My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece (4 page)

I took my present upstairs but I didn’t open it for ten minutes. The address was in neat capitals. I traced the letters on the brown paper with my finger, imagining Mum writing my name as nicely as she could. Then all of a sudden I couldn’t wait a second longer and I ripped off the wrapping paper and screwed it up into a little ball and chucked it on the floor. Inside was a plain box that didn’t give anything away. Rose liked boxes, Dad told me once, and she used them to make spaceships and castles and tunnels. He said she liked the boxes better than the presents when she was a little girl.

I’m not Rose so I was relieved when something rattled against the cardboard when I shook the box. I opened it up. My heart felt like a wild rabbit you see in car headlights in the countryside. At first it sort of froze, too scared to move, but then it exploded and jumped about really fast. Inside the box was some red and blue material. I tipped it onto the bed with one of those grins that hooks on your ears like a hammock on palm trees. The material was soft and the spider sewn on the front was big and black and dangerous. I pulled the Spider-Man t-shirt over my head and looked in the mirror. Jamie Matthews had disappeared. In his place stood a superhero. In his place stood Spider-Man.

If I’d been wearing my new t-shirt in the park, I would not have been scared of those girls. I’d have run after Jas and leapt on a swing, landing on one foot without wobbling. I would have swung higher and faster than anyone ever has before and then I would have jumped off and flown through the air and those girls would have said
Wow
. Then I would have laughed so loud like
HAHAHAHAHA
and probably even sworn or something. I would not have stood ten metres away going all red and shaky like a coward.

On the card there was a football player wearing an Arsenal kit. Mum probably thought it was Man Utd ’cos they both play in red. In the card she had written
To my big boy on his tenth birthday. Have a great day, love from Mum
with three big kisses underneath. I didn’t think I could get any happier until I saw the P.S. at the bottom.
I’m looking forward to seeing you in your t-shirt very soon
.

I repeated that sentence over and over and it’s still circling my head now, like a dog chasing its tail. I’m sitting on the cushion by the window and Roger is purring. He knows it’s been a good day. The stars are shining more brightly than ever before and they look like hundreds of candles on a black birthday cake. Even if I could blow them out, I wouldn’t wish for anything else. Today has been perfect.

I wonder if Mum has already booked her train. Or maybe Nigel has a car that he will let her borrow, though I don’t think she’d like to drive all the way up here on the motorway. She hates getting stuck in traffic and walks everywhere in London. But she’ll get here somehow ’cos she will want to see me before I start school to say
Good luck
and
Be good
and all of that Mum stuff. And she will definitely want to see me in my new t-shirt. I am not going to take it off until she gets here, just in case. I’ll sleep in it too ’cos superheroes are never off duty and she might arrive late after a train delay or a traffic jam. It might not be tonight or tomorrow or even the next day, but if Mum said
Very soon
then she meant
Very soon
, and I will be ready for her when she gets here.

M
Y TEACHER MADE
me sit next to the only Muslim in the school. She said
This is Sunya
and stared at me when I didn’t sit down. Mrs Farmer’s eyes don’t have any colour. They are paler than grey. They look like TVs that have lost reception and gone fuzzy. She has got a mole on her chin and two hairs curl out of the middle. It wouldn’t be difficult to pluck them out. Maybe she doesn’t know they’re there. Or maybe she likes them.
Is there a problem
said Mrs Farmer and everyone in my class turned to watch. I wanted to shout
Muslims killed my sister
but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing you say before
Hello
or
I’m Jamie
or
I am ten years old
. So I just sat down at the very edge of the table and tried not to look in Sunya’s direction.

Dad would go mental if he knew. He thinks the best thing about leaving London is getting away from the Muslims.
None of that foreign stuff in the Lake District
he said.
Just real British people minding their own business
. In Finsbury Park there were thousands of them. The women wore these long cloths over their heads like they were dressed up as ghosts and ready for Halloween. There was a mosque down the road from the flat and we’d see them all going to pray. I really wanted to have a look inside, but Dad told me to keep away.

My new school is tiny. It is surrounded by mountains and trees and a stream runs past the front gate so if you are in the playground you can hear this gurgle gurgle like water running down a plughole. In London my school was on a main road and all you could hear or see or smell was traffic.

After I had got out my pencil case, Mrs Farmer said
Welcome to our school
and everyone clapped. She said
What is your name
and I said
Jamie
and she said
Where have you come from
and someone whispered
Loser land
but I said
London
. Mrs Farmer said she would love to visit London but it was too far to drive and my tummy clenched ’cos Mum suddenly felt miles away. She said
Your records haven’t arrived from your old school yet, so why don’t you tell us something interesting about yourself
. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So Mrs Farmer said
How many brothers and sisters have you got
and I couldn’t even answer that ’cos I don’t know if Rose counts. Everyone started giggling and Mrs Farmer said
Shhh children
and then she asked
Well, do you have any pets
. I said
I have a cat called Roger
. Mrs Farmer smiled and said
Roger the rat sounds very nice indeed
.

First we had to write two pages under the title My Wonderful Summer Holiday and take extra care to put full stops and capital letters in the right place. That was easy enough but trying to think of something wonderful to write was more difficult. Watching Spider-Man and getting my presents from Mum and Jas were the only good things that happened this summer. I wrote them down and they just about filled one page ’cos I made my handwriting really big. Then I sat and stared at my book and wished I could write about ice creams or theme parks or swimming in the sea.

Five minutes left
Mrs Farmer said, drinking coffee and checking her watch.
Everyone should be able to fill two pages and some people might even manage three
. A boy looked up. Mrs Farmer winked at him and the boy’s face seemed to swell. Then he leaned over so far his nose almost touched the table and he started writing really fast, thousands of words flying out of his pen as he described his wonderful holiday.

Three minutes left
Mrs Farmer said. My pen was stuck at the top of page two and it had made an ink splodge ’cos I hadn’t moved it for seven minutes.

Make it up
. These words were whispered so quietly, I thought I’d imagined them. I looked at Sunya and her eyes were bright and twinkly like puddles in sunshine. They were dark brown, almost black, and she had a white cloth over her head that completely covered every single hair but one. The hair hung near her cheek and was black and straight and shiny like a thin piece of liquorice. She was left-handed and six bracelets jangled on her wrist as she wrote.
Make it up
she said again and then she smiled. Her teeth looked white next to her brown skin.

I didn’t know what to do. Muslims killed my sister but I didn’t want to get in trouble on my first day of school. I rolled my eyes like I thought Sunya’s advice was rubbish but then Mrs Farmer shouted
Two minutes to go
. So I started writing as fast as I could, making up fast rollercoasters and trips to the beach and finding crabs in rock pools. I described Mum laughing her head off when seagulls tried to eat her fish and chips and Dad building me the biggest sandcastle in the entire world. I wrote that it was so big my whole family could fit inside but that sounded made up so I crossed it out. I said Jas got sunburn but Rose got a tan. I paused for about one millisecond when I wrote that last bit ’cos, even though everything else was a lie, that was the biggest one of them all. But then Mrs Farmer shouted
Sixty seconds left
and my pen raced across the page and before I knew it I’d written a whole paragraph about Rose.

Mrs Farmer shouted
Time’s up
. She said
Who would like to tell the class about their holiday
and Sunya’s hand shot into the air and the bracelets tinkled like those bells you get on shop doors. Mrs Farmer pointed at her and then at the boy with the swollen face and then at two girls and then at me, even though I hadn’t put my hand up. I wanted to say
No thank you
but the words got stuck near my tonsils. When I didn’t move, she said
Come on James
in this cross way so I got to my feet and walked to the front of the class. My shoes felt heavier than normal and someone pointed at the stain on my Spider-Man top. Coco Pops turn the milk chocolatey, which is good for drinking but makes a mess if you spill it.

The boy read first and it went on and on and Mrs Farmer said
How many pages was that, Daniel
and Daniel said
Three and a half
and his eyes almost popped, his face was so puffed up with pride. Then a girl called Alexandra and a girl called Maisie described their holidays, which were full of parties and new puppies and trips to Paris. Then it was Sunya’s turn.

She cleared her throat. Her eyes narrowed to two sparkly slits.
It should have been a wonderful holiday
she said. She paused dramatically and looked around the room. Somewhere outside a truck rumbled by.
The hotel looked lovely on the website. It was in a beautiful forest, with no other houses for miles around. A perfect place for a rest, Mum said. She couldn’t have been more wrong
. Daniel rolled his eyes.
On the first night I couldn’t sleep because there was a storm. I heard this tap tap tap on my window and I thought it was just a branch, blowing in the wind. But it didn’t stop even when the wind died down, so I climbed out of bed and opened the curtains
. Sunya suddenly screamed at the top of her voice and Mrs Farmer almost fell out of her chair. Then Sunya spoke as fast as she could and said
Instead of a branch there was a dead hand knocking on the glass and then a face appeared and it had no teeth and scraggily hair and it said Let me in little girl, let me in. So I
—

Mrs Farmer stood up with her hand on her chest.
Very entertaining as always, Sunya. Thank you very much
. Sunya looked annoyed that she hadn’t been allowed to read to the end. Then it was my turn. I got through it as quickly as I could, mumbling all the bits about Rose. I felt guilty for telling everyone she’d been having fun on the beach when really she was inside an urn on a mantelpiece.
How old are your sisters
Mrs Farmer asked.
Fifteen
I replied.
Oh, are they twins
she said, as if that was the best thing in the world. I nodded and she said
How lovely
. My face flushed the exact colour of pink highlighter pen. Sunya stared at me for too long. I knew she was trying to work out which bit of my story was made up, and it got on my nerves so I glared back. Instead of looking embarrassed, she smiled her big white smile and winked like we were sharing a secret.

Excellent
Mrs Farmer said.
You are all one step closer to Heaven
. Daniel beamed but I thought this was stupid. Our writing was okay but I don’t think it would have impressed Jesus. But then Mrs Farmer leaned over her desk and for the first time I looked at the display. There were fifteen fluffy clouds going diagonally up the wall. In the top right corner was the word HEAVEN in letters cut out from gold cardboard. In the bottom left corner were thirty angels, each with its own pair of huge silvery wings. Written on each angel’s right wing was the name of someone in the class. The angels would have looked quite holy if they hadn’t got pins stuck through their heads. With a plump hand, Mrs Farmer moved my angel onto the first cloud. Then she did the same with Alexandra’s and Maisie’s, but she flew Daniel’s angel right past cloud one and perched it on cloud two.