Jeanette bumped into Rube halfway back to the house, having got fed up of sitting at the bottom of the staircase and not being allowed to climb it. And it was just as well she’d started back when she had, because Rube was in a state. Her face was bone-white and she was breathing funny, like she had when she’d gone to get her GCSE results last year.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jeanette. Her first thought was that Rube had had a close call with some kind of dangerous animal, or maybe even a person who’d wandered into the area and started threatening her. She didn’t even remember that Rube had gone back to check on Sally until she said her name.
“Sally’s gone off somewhere,” mumbled Rube.
That didn’t seem to fit with Rube’s panicky expression. ‘Gone off somewhere’ sounded a lot less urgent than ‘gone missing.’ “Well… she can’t have gone far, right? We’ve only been away from the house for…”
“No, I saw her go.” Rube fiddled with her fringe. It looked as if she was trying to crush the hair with the sheer power of her knuckles. “She…. I don’t know what happened…”
Jeanette put what she hoped was a calming hand on Rube’s shoulder. “Come on. Tell me.”
Rube looked up at her. “It… It looked like she was flying. I looked out of the window, and she was off in the distance…. I guess she was on a zipwire? I don’t know where it could have…”
Jeanette couldn’t make head nor tail of what Rube was telling her. A zipwire? Flying off into the distance? Sally could be anywhere by now. Anywhere, and in any situation.
So Jeanette said the only thing that made sense to her at the moment. “Let’s go back to the staircase. You need to see what’s up there.”
The thing they were riding reminded Sally of a seahorse. Something about its face. Something about the way it shimmered in the sun.
“We call them pipers,” explained the moth, “They live down in Wallfruit Cove. That’s where we’re heading.”
“Right,” said Sally. The moth had introduced himself as Kai. That was just about all he’d had time to say before he’d tarted whistling his little tune to summon the seahorse thing.
Sally should have been frightened. She was normally scared of heights. She’d never have dared to get on a theme park ride that took you as high as this seahorse-thing was going. But once talking moths and flying purple creatures got involved, falling was probably the least of your worries.
“I wanted to talk to Colwyn about what the Iridescence family are up to, but if he’s not around, the Cove’s probably our best bet,” Kai continues. He was perched on Sally’s knuckles, tickling her a bit when he moved. Every so often, she’d worry that she was about to drop him, before remembering that he had wings.
“Who are the Iridescence family?” asked Sally. Miles underneath them, she could see their shadow move across the fields and towns below. It was the only shadow in sight. The sun must have been right above them.
“They live over there,” said Kai, pointing out a town to the right of them. Sally couldn’t see much of it, but some of the buildings looked as if they were made out of colourful glass, like a church window. “They’re the ones I escaped from.”
“Right,” said Sally.
“Bunch of creeps. No-one in the city’s ever tried to tell them no; that’s the problem. That’s why I thought Colwyn could help.”
“So they kidnapped you?” asked Sally, trying to get the conversation back to where she’d have a clue what he was talking about.
The moth nodded his furry head. “When I was younger than you.” Sally was just wondering how long it took for moths to grow to adulthood when he added, “It’s their fault I’m even in this body.”
“Oh, right- so you weren’t always a moth?”
“Nope. I started off just as human as you are. But one day my parents took me on a trip to Dovecote Gardens, and I wandered off down one of those paths.” He sighed. “Next thing you know…”
Sally felt that lonely, punching feeling again, just like when she’d been reading last night. She wondered how old Kai had been at the time, and how long it had taken him to realise that he really wasn’t ever going to see his home or family again.
Then she thought of something else. “I think my sisters went for a walk along those paths. Should we…?”
Kai waved one of his front legs in a calming gesture. “They’ll be fine, as long as they’re careful.”
By the time she got to the front door, Rube felt s little calmer. They’d deal with the staircase once they got back to it. Right now, her only responsibility was to check on Sally and get her to come outside and enjoy the fresh air with them. By the time they got back to it, the whole staircase thing would probably seem a lot easier to figure out.
As soon as she got through the front door (enjoying that lovely wood smell again), Rube heard Sally’s voice from upstairs. “Is he really going to fly us there?”
That wasn’t alarming in and of itself- Rube remembered Sally playing imaginary games with her Barbies and Sylvanians when she was younger, and this sounded like that all over again. She’d thought Sally had grown out of that over the last couple of years, but you never knew- sometimes kids her age went back to their old habits when they were feeling insecure.
But then, before Rube had a chance to call up to Sally, she heard an unfamiliar voice reply, “Yep. Just climb on up.”
A stranger. And a strange man, at that. Rube felt her heart seize up. “Sally?” she called up the stairs, somehow keeping her voice even, “Is there someone up there with you?”
No reply. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Alert him to your presence, why don’t you? Now he’ll panic and start threatening her.
Or maybe not. Maybe he’d panic and sneak out of the window before Rube called the police. And, come to think of it, wouldn’t he have heard the front door close behind her anyway?
Maybe everything was fine. Maybe Uncle Colwyn had hired a cleaner or a groundskeeper that he’d forgotten to tell them about, and Sally had just run into him and struck up a conversation.
But then why did he go quiet when you shouted up? Why didn’t he just call down and introduce himself?
There was nothing for it- Rube was just going to have to go upstairs and confront him. She looked around the hallway for something she could use as a weapon. There were a couple of big, sturdy umbrellas in the stand by the door. One of those might do. It would be something to swing around in front of her, anyway, and that might be enough.
She picked it up and darted to the staircase, trying to take the stairs two at a time but worrying that that might not actually get her there any quicker, and the whole time there was a strange, loud noise coming from just beyond the door to Sally’s room. A wafting kind of sound, like a giant fan, or the wind hitting a big bedsheet on the washing line.
She opened the door to Sally’s room, and…
Sally wasn’t there, first of all. Not in the actual room part. Rube’s first thought was, They’ve disappeared out of the window, but that wasn’t accurate, now, was it? They’d left through the window, but Rube could still see them in the distance. She could still see Sally, anyway. She was about ten yards from the window when Rube got there, and about thirty feet above the ground.
The thing she was riding…
It’s some kind of zipwire, Rube told herself, because that was the only sane thing it cold be. It was ling and thin, see-through in places and purpleish in others, and it was disappearing into the distance with Sally on top of it.
The sound hadn’t been like a giant fan after all. More like a giant bird’s wings flapping.
Rube leaned out of the window and called to her sister, but it was no good. The noise was too loud. She’d got too far away. A crazy part of Rube wanted to jump out of the window and try to grab onto the thing’s tail (It’s a zipwire, and zipwires don’t have tails, she told herself firmly), but she probably couldn’t have even if she’d tried. Her legs felt like stone, bolted to the ground. She cold barely even feel them.
As she looked helplessly out of the window, all Rube cold think was, What am I going to tell Jeanette?
After breakfast, Sally disappeared upstairs with a few slices of orange to feed to the moth that had appeared in her room last night. She’d spent the whole meal asking Rube and Jeanette what moths ate and how to treat their injuries, and neither of them had had the heart to tell her that moths only had a life expectancy of about a fortnight. Rube waited a minute or two, listening out for a sudden cry of grief upstairs. When she didn’t hear one, she assumed that the moth was OK for now, and went for a walk out front.
Uncle Colwyn still wasn’t here.
Rube climbed down off the veranda and looked out at the gardens at the foot of the hill. Those little white walls really were everywhere, forming twisting paths that seemed to begin and end at random. She wondered who’d designed it that way in the first place, and what their reasoning behind it had been. Maybe there was a pattern she hadn’t seen yet.
There was a noise behind her, and Rube turned round to see Jeanette on the front steps. “Sally’s still upstairs,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “So, tell me what you’re not telling her.”
Rube’s first instinct was to say something like, What do you mean?, but that would probably just have made Jeanette angry. Rube knew exactly what she meant, and they both knew it.
“Come on,” said Rube, gesturing to the path in front of them, “Let’s go for a walk.”
Jeanette got the hint, and followed Rube a little way down the hill. It was funny- you ended up following the routes picked out by those little white walls whether you meant to or not. After a minute or two, Rube said, “Mum’s been getting phone calls from Dad again.”
“Ah,” said Jeanette, “I thought it would be something like that.”
Just breathing made Rube feel as if she was lifting a huge weight. “I don’t know what he said, but I’m pretty sure she was crying one night last week. I came downstairs to get some paracetamol, and her eyes were all pink.”
Jeanette frowned. “But she knows he’s all talk, right? Remember when he kept threatening to go to court and get custody of all of us? But then when I say I might actually want to move in with him for a bit, suddenly he disappears for six months and never mentions it again.”
“He’s not always just talk,” said Rube, remembering the time he’d got drunk and stood outside their house for two hours, yelling things, until Mum had had to call the police. “Besides, talk can be upsetting enough on its own. You know- sticks and stones.”
“I’m pretty sure that means the exact opposite of…” Jeanette broke off and looked around. “Have we gone over to the opposite side of the hill? I don’t recognise any of this.”
Ruby shrugged. She couldn’t tell one part of the gardens from another yet. They were gorgeous, she would never deny that, but they weren’t her top priority at the moment.
They walked on a little further. “How scared is she?” asked Jeanette.
Rube sighed. “Scared enough to send us away. Not scared enough to come with us.”
“Well, she had work.”
“I know. But if…”
And then they saw the staircase. It came into view as they turned a corner, long and white and stretching up into the clouds.
“What the hell is that?” asked Jeanette, squinting ahead.
“I don’t know,” said Rube. It was about twenty yards ahead of them, blocking off the path, as if it was the next logical step for anyone who had followed it this far. As far as Rube could see, it didn’t lead to anything- it was angled away from the hill, not towards it. They hadn’t seen anything like this from the house. But how could they have missed it? It was taller than anything else around.
Jeanette ran ahead, reached the bottom of the staircase, and circled it. “There’s nothing supporting it!” she called back.
“What do you mean?” asked Rube, running to catch her up.
“You can see right under it! Look!” She led Rube to the side of the staircase. When Jeanette touched it, Rube saw that each step was about twice the height of her hand- and that was all there was. Underneath, it was just a white, diagonal line leading up as far as they could see.
“We shouldn’t try and climb it,” Rube heard herself say, “It’s probably not very stable.”
“‘Not very stable’?! It’s physically impossible!”
“There must be a kind of trick to it… Some kind of balancing trick… If we put our weight on it, it’ll collapse.”
Jeanette rested her elbows on the fourth step, and- without warning, because she was apparently out to scare Rube to death today- hoisted herself off her feet, using it like a chin-up bar.
“Don’t do that!” screamed Rube.
Jeanette let herself down. “It looks pretty solid to me.”
Rube was getting a headache. There had to be a trick here. An optical illusion, maybe. “I’m going back to fetch Sally,” she said, because it seemed like the only sensible thing to do, “She needs to see this.”
*
Sally didn’t know how to tell whether a moth was eating something or not. She just put him on an orange slice and hoped for the best.
She turned back to her bed and pulled the duvet straight so that she could sit on it. She still had all the books she’d been trying to read last night piled up on the beside table- maybe she’d have better luck with them this morning. She definitely didn’t feel like going out yet. At least this room was hers, full of her own things. She could make a familiar little nest in the middle of all this weirdness.
She picked up a Goosebumps book with three grinning pumpkins on the front. Not much chance of that making her homesick. She opened up the first page, and began to read about a bunch of American kids having daft, creepy Halloween adventures that didn’t remind her of anything she didn’t want to think about.
She’d just finished the first chapter when she heard an unfamiliar voice. “You’re one of Colwyn’s nieces, aren’t you?”
Sally sat bolt upright, the book dropping onto the bed, completely forgotten. She drew her knees up to her chest as she looked around for the intruder.
“Over here,” said the voice. It was coming from over by the window.
Sally stared at the moth. He looked like he was propping himself up on his front legs.
That can’t be it. There must have been someone outside. A window cleaner, maybe? Sally’s room was three floors up, but a window cleaner would have a ladder, or maybe one of those hoist things that pulled you up on a platform. She took a step towards the window, meaning to open it and look around… and this time, she actually saw the moth’s mouth move.
“Look, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said apologetically. (It was definitely a “he.” Sally thought he sounded a bit older than Rube.) “I just thought I ought to check where I was, that’s all.”
Sally nodded. “You’re at Dovecote Gardens,” she told him, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, “And yeah, Colwyn’s my uncle.”
The moth’s head drooped. “Thank. God.”
“Um.” Sally swallowed. “How come you can talk?”
“I had a good education,” said the moth. Sally was pretty sure he was grinning.
*
The longer Rube was gone, the greater the temptation became. Jeanette really, really wanted to find out what was at the top of those stairs. Or at least find out how high you could go before the air got too thin.
The air down here was warm and still around her. The only sound was a few insects buzzing and a couple of birds squabbling in the distance. Jeanette sat on the grass, resting her elbow on one of the lower steps, which felt nice and cool against her arm. Rube was taking her sweet time getting back. Sally must have wanted to talk about something. Hopefully it wasn’t because the moth had died.
Rube hadn’t wanted Jeanette to put her weight on the staircase in case it collapsed and she hurt herself. And Jeanette didn’t want to make Rube worry (any more than her natural baseline level of worry, which was honestly pretty high.) But Rube wasn’t here. And what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?
By way of experiment, Jeanette pulled herself up against the staircase, using one the higher steps as a chin-up bar. She didn’t quite dare to leave the ground- Rube had kind of had a point- but she got onto tiptoe before relaxing back into position. She tried it again, pushing down on the surface of the step beforehand to see if she noticed any shaking or cracking. Nothing.
Feeling a little guilty, Jeanette stepped away from the staircase and looked at the path to see if there was any sign of Rube and Sally yet. She watched it for three whole minutes, counting out the seconds in her head, before turning back to the staircase and putting her foot on the bottom step.
Jeanette had spent the previous day hot, uncomfortable and sticky in the back of a series of cramped vehicles. She’d spent most of the three months before that either in school listening to lectures about smart targets and positive attitudes, or sleeping over at Zainab’s and listening to Monessa sing that song about Yogi Bear having a cheesy knob for the eightieth time in a row. Now that she finally had access to something new and interesting, she intended to make the most of it.
She went slowly, spreading her arms out slightly to keep her balance. If it started to creak or wobble, she could always turn around and go back the way she came. And as long as it didn’t…
The thing was, Jeanette had imagined things like this when she was little. Climbing u an enchanted beanstalk until you reached a giant’s kingdom in the clouds. Shooting up to the sky on the back of a dragon or a Pegasus or a giant bird. Leaving the land behind and climbing up to something better. She’d never thought she’d actually be able to do it, but she’d always hoped.
There were no clouds in the sky. There was nothing ahead of her but pure blue.
At some point, she stopped for a rest. There still wasn’t any creaking or swaying, and the air still seemed breathable (Jeanette assumed that if it wasn’t, she’d find out pretty quickly.) If her legs hadn’t started aching, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to her to stop at all.
At a guess, she’d have said that she’d been climbing for more than five minutes, but less than twenty. She knew better than to swear to that, though. Every story she’d ever heard about places like this said that they could make time work differently whenever they liked.
Supernatural places. Magical places.
Jeanette sat down on the stairs, and looked over the side. She could still see Uncle Colwen’s house. She couldn’t see the streets and roads that were supposed to be around it, though. Instead, there were just walls, and paths, and the places they led to.
A lot of it was green- rolling hills and fields, like a solid background keeping it all together. But to the left was a dark, tangled forest where the trees didn’t seem to have a single leaf between them, and a little way behind it was a wide blue lake surrounded by little cabins. To the right were buildings that looked as if they were made out of diamonds. Behind them were mountains, blending into the sky with blues and whites and purples, and cable cars travelling from peak to peak. And all over the place, things were flying. Jeanette could see colourful flecks trailing across the landscape, too far away for her to make out any details.
She thought, I want to stay here looking at this for the rest of my life.
She couldn’t, obviously. She needed to get back down before Rube got back, and tell her and Sally what she’d seen. But she couldn’t bring herself to move. Because what if she left, and by the time she got back with Rube and Sally it was all gone? And then she spent the rest of her life thinking about it, doing her best to remember every detail, but she never got to see it again?
She could just wait here. When Rube and Sally got to the bottom of the steps and found her gone, they were bound to work out where she was and come up to find her.
No. Bad idea. Even if they did work it out eventually, Rube would have two or three nervous breakdowns before they did. Jeanette didn’t want to do that to her.
She stared at the landscape for a few more minutes, committing it to memory. Then she stood up and made her way back down.
(This chapter and the second one will mostly be an edited version of what I posted last year.)
*
Sally and her sisters were marooned, cut off from any human contact and stranded in the icy expanses of deep space. Sure, to anyone watching from the outside, it would have looked like they were sitting on a sunny terrace in front of a nice café, but Sally knew how she felt.
“I still don’t know why he couldn’t have met us at the station,” said Jeanette, shielding her eyes from the sun. They’d got to that stage in waiting where Jeanette suddenly forgot how to keep still. She’d been shifting about on her seat, playing with her empty drink bottle, and examining her nail varnish for any chips that might have appeared in the last thirty seconds. Sally didn’t know how long they’d been there exactly. All she knew was that it had been enough time for her to drink four bottles of Pepsi. If Mum had been there, she’d have made her stop at two, but she wasn’t, so Sally was going to make her own fun.
“I’m sure he would have if he could have,” said Rube, who was meant to be in charge and looked like she really, really wished she wasn’t.
“But he works from home, right? How hard can it be to get away?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Rube. She’d had her hair cut short a few weeks ago, and her face looked really lonely without it. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
“How soon is now?” muttered Jeanette, which didn’t make any sense, but at least she wasn’t moaning anymore.
Sally stayed quiet and looked at the trees on the other side of the road. Strange, alien-looking trees, too thin and too light a shade of green. Not like the trees at home.
She’d never been to Uncle Colwyn’s place. None of them had. He’d been round theirs for Christmas a couple of times, but they’d never actually seen the house. It was called Dovecote Gardens (which was another thing that put Sally off- normal houses didn’t have names), and Mum had grown up there. She’d said it was a wonderful old house with a lot of personality. That probably meant it was full of spiders. They’d probably burst out of your mattress if you wriggled too much in your sleep.
“What does Uncle Colwyn do for a living, anyway?” asked Jeanette.
“He maintains the grounds and things around the house,” said Rube, “I think Mum said some of it was owned by the National Trust.”
“Oh yeah, sounds really demanding. Obviously he wouldn’t be able to spare fifteen minutes to drive down and pick us up. I completely understand now.”
“Look, I’m just telling you what Mum told me.”
“I know, but you’d think she’d have told us more, right?” Jeanette wrapped a strand of long blonde hair around two of her fingers, and gently touched them to her lips. “Like why we had to go off to the other side of the country for the whole summer. And would it have killed her to tell us about it before the last week of term?”
Rube shrugged unhappily.
They’d had three days to get ready. Three days to pack their worldly belongings before leaving their hometown behind and going into outer space. And Uncle Colwyn hadn’t even been here to meet them. The least he could have done was be here. At least he’d have been familiar.
Jeanette let out a short burst of air, and smiled a little sheepishly. “Ugh. I don’t even know why I’m complaining. A whole summer away from that jackass Monessa is a whole summer away from that jackass Monessa.” She rolled her eyes. “And who names their daughter Monessa anyway?”
“It’s a saint’s name,” said Rube.
“Why do you hang out with her if you hate her so much?” asked Sally, who’d had to listen to Jeanette whingeing about Monessa for the last six months.
Jeanette waved her arms. “It wasn’t my decision! Zainab had clarinet lessons with her, they hit it off, and now suddenly she’s part of our group and we all have to listen to her repeating jokes from KFC adverts all day.”
A taxi parked on the corner nearest the terrace, and a man got out and looked around. He checked a piece of paper in his hand, and walked over to them. “Excuse me- is one of you Ruby Warbeck?”
Rube raised her hand as if they were still in school. “Yes?”
“I’ve got a letter from your uncle.” He handed her the piece of paper, which turned out to be a little white envelope. Rube opened it daintily with one fingernail (a trick that Sally had always envied), and took out the letter inside.
“Colwyn says he’s been held up at work,” she told Sally and Jeanette, after skimming it for a couple of seconds, “He’s paid for a taxi to take us to his, and he promises to be there by this evening.”
Jeanette let out an exasperated snarl. “Goddammit, I thought he worked from home!”
The taxi driver shrugged.
Jeanette might have been disappointed, but Sally wasn’t surprised in the least. This was exactly what she’d come to expect from deep space. She reached down, picked up her suitcase, and headed for the next galaxy.
*
Dear Ruby,
I’m so sorry to leave you and your sisters waiting- you must think that I’m the rudest man alive. Something came up at work, and there was no getting around it. Please find the front door key sellotaped to the back of the envelope. I’ve paid for your taxi to the house (complete with tip, so you don’t have to worry about that), and I hope to see you later this evening.
I know the circumstances aren’t the best, but, still, I’mvery excited to have the three of you up at the house for the summer. There are a lot of people I’d like you to meet.
Yours sincerely,
Colwyn Ballantine
In the back of the taxi, Rube felt Jeanette nudge her arm. “I’m pretty sure that at this point, the Always logo is permanently stamped on my arse,” she whispered.
Rube made a face, and shushed her. She had a point, though- between the train and the café, they’d been sitting down most of the day even before the taxi had got stuck in traffic. It wasn’t comfortable for anyone, and Jeanette probably had it worst.
“Apologies for the delay, ladies,” said the taxi driver (who, thankfully, didn’t seem to have heard what Jeanette had said), “I think there must have been an accident up ahead.”
“That’s OK,” said Rube. Jeanette and Sally’s faces said different, but she ignored them.
“We shouldn’t be much longer. We just need to take the next left, and then it’s a straight line to Dovecote Gardens.”
Dovecote Gardens was the official name of Uncle Colwyn’s house, but apparently the gardens themselves were the really interesting part. There were statues, topiaries, plants from all over the world, all spread out over the hill and the surrounding fields. That was what Uncle Colwyn spent his life maintaining, and that was why Rube was a bit more sympathetic about his being held up than Jeanette was. ‘Working from home’ probably meant something a lot different when ‘home’ stretched out for half a mile.
Technically, Colwyn was Mum’s cousin rather than her brother, but she’d spent most of her childhood living with her aunt and uncle, so it more-or-less amounted to the same thing. They’d all moved to Dovecote Gardens when Mum was a teenager. Colwyn’s mother had inherited it from her father. Or, wait, maybe it was the other way round? Rube didn’t remember. Somebody had inherited it from somebody, that was the point. It had been in their family for over a hundred years.
Sally was leaning against the car window, her ear pressed against the glass as if she was trying to hear the sea. “I’ve worked it out,” she said gloomily, “Five weeks is thirty-five days. We’re going to have to wake up in Dovecote Gardens thirty-five times before we can go home.”
“Thirty-four,” said Jeanette, “Today’s Saturday. We’re going back on the Friday.”
“OK,” said Sally, “What’s twenty-four times thirty-four?”
“Er… Well, twenty times thirty is six hundred…”
Rube wanted to tell Sally to stop thinking about their holiday as if it was a prison sentence, but, if she was honest with herself, Rube wasn’t thinking of it as a holiday, either. It felt more like they were being sent into hiding. She didn’t know exactly what Colwyn meant by, “I know the circumstances aren’t the best,” but she could make an educated guess that it had something to do with Dad.
Not long after the taxi driver turned left, they saw the hill in the distance. “That’s the house, right there,” said the driver, nodding towards the little blur of black and cream at the top, “You’ll have a good view of the sea.”
They drove up to a ten-foot hedge with an arch carved into it to allow the road to go through. Once they’d passed it, Rube glanced behind, half-convinced that the arch would have closed up behind them. It was a lot neater than the thorn bushes in ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ but Rube didn’t know if that meant they could trust it. A lot of things were neat.
At first, all they passed were tall, conical trees that made Rube think of the spade symbol you got on cards, spaced out along the side of the road at two-yard intervals. As they went on, though, there was more. Every shade of green you could think of, with occasional flashes of pink and blue. Rocky streams with miniature waterfalls and wooden bridges. Little black ponds covered in reeds and lilypads, like in a cartoon. What looked like a hedge-maze, off in the distance. Fountains with three or four layers, splashing water that looked like an impossible shade of blue. Clusters of tall, leafy willows casting ominous shadows across the grass. And throughout it all, little white garden walls wound through it, like someone had put a marble net over the whole thing.
The first things Rube noticed, when she finally saw the house close-up, were the two marble lions perched on the roof of the veranda, each with a raised front paw and a snarl on its lips. Rube wondered how old they were. They looked like they’d been made out of the same rough, off-white stone as the rest of the house, but there wasn’t any weathering on their faces. You could still see every whisker, even from four metres below them.
“Does Uncle Colwyn drive?” asked Jeanette, looking around for a parking space or a garage, “He must do, right? He’s barely walking-distance from his front gate, let alone the shops.”
“I don’t know,” said Rube. She seemed to remember him taking the train down to visit them at least once.
The house was four storeys, all white stone, black railings and wooden shutters, and Rube found it hard to imagine what it must be like to live there alone. Maybe that was why Colwyn had been so quick to invite them to stay- the company of three annoying nieces was better than no company at all.
They went up to the veranda, and Rube unlocked the door. When she got it open, she was relieved to find that the house smelled nice- warm wood and fresh air. It wouldn’t have been a good sign if she’d smelled mould or dust. Or old food, which you could smell at one of her friends’ houses back home and which meant that Rube couldn’t spend more than five minutes in there without gagging.
They walked inside, and saw that the whole bottom floor seemed to be one room. You came through the door to the living room, and the dining table and kitchen unit were at the back, behind the staircase. At various points around the walls, there were French windows, leading out to the gardens.
“I’m sure there’s some kind of feng shui thing about not putting the stairs right across the room like that,” said Jeanette.
“I don’t think that’s how it’s pronounced,” Rube replied. She walked over to the coffee table opposite the sofa, and found another note from Uncle Colwyn.
Dear girls,
I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here this evening. I’ve prepared a salad for dinner, but if you’re not in the mood for that, there’s plenty of other food in the fridge. I hope to be back tomorrow morning at the latest.
Yours,
Colwyn
Rube walked through to the kitchen, and found the salad bowl in the fridge, covered with clingfilm. “This looks nice,” she told the other two. She’d probably have said it anyway, just to be encouraging, but it did look nice. It was one of those salads with cheese and fruit thrown in, as opposed to Mum’s salads, which were usually just cucumber, lettuce, tomato, and maybe some red onions if you were lucky.
Rube turned round to put it on the table, and saw the horse.
Not an actual, flesh-and-blood horse, obviously, though it had made her jump just as much as if it was. This horse looked as if it was made out of wood and wicker. It was a head mounted to the wall like a hunting trophy from the bad old days, and underneath was a label saying Falada.
When Jeanette came over to see it, she made a little impressed noise in the back of her throat. “Why do you think it’s called Falada?”
“It’s from a fairy tale,” explained Sally, “The one about… um, there’s a kidnapped princess, and they kill her horse so it can’t tell anyone who she is, but then its head carries on talking anyway…” At this, she eyed the horse nervously, as if she expected it to start speaking there and then. It wasn’t just her, either- Rube found herself checking around the base for any microphones or mechanical bits.
After a moment or two, by which time they were all reasonably certain that they didn’t have a talking wooden horse on their hands, Jeanette leaned forward and patted it on the nose. “I wish we had something like this at ours. Do you think he’ll tell us where he got it?”
“I think maybe he made it himself,” said Rube. She didn’t know why she thought that, but she did. Maybe it was something about the unevenness of the wicker. Or maybe it was just comforting to think of Uncle Colwyn as the kind of guy who’d spend weeks on end making something sweet and odd like this. It wouldn’t be so bad to spend five weeks with a man like that.
Jeanette straightened up. “Anyway. Salad?”
“Salad,” agreed Rube, and they went to sit at the dining room table.
*
There had been a whole bunch of bedrooms to choose from, and Jeanette had picked the one with the imposing, black-framed window that stretched up to the ceiling. It gave the place a gothic look, which seemed appropriate when you were sent off to a big, empty mansion to visit a long-lost relative. Just as long as no-one got locked in the attic or forced to marry a wicked duke.
She’d been worried that she’d have to share with Sally. Even after they saw that there were enough rooms for the three of them, she’d worried that Sally might say she’d feel better with Jeanette or Rube in the same room as her. And Jeanette would have been the obvious choice, being three years older instead of five and a half, and she wouldn’t have been able to complain or refuse without feeling like a selfish jerk. Sally had been anxious about this whole trip from the start. If she’d needed her big sister to keep her company, then big sister would just have had to to swallow her desire for personal space and do the right thing. But it hadn’t happened. Sally was in the room next door, close enough to shout if she needed anything, and Jeanette was in here. It was the first stroke of luck she’d had all day.
In a way, though, she was glad that Uncle Colwyn hadn’t been there when they arrived. After a journey like that, the last thing you wanted to do was make polite conversation with a guy you hadn’t seen in years. After dinner, Rube and Sally (who saw her every day, and had been stuck on a bus with her for three hours on top of that) had let her go upstairs for a shower, then pick a bedroom and stay there. Uncle Colwyn probably wouldn’t have.
Still, where was he? They weren’t going to find his body in the cellar or something, were they?
She shouldn’t think like that. It was tempting fate.
She was pretty sure this house didn’t have a cellar, anyway.
Jeanette turned out the light and got into bed. The big, black window loomed in front of her. There weren’t any curtains, so all you could see from the bed was the sky. You could actually see the stars from here. You couldn’t at home.
*
If Sally had been able to get to sleep on time, she’d never have seen it. But she’d hated the idea of lying here in the dark thinking about things, so she was reading instead. It didn’t make her feel much better. She’d thought that maybe she could forget about what was going on in real life if she got absorbed in a book, but bits of the stories kept bothering her. There was a girl who stopped being able to talk when her mother died. There was a girl who was separated from her family during the plague. There was a girl who was sent away to become a servant on her twelfth birthday. It probably should have been comforting to think that she wasn’t the only one alone and adrift in outer space, but it felt more like being punched in the stomach.
Sally hated sleeping with the window open (she’d read too many stories about vampires), but Rube had told her it was too hot to sleep with it closed tonight, so they’d compromised. The window was only open a crack- barely three centimetres- and that was just wide enough for the moth to get in.
Sally looked up at the window, and there it was, a fluttery tangle of brown on the windowsill. It was moving- it looked as if it was trying to get its wings into position- but there was a reddish-brown stain underneath it, smudged across the wood. Sally got up for a closer look. Something had happened to one of its… wings? Legs? There was too much blood to tell. She didn’t dare move it. If you picked insects up the wrong way, you could end up crushing them to death.
There was nothing for it- she was going to have to go and find the bathroom. She was pretty sure she remembered where it was, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.
Sally opened the door, and stepped out into the cold, dark hallway. It was gloomy and weird-smelling, and the floor was all stony and cold on her feet, but at least the bathroom wasn’t that far down the hall. There was a little glass in there to keep toothbrushes in, and Sally took the brushes out and filled it up part of the way with water. After thinking about it for a moment, she took a few squares of toilet paper as well.
She hurried back to the moth. If she was careful, maybe she could clean it up. At least then she’d be able to see what had happened.
The moth hadn’t stopped moving. Sally put the glass down beside it, and dipped her finger in the water. Just a little drop. She didn’t want to soak it.
As gently as she could, she touched the moth’s side, near where the blood was but not actually on it. She couldn’t tell if it had made any difference, so she put her hand back in the glass and tried again.
It took three drops of water before she dared to dab the moth with the tissue and wipe away some of the blood, but when she did, she was relieved to see that it was only the blood that was coming away. She hadn’t pulled off any of its legs by mistake. Soon the wing was clean. Sally couldn’t see any damage. It must have been the body that was hurt.
Once she’d sponged away as much of the blood as she dared, Sally cupped her hands around the moth too see if it flew up and perched on her finger. Instead, it just fluttered for a bit, then gave up.
So, how were you supposed to look after a moth? She tapped her fingers on the windowsill, thinking. She was pretty sure that insects were cold-blooded, so she shut the window so it wouldn’t freeze. She thought about fetching a bit of cloth to put over it, like a blanket, but she didn’t know how to make sure it wasn’t too heavy. After a moment, she went to one of her bags, got out a notebook, and tore out a piece of paper. If she gave it a little paper tent, it would be in the shade when the sun came up in the morning.
Sally stayed there for another hour, keeping an eye on the moth. It wouldn’t have been polite to leave him alone in the dark, either.
(I’m going to take a break from “Kelpie and Silkie” for a few months, while I decide what to do with it. Tune in next week for the return of the Warbeck sisters.)
*
(A letter delivered to 14 St. Crispian’s Drive, September 2006)
Dear Mr Green, Miss Clements, Miss Pepper and Miss Gharib,
Pardon the intrusion, but I have an offer that I think will interest you.
My name is Joshua Dunn, and I represent Safety First Lettings, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of student safety within our properties. We believe that what happened to you this spring could have been avoided if Berrylands University had taken adequate safety precautions on its campus and in the student housing it offers. For too long, the university has been letting in areas where just anybody can gather. You saw for yourselves how disastrous the results of that can be.
The promise of Safety First is exactly that- the safety of our tenants is our top priority. In addition to reinforced doors and panic buttons within each room, the streets and buildings in which we let are protected by a hired security team. We would be delighted to take you on a tour of some of our properties and show you that a different way of living is possible.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Yours,
Joshua Dunn
Safety First Lettings (a division of Dalrymple Property Co)
*
(A poster in the Student Union, October 2006)
This is ROSALYN PEPPER.
On the 8th of April this year, she saw her flatmate being attacked by a madman with a hammer. Instead of freezing or running away, she calmly walked up to him and tapped the attacker on the shoulder, drawing his attention away. The man broke Rosalyn’s collarbone, but she saved her flatmate’s life.
Forget shallow pop stars and spoiled celebrities. THIS is the sort of person you should be looking up to.
*
(From the ‘Berrylands After Dark’ forum, November 2006)
MRowlands:
How much do you want to bet that one of those girls was having an affair with one of the Oakmen guys, and doesn’t want it to come out? Every time I see their pictures, I think, “Yeah, you’ve got something to hide.”
JButter:
My bet would be Clements. Notice how she was conveniently absent from the scene…
*
(A letter sent to 14 St Crispian’s Drive, December 2006)
Dear Ms Gharib and Ms Pepper,
I am writing to express my concern about your statements about Bradley Simmons and Gregory Melham. While I can understand your distress about what happened to you on the 2nd of April, the fact remains that these are two individuals who are clearly in need of psychological help. To make matters worse, there is some evidence that they may have been unfairly scapegoated because of their unconventional lifestyle. I hope you can see why, in a situation like this, comments like the ones you made are not helpful.
If you would like to discuss this matter further, my contact details are written below. I would be happy to meet you in the Student Union or elsewhere to explain the situation further. I believe that everyone is capable of learning and doing better- you have the opportunity to prove this to yourselves.
Yours faithfully,
Dean Hazell
*
(Graffiti in the men’s toilets near the Rubens building at Berrylands University, January 2007)
Never forget that Mariam Gharib blew up a microwave just to take out an annoying co-worker!!!
“He’s done terrible things,” said the old lady on the phone.
Saffron was just standing in the middle of the living room, but she felt as if she was on a rolling ship, shaking her about and making her seasick. “Who are you?”
“Listen to me, Saffron. Years ago, he stole a girl from her parents. I don’t know why he did it, but he hid her away and laughed in their faces.”
Saffron fell back onto the sofa. No wonder he didn’t want to tell me about Amber before. She looked up at the ceiling and tried to stop feeling like she was going to throw up.
“When her father died, he wouldn’t even let her go to the funeral,” the old lady continued, “That is the kind of man he is.”
Last year, Saffron’s teacher had read The Horse and His Boy to the class, and Saffron remembered the bit near the start where the boy had overheard his dad saying that he wasn’t his real father and he was going to try and sell him as a slave. It had said in the book that the boy didn’t mind because he’d never really loved his dad properly anyway, but Saffron didn’t see how he wasn’t upset. He was his dad. He’d seen him every day of his life. Even if he hadn’t been nice to him, he’d been what the boy was used to. Wouldn’t you feel as if you’d been shaken up and put down in the middle of nowhere? Wouldn’t you feel like you couldn’t really believe anything you’d ever been told in your life?
Uncle Christian had said, It’s Amber’s story- I can’t tell to you behind her back. I’ll tell it when she asks, and not a moment sooner. And even if it hadn’t been his real reason, even if she couldn’t believe anything else he’d ever said, Saffron still didn’t want to hear it behind her sister’s back. “Should I get Amber?” she asked, her voice sounding a bit croaky.
“Excuse me?”
“Should I get Amber? Do you want to tell this with her listening?”
“Who on earth is Amber?”
“My sister.” Saffron frowned. “I thought that was who you were talking about.”
“Of course I wasn’t talking about your sister!” said the old lady, in the kind of voice that made you feel stupid… but Saffron didn’t think she had any reason to feel stupid, because if the old lady wasn’t talking about Amber, then who could she be talking about? The only other little girl Uncle Christian lived with was her, and Saffron was pretty sure she’d remember if she’d been kidnapped.
And there was something else, too. “Wait a minute- who are you? You never said.” Saffron knew she should have got the answer to that a lot earlier, instead of instantly believing strange voices on the phone over people she’d known her entire life, but at least she could get it now.
There was a heavy sigh. “The important thing is, Saffron, that right now, you have two choices.” (She still hasn’t answered it! thought Saffron, but decided not to say anything.) “There’s no way out for your mother and Mr Ashley. The police will soon be at their door. You can either wait at home and be dragged away with them, or you can get out while you still can.” She paused. Horrible images danced through Saffron’s head. “If you start walking now, you can be ten miles away by nightfall.”
“They don’t arrest kids just because their mothers are in trouble,” mumbled Saffron.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said the old lady, with such force that Saffron wanted to hold the phone away from her ear in case it happened again, “Are you really that naïve? They’ve probably already tricked you into being part of everything they’ve done. That will be enough for the police. Tarred by the same brush, they’ll say.”
Saffron pictured herself and her family at the police station, being screamed at by officers as they waved spotlights and handcuffs at them. Could Mum and Uncle Christian really have tricked her into being part of something bad? When? And had there been any way she could have avoided it?
“Leave the house now,” said the old lady, “Get as far away as you can. This is your only chance to escape.”
Saffron saw herself sneaking out of the house, walking to the end of the road, and then getting herself lost on purpose. Walking until her feet bled, and then sleeping under a bridge. It was her only way out. The only way to avoid the police station and the spotlights and the handcuffs.
She’s lying. Sometimes people say things just to upset you.
But what if she wasn’t? What if the police really were on their way? Maybe there was a girl who’d been kidnapped, somebody Saffron had never met. Maybe Mum and Uncle Christian really had done horrible things when Saffron and Amber weren’t around.
But that didn’t mean that she had to run off and leave them behind. Even if there were horrible things on the way, she’d feel a lot better about facing them if she was with her family.
Saffron cleared her throat. “Anyway, like I said, my mum’s not in right now. You should try again later.” And she hung up quickly, before the old lady could say anything else. “Get out of the house,” Tamsin had said, and Octavia did, because she might have taken back the knife and the mug of poison but she’d also kept Octavia’s phone so she couldn’t call the police. Octavia ran through the streets, searching for a passer-by who might help her call an ambulance, imagining that she could feel her stomach corroding and dissolving away with every moment. But even as she thought that, she felt a strange sense of triumph: She’d talked her way out. She knew it had been a fluke more than anything else- her philosophy of “no-one really knows what they’re doing” applied to herself as much as anyone else- but the euphoria was still there. All that horrible stuff had happened, but she was still here. And she’d still be here the next time, and the one after that.
Octavia was timing it as well as she could. One five-second sip, and then a question. Playing for time, hoping the sips she’d taken so far hadn’t poisoned her already. The knife was still there, cool against her throat. She took a sip (one, two, three, four, five) and asked, “Why are you doing this?”
Tamsin let out a dry splutter of a laugh. “Are you joking?”
Another sip- one, two, three, four, five. “Well, it can’t just be because Russel didn’t want to ask Martin about hiring a musician for the ceremony.”
Tamsin leaned forward, the knife shaking unnervingly as she moved, and whispered in Octavia’s ear. “Are you actually fucking him, or do you just really want to?”
“What?!” Octavia was so taken aback that she forgot to sip this time.
Luckily, Tamsin didn’t seem to notice. She just rolled her eyes and put on a sardonic sing-song voice. “Resurrecting his TV career… Miss executive producer…”
Octavia wondered if it was worth it to try and tell the truth. She might not believe it. It might just make her angrier. But she was quickly working her way up to murderous anyway. And honestly, what else did Octavia even have?
The knife left her neck. Tamsin had only moved it back an inch or two, but it was an improvement. “What?”
Sip- one, two, three, four, five. “He found out that I’d screwed over a businessman I worked with.” One, two, three, four, five. “George Chandler from LeFay Jewellers, if you really want to know.”
“How was he blackmailing you?” Tamsin was still holding the knife up, but Octavia thought she might have relaxed her hand a bit. Of course, she could just have been giving herself enough space to have a run-up if she decided to stab her.
One, two, three, four, five. “He said he’d tell George Chandler where my children live.”
“You never said you had children.”
“I know.” One, two, three, four, five. “That’s because I don’t want people like George Chandler finding out about them.” One, two, three, four, five. “Or people like my mother.”
Tamsin’s frown deepened, and Octavia worried that she was about to ask why it had been kept from her, and was Octavia trying to call her a snitch? “So how did Russel find out?”
One, two, three, four, five. Here it was. If anything she said caused Tamsin to lose it and plunge the knife right in, it was this. “He followed me.” One, two, three, four, five. “He got photographs of me at my daughter’s tenth birthday.”
One, two, three, four, five. The knife hadn’t moved yet. Of course, depending on what Tamsin had put in the tea, she might be as good as dead already. At least that way George Chandler wouldn’t have any reason to go after Amber and Saffron.
“And why should I believe you?” asked Tamsin.
One, two, three, four, five. “No idea.” One, two, three, four, five. “But it’s true.” And there it was. That was all she had.
The phone rang while Uncle Christian was in the garden, and at first, Saffron was just going to let it ring. She knew what to say on the phone- Mum had taught her- but that didn’t mean she liked doing it. You picked it up and got some strange adult’s voice on the other end, asking you questions you didn’t know the answer to. But the phone carried on ringing and Saffron started to wonder if it was someone with an emergency. Maybe even Mum, calling from London. Somebody she’d feel bad ignoring, anyway. Saffron picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Octavia Lambton,” said the voice on the other end.
“What? I’m not…”
“I want to speak to Octavia Lambton.” It was a scratchy old-lady voice, and Saffron didn’t think she’d ever heard it before. “Now, please.”
Saffron finally came up with an answer. “Um, she’s not at home.”
There was a huff on the other end. “Who am I speaking to?”
“Saffron.” She shifted the phone from one hand to the other. “I’m her daughter.”
“Saffron.” She said it in the same way teachers said the names of kids they wanted to send to the headteacher , and even though they weren’t even in the same room, Saffron felt like trying to hide behind something. “Do you know a man called Christian Ashley?”
“Yes! Do you want to talk to him instead?” Uncle Christian could deal with her, no problem. Whatever she wanted, she could tell it to him instead of Saffron.
“Certainly not!” snapped the old lady, “I’m calling to warn you about him!”
And Saffron couldn’t reply to that, because she was too busy thinking about that sentence again and again in the hope that it would eventually make sense.
They were back in the Doggetts’ sticky, cramped living room. Octavia had looked around at a couple of the boxes and piles of clutter, but found nothing but old toys and used food packaging. Maybe they were planning to recycle all of it eventually.
“It’s going to be a smash hit,” said Russel, “You’ll see. People have been waiting for a return to the simpler things. Not everything has to be post-modern and clever-clever.”
Tamsin gave him a tight smile. “Drink your tea.”
Russel obeyed. “A smash hit.” He grinned. “And you won’t be forgotten in all this, Octavia. Executive producer- how does that sound?”
“If you like,” said Octavia. She’d noticed that Russel was slurring his words a bit. She didn’t think she’d seen him drinking anything, but maybe he’d asked for a shot of vodka in his tea.
He raised his mug, as if in a toast. “Couldn’t have done it without you. And we’ll forget about old what’s-his-name, right?” He winked at her.
“If you like,” she repeated. She’d have expected Tamsin to pick up on what Russel had just said, but she hadn’t acknowledged it at all. Just carried on staring at him.
Russel elbowed Tamsin. “We’ll be moving somewhere better than this dump soon, eh, Tam? You might get to make friends with Girls Aloud after all, eh?”
“Mm.” There was something strange about her face. Something tight and tense.
“We can send Avery off to one of those big private schools.” (Avery was currently at his grandmother’s- Octavia still hadn’t met him. Sometimes she thought that Russel and Tamsin didn’t actually have a baby at all, just a recording of one crying that they played every time one of them wanted to leave the other alone with guests.) “We can… We can buy a property on the Costa Brava…” He was definitely stumbling over his words. “Somewhere on…” He trailed off. His eyelids were beginning to droop.
Tamsin watched him for a few seconds, as if to check he wasn’t going to continue his train of thought. Then she turned to Octavia. “You’re not drinking your tea.”
Out of nowhere, Octavia remembered something Tamsin had said a couple of weeks agio. I’d started to play games and cause trouble in our relationship. Maybe she should have asked Tamsin what exactly she’d meant by that. “Hm? Oh, I’m just waiting for it to cool down a bit.”
Tamsin’s brow furrowed. “Drink. It.”
Octavia looked back at Russel, whose eyes were completely closed by now. Dead to the world. She looked Tamsin in the eye, and set her mug down on the table.
“Drink it,” said Tamsin, through gritted teeth, clicking her tongue with the ‘t’s, “If you want to leave this house alive, you drink it.”
“What did you put in it, Tamsin?”
“That’s not what you need to be worried about. Drink it!” Tamsin looked sharper, as if her nose, chin and cheekbones had all suddenly been filed to points that could take your hand off if you weren’t careful. And Russel had thought he could call her pathetic in public and then drink tea she’d made an hour later. He must have been mad.
Then again, what did that say about Octavia? She’d been about to drink the tea, too.
“Sounds a bit like something your husband told me last week,” she said, conversationally, “I’m not the one you need to worry about. He wasn’t talking about you, but maybe he should have been.” She smiled.
Octavia had hoped- stupidly- that a bit of flattery might help Tamsin calm down, but no such luck, because the next thing she knew Tamsin had taken a knife out of her pocket. It was a little, old-fashioned letter-opener with a delicate silver handle and pretty carvings around the edges, but that didn’t make the blade look an less dangerous. Especially not when Tamsin reached out and pressed the flat side against Octavia’s neck.
Tamsin took a little breath, like a schoolgirl preparing to give a presentation to the class, and sad, “If you drink your tea, I might call the ambulance in time for them to come and pump it out of your system. If you don’t, you get this in your throat, and I won’t.”
Octavia’s mind went to the same place it always did in situations like this. She’s bluffing. There’s no way she’s actually prepared to use that knife. But it wasn’t as much comfort as usual, because Tamsin didn’t need to be prepared. She could cause a fatal injury just as easily by accident as on purpose.
There was only one thing to do. Octavia lifted the mug to her lips and took her first sip.
camelwithout 