by Suzi Moore
5
Alice
Do you look a bit like your mum? Or does someone always tell you that you look just like your dad? Maybe there’s another relative in your family who has the same hair colour or the same blue eyes? Perhaps you’re really good at playing the piano, just like your mum? I’m not. I don’t look anything like my mum or my dad. I don’t look like my aunt or my uncle.
My mum has golden hair and eyes that are almost grey. Mine are not. My dad has reddish-blond hair and freckles all over his face, his arms, his hands, and his eyes are as blue as a swimming pool. Mine are not. My mum has skin that is so pale you can see the veins in her arms, and every summer she has to wear a hat and lots of suncream. So does Dad. So does his little sister, so do my cousins, but I don’t. I don’t look like them at all. My name is Alice Isabella Richardson, but I don’t look like anyone in the Richardson family.
My hair isn’t blonde or red or even brown, it’s black. Blackest black. My skin isn’t pinkish or pale or even freckly. My eyes aren’t grey, blue, green or anything in between. They’re darkest brown. Dad says I have eyes that are shaped like large almonds and Mum says they’re the colour of melting chocolate. She says I have the thickest spidery eyelashes that she has ever seen and that when I cry they sort of stick together like the bristles of a paintbrush. Mum is tall, very tall. They both are. Tall and skinny. And me? I’m the smallest girl in my year and I once heard Florence say I was kind of chubby. So, even though I was chosen, even though I was the perfect fit for Mum and Dad, I don’t really match at all.
These days, every time I brush my teeth, I look in the mirror and wonder if my other mother has the same eyes as me. Once, when I was in town, I saw a lady with the same hair and wondered if it was her. I followed her round the supermarket until she got to the frozen-food section, but when she turned round she wasn’t a she at all. It was a boy and it gave me such a fright I ran back to the till to find my mum.
Which is sort of funny if you think about it.
I didn’t tell Mum though. I’m still not speaking.
This morning, after breakfast, my dad tried to get me to talk again.
‘What’s the capital of Portugal?’ he asked and I knew the answer. I like looking at maps or at the enormous globe in the library. I looked up at him, but just as the words were about to come out my mum came into the kitchen with a screwdriver in her hand.
‘David, can you give me a hand? I can’t quite get the last screw to tighten on Alice’s old cot.’
I felt a chill run down my body and a frown appeared on my forehead. Dad looked down at me hopefully.
‘Do you want to help too, Alice? We’re putting your old cot back together so it’ll be ready for your little sister.’
My cot! I wanted to shout. MY COT! Why is she getting my cot? I stood up from the table and left the room, slamming the kitchen door so hard it sort of rattled for ages afterwards.
At dinner time no one said anything about it and I noticed again that Mum wasn’t eating anything. She’s got this thing where you feel sick all the time. Most mornings I hear her throwing up, but Dad says it’s nothing to worry about. He says that pregnant women often get sick, but poor Mum has been sick every morning for months and I’m starting to think it’s like my little sister is making her poorly and that can’t be a good thing.
At bedtime Mum came to say goodnight. As she kissed my cheek, I wanted to put my arms round her neck and cuddle her, but then she asked me something crazy.
‘Do you think you have an old cuddly toy that you’d like to give your new sister? Perhaps it would be nice for you to pick one for her nursery? Or we could go into town and choose one together? Maybe we could get something new for you too?’
I wanted to shove her away. What about the tree house that they’d promised to build for me? Or the trip to the cinema they’d said we’d go on last week? They didn’t seem to have time for that any more, but all the time in the world for someone who wasn’t even here yet. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want to give my little sister anything. Instead I just turned out the light and rolled over. She sighed and left the room, but as I heard her walk down the wooden hallway I turned the light back on and spied the notebook the doctor lady had given me. There was a blue pen beside it. I still haven’t spoken a single word or written one either, but I picked up the pen and looked down at the first blank page. I was going to write something, but then I changed my mind, lay back on the pillow, switched off the light and closed my eyes.
I lay there for quite a long time before I did what I’d been doing a lot; I thought about her. I thought about my other mother. Where was she now? What did she look like? Does she have short chubby fingers like me? Does she like eating peaches straight out of the tin? What does she sound like? What does she do? Some nights I imagine that my other mother is a famous movie star. Some nights I think she’s an Olympic gold medallist and nearly always I imagine her trying very hard to find me.
The next morning I woke up, turned on my side and looked at the photograph frame on my bedside table. Me, Mum and Dad: the three of us smiling together. Then I heard Mum shout up the stairs to tell me to get up, but I didn’t. For a while I just lay there, thinking about the blurry black-and-white photograph of my soon-to-be little sister. I wondered if my other mother had been given a picture like that of me and suddenly I had an idea. I sat up quickly, picked up the blue pen, opened up the notebook and on the first clean white sheet I wrote my first words.
I walked into the kitchen slowly and when Mum saw me she turned round and smiled. I looked at her stomach; it was getting bigger now. I held the pad in front of her, but when she saw what I’d written she gasped and put a hand to her mouth. I waited. After a while, she bent down to me and stroked my hair.
‘I’ll try. I’ll do my very best,’ she whispered.
One week passed, then two weeks and every time Mum and Dad tried to get me to talk I just picked up the pad and pointed to the words. But nothing happened; they were too busy making my sister’s room perfect or buying things for her or visiting the hospital, so I thought they’d forgotten all about my note.
I was wrong.
It was the last day of May and I’d spent all afternoon hiding in the garden with my notebook. I’d started drawing in it. The paper is silky smooth so that my pen glides across the white paper in a way that makes drawing a lot easier than I find at school. That night, when I was getting ready for bed, they came to tell me. They had something for me. A photograph. A photograph of my other mother. There she was, in my dad’s hand, between his thumb and forefinger. He held it out towards me.
At first I was scared, more scared than I have ever been in my whole entire life, and as I took the photograph from my father’s hands I could see that mine were shaking.
At first I was afraid to look and then I turned the picture over and stared.
6
Alice
When Mum and Dad had left, I stared and stared at the photo. Then I held it right under my bedside light to get a better look. I bent down over the picture to take in every little detail. My other mother was somehow not what I had expected at all.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, and every so often I switched the light on and had another look.
The next day was the same and the day after and the day after that. Her face was all that I could see. Now that I had a picture of her I could put her face into any of the different imaginings that I had. I could see her face when she was a famous ballerina, a princess, an actress, an explorer, an artist, a tennis player winning at Wimbledon. A lot of the time I imagined that she was a nurse. My dad’s a doctor and the nurses at the hospital where he works are always so lovely that he calls them the hospital angels. So my favourite thing to imagine is that my other mother is a hospital angel, healing all the sick children in the world. Which is why she can’t look after me. It’s understandable. I’ve decided that she’s definitely out there at some other hospital and one day she’ll com
e back for me.
Ever since they gave it to me, I’ve been carrying the photograph everywhere with me and yesterday, when I thought I’d lost it, I got so upset that I cried and cried. I’d only had the thing for a month and already I’d lost her. It was just like the time I lost my favourite rabbit. When I was a little baby, my aunt had given me the softest ever rabbit and I’d called her Rebecca at first, but after a while I just called her Becky Boo. Her fur was sort of silky soft and I used to suck my thumb and hold her against my cheek. I took her with me everywhere.
When I couldn’t find the photograph, it was just like the time I left Becky Boo on the train and nobody could find her. Mum bought me another rabbit and even though it was identical it didn’t feel the same. It didn’t smell the same at all. In the end I just called it Rabbit because I couldn’t think of a name and because it didn’t really feel like it belonged to me. It didn’t feel like it was mine.
As I searched everywhere for the photograph, I felt myself get scared. That was when I realised that I’d not spoken for so long that even if I wanted to talk I might not be able to. It’s as though the words won’t come out and it kind of frightens me. I stood there, blinking at Mum, with my mouth hanging open and my arms outstretched. I wanted to say: ‘I’ve lost the photograph! I’ve lost her!’ She was so worried she called Dad to come home from the hospital, but by the time he came speeding up the driveway I’d found the photograph in between the pages of my new book and gone back outside to sit under the old cedar tree at the bottom of the garden.
I stared down at her face again, even though by now I’d looked so much that I didn’t need the photo to remember her face. Did we look alike? I wasn’t sure. She was standing in front of a shop with her hands in her jacket pockets. Where was that shop? I looked closer and I thought I saw something familiar, but I didn’t know why. Was it the sign above the shop? Had I seen it before? I closed my eyes to think, but nothing came into my brain and I got distracted when Dad suddenly shouted down to me to say he was going back to work. I watched him waving as he ran up to the driveway. I heard the car as he left and I sat silently looking out to sea.
I looked round the garden and thought of all the secret places I knew. Would I have to show them to my little sister? Culver Manor wouldn’t be my place any more. I turned round and looked up at the house. When you drive down the lane to our house, it feels as though there isn’t anywhere left to go until you see the black and gold shiny gates and the high white walls that go all round the garden. Dad calls them our ‘soft white walls’ and says that we’re always safe inside them. The thing about our house is that it’s the very last house on the coast road and at the very far side of the vale. If you didn’t know it was there, you would not know it existed, but everyone in the village knows who I am. I am Dr Richardson’s daughter. I am the girl that lives at Culver Manor.
But now I am the girl that won’t talk.
What they don’t know is that I can’t. I have tried. When I’m on my own. I get as far as the first letter and then it stops, and when I try harder it almost hurts. It’s like, no matter how hard I try and push the rest of the word out, it won’t come. It gets stuck.
Later that week, I was sitting in the rose garden, drawing a butterfly in my notebook, when Mum came outside. She started to cut some of the beautiful pink flowers that smell like honey, and when I got nearer she looked over at me and asked if I was hungry. I was. I was really hungry. My tummy had been rumbling for ages, so I tried as hard as I could to tell her. I thought of the words I wanted to say, and even though I was scared I took a deep breath and opened my mouth But as I did, as I felt the words begin to come up out of my throat, my mum suddenly straightened her back and put both hands on her bulging tummy.
‘Oh! She’s kicking! David, come quickly!’ she shouted.
Dad ran over from the corner of the garden where he’d been weeding; he ran over and bent down so that the side of his face was resting on her stomach. I watched him smile like I’d never seen him smile before and the words I’d been trying desperately to get out disappeared right back down where they’d been hiding. I spun round and marched inside where I ate all of the strawberries we’d bought earlier at the supermarket, leaving a messy plate and a trail of sticky red fingerprints behind. I stomped upstairs and slammed my bedroom door. My little sister wasn’t even here yet and already it felt as though she was taking over. As if she was taking my mum and dad away from me.
After a while, I walked over to the window and looked down at the garden. Mum and Dad were lying side by side on a rug underneath my favourite cedar tree. I watched Mum take her sun hat off so that her long blonde hair fell down in a shimmering golden curtain. I turned and looked in the mirror at my long dark hair. I pulled on one of the curls to get it to straighten, but it just sprang up again. Stupid curls, I thought.
The baby will probably have lovely blonde hair like Mum. She’ll probably look just like them. She’ll have freckles and blue eyes. She’ll look just like them and be a much better fit than me. I grabbed a hairband and did my best to tie my stupidly thick hair up. I felt myself frowning and that is when I decided to do something I’ve never done before. The most forbidden thing. No, I didn’t go into the library and get my sticky red fingerprints all over Dad’s special books. Actually, I thought about it, but I decided it was too nice to stay inside.
When my grandpa was alive, he would say: ‘At the bottom of the garden, where the long grass grows, there is a secret door which nobody knows. No one but us knows the door to the shore, where the smugglers came many years before.’
One night, when Florence and her family were staying, we both crept downstairs when we were supposed to be in bed and heard the grown-ups talking all about Culver Cove, so we listened at the door. We heard my dad and my aunt talking about the time, when they were children, they’d snuck out of the house late at night. We listened with amazement as my aunt described a torch-lit scramble down to the shore. Ever since I heard about a moonlit waterfall and pinky white sand, I’ve wanted to see it for myself, but Mum and Dad would never tell me how to get there. I didn’t even know where the path to the shore began. Dad always said it was too dangerous.
Florence and I had held our breath as we heard my dad describe a footpath that was so hidden in places that if you’d never been along it you wouldn’t know it was there; he said it was overgrown with purple flowers that cover the shoreline all summer so that if you were a bird, looking down at the hog’s back cliffs which drop down to the sea, all you would see is a purple-covered hill. We heard Aunt Aggy describe a little stone seat where the path looks as though it’s come to an end, but really you have to duck underneath the last large tree and climb on to a small ledge by the waterfall. ‘One slip,’ we heard her say, ‘and you’ll go crashing down on to the rocks.’ They had all used the secret path and I didn’t even know where it was.
But on that hot day of summer I did several things I wasn’t supposed to do. Firstly I ran upstairs to the attic and over to the far corner of the room. Had I seen what I thought I’d seen when I’d been there with Dad? I stood in front of the little door for a few moments as though I was waiting for some little voice to tell me to stop. I felt the cool of the metal handle in my hand and slowly I pushed open the door.
It was exactly how I remembered and, before I had a chance to think, I was standing in front of the faded poster. A picture of a footballer with the words Mexico 86 in the top right corner and where it was peeling away from the wall I saw the corner of a drawing. My heart beat a little faster and, as I carefully plucked the poster away, flakes of old paint fluttered to the floor. The poster fell forward, clung on to the wall for a moment or two, but then the ancient Blu-Tack gave way and I watched it skid across the floor.
When I looked back up again, I smiled. I had been right. It was a map and I leaned in closer to get a better look. A perfect map of the house, the garden, and I could just about see the faded outline of a door at the far left corner of the rose gar
den. Was that the door to the shore? A door in the rose garden? I traced the footpath with the tip of my finger as it snaked down the hillside. Culver Cove, a waterfall and the letters A, D, T, J, S and K were written in different colours on the little beach. Aggy? David? Tom? But what were the other letters for? I carefully stuck the poster back on the wall and raced down the stairs. Culver Cove, that’s where I was headed, but first I had to find the door.
I went to my room and grabbed my book, my photograph and my drawing pencils and went downstairs. I found my old rucksack, a towel and I stole the lemon cake that Mum had made for the school fair. The cake which I had smelt all morning as it baked in our funny-looking oven; a delicious citrus perfume that had wafted out of the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs and into my bedroom. I packed my bag, placing the cake inside the towel, and then I crept out of the front door and round the side of the house.
I walked through the rose garden and along the walls where I had played for hours with my friends. I looked carefully up and down all of the faded red bricks and climbed into the flower bed to get closer, bending down and reaching upwards through the climbing roses. The scent of the little yellow buds filled my nostrils and I nearly caught my face on their thorns. Remembering the map, I followed the wall to the far left corner where a large red rose bush stuck out from the wall; its velvety flowers hung down, a pool of scarlet petals at my feet. This had to be the corner where the door was, but I saw nothing but the rose bush.
I turned round and looked back along the walls. Nothing. But, as I climbed down from the flower bed, my foot got caught in a branch and I fell sideways against the wall so that my face was now almost against the warmth of the pale red bricks, and something caught my eye. A shimmer of something, a glimmer of something, a rusted metal bolt. I stood up quickly and, taking my little cardigan off, I wrapped it round my arm to protect it from the thorns.