All In Good Time - A Time Travel Beatles Fanfiction

Track 33 - What'd I Say

December 2012, London

It was barely daylight on a cool, crisp day in London when Lainey reached the little red phone booth near Regent's Park that she knew also existed in 1964. Her heart was pounding with anticipation. It hadn't been easy, convincing her grandmother that she was old enough to know what she was doing and smart and savvy and wasn't going to let a rock star like Paul McCartney break her heart. She'd been on pins and needles for what felt like weeks, waiting for the letters from George to sell and for Grandma Marie to announce that their Christmas trip to London to see Lainey's brother was still on.

Trapped together in a silver tube flinging itself through space, all the way across the ocean her grandmother had nattered on about her recollections of Don Juan McCartney from Liverpool while Lainey chewed her nails to the quick, nodding when it was required and trying her best not to show any reaction. Frankly, her grandmother could have told her she'd watched Paul engaging in drug-fueled orgies with groupies every night at the Cavern Club in the middle of the stage, and hardly a word of it would have reached Lainey's ears. All she could think about was that she was only hours away from holding him again.

In the hotel room last night in Oxford, Grandma Marie had come up behind her as Lainey stood at the window, her thumb grazing the gold ring as she stared in the vague direction of London. He was So. Very. Close.

"Sweetheart, have you listened to a single word I've said?" Grandma Marie had asked.

"You won't even notice I'm gone," Lainey had responded, completely avoiding the question.

Alone in the phone booth, with no one noticing her, she wrinkled her nose in disgust at the strong smell of urine as she checked the contents of her backpack yet again. A pretty red knit dress to wear for Christmas Day, a few other articles of clothing, and her sketchpad and pencils. Most importantly, Paul's Christmas present was securely folded and wrapped. Her handbag held the usual cosmetics, a bit of old British money, a charge card for her travels around 2013, and her iPhone. Leaving nothing to chance, Lainey had made sure the ring held a picture of Paul she'd taken herself only two months ago.

The ring worked its magic, and in seconds Lainey was reeling from her journey through time, an arm flailing out to clutch onto the shelf of a much more pleasant-smelling phone box in the middle of a downpour.

In the moment it took for her head to stop spinning, Lainey realized she was shivering with cold. It had to be at least twenty degrees colder here. Global warming indeed. And it would have been nice if she'd thought to pack an umbrella when she set out on that perfectly sunny morning in 2012.

At least there were no pedestrians about. No one was interested in her phone booth, where she might be parked for quite a while if Neil Aspinall wasn't home to answer his phone.

The odds were apparently in her favor, Eros the god of love had to be smiling on her that day because Neil answered on the second ring. "Hang on a tick," he said, his voice rough with sleep. "We'll send a car."

"God loves a trier," Lainey murmured, rubbing her arms and stamping her feet a bit to keep warm. It was one of the old-fashioned, quirky adages Paul liked to use, one that he said he'd learned from his dad.

Twenty minutes later a large black Austin Princess limousine pulled up and idled on the street just in front of the phone box. A uniformed driver stepped out, raised an umbrella, and looked Lainey's way. Are you serious? she thought. A limousine and a driver roused from 24/7 standby to fetch her at a moment's notice? So this was what life was like for the Beatles in late 1964.

They splashed through grey sodden London streets for fifteen minutes or so, with Lainey reflecting on how much quieter it was here in 1964. The driver circled a huge park and suddenly stopped beside a crowd of people on the sidewalk in front of a six-story red brick building.