The branch was now as thick as a tree trunk.  Sandy walked along it, through air so cold that you expected to walk into a sheet of ice at any moment, and looked down at the empty streets below.  At the moment, the view was about the same as you’d get from the top of a double-decker bus, but Sandy knew it wasn’t going to stay that way. 

She’d only ever seen Anastasia’s house from the front, when a group of them had been to the cinema and someone’s mum had dropped them home one by one.  It didn’t look any better from the back.  It wasn’t a cheap or dirty-looking house (never mind what Mrs Fellowes and Mrs Crowther had said), but it was… bare.  A grey rectangle like a used, smudgy rubber with a roof on top.  There was about half a metre of front drive, with a six-foot spiked fence around it.  The curtains always seemed to be drawn, even when it was light out.  Which meant that Sandy had to take a wild guess as to which of the back windows was Anastasia’s bedroom, and knock on the glass, hoping desperately that she’d got it right.

The curtain went back, and Anastasia looked out at her.  Sandy waved.

Anastasia immediately opened the window.  She didn’t take a second to recover from the shock, and she didn’t hesitate and wonder if it was a good idea.  Whatever was going on, it looked like she wanted in.  And that was when Sandy began to wonder if the plant had taken her past Anastasia’s window on purpose.

The window opened.  Sandy couldn’t see much of Anastasia’s room behind her, but there was a faint smell of chocolate, like you got from a box of cocoa powder.  A very Christmassy kind of smell, Sandy thought. 

“What are you doing?” asked Anastasia.

Sandy waved her hand from one end of the branch to the other… or, at least, from the rightmost bit you could see to the leftmost bit.  “Remember I told you about the plant someone gave me?”

Anastasia leaned out of the window to get a better look at it.  “You said it was a little plant!”

“It was, until about twenty minutes ago.  Then I got upstairs, and it…”  She looked around herself, and wasn’t sure that there were any words that could properly describe what had happened.  “It wanted to go out of the window.”

Anastasia let out a short, surprised laugh.  “And you let it?”

Sandy shrugged.  “I don’t know where it leads.  Do you want to come?”

Anastasia didn’t even say anything.  She just hoisted herself onto the windowsill, and climbed through the open window onto the plant.

(To be continued)

By eight o’clock, everyone was lolled out all over the living room, watching the Porridge Christmas special for the eighth year in a row and dipping their hands in and out of the chocolate tins.  About an hour ago, Gran and Aunt Bernie had brought in sandwiches and cups of tea for dinner, and it seemed like that was the last time anyone had moved.  No-one was exactly asleep, but they’d all fallen into a doze, hypnotised by the warmth and the soft glow of the room.

Sandy decided that now was probably as good a time as any to start shifting her presents up to her room.  She made a neat pile of books and chocolate boxes, laid some folded-up clothes over it, and picked it up as carefully as she could.  Nothing fell off, so she carried it over to the living room door and went out into the hall.

As soon as you left the living room, you felt cooler.  Spending the whole day in the warm glow of the Christmas lights, the fire and the telly made the rest of the house seem almost… blue, by comparison.  Not in an unpleasant way, but definitely in a strange one.  It was as if the whole house was reminding you that it was Christmas Day, and everything was operating on different rules.

Sandy heard every creak of the staircase as she went up.  She carried her pile of presents through the cool, blue silence, and then she opened her bedroom door and saw what had happened to the plant.

When she thought back on it later, Sandy was quite impressed with herself for not dropping everything in shock.  She stood in the doorway, still and staring, for a minute or two, then carefully put the presents down on her bed before going to the window to see what was going on.

The plant had grown at least a metre since this morning, long enough that it had reached the window and buckled against it.  The long, purple branch was curled at the end, making it look as if it was scratching at the glass.  In fact, it had scratched the glass- there were two little white lines there that definitely hadn’t been there before.  Gran was not going to be pleased.

When Sandy opened the window, she wasn’t expecting anything amazing to happen.  She probably should have been, considering what had happened already, but in the moment, she was just thinking that it would be good for the plant to have a little more space.

She’d barely opened it a crack when the branch rushed past her, shooting out into the night.  Yards and yards and yards of it, as if the window had been the only thing restraining it for the last few hours.  Sandy took a step back to get out of its way, and saw that it was getting thicker as it went.  First it was the width of a bit of string, then the width of her index finger, and before long, the width of her arm.  It gained thorns and knotholes as it went, seeming to pull them out of itself.  And all the while, the flowerpot it had grown from stayed where it was, anchoring the whole thing in the middle of her desk.

It finally stopped growing, and Sandy went to the window to see how far it went.

She couldn’t see the end.  It went up at kind of an angle, leaning forward and looming over the houses across the road.  Looming over most of the town, probably.  Sandy couldn’t see anyone out on the street right now, but if somebody did look up, they’d have no idea what they were looking at.

If somebody did look up, they’d see Sandy walking across the branch, her arms out for balance, stepping carefully around the thorns as she climbed higher and higher.  She went up through the frosty air and into the night sky, waiting to see what the plant had planned for her.

(To be continued)

At seventeen, Roma was the oldest of Shirley and Arnold’s grandchildren, and she felt she had a duty to set an example for the younger ones at family events, because God knew the adults wouldn’t.  Over the last few years, Roma had started to notice that Christmas lunch went pretty much the same way every year, right down to the arguments.  Gran would always tell Granddad off for not helping with the cooking.  Grandad would always tell Uncle Nicky not to get too drunk, even though him and Gran had started on the Bucks Fizz at around nine in the morning.  Mum and Uncle Nicky would always needle Uncle Simon about being uptight (Roma had never seen much evidence of that, so she assumed it was one of those things that brothers and sisters decided about you one day and never, ever changed their minds.)  Then the crackers would come out, and there would be tantrums galore until Roma put on the paper hat, even though her hair was so thick and curly that it would split the thing in half before she’d had it on for five minutes, so really, what was the point?

And now Gran was telling stories about when Sandy was born.  Mainly the ones about how Sandy’s dad’s family had inconvenienced her.  “It’s caused no end of trouble, her having a different last name.  But it’s what her mother wanted.”  Gran let out a snort.  “And you can imagine the kind of fuss Caroline would have put up if we’d tried to change it.  Queen Caroline who washed her nose in turpentine.”

Sandy herself wasn’t paying much attention.  In fact, she’d been in a funny mood all morning.  Lost in her thoughts, or something.

Mum took a sip from her glass.  “I thought about going back to my maiden name after the divorce.  Then I remembered that my maiden name was ‘Copstick’.”  And she collapsed into giggles.  Gran (alias Mrs Shirley Copstick) gave her a dirty look.

When they’d been opening the presents, Sandy had smiled and thanked everyone, but she hadn’t seemed excited about anything.  Sparkly sequinned skirt, novelty fridge magnets from BHS, inappropriate video from Keeley… barely a flicker.  OK, maybe some of that was to do with getting older, but one of her presents had been a packet of chocolates in weird shapes, and she hadn’t eaten even one of them.  She’d just put it to the side and carried on thinking.

“Are we doing sambucas?” asked Uncle Nicky.

“Not after last time,” said Gran firmly.

Sandy was moving her fork mechanically, shovelling the turkey and veg into her mouth as if she wasn’t tasting any of it.  (“Come on, Gran’s cooking isn’t that bad!” was a joke you’d only make around here if you had a death wish.)  Her mind was somewhere else.  The only clue they had as to where it was involved something Gran had said earlier.  “Do me a favour and don’t mention the carol concert.”  If that even had anything to do with it, and wasn’t just Gran not having liked the songs.

Sandy?  Are you feeling OK?  The moment Roma thought about asking that, she realised that it wouldn’t make any difference.  If she’d wanted to talk about it, she’d have brought it up herself, and if she didn’t want to, then she definitely didn’t want to at a crowded dinner table where most of your words would be drowned out by someone starting an argument about what year “Stairway to Heaven” was released.  Sandy would probably just say she was fine and refuse to say anything else.  If anything, it would probably just embarrass her to know that it had been so obvious.

Roma decided to stay quiet.  It was probably about time somebody in this family did that.

(To be continued)

It was the last day of term, but there was no time for any celebrating.  Right at the end of lunch, the Year Eights were herded into the Music room to be registered and checked for uniform violations before walking in crocodile formation to a church three streets away.  One they were there, they launched into a rehearsal, which meant a lot of waiting around while you weren’t on stage and a lot of being yelled at for going the wrong way or standing up at the wrong time when you were.  The only interesting thing to do was start wondering about some of the song lyrics again.  Like why they were letting Mrs Fellowes sing, “What can I give Him, poor as I am?” when they’d all seen her husband’s new BMW.

The hours wore on, bringing crushing boredom and tiredness, until it was finally five o’clock and everyone’s parents began to show up.  By then, Sandy couldn’t stop yawning.

“Just as long as you don’t fall asleep before we get to Joy to the World,” said Anastasia, “Remember, you promised to sing the Simpsons version.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Oh.  Well, in that case, I dare you to sing the Simpsons version.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Between the headteacher’s long, rambling introduction, the vicar’s long, rambling introduction, and all the students who’d been given Bible verses to read out, it was about a quarter of an hour before they even got to sing.  Sandy sat on the bench, letting herself be hypnotised by the Christmas lights, and listened to Mrs Crowther try to fit more syllables into words than belonged there.  Gloah-hoar-ee-ee too-oo thuh-huh new-hew boa-orn king…

Then, all of a sudden, she heard a different voice.

She couldn’t hear any of the individual words at first- it was just a series of aggressive sounds from the back of the church.  Sandy looked up just in time to see a big guy in a blue jacket elbow past the ushers on the doors and stride out into the aisle, looking from one pew to another.  After a few seconds, he spotted someone near the front, and ran forward towards them.

Sandy looked over at Anastasia, who’d gone pale and started biting her lip.

The music had stopped for the next Bible verse, which meant that some of what the man was saying came through to Sandy and her friends.  “…come home to an empty house…”

“I told you about this weeks ago!” said the woman whose elbow he’d grabbed.  She was tall and thin with short black hair, and, even though she’d never seen her before, Sandy suddenly knew who she was.  Anastasia looked exactly like her.

“I work hard all day, and you’re here sitting on your…”

Sandy saw some movement on the other side of the pew.  It was her gran, standing up and looking at the man as if she was going to leap over to his side and throw him out of the window.  It wasn’t going to be like that, though.  Sandy knew.  There were too many people in between them.  By the time Gran got to them, the man would have already done whatever he had planned and left.

He looked up at the stage, saw Anastasia, and pointed right at her.  “Go and get her,” he told her mother, “Now.”

As it turned out, she didn’t need to.  Anastasia had already stood up and started to make her way down the steps.

*

After Anastasia left, there were more songs- so many that Sandy lost count.  But in between, when somebody got up and spoke, she heard Mrs Crowther and Mrs Fellowes whispering.

“Well, he’s just the latest in a long line of them.  There’s always a sugar daddy somewhere.”

“I’d feel sorry for her, but she’s…  Oh, I don’t know.”

“Cheap.  That’s the word I’d use.”

“You know, my sister taught the daughter in primary, and apparently she had all the boys wrapped around her finger.  Played them off against each other, apparently.  Sly little thing.”

“She’s never very clean, have you noticed?”

Sandy stared at the floor and waited for the next song.  She wouldn’t be able to hear them when the music was playing.

*

On the drive home, every window was filled with warm, bright lights.  But Sandy didn’t even feel like looking at them.

(To be continued)

As soon as December started, Sandy got into the habit of counting all the Christmas trees she could see on her walk home from school.  For the first couple of days, there would only be one or two (“probably had theirs up since September,” Gran would say), but as the month wore on, they’d double and triple until you lost count.  Every house you passed would have at least one window full of glowing lights, red or gold or multicoloured.

When Sandy got to her own house, there was a set of warm, flashing lights in the living room window there, too.  But for the last few days, that hadn’t been the first thing she’d looked at.

The plant sat in her window, a striking purple against the yellow curtains.  When you looked up at it from street level, its branches almost looked as if they were waving.

(To be continued)

After the fourth time Sandy tried and failed to thread the sewing machine, Anastasia moved her chair sideways and did it herself.  “Thanks,” said Sandy gloomily.

“Well, it was starting to depress me,” she replied with a shrug, “Sandy versus Machines, coming soon to a cinema near you.”

“If it acts up again, I’m throwing it in the river.”  The sewing machines were all on tales around the edge of the room, which meant that, when you were using one, you had your back to the rest of the room.  This had its advantages and disadvantages.  On the one hand, it meant that you didn’t have to look at Mrs Ingram all lesson.  On the other, it meant that she could sneak up on you whenever you least expected it.

No-one in Year Eight knew exactly how old Mrs Ingram was.  She couldn’t have been much more than sixty (“otherwise she’d have retired by now, right?”), but she looked as if she’d been around for centuries, like a bog mummy preserved in the mud for future generations.  Her face had shrivelled into a permanent scowl, and she looked at every pupil in the class as if they’d just thrown litter into her garden.  Sandy glanced around, just in case, and saw her behind the desk, flicking through some paperwork.  They were safe for now.

Sandy looked up at the display on the walls, about a foot above the sewing machines.  They’d spent most of this term making tea towels with their own personal designs.  Actually, they’d spent most of this term writing about how they were going to make the tea towels, then writing about how they had made the tea towels, with the actual making bit kind of a rush job in between.  Anyway, Sandy could see hers from here, and she wasn’t totally satisfied with it.  “I don’t think you can tell that they’re supposed to be bananas,” she said, pointing at the yellow shapes sewn onto the material, “They look more like moons.”

Anastasia stretched up for a better look.  Sandy noticed that she was wearing a kind of glittery blue eyeliner today, and wondered if she’d deliberately picked it because it matched the jewels in her earrings, or if it had just been a coincidence.  “Nothing wrong with moons,” she told Sandy.

“Yeah, but if I’d been doing moons, I’d have picked a dark blue background, not a green one.”  Her eyes wandered over to some of the other projects.  “Yours is meant to be like a ladybird pattern, right?”

“Yeah.”  A genuine grin came to Anastasia’s face when she looked at it.  “The giant ladybird tea towel, that’s me.”

“It looks good.”

“Thanks.”

If they’d been listening to the sound of flickering paper from Mrs Ingram’s desk, then they might have heard the decisive thump as she dropped all of it onto the desk, all done with.  Then it might not have been such a surprise when Mrs Ingram called out, “Anastasia Dunn.  Come here.”

Anastasia came here.  Sandy turned around on her chair, so she could have one eye on her sewing and one eye on what was happening at the desk.  She couldn’t risk turning any further.  Mrs Ingram looked ready to skin someone alive.

She waited for Anastasia to walk all the way to her desk (about two and a half metres, give or take), before demanding, “Where is your evaluation essay?”

“Um…” mumbled Anastasia, “I handed it into the marking cupboard on Monday…”

“No.”  Mrs Ingram didn’t yell it, exactly, but she managed to stretch the word out so that it sounded like it had four or five extra vowels in it.  “If you had, it would have been in this pile with the others.”  She tapped the pile with her whole hand, as if she was smacking it on the nose for misbehaving.  She stared expectantly at Anastasia for a few seconds, then added, “Can’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth, can we?”

Anastasia didn’t seem sure of how to answer that.  Sandy wasn’t sure who “we” were.

All of a sudden, Mrs Ingram blinked, and said in a voice that could have shattered glass, “What on earth is that on your face?”

Anastasia touched her sparkly blue eyeliner, as if she’d forgotten that she had it on until right this second.  “It’s… um…”

“How dare you wear that to school?”

“Um…  I’m sorry…”

Mrs Ingram pointed to the door with a trembling hand.  “Go straight to the toilets and wash it off.  This minute.” 

She seemed to be wavering over the next bit, taking a breath and then thinking better of it, pressing her lips together as if her whole mouth was having an argument with itself.  But finally, just as Anastasia was halfway out the door, she added, “You can plaster yourself with as much makeup and you want, but we can all see what you are.”

Mrs Ingram was old, Sandy reminded herself.  She said strange things sometimes, and only she knew what they meant.  There was no reason to get upset.

(To be continued)

It was the last Saturday before the end of term, and Sandy’s Aunt Bernie had come to visit, bringing along her cousins.  What this meant was that Gran and Aunt Bernie sat in the kitchen complaining about other family members (and Sandy’s dad’s family in particular), while Grandad sat in the living room with the kids, watching an old episode of Only Fools and Horses.  The only problem with that was that Grandad had seen this episode before, years ago, and he kept talking over the dialogue as he tried to remember what happened next.  Sandy and her cousins had long since given up trying to follow the plot, and started playing with the Cluedo board instead.

“Sandy, have you ever actually played Cluedo with this board?” asked Roma.  Currently, they were pretending that Miss Scarlet and Miss Peacock were on an Atlantic cruise that had got horribly lost and resorted to cannibalism.

“We tried once,” said Sandy, “The rules didn’t make much sense.  And then I dropped the dagger through the floorboards upstairs, so…”

“Oh, I know this one!” said Grandad, his eyes still trained on the screen, “It looks like he’s going to take the gun, but then he grabs hold of the cigarettes instead.”

The girls listened politely, then went back to their conversation.  “Don’t feel too bad about the dagger,” said Keeley, “When we were younger, we had a massive collection of Sylvanian Family stuff, but then Roma swallowed about half of it.”

“I swallowed one thing!” snapped Roma, the colour rising in her cheeks, “It was a little cocktail glass, and it was an accident!”

“Yeah, but you were eleven.  You should have known better.”

Afterwards, Sandy was never sure why she spoke up just then.  Maybe she just wanted to stop this conversation before Roma went off in a sulk.  “You guys didn’t buy me a plant for Christmas, did you?”

Roma frowned.  “No?”

“A plant?” asked Keeley.

That was about what Sandy had expected, but she felt that she ought to be sure.  “Someone left it on the doorstep a week ago.  It’s addressed to me, but it doesn’t say who it’s from.”

“Well, it’s either your secret admirer or somebody trying to poison you,” said Keeley cheerfully.

Sandy grinned.  Granddad had said that thing about secret admirers, too.  It was like it was a hereditary joke.  “There are a few funny-coloured thorns on it.”

“Well, there you go.  You watch- prick your finger on one of them, your hand’ll swell up and explode.”

“Oh, just ignore her, Sandy,” said Roma, but without much rancour.  She’d gone back to fiddling about with the Cluedo figures again.

(To be continued)

The music block was always a little warmer than the main building.  Something to do with the thick carpets everywhere, and the windows always being closed to keep the music in.  It looked a lot nicer than the main building, too, and had a kind of warm, polished smell to it.  Music wasn’t Sandy’s favourite subject, but she always liked being here.

For the last two weeks, they’d been doing nothing in Music but rehearse for the Year Eight Carol Concert at the end of term.  Sandy had never heard of half the hymns they were supposed to sing.  The other half she vaguely remembered singing in primary school, but had turned out to have strange, confusing extra verses.  Like ‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ which spent a whole verse describing how great a son Jesus was, and ended it with, ‘Christian children all must be / Mild, obedient, good as He.’

“I bet that’s the whole reason they chose it for us to sing,” she whispered to her friend Anastasia, “Subliminal messages.”

“It’s like that bit in ‘Away in a Manger’ about ‘no crying he makes.’  I bet he cried loads.  He was a baby.  I bet there’s nothing in the Bible to say he didn’t.”

 “There’s copies of the Bible in the library.  We could go there at lunch and check.”

A loud, commanding voice rose over theirs.  “Anastasia and Alexandra, the Russian tsar’s two beautiful daughters!” said Mr Finch, “Concentrate!”

Sandy and Anastasia looked dutifully back at their lyric sheets.  Mr Finch was one of the more reasonable teachers, but his voice was intimidating enough when he was in a good mood.  No-one wanted to find out what it sounded like when he really decided to yell.

After a minute or two, Anastasia whispered, “Wasn’t it the tsar’s wife who was called Alexandra?”

“Yeah.  And their son was called Alexei, I think.”  Sandy also didn’t like the closing lines of the song much.  ‘And like stars His children crowned / All in white shall wait around.’  White was her least favourite colour.  It wasn’t so much that she was worried about getting to Heaven and being made to wear a colour she hated; it was more that it made her worry about what else God liked that she didn’t.

Anastasia had skipped head to the next song.  “‘Angels help us to adore Him’?  Why would you need help to adore someone?  You either do or you don’t.”

Sandy shrugged.

(To be continued)

Being a sequel to “What Sandy Did at Half-Term,” a story I wrote on here in 2017!

*

It can be quite difficult to buy Christmas presents for a twelve-year-old, but Sandy’s family did their best.

Her Grandma Shirley knew what to get her pretty early on- a basic make-up kit, nothing too fancy, but enough for her to experiment a bit ‘til she got things right.  Countless times, Shirley had seen Sandy come back from her cousins’ house done up like a clown (her cousins were fifteen and seventeen, but they were like little girls with a Barbie doll sometimes), and decided that now was the time to counteract a few bad habits.  The only reason shopping for it took as long as it did was that most of the make-up kits for girls Sandy’s age looked ridiculous- covered in cartoon characters or colourful little hearts and flowers.  It was enough to turn your stomach.  Eventually, Shirley found a modest little black box with a couple of eyeliners and lipsticks, and decided that would have to do.  Sandy was a bright girl- she could work out what to do with those.

Sandy’s Cousin Keeley found a copy of Blazing Saddles at HMV, and instantly decided that it was her duty to introduce her baby cousin to the classics.  She was doubly delighted to see that it was rated 12, which meant that she didn’t have to ask her mum to take it to the counter for her, which would probably have got her a lecture on what was and wasn’t an appropriate film for a little kid.  In Keeley’s view, there wasn’t any point having older cousins if they couldn’t show you an inappropriate film or two.

Sandy’s Aunt Caroline found it hard to think of what to get, until she spotted a particular piece of jewellery at one of the shops just off the high street.  It was a necklace of alternating blue and black stones, and it was almost identical to one Caroline’s own mother (who would have been Sandy’s other grandma) had worn nearly every day of her life.  Caroline thought of giving it to Sandy with an explanation of why, telling her about her mother’s ability to keep everything running even when it should have been falling to pieces, about how much she wished Sandy could have known her, about Caroline’s hope that the necklace would represent a small piece of Sandy’s family history, and remind her that she, too, had the ability to endure when life was hard. 

Sandy’s Aunt Joanie, who was Caroline’s younger sister, suspected that Caroline was going to get Sandy something weird that didn’t make any sense, and decided to mitigate that with some good music.  She knew that Sandy was always interested in hearing old 60s and 70s albums (which was just as well, since Joanie had a whole lot of them), and so Joanie spent a long time thinking about something Sandy would like but hadn’t heard yet.  Graceland?  After the Gold Rush?  Blood on the Tracks?  In the end, though, she decided that Sandy hadn’t heard nearly enough Tamla Motown yet, and got her a compilation.  She’d probably appreciate getting something she could dance to.

Sandy’s Uncle Nicky (youngest son of Grandma Shirley) was also thinking about music.  Every kid should know how to play the guitar, that was his motto, so he got her an acoustic Yamaha from a second-hand music store.  It cost a little bit more than he could really afford to spend, but that was OK.  You couldn’t put a price on a life skill.

Sandy’s Uncle Simon, who was snowed under with gift-buying this year (and, if he was honest, every other year since he’d been about ten), saw an advert for a charity that would buy a goat for a Third World family in your name.  Sandy had a big heart, Simon decided, and she’d be happy to know that a poor family were going to get the chance to improve their lives because of her.  Simon signed up to get the goat, and breathed a sigh of relief.  Another person he could cross off the list.

And then there was that other present.

Sandy found it on the doorstep when she came home from school one day.  It was an ordinary-looking flowerpot, the brown plastic kind Sandy had seen a million times before, with a gift tag attached to the side.  To Sandy Buckland- Season’s greetings.

Inside the flowerpot, set in a bed of soft black earth, was a little purple plant.

“Same colour as red cabbage,” said Gran when she got back from work, “Could probably use it to dye the spare pillowcases.”  She looked at the gift tag again.  “Are you sure you don’t know who sent it?  You must have some idea.”

Sandy shrugged.  “It’s not Keeley or Roma.  They said they’re giving me their presents on Christmas Day, right?”

“So you’ve got a secret admirer, then?” called Grandad from the living room, cheerful as anything in spite of the glare Gran gave him at that.

Sandy took the plant upstairs and put it on her windowsill.  Every so often, she’d look over at it, and wonder where it came from.  But the plant gave her no clues.

(To be continued)