The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen

by Deborah Abela

  ‘Like what?’ Aurelie’s voice was small.

  ‘They can become invisible, or levitate, or walk through walls.’

  ‘Walk through walls?’

  ‘Only if they want to. Most of the time they open doors like everyone else.’

  Aurelie frowned. ‘So, the Bonhoffens can live forever?’

  Lilliana laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Bonhoffen who has wanted to do that. No, you only get one chance to come back. The next time you meet your end, it’s final.’

  ‘Do all of us have it?’

  ‘It seems everybody who was born a Bonhoffen, yes.’

  ‘Even me?’ Aurelie’s voice filled with a creeping fear.

  Lilliana took Aurelie’s hands in hers. ‘Even you. If you should ever wish to.’

  Aurelie’s eyes widened. ‘Are you …?’

  ‘No. I’m your creaky old grandmother like I’ve always been.’

  ‘Why does it happen to us?’

  ‘Some say it can be traced back to the Middle Ages, to a distant ancestor in Scotland who was said to be a witch.’ Lilliana cocked an eyebrow. ‘An accusation people loved throwing at women back then. The woman and her son were driven out of town and became the first of our family to make their living as travelling performers. Others say the gift was given to them by a gypsy queen in Romania for saving her son from a burning barn. Maybe it’s something we’ve always had.’

  Aurelie didn’t move.

  ‘The very special thing about this gift is that people never come back for small reasons, like a party they don’t want to miss or a roast chicken they were about to eat. It’s always for bigger reasons. Like love and friendship and knowing there would be someone too broken to go on without them.’ Lilliana smiled. ‘But mostly, it’s for love.’

  ‘But then why didn’t –’

  ‘Because your grandfather was ready,’ Lilliana said. ‘He’d lived through many years. He’d seen wars, met kings, survived sickness. His body was old and couldn’t go on anymore.’ Lilliana paused. ‘Plus, I told the old codger he had to leave. He didn’t want to at first, but I knew he’d always be with me, and I was right. There hasn’t been one day when he’s left my side.’

  ‘He’s here?’ Aurelie looked around the room.

  ‘Yes. He’s always nearby, making sure I don’t trip on a crooked step or leave the stove on.’

  ‘Can you see him?’ Aurelie whispered.

  ‘Not now. I see him mostly at night when I’m falling asleep. He sits on the end of my bed.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  Lilliana leant in. ‘Juggles.’

  ‘Juggles?’

  ‘He knows I love it. Each time he juggles something flashier – bottles, slippers, small octopuses. Not that the octopuses seem to like it, poor things.’

  Aurelie was only three at her grandfather’s funeral. She remembered bits. A black carriage with large, polished glass windows and white silken scarves sailing behind it like a regal ship. Horses, tall and black, breathing great smoky white puffs into the chilly air.

  ‘He looks out for you too, you know.’ Lilliana smiled.

  ‘He does?’

  ‘Oh yes. Everyone has someone looking out for them – even the mean ones.’ She nudged Aurelie. ‘Your grandfather and I talk about you often.’

  ‘You talk to him?’

  ‘All the time. The days wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.’

  ‘How does it happen? The coming back?’

  ‘When a Bonhoffen dies, there’s a small sliver of time when you stand somewhere between life and death, when you can decide to come back to life. Lukash said it felt like hours, but when he came to he realised it was only seconds.’

  Aurelie’s brows squeezed together. ‘So there are ghosts that are spirits and others that are half-ghost, half-human but who look and feel like us?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Is anyone I know like this?’ she asked warily.

  Lilliana nudged her nose into Aurelie’s cheek. ‘That’s not for me to say, but if you want to ask anything else, I’m all yours.’

  Aurelie shifted on her stool. A cold morning breeze snuck beneath the door. Lilliana handed her another chunk of cinnamon twist. ‘But for now, you’re off to school.’

  She slipped her hand into Aurelie’s and walked her down the curved stairs of the ice-cream parlour, through the pier and past a few early morning visitors.

  At the front gates, Lilliana held her granddaughter’s face in her hands. ‘The secret is hard at first, I don’t pretend it isn’t, but it is a gift not a curse. Something to be thought of as special, that sets us apart from the world.’

  She kissed Aurelie on both cheeks and watched as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and made her way through the gates of Gribblesea Pier to school.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Aurelie Bonhoffen

  ‘Here she comes.’

  Three students crouched behind a bush inside the entrance of Gribblesea College. Charles was a smart boy with well-behaved golden locks who bored easily. The second, Sniggard, had never read a book, so forever felt a sense of having lost something important. The third was Rufus Bog, the mayor’s son.

  ‘Come on, Bog, don’t chicken out now,’ Sniggard hissed. ‘If you wait any longer she’ll be gone.’

  Bog’s shoulders twitched. He stretched a slingshot in front of his eye. His hands shook as he held Aurelie in his sights.

  ‘Now!’ Sniggard commanded.

  Rufus flinched and released the sling. The paint-filled balloon flew out of its rubber strap. The three boys held their breath.

  The balloon ripped through the air – but not at its intended target. It sailed past Aurelie, towards the upturned nose and crisp, rigid step of Mrs Sneed, the maths teacher.

  Charles gasped and Sniggard’s face lit up with the delicious possibility of what might happen next. Bog swallowed what felt like a steel lump. Mrs Sneed, her lips twisted in horror, screamed as the red paint splattered over her dress.

  ‘Oh! What on earth … what in the name of … who ever has …’ she spluttered, searching for the reason why her Monday morning had become littered with such unexpectedness. Mrs Sneed, being a maths teacher, always relied on the certainty of formulas, the logic of equations and the uninterrupted quietness of her walks to school.

  She didn’t count on paint-bombs flying through the air from nowhere. Or small children standing and staring from the pits of guiltiness.

  ‘Aurelie Bonhoffen!’ Mrs Sneed’s ruler-cut fringe shivered with rage.

  Mrs Sneed was a tall, colourless woman, except for the splatter of red paint now on her dress, parts of her face and tightly wound hair. Even her silhouette was harsh, a collection of strict and measured lines. She liked maths, not children. Not those unpredictable, loud, opinionated and now paint-throwing children.

  ‘Yes?’ Aurelie’s bleary, sleep-deprived eyes winced.

  Mrs Sneed’s eyes pinpointed Aurelie like a scientist zeroing in on a strain of bacteria she planned to wipe out. ‘Did you throw paint all over the brand-new dress I had specially sent from London?’

  Aurelie looked at her, confused.

  ‘Nothing to say for yourself, eh? No excuses that you children are so fond of? Come with me.’

  Mrs Sneed cantered towards the entrance of the school office, sending specks of paint flea-jumping into the air as her skirt swished angrily like an out-of-control fly swatter. Aurelie tried to keep up with small, skipping steps, but stopped when she passed the bush that hid the three boys. Her eyes rustled through the branches and made out the faces of her classmates staring back at her.

  Sniggard did nothing to cover his smirk at how a plan that had gone so wrong had now become so perfectly right. He threw her a look, daring her to betray them. Charles poked out his tongue. But when she looked at Rufus, he quickly lowered the slingshot and recoiled as his finger caught on a thorn. He looked cornered, pinned down by the branches.

  ‘Aurelie Bonhoffen!’
Mrs Sneed had gained ground in her indignant march. ‘When I give an order I expect it to be carried out.’

  Aurelie didn’t move. Rufus stared back, knowing they were done for.

  ‘It’s –’ Aurelie began.

  ‘Enough! I’m not interested in words.’ Mrs Sneed’s face had turned as red as the spots on her dress. ‘I’m interested only in you … coming here …now.’

  The smile on Sniggard’s lips rose even higher.

  Aurelie gave one last look before she turned away and did as she was told.

  Principal Farnhumple stood at the back of the room, polishing a souvenir spoon from Blackpool. She held it up to her face and saw herself reflected in its shiny surface before laying it neatly in a velvet box alongside spoons from other famous places: Big Ben, Brighton, Buckingham Palace. She usually polished them from A to Z and was unhappy about the interruption while she was only at B.

  She turned and sat at her desk that was weighed down with two stained-glass lamps, a boxed collection of elegant pens and a carved wooden beetle, which she gave a small pat.

  ‘Well? Are you going to answer me?’

  Aurelie could feel the lateness of the night before sit heavily on her eyes. It was obvious from Mrs Farnhumple’s rouge-coloured cheeks that she had asked a question, probably some time ago.

  Aurelie tried hard to stifle a yawn. ‘Yes, Miss.’

  Her head was a fog of fire-twirling, trapeze swinging, Blackforest cake and cloudberry juice.

  And of course there was the news about the Bonhoffen secret.

  Aurelie remembered an old and crooked aunt she and Lilliana had visited in a castle overlooking the Baltic Sea in Estonia. The aunt moved around the castle without a sound, like a whisper of air, as if at any moment she would disappear. Lilliana explained that it was a broken heart and a son who had gone missing that caused her quiet footsteps. But Aurelie now wondered if this slumped and saddened woman was a ghost. Or a half-ghost. What did someone look like who had come back? Like this old woman? Maybe she’d come back because of her missing son. To search for him. To …

  ‘It’s Mrs Farnhumple. It’s very easy to remember. Why does everyone …’ Mrs Farnhumple looked away. Her husband was an entomologist, an expert on insects, and had been in the depths of the Amazon jungle studying the little creatures for the last five years. Some people said he found insects more appealing than his wife.

  ‘What I am finding hard to understand,’ she recomposed herself, ‘is that you seem to go out of your way to draw attention to yourself. Your teachers say you often stare into space and at times say the most inappropriate things. You told Mrs Crankshaw that one of your favourite moments is when you get to be the back end of a cow.’

  Aurelie smiled. ‘Especially when Rolo is in the front. We make a very convincing cow when we’re together.’

  Mrs Farnhumple frowned.

  ‘In the marquee. During performances.’ Aurelie could tell her explanation was doing nothing to clear things up. ‘Miss Miel says I have a lively and curious mind, and that it’s good to –’

  ‘Miss Miel,’ Mrs Farnhumple’s lip curled upwards, ‘is young and has a lot to learn about educating children. I am more concerned about the comments of the experienced teachers, and the peculiar way you answer some of their questions.’

  Aurelie wilted under Mrs Farnhumple’s glare. ‘Sometimes I don’t seem to give them the answers they want.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of giving them answers they want, it’s a matter of giving them answers that are right.’

  Mrs Farnhumple leant forward over her desk and clasped her spider-like hands in front of her. ‘It is not just any child who is offered a place at such a fine school as Gribblesea College. A place, I need not remind you, that should be treated with respect and occupied by someone who is good enough to deserve it.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Farnhumple.’

  There was a heavy silence that left Aurelie unsure whether to leave, remain seated or duck.

  ‘Is everything all right at home, dear?’ Mrs Farnhumple asked almost gently.

  ‘Uh?’ Aurelie tilted her head and frowned.

  ‘Not, uh.’ Mrs Farnhumple’s left eye was beginning to twitch. ‘You mean, excuse me. And sit up straight.’

  Aurelie lifted her body upright.

  ‘Well, is it?’ Her words were like hailstones. ‘Is everything all right at home?’ she thundered.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Farnhumple.’

  Principal Farnhumple’s wrinkles quivered so much that small avalanches of face powder stormed over the table.

  ‘Things are perfectly …’ Aurelie tried to stifle her yawn, but it came out in one noisy gush.

  If Aurelie wasn’t sure she’d upset Mrs Farnhumple by then, she could be certain of it now. Her cheeks wobbled and turned purple, and her throat seized up so that she looked like a frill-necked lizard.

  ‘I know this may not make much sense to you, but the responsibilities of a principal are many, the most important being to protect each child from moral corruption and the fall into delinquency.’ She stopped, as if this should have cleared up any confusion.

  Aurelie blinked.

  Principal Farnhumple snatched up a long black pen and, for a frightening moment, Aurelie thought she might use her as a dartboard. She wrote something hurriedly, jamming the pen down and leaving deep grooves in the cream-coloured paper.

  ‘Give this to your parents when you get home.’

  Aurelie jumped as Mrs Farnhumple slammed a rubber stamp onto the back of a school-crested envelope. It read: From the Principal, Mrs Esmerelda Farnhumple.

  ‘You are excused.’ She may as well have said, ‘You are a cockroach’ for all the venom she crammed into it.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Farnhumple.’ It seemed the right thing to say. Aurelie took the envelope and stood up. She had no idea what was inside, but it felt heavy with bad things to come.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mr Lucien B. Crook

  Lucien B. Crook sniffed as he lifted his gold eyeglass and surveyed the view before him. It was a covetous, greedy sniff, punctuated by the smallest of grins on his red, fleshy lips. His black hair was waxed into a neatly coiffed wave and sat obediently beneath a stiff hat. He stood tall. Some might have described him as good-looking. His trim face was cleanly shaven except for a pencil-thin moustache drawing a neat line beneath his tapered nose.

  In his long coat, immaculately pressed striped trousers and vest of deep green, he slowly swept his eyeglass over the town. Past the far docks where hulking wooden cargo ships swayed and creaked in the calm of the bay. Over cobbled backstreets to his newspaper factory. Along the sweeping stretch of the high street, which was lined on one side with gleaming Georgian mansions and on the other by the rippling curve of the ocean.

  When he spied the pier, he stopped.

  The entrance was guarded by two wooden towers joined in the middle by a smoothly curved arch. In the centre was a clock that had been ticking time for almost one hundred years. And above it all was a sign:

  Bonhoffen’s Seaside Pier

  Each letter stood over five feet tall, filled with lights that could be seen at night from the far edges of Gribblesea.

  Most of the pier buildings were a streaky grey-white, due to circling flocks of seagulls and pigeons. Inside were booths crammed with games of chance, stalls of candied rock, lollipops, ice-cream, lip smackers and fruit jellies. There was the clash of dodgem cars, the circling whirr of the ferris wheel and the rattle of the roller-coaster that swung out over the sea.

  Above each building and along the pier’s side rails were strings of lace metalwork, which, at intervals, balanced rounded lights that glowed like miniature moons. Deckchairs sat open for passers-by to stop and take in the smell of the sea or feel the warmth of the sun against their faces. To sit and listen and maybe even dream.

  But Mr Crook had no time for sitting, and he rarely dreamed.

  He snapped his eyeglass shut and was off.

  His polished shoes clicked
along the boardwalk as he passed brightly painted double doors where fishermen scaled their catch. Women sat in doorways chatting as they shelled prawns, shucked oysters and turned whelks out of their snail-like shells.

  Lucien B. Crook hurried past it all and only slowed when he reached the pier. He lifted one side of his lip in disgust at the curled ironwork gate, moulded into images of crowns and lions, eaten away in places by rust. A crumbling lion’s tail snapped off in his gloved hand. He let it fall to the ground with a ‘humph’.

  Crook strode through the crowd of running, chattering kids, past stalls of dolls and stuffed animals and the giant wave slide that sat quiet, its operator slumped and snoring into his crossed arms.

  Lucien looked around at the faded signs offering henna tattoos, waffles and pinwheel lollipops. He pulled his jacket tighter across his chest and held a handkerchief to his nose, as if the rust and fadedness were a contagious disease.

  He looked about sharply until he saw the sign he was looking for: Office. It was tipped on an angle and sat above the door of an oddly shaped building that looked more like an upside-down ice-cream cone, with twists of red and blue spiralling down from the red flag at its pointed top.

  It used to be the Tower of Terror.

  On the outside was a swirling wooden slide where smaller children could wend their terrified way down on hessian sacks to the pit of rubber balls at the bottom. But that was before Argus had found a nest of woodworm that had almost eaten through the boards, making the slide as thin as toast.

  The balls had been removed and the slide closed, too expensive to fix with all the other repairs. Besides, Argus thought optimistically, I’ve always wanted my own office.

  Lucien knocked on the door. He heard the slow drawl of a chair against the wooden floor. The door opened to Argus’s smile.

  ‘Mr Bonhoffen, I have come to make you an offer!’ Lucien said it with a bright-eyed grin, as though he was offering Argus the crown jewels.