Cat and the Time Travelling Vespa — Part 2

It was weeks since Cat had returned to 1984, but time hadn’t settled. Not really.

Her Vespa purred with a strange frequency now, like a cat that knew more than it let on. Don’t they all?

The mirrors sometimes flickered, showing glimpses of streets and people not quite in sync with the now. Once, she saw Mikey’s face — grinning, wind in his hair — and her chest ached with something that felt like homesickness, but sideways.

Cat took to carrying a notebook. She scribbled everything the Vespa did that was off — the days the chrome glowed blue, the radio’s outbursts of songs that hadn’t been recorded yet. She mapped where and when the Vespa pulsed under her, like a compass that spun only for her.

One night, after a Northern Soul stomp at the Electric Ballroom, Cat cruised toward Soho. The radio was dead quiet. The streets were slick, reflecting traffic lights in neon puddles. She passed under a rusted railway arch — and the Vespa lurched.

This time, it wasn’t a slow bleed between times. It was a crash.

The mirrors exploded in light. The Vespa screamed like a fuzzed-out guitar solo, then bam — silence.

Cat blinked.

The air was smoky, sour with coal fires and ale. She sat in a cobbled alley, her Vespa humming like it was smug. The buildings were bomb-patched, and the streets full of sharp suits and barely concealed tension.