“Absolutely not. Can’t have dogs wandering around the place. I’ll take him. Come on, little one, over here.”
And Scrag, the treacherous little beast, trotted over to Madam Hoosier with barely a backward glance.
“Gosh. Lovely little fellow, aren’t you?” She patted his head and said, “Off to prep for you, Miss. Go on now, and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you coming out of the Rabbit Run with a dog.”
“Yes, Madam. Thank you.”
Bum.
She watched until I’d gone back inside. Scrag gave one little yip but he seemed entirely happy to switch allegiance to my PE teacher. I knew I should have been pleased that I didn’t have to worry about him any more but I felt like a little piece of our gang had gone. And I wasn’t looking forward to telling Marsha she’d lost her furry pal.
I didn’t have to. Not that night. I couldn’t find Marsha all evening. She didn’t reappear until breakfast the following morning.
“Where’ve you been?” I said.
She shrugged.
“How do you get away without going to prep?”
She shrugged again.
She wasn’t in a good mood and I wasn’t going to make it worse by telling her about Scrag. And then we passed Madam Hoosier on the way to form and with absolutely zero subtlety she said, “All sorted. He’s staying with me. Pop up and see him any time you like.”
I had no choice but to explain what had happened.
As predicted, it didn’t go down well. When Marsha was disappointed she seemed to collapse in on herself, physically and mentally. Everything about her slumped. A flutter of butterflies released from my stomach.
“You’re still coming to the Pavilion?”
“I said I would, didn’t I? And I spoke to Keisha – she and Susan are fine about it.”
“Really?”
“You’d better hope it’s worth it, dragging us all out after your lunatic friend.”
I felt absolutely awful.
I was trapped, but somehow I didn’t care.
I wasn’t cold or wet. I wasn’t being kicked or shoved around. Not most of the time anyway. I wasn’t hungry. Food came in through a hatch in the bottom of the door. I ate it mechanically and immediately forgot what it was. Maybe there was something in it that made me numb. Maybe that in itself was a kindness. I didn’t know. I wasn’t that bothered.
Sometimes a tension built up in me and I paced the cell, counting the five steps from one end to the other. The walking calmed me down.
Lights came on, went off. When it got dark, I laid on the rubber mattress, my mind a fog. I missed Scrag. I missed walking and sunshine and cheese but…
A sort of blankness sat in my head, like I was suspended, waiting.
I was up ridiculously early on the Saturday of exeat. I spent about an hour trying to decide what to wear.
At eight I went to wake Marsha but she wasn’t in her room or the bathroom. That was both worrying and annoying. It was my first proper outing as a normal human teenager in this century and I really needed a friend to do all the friend things with. Primarily, outfit selection.
I could hear Ima in my head saying, “It’s not a fashion show.” How wrong she was. All of life is a fashion show and everyone knows it.
I’d plaited my hair in two tight braids and finally decided on black skinny jeans and my lemon sweatshirt, but I really needed a second opinion. I went back to my own room and changed my top, again, to a red gingham shirt Miss Lilly had bought me.
Maybe red was too bright to be inconspicuous. I took it off and put on Stacey’s Benetton jumper. Only that might send the wrong message to Stacey.
I put the gingham shirt back on. With the plaits in my hair I did look a bit cowgirl but I took a deep breath and went to the dining room.
Keisha and Susan were eating toast and poring over old history books about the Pavilion. That was good. If they were completely engrossed in the history of the place they wouldn’t notice me disappearing to find Stacey.
I was relieved to see they were both in black jeans – Keisha with a white shirt tied at the waist and Susan with a sort of weird patchwork sweatshirt, covered in cat pictures. She held out the hem of her top and said, “Do you think all these cats are related?”
We looked at her but I mean, seriously, what could you say?
Keisha said to me, “You look nice, is that a vintage top?”
“No, does it look it? I wasn’t sure what to wear. Do I look weird?”
Keisha and me both glanced at Susan. Comparatively? No, I definitely did not look weird.
I was twitching with nerves though and very grateful those two were coming. Susan would definitely deflect any interest that might otherwise come my way and if Marsha didn’t appear, at least I had them.
Susan flipped a page of her book and said, “Wow, look at this – isn’t it the most beautiful room you’ve ever seen?”
She shoved the musty thing under my nose and showed me the ugliest room in the whole palace – it was orange with a crazy floral carpet – headache-inducingly bright. A rush of memory made me catch my breath.
My parents standing close together in that very room. Their little fingers hooked together, not quite a hand hold, not quite anything other people could comment on. And me, pushing my way between them, small enough to kiss each of their hands as I passed through – no Alfie yet, he hadn’t been born. There was so much love in our family I could have taken a fistful of it and modelled it into a heart shape.
In that second, I felt the weight of all that loss. I was the curator of the museum of my family. All the responsibility to keep the essence of it rested in me and yet I still hadn’t even asked about where they were buried.
I looked down at my porridge. I’d stirred blueberries in it so violently that it looked like a bowl of grey gloop.
“Hey? What’s up?” Keisha said.
I blinked, suddenly aware of the tears on my lashes. I shook my head. “Nothing.” I forced a smile. “Have you seen Marsha?”
Keisha shook her head. “I’ll text her.”
I should have thought of that. It wasn’t a habit with me yet. “I’ll do it,” I said. Holding my phone under the table, I quietly sent a message.
Keisha said, “Eat up and we’ll go get tagged.”
“What?”
“Tagged. They won’t let us out without knowing where we are, will they?”
I followed her, wondering what on earth they were going to do – put a luggage label on us like Paddington? Please Look After This Laura. I sort of liked the idea that I couldn’t get lost. If Stacey went crazy and tried to kidnap me or something, at least the school could track me down.
I did not want to be on the wrong side of Stacey’s temper. I remembered when she’d been sort of seeing Michael Westerbrook, a kid in our class, and he’d got off with one of the Level-Johnson twins. Stacey went absolutely mad – she threw a chemistry lab stool at him and gave him a black eye. She’d been suspended for a week.
I’d expected we’d go to Madam Hobbs or reception but Keisha led the way to the medical centre. We climbed the stairs and she knocked on the door.
“In you come, girls. I’m ready for you. How’s that knee doing, Laura? You were meant to pop in and see me.”
“Oh, yes.” I’d forgotten all about my knee, and my appointment. “Sorry, it’s fine. The glue stuff did the trick.”
“Excellent, I’d still like to check it though.”
I looked down at my skinny-jean clad legs and she said, “Maybe when you get back. Let’s sort this out first, hey?”
Keisha rolled her sleeve up and the nurse picked up one of three small metal tubes.
“What’s that?” I said.
The nurse looked up. “Tracking serum. Nothing to worry about. A gentle push against your skin and it’s done.”
I swallowed. An injection?
Keisha held her arm out, palm up. The dark pink skin looked vulnerable and exposed but she didn’t flinch when the nurse stamped
her wrist.
“Can we go without it?” I said. “Marsha…”
“Oh, she’s already been in. And no, goodness me, we need to know we can keep you safe, don’t we?”
“But…”
She jabbed Susan and then turned to me. “It’s fine. It’s a benign virus carrying a code individual to you. It lasts about a week and then your body fights it off. You won’t even know it’s there as long as you stick to your exeat rules. I have you down as going to the Pavilion only with a six p.m. pick-up? Is that right?”
Keisha nodded and said, “Come on, Laura. We need to find Marsha.”
I rolled up my sleeve. It didn’t hurt, like she said. With just a tiny push against my skin, they could follow us wherever we went. I shuddered.
We found Marsha halfway back to Blue House corridor. She looked utterly miserable.
“Where were you at breakfast?” Keisha said.
Marsha shrugged.
I touched her arm. “Are you okay? Look, if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”
“And abandon you in your hour of need? Of course I’ll come.”
As we walked back to get our bags, she seemed really down. I asked her where she’d been.
“Begging my father not to move me again. He’s talking about next weekend. He can’t even wait until the end of term. He has a stone for a heart.”
My mood sank with hers. I would really miss Marsha.
We went through the main door, signed our exeat slip and the receptionist held up a paddle to check the tracker virus was active and scan us out. It was kind of creepy but sort of reassuring at the same time.
A minibus was waiting to drive us to town but there was no driver and no guards. Other girls were getting on, with a lot of excited chatter about their plans for the day. I clutched at Marsha’s sleeve; a great big ugly old ball of worry was growing in my gut. Marsha tapped away on her phone, not even acknowledging my pathetic clinging on.
The minibus stopped on the seafront and said, “Alight here for Brighton and the Pavilion.”
We did and Keisha headed confidently away from the sea, Susan hurrying to keep up. Nerves held me back and Marsha was lost in her own thoughts until Keisha snapped her head round.
“Come on, you two. We haven’t got all day. Don’t you want to see the ice house exhibition?”
“Ice cream?” Susan said.
“No, ice house – where they stored ice for the palace. It’s been fully excavated now – you can see it without any of the tech, just—”
“No,” said Marsha, “we don’t.” Then she whispered to me in a voice that was definitely loud enough for Keisha to hear, “Honestly, does she do it on purpose? Idiot. As if after forty years in a deep freeze you’d want to visit another one?”
Still, when Keisha huffed off, we followed her because she did seem to know where she was going. She’d snapped her phone around her wrist like a chunky white bracelet and had a button in her ear that was probably telling her where to go.
I could soon see the beautiful onion-shaped roofline of the Pavilion. I scanned the crowd waiting to go in. Where were Miss Lilly’s guards? Was Stacey here already? It was early. Too early probably.
Susan said, “Don’t you think all buildings should look like vegetables? Like, a runner-bean tower block or a mushroom bungalow.”
“Or a cabbage cottage?” I joined in.
She gave me the most enormous smile. “Yes! Or an aubergine apartment or a halloumi hovel.”
I opened my mouth to ask what kind of vegetable halloumi was, but she seemed so happy that I just nodded.
We queued. Keisha buzzing with excitement, Susan quietly bonkers, Marsha still absorbed in her phone, and me ready to vomit. I was seriously questioning what I was doing. Maybe I should have just left well alone, ignored Stacey. Cut her out of my mind. I sighed. That was never an option. Not really. She would haunt me for ever – if not in real life, then in my head.
When we got to the door, an attendant explained that if we hired the AR glasses we could enjoy the company of King George IV or, if we preferred, Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria.
I nudged Marsha. “What’s AR?”
Marsha poked her hand in the middle of the attendant – I mean, right through his stomach. He shimmered with static. My mouth dropped open.
She shrugged. “Holograms, Augmented Reality, but with the glasses, they seem to move about.”
I stared at the attendant. “He looks so real.”
She shrugged again as we went past. I was looking back at the attendant when Keisha tugged my arm.
“Do you want the glasses? Just tap there.”
She pointed at a screen with a shelf underneath. I tapped it and a pair of glasses dropped into the tray.
“Where do I pay?”
“You already did, when you hit the button.”
I looked at Marsha for an explanation – she held up her phone. “Airpay.”
It was the most alien I’d felt since I came back.
“Do you still have actual cash?” I asked.
“Hmm, not many people use it any more,” Keisha said. “It’s dirty, isn’t it? Disgusting, when you think about it. So many people handle it, it gets covered in germs.”
By the time I’d finished being agog, we were in the pale green Entrance Hall being welcomed by a footman.
“Real?” I said to Marsha.
“Nope.”
She put her glasses on so I did the same. The room was suddenly full of people in old-fashioned clothes, chattering to each other. I mean really old-fashioned clothes, not 1980s old-fashioned. I took the glasses off and the people disappeared. It was creepy. Totally creepy. But also kind of cool, even if the weird motion of it made me feel slightly sick. We walked through to the long gallery, me with my hands flapping about in front of me, struggling to work out what was real and what wasn’t. I blinked at a short man in Chinese court dress and he started speaking to me. Convinced it wasn’t a person, I reached forward to put my hand through him, like Marsha had done at the door, and stubbed my fingers on a statue.
“I can’t deal with this,” I said. “How do you know what’s real and what’s not?”
“You don’t,” Keisha said with that annoying superior tone in her voice. “That’s the whole point.”
“Haven’t you been in the AR room at school?” Susan said, as we worked our way into the banqueting room.
“We have a room like this at school?”
“Since my grandma died, it’s the only way I get to spend any real time with her,” she said, smiling sadly. “And her giraffes.”
“Giraffes?” I said.
“Don’t encourage her,” Marsha said, then more quietly, “Let’s just go straight to the bedroom and wait. We don’t want to miss your friend.”
I felt properly jittery. What if I didn’t recognize Stacey? She’d be so much older. I took the AR glasses off and checked the time. I had nearly an hour until I was due to meet her. I looked around. Without the glasses the room was so much emptier and I realized my friends had moved on. Even Marsha was heading through to the next room.
I watched the other tourists for a bit. It was strange watching them carefully navigating around non-existent Victorians, like the room was full of ghosts and I was the only one who couldn’t see them. With a small shock, I noticed I could still see one, even without the glasses on. It was a woman in Victorian costume, her face in the shadow of a bonnet, who was definitely looking at me.
Could it be her? Could it be Stacey?
Walls.
White walls.
Walking.
And waiting.
Was this it?
Was this my life now?
Why?
We stared at each other, the invisible thread of our line of vision connecting myself and the woman. Her eyes had not a smudge of Robert Smith eyeliner, her skin was soft and doughy. I guessed she was in her fifties but I couldn’t be sure. Anyone over forty seemed ancient to me. She didn’t
look like Stacey but why else would she be staring at me so intently?
My heart hurt. It seemed to be tearing itself in two with the simultaneous urge to run towards her and to run away. Unless… Could the woman be a journalist? Could she somehow have discovered that I was out for the day? Or maybe she was Miss Lilly’s guard – if she was, I probably needed to shake her off before I met Stacey in the room upstairs. I needed Marsha’s advice. I turned away, but before I’d taken two steps, the woman had crossed the room and caught hold of my arm.
I peered down at the hand holding onto me. It was blotched with freckles, the nails bitten to stubs, chewed and torn. Then I examined her face, really looked, and I knew her like I knew my own reflection. The breath I’d been holding escaped in a gasp.
Her eyes shone. “It’s you, it’s really you.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
For a moment, all the betrayal, all the questions, everything fell away. She was Stacey, my Stacey. My past right here in my present. I threw my arms around her neck and hugged her.
She hugged me fiercely in return and then something changed – she stiffened and stepped back. “We need to get out of here,” she said.
“I can’t,” I faltered. “I’m with –” I hesitated over saying “friends”, it seemed too cruel, a reminder she wasn’t one of them – “people.”
“Get rid of them.”
“I can’t, they…”
“Do they know you’re meeting me? Why did you take that risk? I told you…”
“What do you mean?”
“Keep your voice down.”
Marsha put her head round the corner and called across the room. “Laura, catch up, will you?”
I wanted to call her back but she’d already gone. With the AR glasses on, Stacey blended in with the fake Victorians. Marsha wouldn’t have realized. I was tempted to follow her, but Stacey put a hand under my elbow and swept me sideways, through a plain wooden door into a tiny hallway.
I pulled my arm away. “What are you doing?”
“We can’t be seen,” she said, and then, as if a switch had flipped, her face softened again. “Oh, Laura, I can’t believe it, after all this time, I can’t believe you’re in front of me, real, solid, alive.” She hugged me again, her bonnet biffing me in the face.
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