5
With all the excitement of coming back to cottage and finding out about their friend, the girls had not noticed that things were different, very different indeed.
They had gone downstairs and into the lounge of the cottage. They sat on the couch – tired from the adventure of going back in time – tired of coming back and in a tizzy over Lizzy and the news about their friend.
Aoife looked around the room and something was strange again – Was this the cottage they had left? It looked different. The couch she was sitting on was not the same couch – in fact it was a brown couch and not the red couch that had been there. This was a different cottage.
Aoife began to realise that they were not in the same place after all. They stood up. Niamh had also seen that things were different.
“What’s going on, what’s happened to us, have we not returned to our own time?” She said in a worried voice.
Aoife knew what the date and time should have been. She began to look around for something that would tell them what date it was. She saw a magazine lying on a table. “May 2006, Volume 42.”
Yes this was 2006 and it was the right month.
“Something must have happened when we were gone” she said – “but surely not a new couch and television and different paint job.”
They heard the front door opening. Niamh was just about to run to meet her Dad, when Aoife grabbed her arm.
“Hold on Niamh” she said, “I have a very bad feeling about this.”
Niamh stopped and could see the Aoife had a very concerned look on her face. The door closed and they heard the footsteps in the hall bringing whoever it was closer to them.
The door opened and a large and very fierce looking (a little startled too!) stood before them.
She jumped back and snapped, “What are you two rats doing here. Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
Niamh said nothing at all as she was just too scared.
Aoife tried to think of something. “Errr well we were just passing and we saw the front door open and we thought maybe – we came in and we thought that you were being burgled and … ”
The woman interrupted her. “What? That door was locked from the outside. How did you too get in here?”
Aoife was out of excuses and decided that since the woman was a little bit on the chubby side, she could make a good escape.
“Niamh – RUN” she shouted and both girls ran towards the fat lady separating to either side of her, accidentally pushing her backwards and making her fall back on her feet and hit the floor with an enormous thud.
She squealed and roared, “I’ll get you two monsters and when i do, I will give you a good thrashing …. ”
But there would be no chance of that. Aoife and Niamh had bolted for the door and were almost at the front gate of the cottage. They jumped over the fence, crossed the road and ran off into the fields towards Kilkenny.
After a minute of running as fast as they had ever run in their lives, Niamh looked back towards to cottage. She could not see the fat woman chasing them. Niamh, shouted, panting –