The Good, The Bad and The History (Chronicles of St. Mary's #14)

by Jodi Taylor

Brace yourselves. It’s TIME TRAVEL, people. Bloody hell, that felt good – I’m going to do it again. It’s TIME TRAVEL, people. I’d better stop now before I become overexcited.

‘I saved Peterson from the plague, you know,’ I said, quite indignantly. ‘Hope you’ve washed your hands since then,’ said Pennyroyal,

I finished my one sarnie and asked if he was up for an enema. He pulled a small gun from under his pillow. I picked up the tray and trudged back to the kitchen.

In reality, those dreamily drifting seekers of knowledge and truth would be mentally composing the words and phrases best suited to trashing their colleagues, their colleagues’ work, and their colleagues’ reputations, all for the purpose of leaving them wailing in the outer darkness of academic discredit, disgrace and dishonour. Life is brutal in academia.

A tip from the future, people – forget the paperless office. It never happens. Along with efficient public services, quality public transport and good government.

And soon, because messing with History is a very dodgy business. Try assassinating Hitler and see what happens. You’d be deader than a very dead thing long before you could get anywhere near him.

History books say the first women were allowed to vote in 1918, but I always think that assumes who could vote and at what age was the prerogative of men in the first place. That prerogative had to be wrested from them. There was no allowed about it. Women won the vote, gentlemen, and don’t you forget it.

I had a nasty feeling I might have reduced my chance of survival to slightly less than that of Sean Bean surviving to appear in the second part of a major franchise.

I had Geoff behind me, so pushing him off a cliff – accidentally, of course – was going to be quite tricky, but I refused to be downhearted. The night was young.

Or were they being extra polite to each other in that special English way that says, I detest you and will rip out your heart at the first opportunity. May I pour you another cup of tea?

All of these activities came under the society-approved aimless sort of existence considered appropriate for middle- and upper-class women. Working-class women, of course, were out there working their arses off in the factories and dying in childbirth.

Admin staff – the lethal force you never see coming. There’s probably one of them standing behind you at this very moment. DON’T look round.

He’d almost certainly never seen a poor person in his entire life and so to remedy this defect, he and his party had created quite a lot of them.