Midnight (17 page)

‘You can do it, Violet,' said Jasmine, taking my other hand. ‘We'll applaud you when you come down and then it'll be your turn to ask
us
questions. You can use your time up in the attic to think up the most amazing embarrassing questions that will make us both squirm.'

I let them lead me up the stairs and along the landing.

‘Can't you come up with me?' I said.

‘Violet, you're deliberately missing the point.'

‘Well, couldn't you go and have a look in the loft first, just to check there aren't any bats?'

‘You've got bats on the brain, Violet,' said Jasmine, but she squeezed my hand sympathetically. She looked up at the closed loft entrance high above us. ‘How on earth are you going to get up there?'

‘Open sesame,' said Will, pulling a lever.

As if by magic the trapdoor opened and a set of steps was lowered downwards. Dad fixed it up years ago so he could store all our old stuff more conveniently. Will and I were expressly forbidden to go up into the loft because the floor didn't have any proper boards laid down.

‘I'll probably fall through the joists and break my neck,' I said. ‘Then you'll be sorry, Will.'

‘Oh, I'd be heart-broken. If I had a heart,' said Will, adjusting the timer. ‘Here you are. I've set it to go off in ten minutes.'

I snatched the timer from him and started up the steps. I kept looking up at the dark rectangle above me, waiting for the bats to come flying out into my face. I wished I'd thought to tie my hair up, even though Will said that was an old wives' tale. Why should I believe anything Will said? Why could he always make me do whatever he wanted? I looked down at him.

‘Will you come and rescue me if I scream?'

‘Certainly. Once your ten minutes are up. Now get on with it. The timer's ticking away and you're not even up there yet. Get
in
!'

I took a deep breath and tentatively took two more steps upwards, poking my head up into the entrance. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. I listened hard for the flapping of wings. I didn't
think
I could hear anything. My pulse was beating so fast there was a drumming in my ears. I took one more step, then another. I stood shakily on the last step and walked right into the loft. I stood on a narrow joist, dizzy with fear, waiting. And waiting. And waiting . . .

I put my hand out, terrified that something might be waiting too, invisible in the dark. I couldn't feel anything in front of me. I tried moving my hand sideways, sweeping it in an arc. My fingers brushed against something small and hard and familiar on the loft wall. A light switch! I flicked it on and saw the loft properly. It wasn't the bogey bat lair of my imagination, it was a perfectly ordinary dusty room stacked with suitcases and trunks and boxes, with a big water tank in the corner.

I waited for Will to shout up to me that it was cheating to have the light on. Perhaps he couldn't see from down on the landing. I stepped gingerly from one joist to the next, making my way over to a big cardboard box containing a Sylvanian Family tree house, all my old Barbie dolls, a push-along dog on wheels. I squatted precariously beside it, stroking these once-loved toys, sucked straight back to my little-girlhood.

I started searching through the other boxes. There were lots of boring things, old tea sets, spare duvets, sports things, a box of police boots, helmets and a
truncheon. Then I came to a box of baby stuff. Little pink dresses, a white hand-crocheted shawl, a musical box, a white christening robe with pink smocking, little pink and white striped booties . . . I put a tiny knitted bootie on either forefinger and waggled them up and down like little glove puppets.

I started searching for boxes of Will's toys, Will's baby clothes, Will's booties. I couldn't find anything. I lifted boxes, sifting through them quickly, until I got to the far corner of the loft. There was just one box left, but it was heavily taped shut. This made me more curious. I pulled and tore at it until I got it open.

It was another box of baby things, all carefully wrapped in white tissue paper tied with blue silk ribbons. I undid each bow and found tiny cornflower-blue sleeping suits, little denim rompers, a cot-sized blue and white patchwork quilt, all in pristine condition. Right at the very bottom there was a baby book of photographs. I opened it up. I saw Mum's writing on the first page.

Our darling little William.

I hugged the book to my chest. I knew I had to show it to Will. Mum and Dad obviously loved him so much, right from the day they adopted him.

Then I looked at the birth date in Mum's royal-blue italic. It was the wrong date. I didn't understand. I looked at the photographs. There was a tiny newborn baby in a hospital crib, with a peaky heart-shaped face and long tufts of black hair. He looked eerily like me. There were photos of Mum holding him. She looked so
different, much younger, her eyes bright, cheeks pink, chubby and smiling. Dad had the baby in the next photo, holding his police cap comically above the baby's head, smiling at his son so proudly. There was a big studio portrait in bright colour, the baby propped up on pillows, smiling sweetly, his eyes very big and very blue.

Will's eyes are green.

I flicked through the album to the last page. There was a small, slightly out-of-focus snapshot of Mum in a hospital ward. She was holding the baby, clutching him tightly, as if she could never bear to let him go. The baby was lying very still in her arms. His eyes were shut.

Mum had written something at the bottom of the page, her writing barely legible this time. It was another date, only three months after the one at the beginning of the book. A birth date and a death date.

The timer went off. I slapped it sharply to shut it up. I waited for Will to call to me. I didn't know what to do. He needed to see the baby book himself. I decided to wait until Jasmine went home. This was private, just about Will and me, and this first little baby brother I never knew. Mum and Dad had clearly adored this little blue-eyed boy, their first born. So they'd tried to replace him with Will.

Dear C.D.,

I don't know what to write.

Everything's changed.

I can't believe it.

Love from

Violet

XXX

I LAID THE
baby book back at the very bottom of the box, folded all the little clothes back into blue-ribboned parcels, stuck the brown tape back over the cardboard and put the box back in the corner.

I edged my way carefully back to the trapdoor, trying to sort things out in my head. I felt so sad, as if there were a real little dead baby brother cradled in that box. I switched off the light and then made my way gingerly down the ladder.

There was no sign of Will and Jasmine. I stood on the landing, still clutching the timer. Hadn't they heard it go off? Where were they?

I was about to call them when I heard Jasmine murmur something. She was in Will's room. Maybe they were hiding, waiting to jump out at me. I crept along the
landing towards Will's room. I pushed his door open cautiously and peeped round.

Will and Jasmine were standing in the middle of the floor. Will had his arms round Jasmine, his hands in her beautiful hair. His head was bent. Hers was tilted upwards.

They were kissing.

I stared at them. It could have been a second, a minute, an hour. Time stood still, even though the timer ticked away in my hand.

Then Will pulled away a little. ‘Your fairy's digging into my chest,' he said.

Jasmine swivelled her necklace round so that the fairy dangled over her shoulder. ‘Oh dear. Poor Violet,' she said.

‘Poor Violet and her flipping fairies,' said Will.

Then they both laughed.

I couldn't bear it. I ran right into the room and snatched the Jasmine Fairy from her, yanking it hard over her head.

‘Yes, I know, have a good laugh! Laugh at me, both of you,' I shouted, hurling the Jasmine Fairy into a corner.

I ran to my own room. Jasmine ran after me, starting to cry.

‘Oh Violet, I didn't mean—'

‘Yes you did. And don't worry, I know they're silly.
I'm
silly, a teenage girl fiddling around with fairies, stupid, stupid little dolls,' I screamed.

I reached up and clawed at the Rose Fairy, the Willow, the Dragonfly, the Crow, all of them, tearing them down,
pulling their heads off, snapping their limbs, crumpling their wings.

Jasmine was screaming too, begging me to stop. Will came running and tried to grab hold of my hands. I whirled away from him – and the beak of the crow scratched right down his face.

‘What are you playing at, Vi?' he whispered, blood starting to trickle down his cheek.

‘I've stopped playing,' I said.

I grabbed my jacket, pushed past both of them, and ran downstairs. I snatched the ten pounds still on the kitchen table and then I was out the door. I was still clutching the Crow Fairy. I hung on tight to her like a talisman and started running.

I didn't know where I was going, what I was doing. I just needed to run right away. I heard Will shouting after me but I didn't look back. I don't know if they tried to follow me. They didn't have a hope of catching me. I ran as if I had my own wings beating on my back.

I didn't stop running when I got into town. I needed to get as far away as possible. A phrase echoed in my head –
clear across three counties
. I suddenly knew where I was going. I didn't need to check the address. I knew it by heart.

I asked for a child's fare at the railway station ticket office. It was £9.99. I pocketed my penny and waited for the train. It was a complicated journey, with two changes. The man in the ticket office told me twice and I repeated it as if it was a magic charm.

I didn't know what to do with myself on the different
trains and during the lonely waits at various stations. I couldn't stop thinking about Will and Jasmine. I thought back through our brief intense friendship, wondering if she'd befriended me right from the start simply because she wanted to get to know Will. And what about him? Was he really interested in Jasmine, or was all this an elaborate game to hurt me?

I felt my head was ready to burst as I thought things through, interpreting everything this way and that. It was like so many of Casper Dream's illustrations. You'd look at a picture of an ugly old witch and a group of screaming children and first you'd think she was working evil magic and threatening them so they were yelling in terror. But then you'd look again and wonder if the witch was simply a sad old woman cowering away from taunting children intent on playing tricks on her. A painting of a beautiful nymph cradling a little rabbit could also be a hungry girl with her fingers clasped tightly round the rabbit's neck, ready to strangle it for a stew. A picture of a desperate princess in the clutches of an immense scaly serpent seemed easy enough to understand, but perhaps she was entwining the serpent willingly, her head thrown back in rapture?

I thought about these pictures, imagining all my Casper Dream books, turning the pages in my head, realizing I knew every illustration off by heart.

I arrived at the final station hours later. I stood uncertainly on the platform, not knowing where to go now. I asked an old woman if she knew Paradise Street but she muttered in a foreign accent that she was a stranger.
I asked a young man and he said he'd never heard of it. I asked a group of schoolgirls, who stared at me weirdly and shook their heads, giggling. So I stalked past them all, right out of the station. There was a taxi driver waiting out the front so I asked him if he knew.

‘Sure, sweetheart. Hop in,' he said.

‘No, I don't want a taxi ride,' I said, blushing. ‘I want to walk. Could you possibly tell me the way?'

He sighed and then rattled off a long list of complicated directions, left, left, right, right again until my head was spinning.