The Amazing Mind of Alice Makin (12 page)

When I've finished, she sits back. She thinks for a while, then gets up and goes to the window. I expected her to be really surprised. She's not.

‘Oh, dear.'

‘It
is
all rubbish, Emma, isn't it?'

She takes a long time to answer. ‘Well . . . you've got to remember, dear, that Reggie hasn't had things easy. He doesn't have a mum or dad. He seems to have moved around a lot, and he's often had to change schools. Let's face it, he is bound to have . . .' She stops. Still looking out of the window as if she'll find the words there, she continues, ‘. . . problems.'

She stops again. I don't say anything. Something's telling me I need to listen carefully.

‘Reggie is a lonely young man, Alice. He hasn't a friend in the world apart from you – and thank goodness he's got you, that's all I can say – but he's still got the same needs we all have. Reggie wants to be loved, to have people think that he's special. It sounds to me as if what he's been doing is more about trying to get himself noticed than it is about magic or making impossible things happen. I'd say it's about impressing you. Your friendship is the most important
thing in the world to him. If he can persuade you that this mind-touching business is real then he'll be special in your eyes and he'll do anything to be that.'

‘But he said that I could do it too. That I was doing it without even knowing it.'

‘Well, he would say that, love, wouldn't he? If you're doing it too then you're both in it together. Blood brothers. Comrades in arms. You know something the rest of us don't. You can both do something we can't – it ties the two of you together. And the reason you don't know you're doing it is simple: you're not.'

‘And what about this other person who can do it, the one who's trying warn us off, to scare us?'

‘Same thing. If someone is trying to scare you both it makes the bond between you two even stronger. You're the goodies, they're the baddies. As we used to say in my young day, it's you two against the world.'

She comes back to the chair. Picks up her tea. Stays standing.

My brain is telling me she's right. But my words sound as if I want Reggie to be telling the truth. I don't know why that is.

‘But all those things I told you about. I was there. I saw them happen.'

She looks at me almost sharply.

‘Did you, Alice?'

It's more of a challenge than a question. Then her voice softens. ‘Did you really?'

She looks at me.

‘You're an imaginative girl. You write stories, create other worlds. You put people in them and make them do and say whatever it is you want them to do and say. I bet you even believe your characters are real sometimes, don't you? People with minds like yours can sometimes see things that aren't there. There's nothing wrong in that, dear. You just have a very active imagination. It's a gift, but like all gifts you've got to learn how to use it properly. You've got to learn to tell fact from fiction, reality from fantasy. It's about growing up, my love. Sooner or later we all have to do that.'

‘But what about the fireworks? You saw 'em yourself.'

‘Of course I did.'

‘But we didn't have any! The Spicers nicked 'em.'

‘Stole, Alice.'

‘Sorry. The Spicers stole 'em.'

‘So you want to know where Reggie got them from? Well, he could have found them. A lot of people have fireworks. Maybe someone just dropped them. Maybe not. He could have been saving secretly. Maybe he even took them from the shop.'

‘You mean he ni— stole them?'

‘It's possible.'

‘All right. So why weren't there any used cases? I looked everywhere. There wasn't a single one.'

‘Perhaps one of your friends collects dead firework cases – people do the strangest things – and if I remember
rightly, didn't it snow the day after bonfire night? It was beautiful. I love snow, it puts the world to sleep under a blanket. But blankets also cover things up, don't they? I should think that most of the firework cases were covered by the snow.'

I think back. She's right. It did snow that morning. And the snow got heavier as I was going back to our bomb site to look for the cases.

‘But what about the tidal wave? And the boat? It just started to row itself. Honest, Emma.'

‘A summer storm would be my guess. They often come from nowhere and go the same way. When there's thunder and lightning it can be terrifying. Perhaps there was a strong wind and it just blew the boat along.'

‘But the boat was rocking. We nearly sank!'

‘Now, this is only an idea – I could be wrong – but is it possible that Reggie was deliberately rocking the boat?' She pauses, giving me time to think. ‘Maybe he just saw the storm coming behind you in the sky – sometimes they do bring very high winds – and he started rocking the boat. It got dark. The water got choppy. You got scared. Then the storm blew over and he stopped rocking. There one minute, gone the next. He just made it seem more frightening than it was. He knows full well what you're like. How you can get a bit carried away at times.'

‘You mean he deliberately scared the life out of me just so that I'd think someone was trying to get us?'

‘You mustn't think badly of him. Not you of all people.
You must remember he's doing these things for you: to impress you. So you'll be his friend.'

‘But I don't want to be impressed. All right, what about that day by the canal? Reggie said that Denis ran away because he could see what I was thinking, see something horrible about to happen to him.'

‘Maybe . . . or maybe Denis just saw someone he knew up on the bridge: his dad probably. I do know those boys live in fear of their dad. Denis knew he shouldn't have been out of school, and got scared in case he was in trouble.'

‘And the bubble gum machine?'

‘It could be that the pavement under the machine was just uneven. There's a lot of traffic using that road these days; lorries on their way to the docks. Maybe a lorry went by and the vibrations tipped the gum machine over. Then that good old imagination of yours took over. There are so many ifs, perhapses and maybes, my love, and they're all more likely explanations than the mind-touching one Reggie's trying to get you to believe.'

She sips her tea. I do the same. Mine has gone cold.

‘Friends should stand by each other, but they should also know about each other, otherwise you don't know what it is that you're standing by.' She smiles. ‘Oh dear, does that sound confusing?'

‘I know what you mean.'

She pauses.

‘Reggie's not a bad boy; in many ways he's a good person.
But even good people can use other people for their own ends. Even good people have problems.'

I feel as if I've been run over by a trolleybus. My brain is flattened. But something inside me carries on. Like I have to defend Reggie. Like I want him to be telling the truth.

‘And the lolly stick? The lucky number? You think that's just a trick?'

My eyes dare her to answer. It takes her a long time.

‘I don't know, love. Maybe he somehow found out what the number was and he already had a stick hidden somewhere with the number written on it. Perhaps he knows how to make invisible ink?'

I interrupt. ‘But why?'

‘It's like I said, Alice. He knows how imaginative you are – he's playing on it.

‘But the chocolates! We went back and got them. It was just like I told you.'

‘Except in the morning there was nothing to show that it had ever happened. You don't even have the box. It's still in the window. The same box: the one with the mark on the ribbon. You said so yourself.'

‘Yes, but . . .'

‘There's no such thing as magic, Alice. Except in your imagination. I suppose the better your imagination, the more magic you can see.'

‘D'you think I'm lying? About what I saw, I mean?'

‘Alice, I've known you since you were three. I know
you don't lie. You've told me exactly what you think you saw. What you wanted to see.' She pauses. ‘With Reggie's help.'

She puts down her cup and saucer, looks straight at me. ‘Reggie has just played a few tricks. Maybe when he's good and ready he'll tell you that it was just a bit of fun. Although I think by now he's probably even managed to convince himself it's all real. My mother used to say that if you tell a lie often enough you believe it yourself. Whatever, all he really did was to buy some fireworks you didn't know about, put invisible ink on a lolly stick, and make a summer storm into a hurricane. Your imagination did the rest. I bet you even dreamed about it.'

She was right, I did. Tidal waves chasing chocolates; Mr Giovanni in a rowing boat; the number twenty-seven written in the sky.

I nod.

‘Well then, when you woke up, the dream became reality. You convinced yourself you had got the chocolates and eaten them. You even thought you'd still have the box. But you didn't.' She takes hold of my hand. ‘It's all part of the same thing. It's a great story, though. Mind-touching – good name. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly impressed. Unfortunately, not in the way Reggie probably wants.'

I take a deep breath. It all begins to make sense. The more I listen, the more I know she's right. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, to be happy or disappointed.

‘Don't forget your friendship means an awful lot to Reggie.'

‘But he's tricked me! Lied to me!'

‘No, my love. That's the whole point.' She's still holding my hand. She looks straight into my eyes as if this is really important. ‘In his head it may well be that it's all happening, just as he says it is. It's a bit like an echo. He shouted and it bounced back off you. You both heard it and shared in it. In that way you're encouraging each other. There's nothing wrong in that, Alice. It's like I said before. As long as you understand how echoes work.'

She stops and thinks for a while. ‘Some American Indian tribes thought echoes were the voices of their ancestors calling them. Scientists just talk about sound vibrations. The Indians believe they are right and so do the scientists. Can anyone really say who
is
right?' She picks up the teapot. It steams from the spout. Hot. Comforting. There's a look in her eyes. ‘Reggie is on the side of the Indians. Now give me your cup and I'll pour you another.'

Then, as she's pouring the tea, she shivers.

‘You all right, Emma?'

‘I think so, dear. Someone walking over my grave. I suddenly thought of something I read as a young girl – I must have been about your age – Shakespeare, I think. Now what on earth could have put that into my head? I haven't thought about that in ages. How did it go? Something like: “
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy
.”'

She looks up, and there's a puzzled expression on her face. It makes my stomach wobble.

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means that in spite of everything I've just said there is always the chance that I could be wrong; that what Reggie is telling you is true. Wouldn't that be a turn-up for the books?' Her expression doesn't change. ‘In which case, you have to decide which side you're on, Alice. Which is it to be? The scientists or the Indians?'

Suddenly I feel scared.

T
he weeks are passing. The nights are lighter now. The days are warmer. I haven't seen Reggie for a while. I still like him, I always will, but I need to be away from him. When I'm with him it's like being in a mad dream. And who wants to live in a mad dream?

It feels more normal with my old friends. The way things should be. No one pretending they can do impossible stuff. The only magic we can do is disappearing when the teachers want us.

Things are even a bit better at home. Bert knows I'm not seeing Reggie so he's leaving me alone most of the time, and he and Mum are really happy what with the new baby coming.

The play is coming along really well too. When I'm writing I can forget everything that's going on, lose myself. Sister Bernadette said we should try to get some scenery because that will make it more believable. She wants us to organize the whole thing. Scary! So we have to write the programmes, sort out the costumes, design the tickets, everything.

In the play I'm still turning things upside down. Watson's the clever one, although Holmes still acts as if
he
is. Veronica is really great as Watson, she's so funny. George is finding Holmes a bit difficult. He's learned most of the words, but he's just not natural at it like Veronica. Still, we're all different. We're going to get him a real violin to play. That should be interesting.