All the Fun of the Fair: A hilarious, brilliantly original coming-of-age story that will capture your heart

by Caroline Hulse

  ‘One had films in it. Only the others were porn. And I didn’t sell them here. I sold them at the car boot sale. I never brought them into school.’

  Mrs Vernal folded her arms. ‘This is utterly shocking.’

  Dr Sharma held up a finger. She kept her gaze on me. ‘Where did you get the magazines?’

  ‘I found them.’

  ‘Just shocking. As if—’

  Dr Sharma interrupted Mrs Vernal. ‘Did you find them in your father’s things?’ Dr Sharma’s lip went up at the edge at father’s.

  ‘No. He wouldn’t like these magazines.’ I hoped it was true. I hated these magazines now. Kelly from Winchester and everything.

  ‘You don’t have to defend him,’ Dr Sharma said. ‘He’s not a pupil here.’

  I shook my head. ‘I found them in the park.’

  Mrs Vernal looked at the New Head. ‘This is serious. You’ve been extremely clear with the rules, Mrs Shackleton, you’ve set your stall out about sanctions, and—’

  ‘Let’s discuss this without Fiona here.’ Dr Sharma’s voice was calm. ‘There’s a complicated history, from before your time.’

  I lifted my head a tiny bit. Was Dr Sharma using my catalyst?

  But I saw her face and put my head straight back down.

  The lunchtime bell rang.

  ‘We will talk now, alone, Fiona,’ the New Head said. ‘Sit on the bench outside and we will call you back in shortly.’

  I took a seat outside the room. I crossed my feet and tucked them under the bench, trying to make myself as small as possible.

  Sanctions.

  Sanctions meant suspended. Or expelled.

  I imagined Mum’s face as she got the call from the school. Dad’s face as she explained to him what I’d done.

  I was so scared, I couldn’t even cry.

  Even if I wasn’t expelled– me! Expelled! What would I do? Where would I go? – this was it. It was over.

  There was no way I’d be allowed to go to the fair.

  I waited a bit longer. Through the open window, in the playground, a kid shouted ‘Haircut!’ Then a chorus started. Haircut! Haircut!

  It couldn’t still be about Greeney. But I didn’t even have the energy to wonder who’d got a haircut now.

  I jiggled my legs.

  The teachers had told me to stay on the bench, but there was no way I was staying outside that office. My jiggling legs were telling me something.

  I got up. Still too scared to cry – but so scared that I couldn’t just sit there either.

  Trying not to think what I was doing, I grabbed my rucksack and rushed down the staff corridor.

  I hurried round the playground, my fear making it hard to focus – still, looking everywhere. Finally, I found my girl group at the far end of the field.

  I took a minute, trying to calm down, hoping my face wasn’t too red. They wouldn’t want to hear what had happened. Alison had called my magazines disgusting.

  I ran up to the group. ‘Hi! I couldn’t find you, you were miles away.’ I pulled out the cigarette again. ‘Da da!’ I tried to make myself breathe normally. ‘Me and Lewis didn’t smoke it in the end. Let’s go to the park and have it together now.’

  The girls looked at each other.

  ‘It’s lunchtime,’ Naomi said.

  ‘But we could go anyway! The gates aren’t locked.’ I patted my rucksack. ‘And I remembered the grill lighter.’

  The group widened their eyes at each other, like what I was saying was incredible.

  I licked my lips. ‘Jodie?’

  She twizzled her friendship bracelet round her arm. She looked at her feet.

  I grabbed my empty wrist. I’d forgotten to make a bracelet, and I’d forgotten my crisps.

  ‘I’ll tell her.’ Alison turned to me. ‘We’ve got some sad news. We’ve realised we’re not the right size anymore. We’re too big.’

  ‘Are we going on diets? If we have to. I thought we’d wait till at least Year Eight, but . . .’

  Jodie stayed looking at the ground.

  ‘Bless,’ Alison said. ‘We’ve realised this group’s too big now.’

  A thud in my chest. This must be how it felt to get shot, for the second time. Bang. Falling to the floor. Just getting up again then – bang.

  ‘Four is a good number. Five just feels too many.’ Alison shrugged. Can’t be helped.

  She nodded at Naomi. Continue.

  ‘We’re starting a new group from scratch,’ Naomi said. ‘Me and Alison.’

  I should have just walked away and pretended I didn’t understand. But my heart was going too fast to think properly. And sometimes I can be really really fucking stupid fucking stupid Fiona.

  I made a show of checking my fingernails. ‘Who’s in the new group?’

  ‘It was just me and Alison originally. But then some others asked to join.’

  I looked at Yasmin. I looked at Jodie.

  Both looked at the grass.

  I took my mobile out of my secret pocket with shaking hands.

  Alison looked at it. ‘Your mobile phone isn’t going to get you back in the group.’

  I swallowed. ‘I’m going to phone a friend.’

  ‘Selina Baker? Dean Prince?’

  Even then, I narrowed my eyes. ‘Definitely not Dean Prince.’

  ‘One of the other sixth-formers? The kid who’s definitely your boyfriend, Lewis Harris went to Paris?’

  I took a shaky breath. ‘I’m going to talk to one of my friends from Radcliffe High. Unless,’ I turned to Yasmin and Jodie. ‘You could be in two groups? Three’s enough for a group, isn’t it?’

  ‘My mum says three’s a crowd,’ Yasmin said into her feet.

  ‘We could start a new group. Get some other people. Better people. Maybe some boys?’

  Naomi and Alison snorted.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. I’m really sorry.’ Jodie turned to me. ‘You can’t have boys in a group.’

  I nodded. I did know that, really, but I was desperate.

  ‘It’s this sort of thing’ – I knew Jodie was trying to be nice – ‘that made Alison and Naomi start a new group. They say you don’t understand.’

  I took a deep breath. I put my phone to my ear.

  Alison glanced at Yasmin. ‘Don’t you need to actually make a call first?’

  I turned to leave. I hated Alison. No – not Alison. Alison Fisher.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jodie and Yasmin said, at the same time.

  ‘We can still be friends in drama,’ Jodie added. ‘And in non-group situations.’

  ‘OK.’ I strode away.

  I ran up to where Lewis was playing football. I tugged his sleeve.

  ‘Lewis.’ I tried not to cry. ‘Shall we do some spying practice? Do you want to see my letter from Crimewatch?’

  ‘What?’ He shook me off and turned his back on me. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Or the police?’ I started crying now as I reached for him again. ‘Because I also got a letter from—’

  ‘Fiona. Get away from me. You’re not a spy.’ He shrugged me off again. ‘This isn’t real. No one cares whether you can do a seal crawl, or a feline crawl, or a flat feline crawl. No one cares if you can read hoofprints, or if you’ve got a secret pocket.’ He was using his dad’s meanest voice. ‘Give it up.’ He even had a look of his dad now. ‘And leave me alone. I’m not messing. Just leave me alone – for ever.’

  I hurried out of the school field and towards the park.

  I just sat there, in the second-biggest bush, until it was time for the bell for afternoon classes.

  I rested my head on my knees and cried.

  Eventually, I lifted my head. The bell would definitely have gone by now.

  The New Head would have found I wasn’t outside the of
fice anymore. And afternoon lessons would have long started.

  I’d been scared of being expelled, half an hour ago. It had been a possibility. And now – just by being Fiona – I’d made things so much worse.

  Now I’d definitely be expelled.

  I had cried so much I was shaking again. I felt cold, despite the patches of sunshine, dappling through the branches and leaves above.

  My brain was full. Full of words, all shouting how stupid I was. About how much trouble I was in.

  I wouldn’t be allowed to go to the fair.

  I had to go to the fair.

  I looked at the wasps’ nest. From this distance, the wasps circled round it like specks. I remembered the kids playing chicken with the wasps – putting their hands near the nest, and pulling them away.

  I imagined doing that for a second, how it would make everything change.

  I had to do something. Something to get me to the fair. Something, anything, that could make all this OK.

  I pushed myself up from the grass. I brushed the twigs off my skirt.

  I hurried to Chestnut Walk and stood outside number 23. I made myself knock.

  An old woman answered. She had an apron on, the curly writing saying, Kiss the cook and bring her wine.

  ‘Is Adrian in?’ I made myself taller. ‘Adrian Sykes.’

  The woman frowned. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you go and get him please?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  ‘I just want to speak to Adrian,’ I said, and – don’t do it don’t do it – started crying again.

  Ten minutes later I sat, shaking, with a glass of orange juice, on a squishy old sofa draped in blankets, inside 23 Chestnut Walk.

  I took a sip. The glass tasted of orange juice and dishwasher, like in Lewis’s house.

  At the thought of Lewis, I sobbed more.

  The two strangers sat facing me.

  The man – Adrian – looked at the woman and back. ‘Please tell me your parents’ names. We need to call them.’

  He was a lot smaller than I was expecting. Nothing like the man in my head. Not scary at all. Which made me cry even more.

  ‘They’ll be worried.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘They might already know you’re not in school.’

  I shook my head. ‘I need to know about my sister.’ My words came with extra burbles at their edges. ‘The one who died at the fair. The one you wrote about in the paper.’

  Adrian looked helplessly at his wife.

  His wife took her apron off. ‘What’s your sister’s name?’

  Adrian frowned. ‘Christine, I don’t think . . .’

  The woman shook her head at him. She folded her apron and placed it on the sideboard. She looked back at me.

  ‘Her name’s Danielle. Danielle Larson.’ I turned to Adrian. ‘The girl from the fair in 1982. Active in the RSPB, dead when the paramedics arrived. Blonde hair. Smiley. Tall for an eleven-year-old. Pretty as a picture. Dug gardens for charity.’ I glanced up at Adrian. ‘You might not know that though. I found that out from the Box of Special Things.’

  ‘And what was her address?’ the lady – Christine Sykes – said gently.

  ‘Fourteen Archer’s Way, Monkford.’

  ‘Is that where you live, too?’

  I nodded.

  The two glanced at each other. Mrs Sykes got up. ‘I’m just going to refill the kettle.’

  She went to a drawer behind the sofa.

  I turned back to Adrian. ‘Do I call you Adrian? Or Mr Sykes?’

  I glanced at Mrs Sykes, who left the room with something in her arms. I heard an electrical chirrup and the sound of the backdoor opening and closing.

  ‘Adrian is fine.’ He stretched out his feet. ‘You know – I’ve lived round here a long time. Sixty years. Can you believe that? It’s changed a lot.’

  I took a sip of dishwasher orange juice. ‘The precinct must have got built since you moved here. There were just fields there before.’

  He smiled. ‘I’d forgotten there was a time before the precinct. Well, now.’

  ‘And the schools merged. There used to be three schools around Monkford, and now there’s two.’

  ‘Wow! You know a lot for a little one.’

  ‘I got it from your paper. From the microfiche.’

  His smile faded.

  ‘Did you know my sister?’

  ‘Ah. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know her. I’m just trying to think. 1982, you say?’

  ‘July 1982. Happened on the twenty-fourth of July. The newspaper was on the thirtieth of July.’

  There was another electronic chirrup from the kitchen. Mrs Sykes came back in. ‘Do you want more orange juice, Fiona?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Grand. I’ll just finish off the tea.’ She looked at Mr Sykes and the two had a mini-conversation with their eyes.

  ‘Adrian, my sister—’

  ‘I’m just thinking,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me.’

  Mrs Sykes came back into the room with two mugs. She placed one in front of Mr Sykes and sat down. ‘What did you do in school today, love? Before you came here to find us?’

  I shuddered.

  ‘OK, you don’t want to talk about that,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s fine.’

  Adrian got up. ‘While I’m thinking – it takes me a long time to think these days – I’m halfway through a jigsaw.’ He showed me the big board on the dining-room table, on it a half-finished jigsaw of spaniel puppies in a basket. ‘I could do with some keen young eyes. Want to help me, while I can try to think what I remember about your sister?’

  I sat with Adrian at the dining-room table for a while, doing the jigsaw while he tried to remember. I put in at least fifteen pieces while Adrian congratulated me, because – Adrian was right – I did have keen young eyes.

  And the jigsaw even helped a little with the churning feeling in my stomach.

  The doorbell rang. Adrian and Mrs Sykes looked at each other.

  Mrs Sykes got up. ‘That must be the postman.’

  I froze for a second, hoping it wasn’t my dad. But no – he couldn’t know I was here. And then I heard voices and relaxed, thinking it must be a lady postman and – no!

  Mum burst into the room, the fabric belt of her dress undone and flying behind her.

  38

  A good spy knows when he’s been cornered.

  The Junior Spy’s Secret Handbook™

  Four days to the fair

  Mum rushed straight to me. ‘What’s this all about, darling?’

  I just cried, my shoulders heaving.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Mum said to Adrian. She threw her keys on the carpet and crouched next to me. ‘Fi, you can’t just leave school in the day. However upset you are.’ She looked up at Adrian. ‘I’m so, so sorry. She looked down at me. ‘What’s happened?’

  Mrs Sykes made a nice smile. ‘She’s had a falling out with some friends, I think.’

  The worry flew off Mum’s face. I watched it harden. ‘That’s not a reason to leave school.’ She closed her eyes and pressed her thumb and forefinger to her eyes, like Dr Sharma had an hour before. This is what I did to adults now. Made them press on their eyes and make this face. ‘You can’t just leave when you want. You can’t just do these things.’

  I put my arm over my face and pushed my eyes into my sleeve.

  ‘I’m so sorry – Christine, you said?’ Mum said.

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Sykes patted Mum’s arm. ‘It’s been no bother. We had little ones once.’

  Mum stood up from her crouching position. ‘But I’m sure you’re busy enough, Christine. Thank you for calling me. And for looking after her.’ She picked her keys up from the table. ‘Come on, Fiona. We’re going home.’

  We drove home in silenc
e. Nearly silence, anyway. I was gulping and snuffling.

  ‘Do you want this?’ Mum’s voice was soft as she held out my old Eeyore blanket.

  I shook my head. That blanket should have been thrown out – ages ago. Why she kept it in the boot of the car, I didn’t know.

  Mum put the blanket on the back seat.

  And that was it for our conversation on the journey.

  At home, Mum pulled a stool out from the peninsula and waited for me to sit on it.

  I sat down, my legs shivery.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the school. We’re to go in and see Dr Sharma together, after registration in the morning.’ She pulled out another stool. She got on the stool and shuffled it forward, so our knees were touching. She nudged me with her knee. ‘What’s going on, hey?’

  I looked down at the grey of my school skirt and the blobs of tears on it. ‘I want to wait for Dad.’

  ‘Dad’s working. Why did you leave school? Why did you think it was OK to go to that house?’

  I looked up. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

  I could tell she was trying to keep her face soft. It made her look weird.

  ‘I want to hear it from you.’

  ‘I thought if I found out what happened to Danielle at the fair, I could prove the same thing wouldn’t happen to me.’

  Mum closed her eyes. ‘This is about the fair. This is all about the fair.’

  ‘I thought I could prove I’d learned Danielle’s lesson, then you’d have to let me go.’ My voice was so small and wet-sounding, like a baby’s. ‘So I did some spying.’

  ‘That bloody spying book! And I begged you not to ask what happened at the fair!’

  After all the soft talking, Mum’s sudden shouting made me tense.

  ‘Sorry.’ She looked down at my school skirt and stroked it straight. ‘Fi, there’s nothing you could find out that would make it OK to go to the fair. Nothing. Your sister died there. Don’t you understand what that means?’

  I shook my head.

  She took a deep, noisy breath through her nose. ‘I can’t think about this now. I can’t think about you spying about your sister’s death. It makes me too angry.’

  I flinched.

  ‘We will talk about this properly another time.’ She was trying her best to sound calm. ‘But explain to me the other bits. Why today? Why did you decide it was all right to leave school and go there today?’