What I Did In My Christmas Holidays - By Sally Sparrow. Written by Steven Moffat. Illustrated by Martin Geraghty.
'See?' said the man. 'Told you you could fly a time machine.'
'Yeah, it's easy!' said the other Sally, 'It homes in on his watch, anyway. You just have to press the reset button next to the phone.'
'Who told you that?' I asked her.
A frown clouded her face. 'I did,' she said, and looked puzzled.
The man looked a little cross about that.
'Yeah, well before you set off any more time paradoxes... Sally Sparrow!' he gave me a Teacher look from the television. 'Go and do your homework!'
'Yeah!' said the other Sally, 'You've got to write the essay before you can fly the time machine. It'll take you about two hours.'
'That's enough, both of you!' said the man, 'Got enough paradoxes going on here, without you pair having a chat!'
'But, listen, it's going to be great!' said the other Sally. And she gave me the biggest, most excited smile ever.
And oh goodness! You can see my braces!
And so here I am, finishing my essay. It's nearly two o'clock in the morning, and in a minute I'll be fetching the shed key from the kitchen drawer and setting off across the garden on the trip of a lifetime.
A big, amazing adventure. And not my last one either, oh no! Just the first of lots and lots, for the rest of my life probably. Suddenly I don't care what my Aunt is going to say about the torn wallpaper or what Mary Phillips thinks about my hair. I'll go back to school after the holidays and just be nice to her, and she can make up all the songs she wants. I'll join in, if it makes her happy.
You see, I know the best thing in the world. I know what's coming. I asked the man one more question before the end of the tape. I asked how a beautiful woman spy in the future could have a copy of my Christmas homework.
'Can't you guess?' he smiled. Not grinned, smiled. 'Her name,' he continued, 'Was Sally Sparrow.'
The big blue box is waiting in the shed at the end of the garden. And I've finished my homework.
THE END
