Ruby was exactly the right age to remember Candyboxes from her own childhood.
She’d first seen one during the eighth birthday party of her classmate, Danielle Reeves. For the party Danielle wore a Laura Ashley dress in aqua taffeta: her ringlets just skimmed the tops of her puffed sleeves, and her net skirts flared whenever she spun on the spot – as she did repeatedly. She looked beautiful. Ruby was in love, to the full extent of her seven-year-old heart. The whole class sat in a circle on Danielle’s living room floor as she opened her presents. The Conjuror’s Candybox wasn’t the biggest gift – the four-foot teddy bear was that – but it caused the most excitement. When Danielle removed the packaging everyone craned forward to get their first glimpse. They saw a box made from plastic, in primary colours, with a hole in the top. It was about the size of a Rubik’s cube.
‘Who wants to put their sweet in first?’ asked Danielle.
They clamoured. I do, I do. Everyone had their party bags, which contained sherbet chews wrapped in wax paper. Danielle surveyed the party guests. Her eyes rested on Ruby.
‘Give me yours,’ Danielle said. The others groaned in disappointment. Ruby could have burst with pride. Danielle took the chew, which had softened in the heat of Ruby’s hand.
Everybody watched as Danielle dropped the sweet into the Candybox. It immediately dematerialised on entry. The children fiddled with their shoe straps, plucked at the deep pile carpet, and kept checking that the hole was empty. Then the box beeped and – miraculously, to the onlookers – the sweet reassembled.
‘Ruby gets to eat the chew,’ Danielle said. ‘It’s her sweet.’
Ruby put the sweet in her mouth.
‘How does it taste?’ Danielle asked.
‘Good,’ Ruby slurred. The chew stuck to her teeth. She was eating a magical, vanishing sweet and it tasted all the more delicious because Danielle had picked her to christen the new toy.
*
The Conjuror’s Candybox had been marketed as a party trick. Ruby had never wondered how it actually worked. Eyes down on the links Bee had provided, she learnt that the Candybox used time travel technology to transport sweets one minute into the future. Danielle and Ruby had been unwitting time travel experimenters.
According to Wikipedia, the Candybox was quite a money-spinner in its first year, but the Conclave ceased production in 1993 because of irresolvable design flaws. Frequently the box malfunctioned and the sweet, instead of disappearing, rebounded at high speed. Parents complained it was dangerous, and there were numerous reports of injury – usually caused by the shrapnel of a boiled sweet.
Ruby clicked on the last of Bee’s links. It led to a thriving web community of Candybox modifiers. Nostalgia, and a geeky interest in repurposing old goods, had driven recent second-hand sales. Apparently, with manipulation, the Candybox could transport objects further into the future than the intended one minute. The longest distance achieved so far was about an hour. The people adjusting the Candyboxes weren’t scientists. They were librarians and curators – the kind of women who write zines and collect retro toys. One of them had drawn a cute web comic about the life of Lucille Waters – her early years in fifties Toxteth, winning a place at university, and finally sending messages across time via radio. The artist also reconditioned Candyboxes for sale. Ruby was tempted to buy one, for the sake of nostalgia. She had just reached for her purse when the intercom rang out. Her next client had arrived; the Candybox would have to wait.
*
Heeding Bee’s mild rebuke, Ruby arranged to see her mother, Dinah, the following evening. Dinah lived in Wembley. She was golden-skinned like Ruby but they did not otherwise look alike; Dinah had a mass of chestnut hair with a strange blonde streak that repeatedly fell over her right eye. For the past ten years she had lived in a mock-Tudor semi, which was bequeathed to her by a childless paternal aunt. She indicated that Ruby should regard the house as her home, too, if she wished. Although Ruby appreciated the gesture, weeks – sometimes months – could slip by between Ruby’s visits. Their relationship was cordial, but they had never been close.
When Ruby arrived at the house, dinner preparations were already under way. Dinah subscribed to recipe boxes with pre-measured ingredients in little bags. This meant there was very little food preparation Ruby could assist with, and she sat on her hands at the dinner table until Dinah brought through two plates of sea-bass.
‘I’m glad you were able to come,’ Dinah said. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve met someone. A man. At church.’
‘Oh. That’s nice.’
‘He’s called Henry, and he’s a widower. I’ve met his daughters. Obviously I’ve told him all about you. Only…’
‘Yes?’ Ruby speared a piece of fish, and raised it to her mouth. It tasted rather good.
‘He was a little shocked I’ve never been married. And, well, I didn’t want to overwhelm him further after that revelation, so I haven’t mentioned how old you are. Or rather, how young I was when I had you.’
‘I see,’ Ruby replied drily. ‘You should have just said we were sisters, Mum.’
‘That would have caused problems,’ Dinah said, impervious to Ruby’s sarcasm. ‘No, I didn’t want to lie to him – just to delay giving him the full family history till we’re better acquainted. He’s rather old-fashioned in some ways – but traditional values can be nice in a man, can’t they?’
Ruby poured her mother a glass of table water and decided to treat the question as rhetorical. She wasn’t sure she wanted to meet Henry. If he had old-fashioned views about teenage single mothers, he probably didn’t take too kindly to lesbians either. She wondered how he felt about mental health problems, too.
‘Does he know about Granny Bee?’ Ruby asked.
‘Really, Ruby, of course he knows I have a mother.’
‘I meant, does he know about her past? That she was a time traveller? And why she had to leave?’
Annoyance flashed over Dinah’s face. ‘No. Why do you have to bring that up?’
Ruby toyed with her saffron mash, her appetite waning while she considered the information Bee had recently given her: that Dinah had instigated their years of silence about Bee’s former life, because of her own fear.
‘While I was in Cornwall, I had a good chat with Granny Bee,’ Ruby said.
‘You two are always as thick as thieves.’ Dinah laughed shortly. ‘I might almost feel left out.’
‘She reminisced about the lab. I can’t believe you never let her talk about the pioneers. You pretended it would upset her! Remembering made her happy.’
Dinah threw her fork onto the plate with a clatter.
‘Ruby,’ she said, her voice quiet with frustration, ‘when I was a child, conversations about the pioneers always made my mother happy – to begin with. But soon she’d start ruminating on how they cut her off. She’d endlessly question how she could win back their favour. She should have been angry with them, and instead she wanted to be friends with those bastards. Then after the rumination came the depression. Just as you’d think she was over the worst of that, she’d attempt suicide. That’s why I don’t like to bring up the pioneers. That’s why I told you not to discuss them with her. Because yes, eventually, she will be upset.’
This perspective shook Ruby. She had spent some of her childhood in Bee’s care, while Dinah finished her studies, and from what Ruby could recall, Granny Bee’s mental health had always been stable. But maybe that was because Dinah wouldn’t let her dwell on the past.
An uncomfortable silence followed while the food cooled between them.
‘I think I should go,’ Ruby said. She needed to think, on her own, what to do next.
‘Stay,’ Dinah said. ‘There’s mousse in the fridge.’