‘Umm… English, history, art…’
‘Art?’ asked Dad. ‘What are you doing in art?’
‘We’re starting a new project – Mr Leah hasn’t told us what it is yet. We’re supposed to guess and he’s given us two clues. Apparently, we’ll be working on something linked to an artist who focused on dreams and drew clocks.’
‘Dalí,’ said Dad.
‘Dalí?’
‘Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory.’ His eyes lit up.
‘Really? What’s The Persistence of Memory?’
‘It’s the name of a painting. I’m sure you’ve seen it before. It’s very typical of Dalí because it contains several floppy clocks – I was always taken by those clocks. They’re so strange and yet so accurate.’
‘What do you mean? Why are they accurate?’
‘Because they show how time is relative. Here, have a look.’ He took out his phone and brought the painting up on the screen to show me. He was right – I’d seen it before, although I wasn’t sure where.
Aunty Lyn peered over my shoulder as she collected the plates, fussing with a dishcloth over the rings made by our water tumblers.
‘I wonder why it’s called that,’ she said.
‘To me, it’s simple,’ Dad replied, looking at the picture. ‘It’s because sometimes your memories are constantly with you, whether you want them to be or not. Time passes, the clocks move on, but you remain stuck there – your useless, floppy clock always telling the same time. And even if you think you’ve finally escaped, your memories always catch up with you. They come in bursts when you least expect it.’
Dad came with me to my room after dinner and he brought Milo with him, against Aunty Lyn’s orders.
‘You OK, Diz?’ he asked, as he sat on the edge of the bed, Milo in his lap.
‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘You?’
He smiled sadly and turned his gaze in the direction of the mural. I waited for him to say something, but his expression didn’t change. It was obvious he couldn’t see that the colours had disappeared. I felt lonelier than ever.
‘Been better.’
I squeezed his hand and rested my head against his shoulder.
‘I’ve always liked that one best,’ he said, pointing to the picture of me as Juliet with long, flowing hair, standing on the balcony, looking down. It was my favourite role out of all of the ones I’d played.
‘That wig was so tickly. I felt like I still had the itch for days afterwards.’
‘I remember. You were scratching yourself so much we thought you might have nits. Mum got you that special shampoo, didn’t she?’
‘Yeah, and Milo spilled it and it smelled horrendous.’
‘Hey, you haven’t given up on the acting, have you?’ he asked. ‘You know it’s not just me who thinks you’re absolutely specsational at it.’
I smiled. The word had slipped out when Dad had seen me in my first play, many years ago. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to say spectacular or sensational, so he’d blended them and it had stuck.
‘You know I’m still your biggest fan. Look at all of these performances. When I was your age, I’d barely been in a Christmas play, and that was as King Herod’s servant. I didn’t even speak – just held his cloak for him. You have real talent, you know – don’t waste it.’
He wasn’t my biggest fan, of course. I knew that role belonged to Mum, but it made me feel better. I thought about what he’d said long after he’d left the room.
Lou’s words came echoing back too, but this time they had no impact. I didn’t care that Jemima was ‘semi-professional’. I was going to go for Lady Macbeth.
Nine
I breathed in the awful, stifling heat. It filled my insides, expanded in my chest and with it began the spidery sprawl of panic. My watery eyes struggled to make out the edges of things – there were only yellows and oranges now, clouded with grey. My hands groped helplessly through the colours like blind explorers.
‘Don’t look right!’
But I wouldn’t listen to him. I looked right and I wished that I hadn’t.
Because to the right there was nothing but red; nothing but red and an aching emptiness.
‘Don’t look…!’ shouted the colour thief. But he was too late.
3.57 a.m.
‘You ready?’ asked Frank, the moment I arrived in class.
I shook my head. I’d tried to go through the speech again this morning, but I’d been too preoccupied with the mural. The blissful minutes after waking had been filled with forgetfulness, then, as I’d opened my eyes, I was jolted back to reality. Blue. The royal blue of my Juliet dress had gone, as had the blue of the sky in the hair-cutting picture, and the blue of the tiny bag which had held my first few baby teeth, with its carefully drawn navy string. The blue had joined yellow and green. A terrible blankness enveloped my wall.
My legs were weak as I climbed out of bed, but I tried to force the colour thief out of my mind. Lady Macbeth had to come first.
‘I’ve given up on being a witch,’ Frank continued, not noticing my panic. ‘It’s too much effort… Maybe I can get out of the whole thing and pretend to be ill. I’m particularly good at acting someone with a bout of food poisoning. Hey, maybe I could be that Banquo guy? You know, the one Macbeth kills?’
He began clutching his stomach and making retching noises. Within a moment, he had fallen dramatically to the floor and was writhing around bumping into desks. I paid no attention. Was I deluding myself that I was actually in with a chance? There were so many reasons to abandon the attempt.
‘Hey,’ said Frank on the way over to the hall. His cheeks were flushed as he handed me a folded piece of paper. I unravelled it to find a picture of a figure in a long, swirly cloak standing on stage with loads of people around her, their mouths open in big ‘O’s.
‘Why are they scared?’ I whispered to him.
‘They’re not – they’re in awe of how awesome you are.’
He didn’t have a chance to say anything more, because Mr Winch announced, ‘Right, the day of judgement – auditions.’ There were a couple of excited yelps, but they were drowned by a much larger number of groans.
‘OK, hands up who’s not interested in any of the named parts and wants to be involved in the lighting, costume or set design?’ I was on the verge of putting my hand up, but at the last minute, I stopped myself. Mr Winch ushered those who didn’t want to audition to one side of the hall, split them into groups and got them working on different projects to do with the play. Not satisfied with his writhing bout, Frank had acquired a packet of fake blood from somewhere and was busily biting into it.
Those who remained were separated into the roles they wanted to try for. Jemima gave me a meaningful look, a half-smile playing across her lips.
Now that I noticed them sitting together, speaking in hushed whispers, I could see the similarities between her and Lou. They’d practically merged into each other with their high-heeled polished shoes, sheets of poker-straight hair and mocking expressions. They even had the same phone covers in a leopard print pattern.
Maybe I should have noticed much earlier that Lou was swapping Jemima into her best friend slot. The signs had been there, I hadn’t been paying attention.
Mr Winch was back. ‘I’d like you to read the “Out, damned spot!” speech, which is when Lady Macbeth has lost her mind and is haunted by the visions of all the people she’s persuaded her husband to kill. You can take a few moments to prepare and then I’d like you to perform it to the rest of the class.’
I’d memorised the whole speech, but my mind was as empty as the spaces left by the vanishing greens, blues and yellows on my wall. There was no way I’d be able to do it.
Then Frank shuffled along and sat next to me, giving my hand a tiny squeeze, and I saw Mona showing me her crossed fingers behind her back. And all of a sudden, the lines I thought I’d forgotten rearranged themselves into the right order in my head.
Nora, a tall, th
in girl who’d just joined our class at the beginning of term went first of the three candidates for Lady Macbeth. I could tell that she immediately regretted going for the role. Her hands shook as she held the script, and she frequently stuttered, having to repeat lines several times. When she’d finished, she sat back down in the audience and hid her head in her hands. My stomach tightened as I imagined myself exactly like her in a few minutes’ time.
Jemima was next. She read boldly and moved confidently around the stage, her eyes wandering like those of a mad woman. The way she relentlessly washed her hands sent a shudder down my spine. There was no doubt that she had been well-trained. Mr Winch nodded approvingly, narrowed his eyes and scribbled notes as he watched. She was a tough act to follow.
This was it. As I walked on to the stage, I closed my eyes. Blood thudded in my ears and then a thought wormed its way into my mind. We weren’t that different, really, Lady Macbeth and I. We had both done something terrible, something truly bad. And what was more, we were being punished for it. Lady Macbeth with her spot, and me with Mum. Before I knew it, I was speaking – and whether it was my own voice, or Lady Macbeth’s, I wasn’t sure. The feelings of guilt poured from my mouth, the audience disappeared from before my eyes and the background noise became silence. And as I spoke a memory came to the surface of my mind… a memory from before. It was the final curtain call from last year’s play, and Mum was sitting in the front row, clapping like crazy.
I held on to this memory throughout my speech, focussing on the pride on Mum’s face. I could reach her. I could. Before I knew it, it was all over.
There was a second’s pause before my class erupted into the loudest applause that I had ever heard. Harpreet was whistling with admiration and Mona gave me the double thumbs-up.
‘Unreal!’ shouted Frank. Some of the girls in the back row gave me a standing ovation and Mr Winch looked as if he was about to explode.
‘Magnificent, Izzy! Absolutely magnificent.’
I could barely keep up with what was happening. I went quietly to my seat and people in the rows behind patted me on the back. I could hear a couple of girls commenting on how frightening I’d been.
‘Quieten down, everyone!’ Mr Winch ordered, but the tail end of Lou’s sentence, as she spoke to Jemima, could be heard in the silence that followed… ‘Let her have it. She’s a loser anyway – it’s the only thing she has to look forward to.’
That was when the world before my eyes tilted dangerously.
Ten
The next thing I knew, I was standing outside the head’s office with Lou, as Mr Winch disappeared inside. Our head teacher was known as ‘the Sergeant’, because of her cropped grey hair that looked like a helmet, and her no-nonsense approach to life. When Mr Winch went inside, Lou and I stared helplessly at the floor, and I tried my best not to be sick. I knew that I’d done something terrible to her, but I didn’t dare look up to find out what it was.
I’d never been inside the Sergeant’s office, but I’d heard plenty of rumours about people who’d ended up there. Once I’d overheard one of the Year Elevens in the canteen saying that she’d given him lunchtime detention every day for three weeks and he was made to clear rubbish from the netball courts in the freezing cold. She also made sure that he rang his parents in front of her to tell them what he’d done, and he was grounded for the rest of the year. There was no joking with the Sergeant.
It seemed as if hours passed as the two of us stood outside the heavy oak door with its old-fashioned brass handle. I was only vaguely aware of the noise of lessons going on in classrooms around us, and Lou hiccupping nervously next to me and wiping her eyes.
Finally, Mr Winch appeared and ushered us in.
As I’d expected, there was an impeccable sense of order in the Sergeant’s office. She and Aunty Lyn would get on like a house on fire.
At one end of the room was a dark wooden desk, on which rested folders and papers arranged in neat piles, not a page out of place. The two screens of her computer were placed at what looked like an exact forty-five degree angle from one another, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught the glimmer of a gold-nibbed fountain pen, lying in its special velvet green holder. I could imagine the Sergeant grabbing it in her thick fingers and swiftly signing letters about detentions and exclusions. I tried to block that idea from my mind.
I sat in one of the perfect leather chairs, the seat dented by the weight of many bodies.
Lou and Mr Winch perched on the edge of a cream sofa opposite me, each staring at different spots on the carpet. Its pattern swirled beneath our feet, creating a horrid dizziness in my head. What had I done? I tried to catch Lou’s eye and eventually she looked up at me. Her face was still flushed. She looked scared, and I felt awful. I mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ but she deliberately turned away.
The Sergeant leaned against her desk, her fingers linked. Close up, she looked younger, but no less scary than I’d anticipated.
‘What happened? Facts. All I want is facts. No emotions. Just facts.’
‘Isabel pushed Louise and she fell backwards into the costume room and hit her head,’ said Mr Winch succinctly.
A gasp escaped my throat.
The Sergeant’s beady eyes peered down at me.
‘Isabel? What on earth were you thinking?’
Lou had a purple bruise spreading across her upper right arm and a plum-shaped swelling on one side of her head. The costume room was several metres under the stage and she must have fallen on to something sharp, perhaps the edge of Mr Winch’s desk. How had it happened? How was it that I completely didn’t realise what I was doing?
‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.
One of the Sergeant’s dark eyebrows disappeared under the helmet of hair. I couldn’t read her expression.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t… I wasn’t thinking.’
‘She was provoked by Louise,’ Mr Winch offered, glancing over at Lou.
‘What did you say to Isabel, Louise?
Lou flinched, but remained quiet. I saw the muscles of her back tense.
‘She called Izzy a loser and said that she had nothing to look forward to,’ Mr Winch reported accurately, when it was clear that Lou wasn’t going to utter a word.
A deafening silence filled the room.
The Sergeant let out a long sigh. She picked up the fountain pen and rolled it between her fingers.
‘Louise, are you badly hurt?’ she asked finally.
‘No,’ said Lou, her lower lip trembling. But the guilt weighed even heavier on me, as I noticed that the purple bruise spread all the way to her elbow.
‘Ask Nurse Cooper to check that you’re OK and then you may return with Mr Winch to your lesson,’ she snapped. ‘Please come back and see me here at the end of the day. I feel there are a few things that you and I may need to discuss. In the meantime, I’m going to contact your mother.’
‘Please could you not…’ Lou began, but stopped midway through her sentence, seeing the Sergeant’s glare. Her eyes bore into Lou’s face, as if daring her to go on.
‘You should have thought about that when you made your remark earlier, Louise.’
When the door shut behind them, I found myself edging deeper into the chair. For some reason, I wondered whether the Sergeant had any children of her own and if she did, whether they were scared of her too.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have pushed her. I don’t know what came over me… I honestly didn’t even know that I had…’
But then I heard the last three words I’d ever expect from her lips, ‘Don’t be sorry.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. I don’t normally say things like this. Don’t be sorry for feeling the way you do. Yes, you shouldn’t have lashed out at Louise, although she probably deserved it. Trust me, there will be many times in life when people say or do things to you and they deserve a reaction. Unfortunately, that doesn’t give you permission t
o push or hit them. But you have every right to be angry… considering everything that’s happened to you recently. You’ve dealt with it extremely bravely and it must be infuriating to have someone like Louise being nasty.’
My face was on fire. I sort of wanted her to shout at me, to give me a whole month’s worth of detentions, to make me stand up in assembly and apologise for pushing Lou. Anything would have been better than this. But at last I understood – this strictest and most military of women had turned soft because she felt sorry for me.
‘I’m all right.’
She continued to look at me, her nails tapping out a rhythm on the desk like tiny marching soldiers.
‘Isabel, is this the first time that Louise has said something hurtful to you?’ She was careful to hold my gaze.
‘Yes,’ I said, although of course that wasn’t true. I just wanted the conversation to be over as soon as it possibly could be.
‘If it happens again, I want you to report it directly to me, do you hear?’
‘I will. Of course I will.’
‘And… how are you doing generally?’
‘Good,’ I told her. It came out louder than I’d intended, although I’d tried my hardest to keep my voice calm.
‘OK, Izzy. Go back to class.’
I nodded, still not quite believing I was getting off so lightly – no phone call to Dad, no letter to take home, nothing.
And then I was outside in the corridor once more, unsure of what to do next.
Eleven
I wandered about aimlessly. I couldn’t face any more lessons. Not after the Lady Macbeth drama. So I went to the school office and told them I was sick. I wanted Dad to pick me up. I wanted to tell him everything – my nightmares, Lou, the mural, the mysterious colour thief and how all of what had happened had been my fault. Dad would understand and know what to do. I waited patiently for him to come to get me. He didn’t.
Aunty Lyn came instead and made a massive fuss over me being unwell, checking how hot my forehead was.
The Mystery of the Colour Thief Page 5