Minky Robinson: No Love Lost

By Angela Moyle

It feels like nothing this year is going to plan. The class trip to Canberra doesn’t go as anticipated, Seshna is being tortured by her unrequited love and Miranda is so busy, she never seems to be around anymore... it’s no wonder Minky strikes up a new friendship with someone very unexpected.

Life could never be dull when you have a time travelling chair. Going back to the turn of the twentieth century, Minky meets one of Australia’s finest female poets and things get really bizarre when she has a visit from a mysterious stranger from the future.

Will Minky be able to find a way to change the outcome of a distressing night and save the life of the guy she loves?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Moyle
• Release date: Jan 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463953846

Angela Moyle

Angela very much enjoys writing for children young and old. She has published three children's picture books, a five-book series for older readers and two Choose Your Own Way eBooks.She lives in Canberra Australia.

Book preview

Minky Robinson:

No Love Lost

by

Angela Moyle

Copyright 2020 Angela Moyle

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 9780463953846 - eBook

eBook distributed by Smashwords

Table of Contents

Other works by Angela Moyle

Minky Robinson: No Love Lost

Acknowledgments

Next book in the series

About the author

Other works by Angela Moyle

Capital Adventure children’s picture book series

Phoebe Digs Politics

Clyde’s Prickly Ride

Hope’s Dawn Service

Minky Robinson young adult series

Minky Robinson: Chair Traveller

Minky Robinson: Secrets Unlocked

Minky Robinson: No Love Lost

For my mum and for Zara… and for mothers and daughters everywhere!

One

The whole concept of love, I’m talking romantic love, has always been a bit of an enigma to me. I’ve seen the movie my parents often watch at Christmas time which says 'love is all around’ and I guess when you’re really looking for it, you do tend to see it all around. It’s just, well I guess it’s always felt like love has eluded me. That is until last year.

The last two years for me have been nothing less than surreal. If you’d told me I’d be where I am, doing the things I’m doing, and now in love with my first ever boyfriend, I never would have believed you.

I guess I should tell you more about myself. My name, which at the age of fifteen and a half I have finally come to terms with, is Minky Robinson.

When my Mum was whisked away to Dubai with a career opportunity of a lifetime, my lovely Dad and baby brother happily went along with her to help her live out her dream. I was the spanner in the works, not wanting to leave Australia and arguing (I thought at the time, quite effectively to my lawyer mother) that because I’d already settled into high school, I shouldn’t be forced to move during my secondary schooling.

It was somewhat of a win for me, which in the end became a full win when I think about it now. My parents allowed me to stay in Australia, but I had to leave Canberra, my hometown, and move to the bustling city of Sydney to live with mum’s parents Robert and Leanne Taylor in their small apartment house above their antique shop in Newtown. At first I wasn't particularly thrilled with the arrangement but along the way a few things happened to change how I felt.

Not long after moving in, while poking around in the antique shop, I came across a chair like no other. The chair isn’t much to look at, it’s got character, but it looks pretty worn and tired and most people wouldn’t want to have to find a place for it in their homes. I kid you not, this unremarkable looking chair is the most remarkable thing I have ever experienced. It allows you to travel. Not only to different places, but also different times.

I don’t know how it works and will likely never know. There are only two other people who know about the chair aside from me and none of us are keen to share our knowledge of the time travelling chair with anyone else.

My great-grandmother Miranda is one of the people who knows about the chair. In fact she brought the chair into our lives when it helped her escape a horrible fire. The chair brought her to me, 28 years into her future, so although she should be a lot older in current day 2016, she has now lived less years on this earth than her own son, which means she’s younger than him!

I’ve used the chair a few times now. Mostly to visit Miranda in her younger years, but it’s also allowed me to experience some other incredible things. Not many kids my age could say they’d met the world’s all-time best cricketer in the flesh, saved him from drowning, and taught him a few cricket practising techniques!

I’ve only had one bad experience with the chair. It took me back to the night when my great-grandfather passed away. I held his bleeding head in my arms when he took his last breath on earth. It was one of the worst things I have experienced, but thankfully I had Miranda to help me process everything after the event. She was like my own personal psychologist.

The other person who knew about the chair was my Pop’s best and longest friend Col Murphy. Of the three of us, he was the only one who’d not used the chair to do any travelling, but he knew all about it because when Miranda travelled forward to 2014, she had nothing to her name. By 2014 she’d been dead for 28 years! Miranda by chance ran into Col only moments after she’d travelled to the future. He’d very kindly taken her in and had been incredible at being understanding about something none of us really understood. He’d also kept it all a secret from the person he cared about most in this world, Robert - Miranda’s own son and Col's best friend, my Pop.

I’d often thought it was so generous of Col to allow Miranda to stay in his spare room, but there was a payoff. He’d also enjoyed having her help out around the house and he'd been taking advantage of her incredible cooking skills too - his growing waistline was evidence of this.

One of the hardest things about my move to Sydney was my new school. Stone Park is a very old and reputable private school, which is close to Nan and Pop’s place. My mum and aunty went there and Mum’s impeccable academic record was most likely the reason I got in. It was a rude shock for me at first, but I’d eventually gotten into the groove and even though every year was getting tougher, somehow I’d been keeping up with the work, doing well and strangely enjoying the challenge.

There were a few challenges there I would love not to have had to face though. Two of them shared the same surname… Merrett. Kayla and Cormack Merrett are fraternal twins who have tried their best to break me… so far without success.

To counteract my archenemies, I’d found an incredible friend at Stone Park - Seshna Prasad. Last year was without a doubt a tough one for Seshna and my relationship, but we’d sorted everything out and now our friendship was stronger than it had ever been.

The absolute best part of my life at the moment was my boyfriend Wes Duncan. Wes doesn’t go to Stone Park, he attends a grammar school in the western suburbs. Our paths crossed last year when our schools competed in a cricket competition. He was the captain of his team and he’d been undoubtedly impressed with my cricket skills. We’d spent most of the summer holidays hanging out at Bondi Beach. He lived about an hour away by train, but now the new school year had commenced, it looked like we'd be going back to predominately talking by text or social media rather than face to face for a while.

It blew me away to think a guy as popular and as incredibly good looking as Wes chose me to be his girlfriend. Sometimes it felt like it was all a dream, but I’d been pinching myself and it was all definitely real.

Stone Park goes from Year 7 all the way to Year 12 and this year I was in Year 10. Once you are in Year 10 though, they tend to encourage academic studies over sports, which was pretty annoying for me. Don’t get me wrong, they were fine with us playing sport, but there were no major sporting events for me to look forward to like the cricket competition I'd participated in last year.

Even though it was going to be my toughest academic year yet, there were still a lot of fantastic things about Year 10. One of them being the class trip to Canberra. Most people would roll their eyes about this one. Being the capital city of Australia, it had a reputation for being a bit boring and filled with politicians and public servants, but I was looking forward to going on the trip with Seshna and being back in the town I lived in for the first thirteen years of my life - even if it was only for a fleeting five day trip.

The other great thing about Year 10 is they have a Semi-Formal at the end of the year. This is their way for allowing the kids in the grade to get dressed up and celebrate the fact all their assessments were done for the year, sort of like a practice run for finishing Year 12.

Aside from a fairly lame Year 6 graduation I’d had when I’d left primary school, I’d never had anything like the Semi-Formal experience and I could not wait. It especially appealed to me since I had a boyfriend now, and unlike some of the other girls who’d been panicking about it, I didn’t have to worry about finding a suitable date. My only concern was what I was going to wear and how I was going to do my hair! Neither of those things had ever kept me up before and I didn't imagine I'd be having sleepless nights about it any time soon. It wasn’t until December after all!

I knew this year was going to be a great one for me. I couldn’t wait for it to begin.

Two

I couldn’t believe it when I'd received my timetable for term one and saw Miss Davis was my English teacher. She was my year coordinator in Year 8 and I absolutely loved everything about her. She was so incredibly supportive in my first year and particularly kind to me since I started part way through the year. I’d never had her as an actual teacher, but this year I felt like I’d hit the jackpot.

We had just filed into the classroom for our first English lesson for the year, and Miss Davis warmly welcomed everyone to their seats. One of the kids at the front of the class asked her if the rumour she was leaving at the end of this year was true.

I felt a little winded when the question was asked, then felt sad to almost sick when I heard her response.

Yes, unfortunately, the rumours are correct, she said. I will be getting married at the end of the year and my husband and I will be relocating to Brisbane.

I could see the impressive engagement rock on her left hand flashing around as she waved her hands. I was happy for her but at the same time I knew it would be a major loss for our school and I was already mourning her departure for myself.

But we’re not here to talk about my private life are we? Let’s get started on our English class shall we? The class gave a half-hearted groan but I was excited to get to work. I pulled out my binder and pen ready to take notes.

This semester, we’ll be studying Australian poets. I scribbled down notes as she talked. My aim is for you all to fall in love with the incredibly unique poetry and talented poets we have and have had in Australia. By the end of the year, you’ll know all the greats and you'll be able to recite some of their work.

While she was talking she brought up a large list of names on the smart board and told us we'd have to pick a poet from the list to study for our big assignment. We'd have to learn about the poet, memorise and analyse one of their poems, and share what we'd learnt with the class.

I have to admit, poetry wasn’t my favourite part of English. Australian poetry was even lower on my list. However, if it was the assignment Miss Davis was setting, I was happy to go along with it.

I could hear kids around me googling things like ‘short Australian poems’ and ‘top 10 Australian Poets’ on their phones, no doubt to get the pick of the easiest ones and the easier poems to memorise.

Many of them were calling out the names they’d chosen to study and Miss Davis was entering the student’s name next to their selected poet on the board.

Henry Lawson, I heard Cormack Merrett call out in what I found to be a pushy and semi-obnoxious way. I knew if he didn’t get the poet he wanted, he would have a tantrum so I was relieved to see Miss Davis placing Cormack’s name against his poet of first choice.

I watched the list slowly lessen, however, I wasn’t too concerned as there were still plenty on it. As the calling out