by Gwyneth Rees
To Eve D’Souza
Hi there,
I just wanted to say hello and tell you a bit about myself.
I live on the very outside of London near the River Thames, with my husband (who is Dutch and makes great pancakes!) and our two young daughters. We also have a Siamese cat called Hamish who came to us as a very timid rescue cat and spent the first few weeks hiding up the chimney! Now he is a real family cat and loves sitting on my lap (and trying to sit on my keyboard!) when I’m at my desk writing.
I’m half Welsh and half English but I grew up in Scotland. Before I became a writer I worked as a doctor, mainly with children and teenagers. From as far back as I can remember I’ve always loved stories in any form – reading books, watching films, playing make-believe games. As a child I always had one fantasy world or another on the go and as I grew older that changed to actual ongoing sagas that I wrote down in exercise books and worked on for weeks at a time.
I really hope you enjoy reading this – and that you’ll write to me at [email protected] to let me know what you think. I’d love it if you told me a bit about yourself too!
Best wishes,
Books by Gwyneth Rees
Cherry Blossom Dreams
The Honeymoon Sisters
For younger readers:
The Fairy Dust series
Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze
The Magic Princess Dress
My Super Sister
My Super Sister and the Birthday Party
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
CHAPTER 1
‘Daniel, I don’t see how you can write an essay when you’re not even concentrating on it,’ Mum said crossly.
It was three weeks after we’d moved house and I was perched on the settee with my feet on the coffee table, trying to watch my favourite TV show and do my summer project. I’d been getting along quite well until Mum came into the room. Mum has this annoying habit of planting herself between me and the television set whenever I’m trying to watch TV and do my homework at the same time. I’m perfectly capable of doing both, but Mum refuses to believe that.
My mum, who’s called Isobel, is a teacher and you might think that since she spends all day at work lecturing children she’d want to give it a rest when she comes home, but you’d be wrong. Mum never bats an eyelid if I moan at her for being all teachery at home. She just replies that she likes to get in as much practice as possible (especially in the summer holidays, when she might get out of the habit), so isn’t it lucky that she’s got me?
She said something else which I didn’t hear because I was too caught up in listening to the TV. My favourite character, who’s this really cool young police detective who’s always rushing into dangerous situations on his own and saving everybody, was hunting down a man who had taken everybody hostage in a coffee shop. So far the siege had lasted three episodes. The man had said he’d planted a bomb in there and that he was going to set it off if the police didn’t meet his demands. In today’s episode the police were saying it was just a hoax – and they were about to storm the building. The thing was, they’d already shown the bomb ticking away under one of the tables, so you knew that it wasn’t really a hoax. Any minute now the bomb was going to go off and there were going to be cappuccinos and blown-up bodies flying about all over the place.
I leaned sideways in an attempt to see past Mum.
‘You didn’t hear a word of what I just said, did you?’ Mum accused me, shifting her position in order to block the TV more effectively. She had raised her voice so I couldn’t hear what the coffee-shop hijacker was saying to the pregnant lady who was screaming because she was about to give birth to twins and he still wouldn’t let her out of the shop.
‘Shush, Mum …’ I looked up at her in alarm, realising my mistake immediately.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Her brow had furrowed and her eyes were glinty. ‘You watch far too much television, Daniel!’ She reached behind her and switched it off.
‘Mum!’ I yelled.
‘I was saying,’ she continued doggedly, ‘that the beginning of any piece of writing has to grab the attention if you want your reader to carry on reading it.’
‘Mrs Lyle has got to carry on reading it,’ I pointed out, staring crossly at the blank TV screen. ‘It’s her job!’
Mum winced, as if I had just reminded her of a very painful fact. That didn’t shut her up, though. Sighing a sigh of great sympathy for Mrs Lyle, my new head of year, and all other teachers including herself, she continued, ‘And that is precisely why you should try to hand in something that is not too unbearable to read. A little effort is what’s required, Daniel. A little concentration.’ She was looking at me as though she thought I was a lost cause. ‘Honestly, I know your father doesn’t think you’ve actually got attention deficit disorder but I’m really not so sure!’
That made me see red. My concentration – or lack of it – is something Mum’s been harping on about forever, and even Dad gets cross with her sometimes because he says her expectations are too high. He told her that when he thought I wasn’t listening one time. (He’d never say that if he thought I was listening because he believes that parents should always present a united front – even if they’re both wrong.)
‘There’s nothing wrong with my head …’ I said sharply.
Mum gave me a surprised – and hurt – look and I instantly felt guilty. We don’t usually talk about the times when Mum’s been ill. The last time she’d been admitted to a psychiatric hospital was seven years ago when my sister, Martha, was born.
I tried to make myself feel better by telling myself I didn’t care if I hurt Mum’s feelings. After all, she shouldn’t say horrible things about me if she doesn’t want me to say stuff back.
‘All I’m trying to do is encourage you, Daniel,’ Mum said, softly now. ‘But if you don’t care what Mrs Lyle thinks of your work, then that’s your lookout.’ And she left the room.
‘I don’t care what Mrs Lyle thinks!’ I called out after her, because now that she’d reminded me about my new school, I could get angry with her again. After all, it was her fault we’d had to move here.
I looked down at the empty page of my new jotter. I would have minded what my head of year at my old school thought because I liked her and I liked my old school. But Mrs Lyle was just a name to me because term hadn’t even started yet and, in any case, I thought it was really dumb of her to give homework to all the Year Sevens who were going to be starting Year Eight in September, asking them to write an essay about something they’d done over the summer. Even Dad had commented that he thought it was a bit zealous of her, although he’d supported Mum in insisting I do it just the same.
I turned the TV back on and threw my homework jotter on the floor.
Before we’d moved, Mum had been deputy head at a secondary school on the other side of the city from where we lived. She had gone for a few interviews over the last year and when she finally got offered her very first head teacher’s job, I was busy congratulating her like everybody else until I asked whereabouts in the city her new school actually was, and she told me it was on the south coast. The thing was, that was miles away. We’d driven to the south coast one summer for a holiday and it had taken us a whole day to get there.
The really annoying thing was that nobody else in my
family seemed to mind as much as me. My dad, who’s called Malcolm, said he’d always secretly fancied living by the sea. He’s a GP and he joked that there’d be plenty of work for him since seaside towns are full of doddery old people who have to go and see their doctors a lot. My little sister, Martha, liked the idea of living near the beach too. I was the one who hated the idea of leaving our old place the most – and then I found out that in our new town I’d be expected to go to the same school as Mum. I begged and begged to be allowed to go to a different school, even if it meant travelling on six different buses every morning to get there. Mum and Dad did give it some thought, but in the end they said that the school where Mum would be working was far and away the best school in the area and that they didn’t feel they should make any sacrifices where my education was concerned. Dad was sympathetic but said he was sure that I had what it took to cope and Mum promised that she’d try to be as little of an embarrassment to me as possible (which, when you consider what happened later, turned out to be the biggest joke ever).
I couldn’t get back into my TV show properly after that, so when Mum came back into the room, I looked up immediately.
She didn’t say anything about the television being back on. ‘Come on. It’s about time we took those membership forms back to the library. There might be time for you to choose a book today. We can pick Martha up from her singing class on the way back.’
Martha, my little sister, is seven and a half (she’d want you to remember the half) and she’s the sort of little girl that aunties and grannies and other people’s mothers all say they want to take home and keep. I’ve got to admit that she does look really cute. She doesn’t look like Mum or Dad or me because we’re all dark and she’s got fair hair. It’s bobbed at her shoulders and she’s got these big blue eyes and pink cheeks with dimples. She’s always playing some daft pretend game or other and trying to get me to join in. That’s unless she’s got her new friend Sally with her, in which case she screams at me to go away if I try to set foot in her room. The summer singing class had been Mum’s idea. When Martha had protested that she couldn’t sing, Mum had said that that was an excellent reason then for joining a singing class, wasn’t it? I knew the real reason Mum wanted us to join things was so we’d make friends quickly. She’d tried to get me to join some things too, but so far I’d resisted.
As we drove to the library, I stared grumpily out of the car window. I was thinking about how I didn’t know a single other person who lived here and how all I wanted was to go back to my old school after the summer, and be with my old friends. My best friend, Mark, and I had been a bit nervous about starting secondary school last year. We’d been really pleased when we’d been put in the same classes for everything. The classes were streamed, so that was probably why: we’d always got similar marks in any exams at junior school.
‘I only wanted to see what happened,’ I complained crossly to my mother.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s my favourite programme. I only wanted to see who got blown up.’
‘Oh, you and your television, Daniel,’ Mum said, frowning as a plop of seagull poo landed on the windscreen. ‘It’s not good for you. In fact, we should probably get rid of the TV set completely. Maybe that way we’d get you to read some books.’
‘NO!’ I protested. I know it sounds crazy but the TV seemed to have become really important to me ever since we’d moved. It was very comforting, somehow, to watch the same characters and same stories carrying on as normal when everything in my life had completely changed. I sometimes wished I could jump inside the television set and stay there. Or that I could just switch off my real life whenever I got fed up with it, the same way you can switch off a TV programme you don’t like.
Mum was looking for a place to park outside the library.
‘You can never find anywhere in this street. Get your head out of the way, please, Daniel. I can’t see.’ She said a rude word as another car beat her to the parking space she’d just spotted. ‘Listen, why don’t I just let you out of the car here and you can hand in the forms and choose a book while I go and pick up Martha? I’ll meet you here again in twenty minutes. OK?’
‘Mum –’ I wanted to ask her again about the television, to make sure she wasn’t really considering getting rid of it.
‘And make sure you pick a book that you’re actually going to read.’
I knew it was no use pursuing the subject of television when Mum’s mind was on books. I got out of the car, slamming the door a lot harder than I needed to.
Sometimes Mum really makes me mad. I know she only wants what she thinks is best for me, but the trouble is that what she thinks is best isn’t always what I think is best. Dad’s no help because he agrees with her most of the time – just for a quiet life, I reckon. He even lets her tell him what she thinks is best for him – though a lot of the time he just goes and does the opposite when she’s not looking.
Well, Mum isn’t always right, at least not about me. For one thing, she thinks I hate going to the library, but actually I like it.
The library is probably about the only place in our new town that I think is an improvement on our old one. The library where we used to live was a large, airy, modern building on one level with lots of skylight windows. When it was raining, the rain used to make a terrific clattering noise on those windows. The library here is an old building – Mum says it’s got to be well over a hundred years old – that must have once been a very grand private house. I like to imagine it how it used to be, with the big reception area as the main entrance hall, with a maid coming to take your coat and a butler appearing to announce you. There’s a wide, twisting, marble staircase that leads up to the reference section, and I could almost see all the ladies sweeping down it in their big, fancy ball gowns, and hear the music as everyone waltzed round the room in the adult reading section or sipped champagne served from silver trays in the children’s corner.
That afternoon was the second time I’d been there. The first time we’d popped in quickly to collect the membership forms. There was nobody at the reception desk when I walked in now. Maybe they were busy putting books away or something. I put the completed forms on the desk and went to have a look in the teen readers’ section.
I found a book and took it over to the nearest seat, which happened to be right beside the children’s corner. I sat down, opened the book at the first page and started to read. I always try to read at least the first page, and if possible the whole first chapter, of any book to make sure I really like it before I take it out of the library, because the last time I got bored with a book halfway through and gave up reading it, Mum seized upon the fact like it was a major piece of evidence in a courtroom trial: ‘This just proves what I’ve been saying all along! You’re losing the art of reading! It’s all that passive entertainment you get from sitting in front of the television, that’s what it is! It’s making your brain lazy!’ And she wouldn’t let me watch any more TV until I’d finished the book and told her the entire plot.
But I don’t mind reading if it’s a good book. Good books are just as easy to escape into as television – better in our house, because my mum doesn’t keep interrupting all the time.
I was just starting to get interested in this one when the library door banged shut and loud footsteps sounded on the wooden floor.
A female voice boomed out, sounding slurred. ‘Getchyourself a book then, Abby. Hurry up.’
I was still getting used to the way people speak here. They have funny accents, which Dad says are on account of the flat vowel sounds they have instead of the nicer bouncier ones we use in the north. Though Dad suggested I shouldn’t actually point that out to anyone when I started at my new school. As if I’d be that stupid.
‘It’s OK, Mum. I just need to hand these in.’ A girl about my age came into view. She had straight, shoulder-length, light brown hair and a suntanned face. She was wearing a long brown cotton skirt, a red top and black trainers with red laces. She
clutched two books against her chest as she glanced round for the librarian, who still wasn’t behind her desk.
The girl’s mother pushed past her. She had a puffy red face and short untidy hair. She started to walk clumsily towards the children’s section. ‘Just look at these liddle plastic seats – you have to have a liddle bottom to sit on them!’ She laughed loudly. Her breath, now that she was close to me, smelt like my Uncle Robert’s does when he’s had too much beer at Christmas.
The girl called Abby came over to her and grabbed her arm. Her face was turning red too – with embarrassment at having a mum like that, I reckoned – and she avoided looking at me. ‘C’mon, Mum. We have to get back.’
But the woman had already plonked herself down on the rug where some toddlers’ books had been left out. ‘Look at this!’ she said, lifting one up, dangling it by a corner for a moment, then dropping it noisily on to the floor.
The girl saw me staring at her mother and glared at me. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, quickly moving to leave. I hurried over to the bookshelves and put my book back.
Mum was waiting outside for me in the car and Martha was waving to me from the back seat. I waved back. I might moan about my little sister, but she thinks I’m great and that makes her pretty nice to be around most of the time.
Now, as I climbed into the car, I glanced back at the library steps and saw Abby and her mother come out. I wondered if Abby had a dad. I hoped so, because maybe her dad could help her with her mum.
I looked across at my mum, suddenly feeling much less angry with her. Mum always looks good no matter what. She’s got these dark blue eyes that Dad says come from her Irish ancestors and lots of thick dark hair which she only ties back when she’s at work. People sometimes turn to have a second look at her in the street, though she doesn’t seem to notice that. All Mum notices about herself is that she’s plumper than she wants to be, which she’s always blaming on the lithium. That’s the name of the medication she has to take every day to stop getting ill like she was before. Mum says the lithium keeps the chemicals in her brain from getting unbalanced. Apparently we’ve all got chemicals in our brains, but Mum’s don’t always stay at the right level. That’s how Mum explained it to me one time, anyway. You’d think Dad would explain it since he’s the doctor in our family, not her, but Dad never likes me asking questions about Mum’s illness. Anyway, the lithium tablets Mum takes keep her brain working more like everybody else’s, but they also have side effects. And one of the side effects is that they make her put on weight more easily. Mum hates that. I’ve told her lots of times that she’s not horrendously fat, but she just says, ‘Gee, thanks, Daniel,’ and carries on glaring at herself in the mirror.