The Time Capsule

In June 2001, on the last day of primary school, the twenty-eight children of Class 6B at Moorside Primary in Leeds buried a metal box under the oak tree in the playground. Their teacher, Mrs. Harding, had asked each of them to write a letter to the person they would be in twenty-five years. The box was sealed with tape, the date was painted on the lid, and everyone promised to come back.

Twenty-five years later, only nine of them did. Rachel Lowe, who had organized the reunion through social media, stood under the same oak tree on a cold Saturday morning with a borrowed spade and a growing sense of panic. The tree was much bigger than she remembered, and nobody could agree on which side of it they had dug. It took an hour, two wrong holes and the help of the school caretaker before the spade finally hit metal.

The box was rusty but dry inside. They opened it on a table in the school hall, where Mrs. Harding herself, now retired and nearly eighty, was waiting with a flask of tea. One by one, they unfolded their letters and read them aloud, which turned out to be both wonderful and slightly embarrassing.

Ten-year-old Rachel had been going to be a vet with a farm full of horses. Thirty-five-year-old Rachel worked in insurance and was allergic to horses. Sam Patel's letter announced that he was going to play football for Leeds United; he had become a physiotherapist, which, as he pointed out, was at least connected to football. Leanne Brooks had written only one line: "I hope you are still friends with Rachel." They looked at each other across the table. They had not spoken for almost fifteen years.

The letters were funny, but they also made people quiet. Several of them had asked questions that their older selves could not answer comfortably. Did you travel the world? Did you learn the guitar? Are you happy? Daniel Wright, who had become a lawyer, admitted that he wished he had studied art instead, as his ten-year-old self had clearly expected. "I should have listened to him," he said, holding up a drawing of a dragon. "He knew what he was talking about."

Then Sam found something at the bottom of the box that nobody could explain. It was a small silver key on a red ribbon, with a label that said only: "For 6B. Open the cupboard." There were twenty-eight letters in the box, and every one of them had been accounted for. None of the nine remembered adding a key.

"It can't have been one of us," said Leanne. "We were watching each other the whole time." Rachel agreed. "And it must have been someone who knew the school well, because how else would they know about a cupboard?" Everybody turned slowly to look at Mrs. Harding, who was calmly pouring herself another cup of tea and trying not to smile.

She confessed immediately. On the evening before the burial, she had slipped the key into the box after the children had gone home. The cupboard was a small locked one at the back of the hall, which she had persuaded every head teacher since to leave alone. Inside, carefully wrapped in plastic, was a photograph of the whole class under the oak tree, taken on the day of the burial, and twenty-eight envelopes, one for each child.

Each envelope contained a short note from Mrs. Harding, written in 2001, describing what she had noticed about that child. Rachel's said she was the kind of person who would bring everyone back together one day. Daniel's said he should never stop drawing. Leanne's said she was the bravest girl in the class. Some of them read their notes twice before they could say anything.

Before they left, they made a new plan. They would bury another box under the same tree, this time with letters to the people they would be at sixty. Daniel promised to draw a dragon. Rachel and Leanne walked to the car park together, still talking, and were the last to leave.