Living with Certainty

By Malcolm J Brooks

Joy is a young woman from 2015 with an attitude to match. When her ‘time-travelling’ friend Eva departs, she chooses to stay in the year 1967. This is a time when women were not always given the respect they deserved. Being kidnapped by two thugs from London, who had just escaped from a high category prison, she has to use all her wits to keep herself alive. The information that she has gives her power and money, but is this enough to keep her out of danger in a city run by notorious gangs? Or can love keep her safe?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728354286

Malcolm J Brooks

Malcolm Brooks was born in Castleford in the West Riding of Yorkshire and taught Mathematics and ICT in East Yorkshire for 35 years. Since retiring he has written a trilogy of novels about the adventures of Eva, a girl with special powers of time travel and an ability to see both the living and the dead.

Book preview

Chapter 1

If you don’t know about Eva, I need to explain about her for you to understand my difficult situation. Oh, by the way, I’m Joy, Eva’s best friend. Well at least I was until I decided to stay here in 1967 and let her go back on her own to 2015!

OK explanation! Eva had a strange sort of power that allowed her to see people who had died. I never understood the exact details of why or how this happened, but through using these ‘ghosts’, she could travel back in time.

I’m not exactly certain how many times she had done it but she was very keen to find some bloke who had been on a couple of her trips to the past.

I cannot even remember his name because it became so confusing. We had just finished our ‘A’ levels and university beckoned me, although Eva had other plans.

I have to admit that I wasn’t happy back in 2015. My parents were always arguing and likely to split. The world seemed so chaotic and menacing with social media, drugs and violent crime, not to mention religious issues involving suicide bombers, which in my opinion, would probably turn into all-out war.

I was really excited when Eva told me how we could use her powers to go back in time. I became a bit obsessed by it and pleaded with her to let me go with her on her quest back to 1967 to find this bloke. I am ashamed to say that I used my friendship with Eva to get what I wanted, which was another life away from 2015.

To be absolutely truthful, although I made a plan, it wasn’t completely thought through and now there are problems in my life. I was determined that when Eva departed back to 2015, I would stay in the beautiful city of Durham, despite it being twenty-eight years before I was born!

Of course, Eva was very upset with me and called me stupid because I would never see my parents and friends again if I stayed in 1967, but there was a plan.

The plan was based around the concept that having information gave me power, and I had bucket loads of information about the future. I had not told Eva of my plan, but before we left 2015, I had read a book my dad had been given as a present which covered all the major events of the 21st century. I made a note of all the Grand National winners, winners of the FA Cup, Rugby League Challenge Cup, Wimbledon results and golf major results, not to mention American Football Superbowl winners from across the pond. These would give me all the money that would be needed to live in 1967. Oh, and did I mention the winning lottery numbers?

I’m ashamed to say I also tore out some pages from the book to bring with me. They gave me some knowledge of what was to come.

The betting would take some thinking about because I’m not as stupid as Eva suggested. I had to spread bets and get others involved without causing any suspicion on behalf of the bookies and the authorities. I needed to think through my plan very, very carefully.

The last time I saw Eva, she was walking down Hallgarth Street with another student helping her with her suitcase of ‘goodies’ bought in 1967 and destined to be sold in the 21st century as antique. Well sort of antique. That’s how she intended to use her special talents, selling artefacts that she had stolen or purchased from the past. The demand for antiques in 2015 was growing quite considerably.

It was sad to see her go, knowing that we might never meet again, although she did say that she might pop back if circumstances allowed.

As I closed the door behind me, I began to realize the enormity of what I had done. Still there was no going back after Eva departed. I had no special powers of time-travel.

However, I did have a 1967 version of a boyfriend. His name was Alan. He was really sweet and caring, even though I had deceived him by calling myself Jenny. It’s a long explanation which I won’t bother you with, but the funny thing was that 2015 was supposed to be a time of equality and liberation for women and yet Alan was more considerate and respectful of women as any boy I had met in 2015.

Back to my problems. My most immediate problem didn’t concern money. Eva and I had bet on a donkey called Foinavon winning the 1967 Grand National at 100-1 and it romped home, well staggered home, to win us well over £400 of 1967 money. It was of course a racing certainty, since my dad’s book said it won after a collision at one of the fences. There was a real excitement about betting on a certainty and winning ‘big’. Eva and I shared the money which was quite substantial in this day and age and would last me for some time.

OK, back to my immediate problem. I was a nonentity!

It had occurred to me that if I wanted to do the ‘normal’ things in life like get a bank account, drive a car or even get a job, I needed proof that I existed. I hadn’t brought my birth certificate with me as it showed that I was born on the 17th July 1997 in Castleford. So as my Auntie Pearl would say, ‘it’s neither use nor ornament’.

OK, so although money is not a problem at the moment, it would be good to have a proper job that stopped people being suspicious of where my money was coming from and would start me on the road to being ‘an entity’. I was eighteen years old. Well, that was the age of my bones although my teeth were a bit younger. I regarded myself as intelligent and resourceful. I had taken three A levels in English, French and Spanish, although I had no idea of what grades I had got, so technically I had no qualifications apart from my nine GCSEs of varying grades on a certificate dated 2013. So, you are beginning to see my problem!

The other thing that had to be done was to change my appearance somewhat. Alan, bless him, said I was pretty and cute but my dyed long jet-black hair with roots beginning to show and the slugs over my eyes were not of the time and Alan thought that they made me look scary. Of course, I hadn’t told Alan that Eva and I were from the 21st century so he just thought my looks were, what shall we say, weird?

OK, I’ll get my hair cut and use less make-up. Oh yes and the stuff I’d brought from 2015 had to go. Eva had been very specific, ‘under no circumstances can we change things for the future by introducing modern make-up to the 1960s. You would be doing somebody out of a future invention!’ So, the 2015 mascara and blusher had to be abandoned for whatever the 1967 version might be.

A job and a new look it was then!

Chapter 2

Spring had arrived and as it was the beginning of May, the students began to arrive back in Durham from the Easter break. According to Alan, this was the most stressful term and the time when the authorities at the cathedral in Durham closed the access to the very top of it. He didn’t need to tell me why.

The city had been very quiet with most of the students spending time at home with their families. Alan had gone back to Leeds for Easter and was due back in a couple of days.

To say that I had a plan sounds stupid now since I had no documentation to prove who I was and I had been racking my brain as to the way to get ‘an identity’. Did I need to change my name? Or change my birthdate? If it’s 1967 now, then I was born in 1949 if I wanted to be as old as my bones! 1949! That seemed like the dark ages! What if people ask me about my life as a young child in the early 1950s! OK, so we meet that bridge when we get to it. Maybe a bit of research at the library was required.

Eva and I had been living at 53 Hallgarth Street for nearly a month and Mr Fewings, our landlord, was quite happy to let me stay as long as I wanted so long as I paid the £5 a week rent on time. I ask you £5 a week!!! How cheap was that!

Sitting on the settee that had seen better days, I reasoned that I could get a part-time job on the basis of having a semi-permanent address and that Mr Fewings could vouch for me as being reliable. If I could be hard-working and polite then getting a waitressing job for the whole of the summer tourist season was going to be no problem and as I said, it would give me a degree of ‘normality’.

The following Saturday I walked the mile or so into the city centre. It was a beautiful May morning, clear blue sky with just a hint of a cold wind to take the edge off what would have been a hot day. Although apprehensive, it was a day to feel full of excitement and to be happy with my life.

The centre of Durham was strange and it made me smile every time I walked through it. In the middle of what I imagined was the market square, where three roads met, stood a box with a policeman in it. It looked like a coffin on its end. The policeman had one of those strange hats I had seen in old black and white films. There was, of course, much less traffic than there must have been in 2015, but as each driver approached the box, they had to signal their intentions through the open window of their car. The strangest of these signals was the one to go around the box and back up to Palace Green where the beautiful cathedral was situated. This signal consisted of sticking their right arm out of the window and making a vertical circle in the air with their arm and in doing so taking the tight corner around the box, much like a modern-day mini-roundabout. This brought them into a position close to the policeman on the left of the box from where they could go, when instructed, back up the road they’d just come down and then straight on to Palace Green. What a palaver!

Having stood and watched this amusing scene for some minutes, I set about my business. As it was a Saturday, I bought some fruit from the indoor market along with some other essentials. I called in at the hairdressers just off the market square. The name ‘Short Cuts’ seemed about right. I thought I might need to make an appointment but was told just to sit for a moment and I would be seen shortly.

Janice, the hairdresser assigned to me, was a bit reluctant to cut off all my long, black locks, but I gave her some sob story about a romantic break-up with my boyfriend and wanting a new start in my life. What a liar!

The new style made the back of my neck cold but other than this I was quite pleased with Janice’s finished product and it cost me one shilling and sixpence. What a rip off! Not.

Although technically not a ‘Geordie’, as I learned later, her accent was wonderful. Lots of ‘away pet’, ‘hinny’ and ‘why no’ were used in our conversations about the problems we had had with men.

She looked slightly aghast at my suggestion that I might dye my hair blond. Why no pet, it’s lovely as it is. Black hair really suits you.

I’m not actually certain what that meant but still having slugs and black nail varnish might have identified me as something like an early Goth.

I returned home with the immediate jobs done and began to make a list of the potential jobs I could do. I hadn’t seen a Job Centre but even if there had been one, I couldn’t really register without raising some suspicions on where I had come from.

Things had to be done slowly, friendships acquired and social networks set up. I did really miss my mobile phone and the social media that had been a large part of my life. Having little contact with people on a daily basis was beginning to freak me out. But this was a different time, a different way of life and I had to get used to it.

OK, my list of jobs was as follows:-

Waitress (particularly as the summer tourist season was about to get under way. This looked a good bet.)

Shop assistant (more permanent than the seasonal waitressing.)

Typist (boring although I