by Freya North
‘I’m so sorry, darling.’
It was Annabel’s forlorn silence, the way her little fingers slackened as if sighing, that made Frankie feel suddenly useless at everything. She knew Annabel blamed Alice. But Frankie had no one to blame but herself.
‘Come on – let’s go via Howell’s and I’ll buy you two packets and one for tomorrow.’
But then she realized she’d come out in a rush without her purse. And she wondered, does nine months living here warrant credit at the local shop?
* * *
Alice & the Ditch Monster
Alice & the Ditch Monster Hatch a Plan
Alice & the Ditch Monster Brave the Storm
Alice & the Ditch Monster Save the Day
Alice & the Ditch Monster Go for Gold
Alice & the Ditch Monster Halloween Howls
Alice & the Ditch Monster Wonder What the Fuck They’re Going to Do Next
Children quiet in bed, one asleep, the other reading. A glass of Rioja to hand. The paper is still stark white and glaringly empty in front of Frankie. It’s raining outside and it shouldn’t be. All that relocation research done quietly in Muswell Hill over a two-year period was proving pointless, the websites and books were inaccurate. North Norfolk in May should have lower-than-average rainfall. It should be neck and neck with Cornwall in terms of daily sunshine hours and be the driest county in England. But look at it out there – streaming and soaking and that huge sky dense with more to come. She’d overheard Sam calling it Norfuck yesterday.
Alice – we have a book to write.
But there was neither sight nor sound of Alice. Frankie trickled a little wine onto the page, folded it in half and vigorously rubbed her hand over it. She opened it out and stared hard. It looked nothing like the butterflies or strange beings that the children had created with poster paints at nursery school all those years ago. Even Freud – or whoever it was who’d used the exercise in therapy – would have had a hard time reading anything into it. It was simply an amoebic splodge and a waste of wine.
Alice and the Ditch Monster Do Absolutely Nothing
PART ONE
MAY TO JULY
‘It’s Daddy!’
Momentarily, Frankie’s heart ached for her daughter who was so used to fathers coming through the post that she brandished the envelope like it was a missive from royalty, running it in a lap of honour around the kitchen table before placing it carefully in front of Sam.
‘Can you tell where it’s from?’
Sam looked at the stamp and the franked mark. ‘Ecuador,’ he said as if it was some tiresome general-knowledge quiz set up by his father.
‘Ecuador,’ Annabel marvelled. ‘Is that the capital of the equator? Is Daddy at the centre of the universe?’
‘South America,’ said Frankie.
‘Open it then,’ said Sam.
Frankie’s heart creaked again as she watched Annabel slip her little finger into a gap and serrate the envelope as carefully as she could as if in anticipation of its contents bettering a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s. You never knew what Miles would send the children. Previously, they’d received a torn label from Israel which said Coca Cola in Hebrew, a wrapping from a ready meal in Japan called SuShitSu, a beer mat from Tasmania, a shrivelled-up floral lei from Hawaii, something from Venezuela they had thought was a dead beetle but turned out to be some type of bean that they’d planted without success. Occasionally, there were notes, mostly not. Usually there were months between letters but then again Miles might bombard the children for a while, like friendly fire. These days, Sam was inured to all of it, whereas Annabel’s life still depended on them.
Annabel eased out of the envelope a slim, rectangular piece of paper. It was torn carelessly from a Barclays Bank cheque book. Attached to it was the smallest yellow Post-it note imaginable.
Kids!
It’s amazing here!
I’ve struck gold!
Give this to your mother.
Dad xx
Annabel wasn’t bothered about the cheque addressed to her mother. All she cared about was that her father had travelled to the equator for her, had dug for gold and found it. She peeled off the sticky note, placed it on her fingertips as if it was a rare butterfly, and left for her room.
‘Four thousand quid!’ Sam was hard-pressed not to love his dad just a little bit more just then. He passed it to Frankie. ‘Look.’
Four thousand pounds, made out to her and signed, legibly, by Miles.
‘Sick!’ said Sam, leaving the table. ‘Four grand.’
‘Sam – please, no tweetering or facebookgramming about this.’
‘Seriously?’ His mother’s terminology wasn’t even amusing, just annoying.
‘Yes seriously.’
‘But you’re not on Twitter.’
‘That’s irrelevant. It might buy you a few more followers – but not friends. Anyway – it’s vulgar to talk about money. And anyway – it’s private.’
Sam huffed his way out leaving Frankie alone in the kitchen with all that money. If there’s four grand in your English bank Miles, God knows what you have squirrelled away under your Ecuadorian mattress. And not for the first time, Frankie thought, whoever you’re in bed with this time, I hope there’s a gun under your pillow. And then she thought, this autumn, we’ll have been divorced for seven years. These days it was strange to consider that once she’d had a husband and even odder to think that the husband had actually been Miles.
‘Frankie?’ Peta assumed her sister had phoned for a chat, yet she was doing all the talking.
‘Still here,’ Frankie said. Peta’s impassioned tirades against politics in the PTA, unfairness in the rugby club, Philip’s long hours, the boys’ adolescent mood swings and stinky bedrooms had wafted over Frankie quite soothingly, like a billowing sheet.
‘So – what’s been happening in the Back of Beyond?’
‘I don’t live in the back of beyond.’
Peta laughed. ‘Burnham Market it ain’t.’
It was just under twelve miles to Burnham Market but Frankie had to admit quietly to herself that her sister had a point. Renting a holiday cottage in the popular market town had inspired her move from London to Norfolk. But like most holiday romances, reality rendered the fantasy obsolete. Property prices in any of the Burnhams were beyond her means. The type of home she envisaged for her family, that which she could afford, took her further afield. Or, as Peta would have it, in the middle of a bloody field.
‘And the kids?’
‘They’re brilliant,’ said Frankie. ‘Loving school. Loving the outdoors, the sea. Dressed crab from a shack. Scampering.’
‘And you? New friends?’ Peta worried that Frankie’s choice to have a limited social group in a city was one thing, but to move miles away from anywhere was quite another.
‘There’s Ruth,’ said Frankie.
‘The reiki woman?’
‘Alexander Technique,’ Frankie said. ‘It’s about balance and posture, rest and realignment and it’s helped with my headaches already. She’s definitely becoming a good friend.’
‘She’s not a lentil-munching happyclappy hippy is she?’
‘Peta you’re terrible. She’s chic, sassy and my age. She’s much more Jäger-bombs and a secret ciggy than mung beans and wheatgrass shots.’
‘Thank God for that. But you can have more than one friend you know.’
‘You’re not going to tell me to join the PTA are you?’
‘No but too strong a belief in self-sufficiency can be isolating. Lecture over – how’s work?’
Frankie paused. ‘It’s back. The block. I can’t hear Alice. It’s really worrying me now.’ She misread Peta’s ensuing silence and leapt to the defensive. ‘Just because I write for kids doesn’t mean it’s child’s play.’
‘Whoa – whoa. But it’s happened before – when you’ve struggled with the story. Have you told your editor?’
‘No. He keeps leaving messages. And I daren’t te
ll the bank either.’
‘Are you strapped?’ Peta asked. ‘For cash?’
Frankie thought about it. She had only to ask her sister. She’d done so in the past and Peta had been generous, keen even; as if the money she’d married into had value only when she could give it to others.
‘It’s OK, Peta. Guess what turned up today? Not so much a bad penny – but four grand. From Miles.’
‘Oh dear God that man. Where is he?’
‘Ecuador.’
‘Doing what?’
‘God knows. Being Indiana Jones.’
‘Bank it – before it bounces. And go and drink wine with Ruth. Or join the school mums for a coffee morning.’
‘I don’t have time – I have to write my book.’
Frankie decided she’d try and fool Alice into appearing. She left her pencils and paper all spread out on the kitchen table like a fisherman’s nets but instead, she drove to Wells-next-the-Sea directly from dropping Annabel at school. It was all part of her plan. She went to the bank and was told it would be five working days before Miles’s cheque appeared in her account. She went to the newsagent, bought a plain notepad and a clutch of pencils that she wrapped inside a copy of the Guardian. Then she walked slowly, casually glancing in shop windows as if this was precisely the way she’d planned to spend her morning. She came to two cafés almost next door to each other, but she eschewed the crowded one that indulged mums and toddlers with cappuccinos and crayons for the one that didn’t. She wandered in as if the fancy had only just taken her. It was filled with the creak of pensioners but there was an empty table by the side window towards the back and it was perfect. Dumping all her stuff on the empty chair, she ordered poached eggs on toast – white please – and a pot of tea. And there she sat, watching the microcosm of Wells going about its business, as if the street in this small seaside town typified the world at large. Mothers with strollers, people with dogs, builders taking a break, pensioners taking their time, a couple of kids playing hooky, a traffic warden trying to be inconspicuous, a horse and rider, a lorry headed for the Londis – and just an off-duty author having a fulfilling breakfast of eggs and toast and tea.
Alice?
Alice?
You should see this place – why don’t you come and sit with me awhile?
I don’t like towns, Frankie.
It’s hardly a big town.
I like fields.
But this is fun, it’s different. No one knows you here, Alice. See – a lovely blank piece of paper. Hop onto it – it’s what you know. I’ll look after you.
He won’t come you know – not here. He’s too shy. You know that.
You went trick-or-treating together though? That was in a town – remember?
That was in Cloddington. You created Cloddington for me to live in. This place is not there.
But it’s similar.
It’s completely different Frankie. I don’t want an adventure here. But if you eat your eggs and finish your cuppa, I’ll race you home.
So Frankie ate her eggs and finished her tea and walked briskly to her car and raced Alice home. But Alice won. By the time Frankie made it back to her kitchen table, Alice had found one heck of a hiding place and wasn’t going to give Frankie even the tiniest clue as to where she was.
* * *
‘Frankie Darling.’
The voice of Michael, her editor, came through on the answering machine and Frankie closed the door to the kitchen as if he might spy the pages devoid of any creativity strewn over the kitchen table.
‘My surname’s Shaw,’ Frankie muttered at the answering machine, ‘not Darling.’
Actually, she quite liked the way her publishers always referred to her as Frankie Darling. Her agent simply called her Author. She liked that too.
‘Frankie Darling – it’s time to lure you to London. We want to run through the pre-publication plans. And of course I want to hear all about what Alice is up to. We’ll put you up somewhere gorgeous for a couple of nights. Call me.’
Somewhere gorgeous. They were the very words Frankie had used to justify her relocation to everyone. I’m going to move to somewhere gorgeous. North Norfolk: the dictionary definition of precisely that – and everyone had agreed with her, everyone said they envied her. Soon she was lightly telling everyone it didn’t matter that she couldn’t afford the Burnhams, she’d found instead a detached cottage in gently undulating fields two miles from the sea, decorated inside with soft chalky shades reminiscent of a handful of blanched pebbles scooped from the shore.
She was aware that the interior of the house had seduced her as much as the vast sky and endless quiet lanes. But there was something else: the very concept of being detached: the house, herself, her little family, it brought with it a sense of comfort and freedom, independence and excitement. Solitude would be novel and welcome after years in flats squashed between other flats like the patty in a burger, having to look down on other people’s gardens and listening unintentionally to the thunks and arguments above, below, to either side. So last year Frankie spent all her money and borrowed heavily to purchase the traditional flint-and-brick cottage with a bedroom each for the children, a spare room rather than a sofa bed for guests, an en-suite for herself and a garden that wrapped itself protectively around the house in a fragrant and pastel-coloured embrace.
Frankie looked around her home today, nine months on. Weathering winter, it transpired that the tasteful paint scheme had just whitewashed a multitude of faults and problems. What began as annoying niggles soon became a major headache in the hands of a rogue builder no one thought to warn The New Lot about. And now, in late spring, the windows that leaked could open but not close and a peculiar patch of damp had appeared in the hallway that just didn’t make sense. The plug socket in her bedroom sparked, some of the light switches became too hot and the tap in the kitchen often vomited out the water, soaking everything.
Being detached.
She saw it as a quality though it was often a criticism levelled at her by her mother, her sister. Even Miles. In fact, Peta said she was becoming increasingly introvert, even used the word deluded, but Frankie found it easy to hang up on her. Actually, Frankie found assurance in privacy and a certain relief that she could keep the devils out of the details of her life. For the time being anyway. Because apart from Miles’s cheque, which would be swallowed by the bank in one gulp anyway, there was no more money until the next Alice book was in. Currently, Alice hadn’t found her way to Norfolk and Frankie’s sense of direction had never been her strong point.
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, she caught sight of a lone sock halfway up which she’d nagged Sam about since the weekend. Suddenly it struck her how easily she could spend the day just as she was, feeling in a fug, scuffing her feet in absent-minded arcs over the clay-tiled floor. Easy to let her editor’s call go unanswered, the bills to stay unopened, the pages on which Alice and the Ditch Monster should be adventuring to remain tauntingly blank. She could go to the sea. There was something so energizing and validating about gazing at the constant swell while being buffeted by the wind, tasting the briny air while she said to herself see, this is why I moved here. For the fresh air and the good life; for the peace and quiet of feeling miles away.
Or she could take herself to task and do something about it all. She could pick up Sam’s sock and kick-start her day. She could wash the floor and make the beds, she could phone her editor with her diary to hand. Then she could sit at the kitchen table and attempt to draw Alice back into existence.
With the children bickering over TV channels, moaning at her not pasta again Mum, the concept of a couple of nights in a swish hotel at her publishers’ invitation was just then very attractive even if she’d have to lie about progress on her current book. However, Peta said she wasn’t free to come and housesit because she was hosting her book club.
‘But if you’re organizing it, can’t you rearrange?’
‘Can’t you phone Mum?’
> ‘Can’t you just change the date? It’s important, it’s my career.’
‘Listen Frankie – I know you think I have all this spare time because I don’t work, but every day I have to ferry my teenage boys in a car which stinks of rugby boots or rattles with cricket bats. My husband is never home before nine and all I ask is that once a month I can get lost in a book with a bunch of people even more frazzled than I. It’s good for me – it restores me.’
The sisters paused in self-righteous stalemate.
‘Isn’t there anyone local you can ask?’
‘No.’
‘I keep telling you – you need to get out more. You’re becoming too introverted – and don’t call it self-sufficient.’
‘I’m not.’
‘How about a teaching assistant from Annabel’s school? What about your new friend Mrs Alexandra Technician?’
‘Ruth has two young children of her own.’
‘Ask Mum.’
‘Come on, Peta.’
‘What about Steph?’
Quietly, Frankie considered how Steph hadn’t crossed her mind for weeks. ‘I thought she was working in a ski resort?’
‘It’s May, Frankie. The snow has gone.’
Frankie thought about her half-sister as she looked at the caller-id photo in her phone’s contacts. Neither she nor Peta had taken much notice of Steph when she bounced into their lives; they’d been too busy pursuing their twenties, then raising their own families in their thirties. Frankie’s children adored Steph, especially Annabel who thought Frankie hopelessly uncool. Just this morning she’d said, what’s going on with your hair, Mummy?
‘Steph?’
‘Frankie?’
‘How are you?’
‘Oh my God! I’m good! And you? How’s Suffolk?’
‘Norfolk.’
‘That’s funny.’
Is it? Would Annabel laugh too?
‘And the ski season was –’
‘Oh just the best.’
‘Are you working now?’
‘No I’m in my flat.’
‘I don’t mean right now – I mean, at the moment.’
‘Yes – I’m a barista.’