said. “I was 51 the last time we met.”
“How weird is that?” remarked Josh. “I’m 51 now, and I wasnineteen when you met me at Cheltenham Races. I’ve travelled over 60 yearsbackwards in time to get here today. In 1990, I haven’t even been born yet.”
“So how long did it take you to work out how to travel backin time?” I asked.
“A very long time,” replied Josh, and over coffee he relatedto me the story of how he’d discovered the existence of Time Bubbles andultimately how to create his own.
“That’s what this little device does,” he said, reachinginto his pocket and pulling out the wand-like object I had seen earlier. “I canprogramme this to open a bubble to wherever I want to go to in time. Youwouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen. But I guess that can wait until anotherday. You want to see your future and that’s where I am going to take you.”
He pulled a second, identical wand out of his pocket. “Onlyone person can travel within a Bubble at any one time,” he explained, “butfortunately I’ve brought along a spare. I’ve already preprogrammed both of them.All we need to do is find the right place to create the bubbles, and away wego. I try to avoid doing it in public. It doesn’t do to draw attention topeople disappearing and appearing in mid-air.”
“So where are we going, then?” I asked. “Should we go backto my house in Botley? There won’t be anyone there: my parents are in Greece.”
“Probably not a good idea,” said Josh. “There might not beanyone there now, but what about when we come out of the other end of the TimeBubble? Anyway, I’ve already got everything planned out. I’ve already been toyour future and I think you’ll be pleased with what you’ll see. Come on, drinkup, we’ve got a bus to catch.”
“Well there’s no shortage of them around here,” I joked, andJosh laughed. We’d both lived through different eras of time in Oxford, butthere was one constant that never changed: the place was always crammed withbuses.
We went to Cornmarket Street, which was now in the daysbefore it was pedestrianised, and jumped on a 2A bus heading north.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“I thought you’d have guessed that. We’re going to yourfuture home in North Oxford.”
I hadn’t seen the old place for years, but I’d often thoughtabout it, remembering the happy times I’d had there with Sarah and Stacey. Istill missed them terribly even after all this time. Was I going to see themagain today?
We got off the bus a couple of stops after we’d passedthrough Summertown, and walked down the leafy avenue towards the old house.
The road still looked exactly the same as I remembered it.Even the trees didn’t look any different. They must have been here for decades.There was a certain timeless quality about some parts of Oxford, and this wasdefinitely one of them.
Josh walked straight up to my old house, reached up abovethe six foot-high gate that led to the secluded and large garden, and undid thebolt on the other side. He’d obviously done this before.
I thought it was a bit odd, marching straight into what wassomeone else’s garden and anticipating my concern, he said, “Don’t worry,they’re on holiday.”
The garden was set to patio at the top, lawn in the middle,and at the far end was a large selection of bushes and fruit trees that Staceyused to call “The Jungle”. It hadn’t changed much since my time. Josh led medown to this area, right to the bottom where we were out of sight of the mainpart of the garden.
“This is the best place,” he said, “we don’t want to be seen.”He explained what
