The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall
Read The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall Online
Authors: Karen McCombie
Other
great titles by
Karen McCombie
The Year of Big Dreams
Life According to â¦
Alice B. Lovely
Six Words and a Wish
The Raspberry Rules
The
Ally's World
series
The Girl Who Wasn't There
Catching Falling Stars
For Vic S.-C., who likes to weave words too...
When
your world isn't turning,
And your path leads nowhere,
Don't be scared, keep on walking,
Turn the corner, I'll be thereâ¦
From “Turn the Corner”, by White Star Line
Contents
The world is whirling, tilting, shifting. And I have nothing to hold on to â except for a posy of eye-meltingly pink gerberas.
So I close my eyes and try to wish the bad feeling away.
“Congratulations!” I hear the registrar say brightly. “You may now kiss the bride!”
OK, so maybe I'd better
not
keep my eyes closed. It wouldn't look too good, my mother being legally married for all of three seconds and me blanking it out. So I bite my lip, and force my eyes wide open.
(Whirl, tilt, shiftâ¦)
All around me, cheers break out, as Mum and RJ
throw
their arms around each other and smooch madly.
All
I
can do is try not to be sick.
“Woo-hoo!” hollers someone behind me, at a pitch that nearly punctures my eardrums.
I don't turn around, but guess it's probably the drummer in RJ's band. He also does backing vocals, and his voice is so loud he practically doesn't need a microphone, Mum says. She's seen the band play live, so she should know.
Oh, I think I really
might
be sick. As the early spring breeze buffets my loose long hair, I take a few deep breaths and hope that'll help. It doesn't much.
“Sadie looks beautiful, doesn't she?” says Dolores, suddenly nudging me with her elbow. Dolores's fabulous halo of an Afro frames her face, and her eyes are masked by giant, expensive sunglasses â but I can still see the sentimental tears streaking her soft brown cheeks.
“Yes,” I manage to mumble.
Well, duh, Mum
always
looks beautiful. No one's going to argue with that. But I guess today she's looking
extra
beautiful in her bride-white, especially since Mum's version of bride-white is a vintage
1960
s short lace dress, with waxy camellias pinned into her messy, pink-tipped blonde hair.
She's also wearing flat strappy sandals, and has to stand on her tiptoes to lip-sync with RJ, even though he's bending down and tenderly pulling Mum up towards his towering, ultra-skinny self.
“Can you believe this?” says Dolores, snuffling into a tissue she's pulled from her red leather handbag. “Three months ago, Sadie and RJ didn't even know each other existed!”
“Well, technically, Mum
did
already know RJ,” I correct her, as I try to keep myself together by squeezing my neon-pink nails into my palms. Of course Mum knew RJ. Or at least knew
of
RJ Johnstone and his band, White Star Line. Plenty of people do. I mean, personally, I've never been into White Star Line's music, but they're the sort of old, 1990s indie rock band that gets called “legendary” a lot. The sort that still tour constantly and play sets at festivals where devoted fans bellow along to every last lyric and forgive them for their hair going grey around the edges. And even old Mr Evans in the flat opposite ours knows one of White Star Line's tracks; it's the very bass-y sounding one that got used over the opening credits of that detective series on BBC One recently.
“
Ah, yes, of course! Silly me.” Dolores laughs at herself as she dabs the tears away. “You know, I've cried so much today I think my brain's gone soggy.”
Dolores is Mum's agent.
And
her friend, when she's not busy booking Mum work as a hair and make-up artist. So I guess she's partly crying 'cause that's what people do at their friends' weddings, and partly crying 'cause she's about to lose one of her most reliable and popular stylists.
The other hair and make-up artists at Dolores's agency can be a bit snobby and insist they'll
only
work with gorgeous models for glamorous magazine shoots or snooty catwalk shows. Mum's not like that. I mean, until half a minute ago, she was a single mother, bringing me up on her own. Which meant she was always more than happy to do
any
job, even if it was just powdering the sweaty forehead of a random actor in an ad for a verruca treatment, or an online bingo site, or for a toilet cleaner or something.
And then â exactly eleven and a half weeks ago â Dolores took a booking for Mum that would change everything.
Everything
. Yep, Dolores didn't realize she was playing the accidental cupid when she sent Mum off to the video shoot for “Turn the Corner”, White Star Line's latest singleâ¦
“
Ellis? Ellis, baby?” I hear Mum call out.
Everyone around me â and that's a crowd which includes famous faces from bands and a couple of DJs I recognize too â starts oohing and ahhing and stares from me to my beautiful mum and back again.
Even on a normal day, that would make the anxiety waves roll right in; I love my mum, but I don't love people comparing us. We're not exactly similar. My best friend, Shaniya, once said it was as if this tiny punk fairy had given birth to a giraffe.
Thanks
, Shaniya. But she's got a point. I'm all gangly long arms and legs, and even though I'm only thirteen, I'm still a head taller than Mum. (Tall and shy is a pretty tough combination.)
And today ⦠well, it's not exactly a normal day. So right this second, I'm facing a
tsunami
of anxiety, with all these strangers around me, and Mum's in so such a love bubble she's not really there for me in the way she usually is.
On top of that, here I am, struggling not to barf.
“Come here, baby girl!” Mum says, holding out both her hands to me.
RJ has an arm around her tiny waist, and looks as ecstatic as someone who's just won the lottery.
Though
he'll never need that kind of money; RJ's got so much spare cash that he can do stuff like go and buy a mansion in the wilds of Scotland on a complete whimâ¦
“Ellis? C'mere, please!” Mum smiles at me, her lips the colour of glossy pink icing on Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
I try to smile back, I really do. Taking a shaky step towards Mum, I clutch the stems of my gerbera posy so tightly I feel the soft stems snap andâ
Nope, I can't do this. I have to get out of here NOW.
“Ellis? Ellis! Wait!” Mum calls after me as I push through the throng and get as far away from her and her new husband as possibleâ¦