‘Pretty much,’ said Harley. ‘I think they’d love to come up here, but I’m not sure we could trust them to keep quiet about it. If anyone finds out, we’re in big trouble.’
‘OK, this is our secret,’ said Jodie. ‘So what else is along here? We might as well take it all in while we can.’
We found a room with an open door full of old bedroom furniture – dressing tables and spotted mirrors and a large wardrobe.
‘Hey, let’s go to Narnia!’ said Harley, opening the wardrobe door a crack.
‘Idiot,’ said Jodie, but she got right in the wardrobe.
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shut. It was so dark inside that we couldn’t see a thing. We stood squashed up together, giggling a little hysterically. I wanted to hold Jodie’s hand but worried that I might grab Harley by mistake.
‘So where’s Narnia, then?’ said Harley. ‘Let us in, Wicked Queen. I want to ride on your sleigh and nibble your Turkish delight.’ He banged his fists on the back of the wardrobe.
‘There’s no Narnia,’ said Jodie. ‘No way out the back of the wardrobe. And no way out the front either. You’ve shut the door and the handle’s on the outside. We can’t get out! We’re entombed here for ever! We can shout and yell and hammer with our fists, but we’re way at the end of the forbidden corridor and no one will ever hear us. We’re stuck in this wardrobe like three corpses in a coffin—’
‘Shut up, Jodie!’ I said, panicking, pushing on the wardrobe door.
It gave easily and I tumbled out into the room again, landing on my knees. Jodie jumped out after me, laughing her head off. Harley unfurled himself after her, laughing too.
‘That was horrible!’ I said. ‘Don’t make stuff up like that, Jodie, you make it too real.’
‘It was just a silly joke, babes,’ said Jodie. ‘We were only in a wardrobe.’
‘Yes, but you made it seem like it was a real coffin.’
‘I quite fancy the real coffin idea,’ said Harley. ‘It would be cool to have your own comfy coffin to curl up in, only emerging by the light of the full moon, teeth bared, ready for a little snack.’
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boats you get in Venice,’ said Jodie.
‘Gondolas? Yes, even better. I could float down some murky Venetian canal, ferried by a mournful-looking black-robed gondolier.’
‘Have you even been to Venice, Harley?’ I asked shyly.
‘Yes, I went with my ma, when she was temporarily between men, just before she met my current stepfather.’
‘I suppose you’ve been to lots of places abroad?’
Jodie asked.
‘Some. Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Florence, America lots of time – just the usual,’ said Harley.
‘That’s maybe your usual, matie. We haven’t been anywhere, have we, Pearl? We went to Spain once but Mum got all fussed about the noise from the nightclub and Dad didn’t like the food. Honestly, they’re a joke, our parents.’
‘Not as jokey as mine,’ said Harley. ‘I’ll swap you.’
‘Sure!’ said Jodie.
‘You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘I’ll take a chance. It’ll give Mum a break. She’s desperate to get rid of me.’
‘She is not!’ I said.
‘Oh go on. You know perfectly well you’re Mum’s favourite, Pearl,’ said Jodie.
‘Well, you’re Dad’s favourite. And you’re my favourite too,’ I said.
‘Really, Pearly? Even though I scare you rotten?’
said Jodie, suddenly clasping her hands round my neck, pretending to throttle me.
I started tickling her in retaliation and she shrieked.
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if we’re caught,’ said Harley.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! We’re not doing any harm,’ said Jodie. ‘Why are they so fussed about all these attic rooms? It’s not like any of this stuff is really worth anything. No one would want it, ugly old stuff,’ she said, kicking the massive wardrobe.
She kicked too hard and hurt her foot.
‘Ow!’ she moaned, hopping on one leg. She wasn’t good at balancing on just one high heel and nearly toppled over. She grabbed hold of Harley.
‘Whoopsie!’
He sighed. ‘No wonder you’re falling over. Look at your stupid shoes,’ he said irritably.
‘You sound like my mother,’ said Jodie, tossing her ponytail. She marched out of the room, exagger-ating each step. ‘Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble,’ she chanted, making her ankles do just that.
Harley raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged, grinning. I felt guilty. It was as if we were ganging up on Jodie, but it was exciting all the same.
Whenever we’d ever met anyone new before, they’d always wanted to be Jodie’s friend, not mine. But Harley definitely seemed to want to be my special friend. Seeing the badger together had been like a magic enchantment.
We heard Jodie tapping down the long corridor, trying more doors.
‘Come on, you guys,’ she called.
‘She’s an old bossy knickers, your sister,’ said Harley. He was busy rearranging the mirrors, adjusting them carefully. ‘Here, Pearl, take a look.’
I bent down and saw myself reflected in the mirror – and then again and again and again, multiple Pearls endlessly smiling and smiling, until 123
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I felt dizzy, not sure which one was me.
‘ Hey! ’ Jodie called. ‘Come here! Wait till you see what I’ve found!’
‘Oldest trick in the book,’ said Harley, pulling faces in the mirror beside me. ‘Don’t take any notice, Pearl.’
Jodie kept calling, sounding really excited.
‘I don’t think she’s kidding us,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see, Harley.’
I ran out of the room and down the corridor. Jodie was right at the end, standing in front of a door.
‘Look!’ she said, leaping up and down.
‘Look at what?’ I said. ‘It’s just another door.’
‘It’s right at the end of the corridor! Can’t you guess which door it is!’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s got to be the door into the tower!’ said Jodie.
‘Oh, wow!’
‘But it’s properly locked, see,’ said Jodie, pointing upwards at the bolt. She jumped up but didn’t get anywhere near it. ‘ Harley! ’ she hollered. ‘We need you. Come on, Daddy-Long-Legs, this is a job for you.’
Harley strolled slowly along the corridor, refusing to hurry.
‘Come on! We need you to undo the bolt!’
Harley reached up and grappled with it. It had been partly painted over. At first it looked as if it wouldn’t budge at all, but Harley kept pulling at it.
‘Lift me up. I’ll do it,’ said Jodie, tugging at him.
‘Just give me a chance, will you?’ he said. He bashed at the bolt with the side of his hand. It seemed to give a little.
‘Do it again!’ said Jodie.
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‘It bloody hurts,’ said Harley, but he went on bashing until the bolt slid undone.
‘Hurray!’ said Jodie, rattling the door handle.
It still wouldn’t open. Jodie pushed and shoved it. She even tried kicking it.
‘You can’t get in, Jodie,’ said Harley.
‘I will get in,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’
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Mum was red in the face, tears spurting down her ch
eeks.
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‘We’ll have to find the key,’ said Jodie. ‘We’ve got to get into the tower.’
‘I think it’s all blocked up anyway,’ said Harley.
‘Well, we can un block it,’ said Jodie. ‘There’s definitely a room up there because you can see a window on the outside. Maybe the really really naughty Melchester College pupils are shoved into the tower and languish there. Hey, I can hear someone calling. It’s very faint, very hoarse, very desperate – listen!’
We knew she was kidding, of course we did, but we still listened. Then I heard someone calling, very faint and far away but still distinct. Harley and I stared at Jodie’s mouth as if she was performing some clever act of ventriloquism. She looked taken aback.
‘I did hear something,’ she said.
We listened again. There was another faraway cry.
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‘Jodie! Pearl!’
‘Oh God, it’s Dad,’ said Jodie. ‘Quick, we don’t want him catching us up here!’
She slipped off her red shoes and we started running madly down the long corridor, past all the attic rooms, towards the stairs. Harley ran awkwardly alongside us, lifting his legs up oddly, knees high, like a galloping pony. We got to the stairs at last and skidded down them, sliding on the old lino, green and slippery as seaweed. Then we squeezed back through the gap by the big cupboard.
Dad’s voice was much louder now.
‘Quick, don’t let’s hang round in front of the cupboard, it’ll look way too suspicious,’ said Jodie.
‘In here,’ said Harley, shoving us into a classroom. We stood still for a moment, trying to catch our breath.
We heard Dad calling again, louder now.
‘We’re in here, Dad!’ Jodie yelled. She nodded at us. ‘Act like we’ve been here ages,’ she hissed.
She sat at a desk, slipped her shoes back on and put her feet up on a chair. I sat beside her. Harley started a chalk drawing on the old-fashioned blackboard. He drew a broad head with a long snout.
‘What’s that? A dog?’ said Jodie.
‘I bet Pearl can guess,’ said Harley.
‘It’s a badger,’ I said proudly.
Then Dad came into the classroom, dirt and oil already smeared on his new work clothes. ‘ There you are!’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.
Where have you been?’
‘Just hanging out here, Dad,’ said Jodie.
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‘I came looking for you along here only ten minutes ago,’ said Dad.
‘Oh well, we’ve been in some of the other classrooms too. Harley’s been showing us around, haven’t you, mate?’ said Jodie.
‘That’s me, utterly matey,’ said Harley. ‘Always ready to oblige.’
‘Well, lad, Mr Wilberforce wants you to oblige him. He wants you to help him lop his hibiscus.’
‘Isn’t that Jed’s job?’ Harley asked mildly.
‘Let’s all go and help Jed!’ said Jodie.
‘No, no, you need to help your mother, Jodie. You too, Pearl. What were you thinking, sloping off?
There’s so much work to be done. You two go back to our flat pronto and get cracking.’
‘Yes, Dad, no, Dad, at the double, Dad,’ said Jodie, saluting and clicking her high heels.
He pretended to take a swipe at her. She dodged, laughing. Dad shook his fist at her but he was grinning. Harley was watching, looking wistful. I wondered what it would be like not to have a dad.
My sympathy made me brave.
‘Maybe see you later, Harley?’ I said.
‘Sure,’ he said, smiling at me.
‘Oooooh!’ Jodie squealed when we were going along the basement corridor together. ‘ Maybe see you later!’ she repeated, in my voice. ‘You bold girl.
Practically making a date with old Harley Not Davidson!’
‘I wasn’t!’ I said, going red.
‘You’re blushing. Fancy, you’ve only been here five minutes and you’ve got yourself a boyfriend.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ I protested, shoving her.
‘He’s just a friend friend.’
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‘You’ve really got a thing going between you, what with all this booky-booky talk, and little smiles like you’ve got a big secret together.’
‘Shut up. It’s not like that. He’s just being kind to me, the way he’s kind to Dan and Zeph and Sakura.’
I paused. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘He likes you, stupid. It’s obvious.’
‘Well, he likes you too,’ I said.
‘No, he doesn’t. I irritate him,’ said Jodie. ‘Still, I intend to have my pick of all these posh guys when the term starts. And I might just click with old Jed.’
‘Jodie, he’s much too old!’
‘I like older guys. And they like me. Look at Bernie. He really fancied me.’
‘Oh, Jodie, he was just kidding around. You’re kidding, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe,’ said Jodie. ‘I do reckon Jed though. His eyes! And that grin of his – wow!’
She burbled on about him for ages while we were sorting our bedroom. I couldn’t work out if she was serious or winding me up. She kept teasing me about Harley too. It made me feel important, grown up, on a par with Jodie herself.
I unpacked my boxes, arranging my real doll’s house and my shoebox Mansion Towers and my snow globes and my little plaster poodles and my scrapbooks and my jars of beads and my fairy lamp and my three little black teddy bears. I looked at them without enthusiasm. I flicked Edgar, Allan and Poe with my fingernail so that they fell over on their backs, furry paws in the air.
‘ Ouch! OUCH! OUCH!’ said Jodie, pretending to be the bears.
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‘They look a bit silly, don’t they? All my stuff is so babyish. Shall we make our bedroom really stylish and sophisticated, no girly stuff at all?’
‘You’re one hundred per cent girly, Pearly,’ said Jodie, laughing at me.
‘Yes, but I don’t have to stay girly for ever,’ I said.
‘True,’ said Jodie. ‘Though I like you girly. I had plans to make this a lovely pretty pink room for you, with ruffled curtains and satin ribbons. We could scrape off all this scuzzy wallpaper and paint it white and you could paint little roses all over, you’re good at them. You could paint little pink poodles too, yeah? And what else could we paint?
Pink fairies with their own fairy palace? Yeah, loads of fairies like those soppy books you used to read, a whole flock of fairies. You could have a fairy dress with little net wings—’
‘And a fairy wand, and I could poke you in the tummy whenever you teased me,’ I said.
‘I’m not teasing,’ said Jodie.
She saw the little torn piece of wallpaper by my bed and pulled it. A big strip came away, exposing the whitewashed wall.
‘There! It comes away easy-peasy. We can strip it all off and get it painted in no time.’
‘Jodie! Don’t! You’re tearing it all!’
‘Of course I am. It’s all got to come off, dopey. We can’t paint on top of this old wallpaper.’
‘But what will Mum say?’
Mum said a great deal when she came in to check on us. She seized hold of Jodie, hitting out at her.
‘How dare you! Look at the mess you’re making!
You’re wrecking your whole room!’
‘ Ow!’ Jodie screamed. ‘Don’t you dare hit me!
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You’re not allowed to hit kids. If they found out here, they’d sack you. Stop it!’
‘ You stop it then,’ said Mum, her arms s
winging at her sides. ‘And I didn’t hit you. I smacked you, like any good parent.’
‘ Bad parent. You could be prosecuted,’ said Jodie.
‘Better watch out I don’t tell on you to Mr Wilberforce, Mum.’
‘Don’t you dare try to blackmail me, young lady.
Look, for pity’s sake, can’t you try to help, not hinder? You too, Pearl. Why didn’t you try to stop your sister making such a terrible mess?’
‘We’re sorry, Mum, I said.
‘No we’re not! We are helping. You said we could redecorate the rooms and that’s just what we’re doing. You said, Mum.’
‘Later, once we’re all straight. We haven’t even unpacked yet, and I’m trying to give everywhere a good scrub. I’ve been down on my knees on that kitchen floor. I don’t know who the cleaners are but they deserve to be sacked. There’s grease an inch thick around that cooker. We’ll have cockroaches if we don’t watch out, and I’ve found mouse dirt in the pantry. It’s disgraceful, a total health hazard. The very least you two could do is give me a hand with the cleaning, but you run off and play flipping Hide and Seek with that great gangly boy, and then you rip your room to shreds!’
Mum was red in the face, tears spurting down her cheeks. We’d never seen her so worked up before. I felt tears pricking my own eyes. Even Jodie looked worried.
‘Mum? Hey, don’t cry,’ she said, giving her a hug.
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the walls if that’s what you want. And you can smack me all you like if it makes you feel better. Go on, have another bash, feel free!’
‘Shut up, you bonkers banana,’ said Mum, hugging her back. She sniffed and absent-mindedly wiped her nose on her sleeve, though she’d have been outraged if either of us had done the same.
‘Shall we come and help you scrub your kitchen floor, Mum?’ I said.
‘Well, I’ve broken the back of it now. Broken my back too, I dare say.’ Mum sniffed again. Her eyes were still brimming. ‘I need a decent cleaner, but where am I going to find anyone in the middle of nowhere? I didn’t realize it would be so isolated here, and the Wilberforces and that Miss French, they’re not really what you’d call friendly, and the children all seem such an odd bunch.’
‘Harley’s not odd,’ I said.
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