Teena Thyme by Jennifer Jane Pope

further clues inside, maybe tucked away behind the two tiny portraits, but here and now wasn't the time to investigate further. It would require daylight and steady hands, unencumbered by gloves and alcohol and even then there was a risk of causing damage, which I most certainly wanted to avoid.
    'Thyme,' I whispered suddenly. 'The T stands for Thyme.' Don't ask me how I knew that, but I just did and I knew it with an overwhelming certainty that took me quite by surprise. Somebody whose first name had begun with the letter A and whose last name was Thyme. Another ancestor. A relic of a Thyme in the house of a Spigwell.
    Intriguing. But how could I find out more? The births and deaths records would be useless, thanks to Herr Goerring and his merry airmen, as I already knew, but maybe there would be other records somewhere. Maybe either the Spigwells or the Thymes had been important enough to appear in old parish documents, or even under land registry records. I resolved to make further enquiries, maybe even travel up to London and scour the main public records. After all, I could afford to go wherever I wanted now and a few days off from schoolwork wasn't going to hurt any.
    But first, though, there was the locket itself. I bent down and looked under the drawer space again, though I didn't really expect to see the chain there. Something told me that the two had parted company a good while before the locket found its last resting place. However, upstairs in my jewellery box I had the gold chain that mum and dad had bought me for my sixteenth birthday.
    Locket clutched firmly in hand, I renegotiated the steep stairs and went into the bedroom. My jewellery box lay in the top drawer of the dresser and sure enough, there on top of my various cheap bits and pieces of junk, lay the chain. Awkwardly, because of the gloves still, I threaded it through the loop in the locket, held it up to my neck and, after a couple of abortive attempts, managed to clip the fastener in place.
    'There you are,' I announced to my reflection, in a satisfied tone. 'Just perfect. Back where you belong, around the neck of a Thyme female.' I raised my right hand and gently fingered the soft curves of the gold and felt a warm feeling spread through me. Yes, I was right, the locket belonged there all right. I raised my eyes to the mirror again and suddenly all the warmth vanished, to be replaced by a numbing chill that started at the back of my neck and spread upwards and downwards like a tide of ice.
    'What the...?' I began, but then my tongue seemed to thicken and my heart seemed to stop in mid-beat and, as the black curtain came sweeping up towards me, the last thing I remembered in the two or three seconds before I finally passed out, was the face that stared back at me from the ancient glass; blonde hair, pale skin, large blue eyes. Just like me, except it wasn't just like me at all.
    The hair was longer, curlier, thicker, the eyes wider and larger, the cheekbones higher and more sharply defined. There was something familiar there all right, but it wasn't my face. It wasn't my face at all!
     
     
    5 .
     
    The dress the maids brought for her was of deep red satin, with even darker red inserts, the bodice cut low to leave her elevated breasts visible almost to her nipples, and tailored so that it followed every contour of her newly reduced waistline to perfection. The skirts were full and kept out by several layers of stiffened petticoats beneath, the whole of which fell to within an inch of the floor, so that only the very tips of her booted toes were still visible.
    Satisfied that this was the case, Meg ordered Polly to gather up the folds of fabric and hold them clear, while she stooped down and carefully locked a pair of delicate ankle fetters in place, fetters that were joined together by just a handful of links, so that now Angelina could take paces of no more than a few inches at a time.
    'Not that you'll get the chance to run anywhere, missy,' Meg