Teena Thyme by Jennifer Jane Pope Page B

dainty fingers not as long in proportion.
    I swung both legs around together and lowered my feet to the carpeted floor and then extended my legs out straight and gathered up the layers of skirt and petticoats, affording myself a closer inspection of what I was now expected to stand on. Surprise, surprise - not my feet , either. They were tiny, and cramped into the most impossibly high-heeled boots I had ever seen.
    'The ankle chain's a bit of a waste,' I muttered. 'Standing up in these shoes is going to be hard enough, let alone walking anywhere.' I let the billowing material fall back again and sat there silently pondering, and it was at that moment that the bedroom door swung open and a freckle-faced maidservant, dressed in just the sort of uniform you'd expect to see on a Victorian maid, entered. She had reddish blonde hair and pale hazel coloured eyes and was quite pretty - pretty, but nonetheless quite squarely built and surprisingly tall, even allowing for the heels on her shoes.
    'Ah, I see you're already awake, Miss Angelina,' she said. Observant girl, I thought to myself. Well spotted. I had opened my mouth to make some sort of snappy reply, to ask this ginger Amazon what the flaming Norah was going on here, when I suddenly realised what she had called me. My hand flew instinctively to my throat, but the locket was no longer there. I hesitated, but I had to ask the question.
    'What's your name?' I demanded. She looked at me a bit stupidly, I thought, but the answer came quickly enough, nevertheless.
    'Polly, of course, miss,' she said. 'Same as it's always been. You're not trying to tell me you've forgotten that, are you?' Her expression became darker. 'You ain't trying some new trick, are you?' she said. 'I shouldn't, not if I was you. Meg's just looking for any excuse to flog your arse, in case you hadn't realised.'
    'Meg?' The name meant nothing to me, of course. Polly looked even more confused than I felt. 'No matter,' I amended hastily. 'Yes, of course you're Polly.' An idea was already beginning to form in my mind, an idea that was just too preposterous to even contemplate, but I had to ask the next question.
    'You called me Angelina just then,' I reminded her. She nodded without hesitation, so I plunged on in. 'So, Polly, do you happen to know my last name?' The perplexed look deepened in her pale eyes, which were now taking on a green tint.
    'Of course I do, miss,' she asserted. 'I'm not the brightest sixpence in the bag, same as my mum always used to tell me, but I'm not that stupid.'
    'Well then,' I persisted, 'what is it? My last name, that is? And what year is this?'
    'Why, it's Thyme, of course. Angelina Thyme.' She paused, wrinkling her forehead. 'And this is eighteen hundred and thirty-nine. December, in case you'd forgotten.'
    That did it for me. Angelina Thyme - A.T. - and December eighteenth, eighteen-twenty was my - her - date of birth. And this was eighteen thirty-nine. I was nineteen. I was Angelina Thyme. I was about a hundred and thirty-four years in the wrong place and I was also, if those ankle chains were anything to go by, a prisoner here.
    I fainted.
     
    It's a peculiar thing, shock, and even more peculiar is the way it affects different people in different ways and even the same people in different ways and never with any sort of logic involved.
    I mean, when old man Swann told me I was well on my way to being a millionairess, which has to be classed in the 'good' column of the shocks inventory, I'd very nearly lost it on the spot, as you know. A few days later - or a hundred and thirty years earlier, whichever way you want to look at it - I come round in someone else's body to find I'm a prisoner in a supposedly long gone era and what happens?
    For several minutes I act almost as if it's the most natural thing in the world, a sort of curiosity, maybe, but so what? Instead of panicking straight off and screaming the place down like a demented banshee, I take the time to examine myself,