Still. Whatever was coming, it was coming whether or not he invited it, and whether Millie got a courteous response here, or not. Ben had been nicely brought up – as far as that went – and he did the polite thing. As Millie had no doubt known he would. "What period is that, Millie, my love, then?" he asked, really with the utmost courtesy. A lot more than the evil old bird deserved, sometimes.
Millie swayed forward, practically dancing, took both of his hands in both of her elderly, liver-spotted ones. "Oh, my love. Oh, Ben. From when you met that awful Michael. Up until the point – about two years later, wasn't it? - when he broke your heart. Of course. When else would I set the controls for?"
Ben wasn't an idiot, despite what the evidence thus far in this text might otherwise suggest. So, even at this point, he'd developed an uneasy feeling that this might be exactly, in fact, what Millie had been getting at. Why, though, that was another question entirely. So... "And why would you do that, Millie?" he asked, careful and patient. Method in her madness, he assumed. Always, always, scientific method in her madness.
Oh, and although Millie was in essence a sweetheart, sometimes, just sometimes, she could be frightening. She turned a bird-like beady eye upon him now, head tipped to one side, and regarded him keenly. There was a chill in her grey pink-lidded eye, folded over with wrinkles. It was echoed in her voice. "Darling," Millie said, and her voice that wavered with age sometimes now, had never been calmer, never colder. "So that you can change history, of course. So that you can rub him out. Of your past, I mean. Of your past."
***
It was two hours later, now, two hours on from when he'd banged out of Millie's lab. He'd left Millie standing with eyebrows raised, leaning calm and unrepentant on her walking stick. And Dolly had chased after him, unsuccessfully, because she just wasn't fast enough on her quasi-anorexic little stick legs, frail little pre-Raph girlie swot that she was.
YOU ARE READING
Erase You
RomanceMichael is a musician, Cambridge-educated but living in London. He's successful, attractive and has plenty to keep him busy and happy. So why can he still not get over his old college boyfriend, Ben? Fortunately his old Great-Aunt Millie, a notor...
