Minky Robinson: Last Goodbye

By Angela Moyle

It’s Minky’s final year of high school but she still has no idea what she’s going to study at university – that is, if she decides to go to uni at all!

With the school bully trying her hardest to break Minky and make her life hell, a time travelling trip to the future comes as an incredible relief. But what happens when she learns not everything in the future is so bright – especially for her family and the city she has grown to love?

Is it possible she could use what she knows to make things better for her loved ones? Could Minky find a way to save millions of people and Sydney from being wiped off the map or is that something that just can’t be stopped?

Will she dare to trust her mortal enemy with the secret of her travelling chair?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Moyle
• Release date: Feb 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005964870

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:

Last Goodbye

by

Angela Moyle

Copyright 2022 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: 9781005964870 - eBook

eBook distributed by Smashwords

Table of Contents

Other works by Angela Moyle

Minky Robinson: Last Goodbye

Acknowledgments

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

Minky Robinson: Not Forgotten

Minky Robinson: Last Goodbye

Choose Your Own Way (eBook only)

Choose Your Own Way – Camping Trip

For A, E, M & Z

One

Do you spend much time thinking about the future? I have to admit, for the last few years I've been much more focused on the past. That's not what most teenagers would say. It's not like I'm a huge history buff, truth is, most of my history knowledge has been from experiencing it first hand and then researching it after my experiences.

Okay, that sounds weird. I'll try to explain it better. You see, I have a time travelling chair. I think it's the only one in the entire world. Trust me, I have extensively Googled it and according to the search engine (which seems to know everything), there are no documented chairs that enable the person who is sitting on it to time travel.

Now that I say that, perhaps it is just that if people did have a similar of type chair, they just wouldn’t talk or write about it. I know I have kept the secret of my chair close to my chest. The only people who know about the chair are me, my great grandmother Miranda and her fiancé Col Murphy. Technically, as far as linear time goes, Miranda and Col both had encounters with the chair before I did, so it's not like I blabbed to them about it. Although I was there to first tell Miranda about the chair when she was a kid, so, well, time travel is tricky like that.

Both Miranda and Col have travelled into the future and stayed there. That means they are younger in current time than they should be - Col by only a couple of years, but Miranda is now younger than her son. When you look at them you can tell. Miranda should be turning ninety-three years old this year, but because of the chair bringing her into the future, she is really only sixty-five years old - and she's a spritely sixty-five year old too!

Until Christmas the year before last, no one except Col and I knew that Miranda was still alive. Everyone believed she died in a terrible hotel fire in 1986. She was checked into the Dupont Plaza hotel when someone set it on fire. People had tragically been trapped in the building and had died in the fire. Miranda’s belongings were found in her room but her body was never found. The real reason it was never found though, was because the chair had brought her safely out of the burning building straight to 2014.

Aside from sharing with me and Col that she was still alive, she kept herself hidden from her family for a few years. When Col had a health scare though, it really rattled them. They decided to let everyone know that not only was Miranda alive and well, but they were in love with each other and were going to get married.

My pop is Miranda's only son and Col's best friend. Pop is turning seventy this year and although he still has good health, Miranda's energy level far surpasses his. Pop initially wasn't thrilled about finding out his best friend and mum were romantically linked. They haven't rushed into tying the knot, most likely because they wanted to wait until Pop was okay with it. I feel like Pop may be starting to warm to the idea now he's over the initial shock and can see they have genuine affection for each other.

I do tend to ramble, so before I go any further, I should introduce myself. My name is Minky Robinson. I'm seventeen years old but soon to turn eighteen (I don’t feel like I’m almost an adult). I live with my grandparents in an apartment above their antique shop in Newtown. My parents and brother live on the opposite side of the world in Dubai. They moved there because my mum landed her job of a lifetime. She does legal work of some description at ‘Scyopia’, some kind of fancy rich company over there.

My mum's parents, Robert and Leanne, kindly let me move in with them so that I could continue my schooling in Australia. I'm actually going to the school my mum went to which is conveniently close to my grandparents’ shop. It's a much swankier school than I was going to in Canberra, and when I first started attending I felt out of my depth. Funny thing though, after finding the chair, I really think it helped me gain confidence at school. I'd never been particularly academic before, but now - well I wasn't going to be a valedictorian, but I wasn't doing too bad.

At first I wasn't sure about my big move to Sydney - having to go to a new school, meeting new friends and not living with my brother and parents. After finding the chair though, I can say with absolute certainty it was the best thing I ever did. With the help of the chair, I've time travelled to most decades of the 20th century and the experiences have been nothing short of incredible.

Yes, there have been tough times. Through the chair I have seen violence, death and been in situations where I thought I was never going to make it back, but all in all, it's been pretty amazing.

As far as I can tell from my inspections of the chair, it is just an inanimate object. It isn't alive, it doesn't even have any mechanical or moving parts. It's just a shabby looking old chair that could easily be overlooked or ignored because it is so insignificant. Even though it looks like a normal enough chair, I have started to feel like it knows what it's doing - as if it has control over where it takes me and when it is going to work. Almost like it’s been sending me on missions!

Last year made me think about this theory a lot. I suffered through weeks of being held in a concentration camp during the second world war with no way of escape. It was like a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. Thinking back on it now, and knowing how important the job that I did was while I was there, not only was it worth it, I would do it all again. Although I couldn’t see any of that until I was safely back home of course.

Yes, I really think I would do it again, but I'm extremely glad I don't have to. My chair travelling events have been unbelievably amazing, but since I've been home from 1945 I have pretty much been forced to focus on the here and now.

I'm in my final year of school now and have the joy of the HSC (aka Higher School Certificate) exams to stress about. It seems to take up every spare thought and moment of my time. It doesn't feel like that long ago I had the privilege of being able to hang out with friends and play sport. Nowadays it feels like it's just all work, work, work.

Maybe that is slightly exaggerated. I have an amazing friend Seshna, who is as bright as a button and is both an incredible study partner and someone I can always count on when I need a friend.

Alongside Seshna, I have an incredible boyfriend Cormack. When I first moved to Sydney, I could not stand Cormack Merrett. It’s funny to think about it now, but back then I thought he was a creepy snitch and I was sure he disliked me as much as I did him. Funny how things work out. It turned out he actually really, really liked me, and when I allowed myself to get to know him, I realised ‘creepy snitch’ was as far from what the real Cormack Merrett really was. In fact, he is the sweetest, most wonderful boyfriend in the world. He is just as smart as Seshna - he's kind, generous and extremely good looking.

Not only is he my boyfriend, I have good reason to believe Cormack will one day be my husband and the father of my child. Okay, I don't just have a hunch about that, I happen to know it for sure. How do I know this? Well, our teenage daughter visited me from the future and she told me. Oh the joys of having a time travelling chair!

As wonderful as Cormack is, he does come with a pretty awful flaw. I guess he didn’t have much of a say in the matter, but he happened to share a womb with the most horrible person who has ever walked the earth. Cormack's twin sister is a tyrant called Kayla. She is stunningly beautiful and knows it of course. The saying about beauty being skin deep could have been coined with her in mind. Underneath that overly makeup-caked face she is rotten to the core. Where Cormack is sweet, thoughtful and kind, she is mean, cunning and nasty. Even though she doesn't have the brain smarts her brother has, she has street smarts in spades and that means she thinks she rules our school. Somehow, she seems to have the teachers wrapped around her little finger and gets away with the most atrocious things.

The tricky thing for me of course is that she is Cormack's sister, and although he seems to think the world of me, he loves her unconditionally and is fiercely protective of her. It's not easy when your boyfriend's sister treats you like you are her personal doormat. Cormack can't see that and won't hear a bad word said about her.

This is why I could never live without my friend Seshna - she doesn't look at Kayla with the rose-coloured glasses Cormack does. She completely agrees with me about her being ugly beneath that outer beauty. Kayla may be able to fool a lot of people, but anyone who has been her target for abuse or ridicule will never forget what she is really like.

Last year was difficult for me. After I had my World War Two experience everything was different - different in that I stopped taking things for granted. Our generation and most people alive today really have no idea how tough things were for people during the war. Today, we have everything we need and more – especially our freedom.

Unfortunately having everything doesn't help you work out what you want to do when you finish school.

I thought getting my red P's was a major feat! I am now a licensed provisional driver, but unfortunately, it doesn’t mean all that much because I don't have my own car yet. Getting my driver’s licence seemed like a such a big deal at the time, but that hurdle is gone and now my biggest challenge is the HSC exams.

As mentioned, once you hit the last two years of high school you are basically a slave to the HSC. It's all you live and breathe and it takes up every ounce of your being. The end of Year 12 means the next step is university – well that’s the next step in my parents’ opinion. My problem is I've never had a burning desire to do any specific kind of job, so I have no idea what I want to go on to study or even if I want to go to uni at all.

It doesn't help that everyone around me seems to know what they want to do. Seshna has her heart set on studying sports medicine. This is a win-win for two reasons. She has brains and she loves sport. Both her parents are GP's, so medicine is the field her parents expect her to get into, and it’s in her blood so it's not just a pipe dream.

Cormack wants to study architecture. He is super smart but he also has a creative side and it never ceases to amaze me how he can see the beauty in things that I often take for granted. We'd be walking along the street and he'd point out a feature of a building, or notice something about the environment that he'd say would translate well in a building context. He talks about it so much I have no doubt that is what he'll end up doing. I honestly can't imagine him being anything other than an architect.

Even Kayla knows what she wants to do. She made it public knowledge she will become a famous actress like her step mother who used to star on a popular Australian TV serial. She has her sights set on Hollywood because in her words Australian TV and movies were small fry. Knowing the determination Kayla has for getting her own way, I know she will make her dreams come true.

I, on the other hand, have absolutely no idea what I want to do and as the end of Year 12 quickly approaches, and D-day for choosing my career path looms, I feel more and more lost and nervous about it. It's fine to commit yourself to a three to five year degree when you know what you want to do, but what if you have no idea?

My parents want me to make the decision on my own, but I know they both want me to go to uni. It just seems like a waste if I’m not sure and passionate about what I want to do.

So, as you can see, with my time so filled up with school and the burden of having to choose what I want to do, there isn't much time to think about chair travelling.

To make time travelling more challenging... the chair used to live in my bedroom which was nice and convenient for using it, but it’s currently residing in Miranda and Col's garage (long story, don't ask!). So even if I had time to attempt to chair travel, it isn't as easy anymore.

I can’t help but think, if only