‘Destroyed … you?’
He nodded once.
‘Mee.’
He was staring at the picture of the wreckage and I turned to look too and then back at him.
‘You don’t feel like that, do you? Destroyed?’
He nodded once.
‘You’re not. You’re here. I’m here. You and me. Our friendship isn’t destroyed.’
‘Uh-sss,’ he said.
‘Us.’
He was looking at the picture again. But I stood up immediately and spun him round to face the case behind us. The one with the brand new, shiny model train gleaming in its own spotlight. Pristine. Perfect.
‘You,’ I said, pointing at it, ‘you.’
He almost stopped breathing.
‘Say it,’ I said.
He took a big breath.
‘Say it,’ I said again.
‘ME!’ he belted out, ‘ME!’
He was shaking.
I shook too.
‘You know,’ I said, noticing how breathless I was, ‘I could have said something like, let’s get you back ontrackbut I don’t think it’s a time for jokes, do you?’
He started to giggle.
‘But seriously,’ I said, ‘we’ll get there, Ronan, we really can, we will.’
He tried a smile.
‘Boys!’ came a stern voice behind us, ‘I don’t know what you’re up to but I’ve been watching yous on the monitor and this museum is not some sort of race course, if you can’t be attending to each area in a more respectful manner then I’m afraid I might have to ask you to leave.’
Ronan and me looked at each other and burst out laughing, which only added to Annie’s annoyance and confusion.
‘Well, that’s just the height of bad manners, boys.’
‘Sorry, Annie,’ I said, recovering from my laughter, but Ronan was still laughing and I had to speak over him. ‘Sorry, we don’t mean to be disrespectful, honestly, it’s just we’ve made a bit of a discovery today in your museum and, I mean this when I say it, today has probably made a difference for the rest of our lives.’
Ronan’s laughter eased off and Annie cleared her throat, studying the both of us as if she wasn’t sure whether we were making a fool of her or not.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘well … that’s just … well, you see, that’s the power of history, boys. Learning about the place you come from, where it all started.’
‘And where it’s all going,’ I said.
‘And where it’s all going,’ she repeated. ‘To make sense of the future you need to make sense of the past.’
