Secret Meeting

by Jean Ure

  With Harriet, I thought; and I couldn’t help a little giggle bursting out of me. Oops! I promptly clapped a hand to my mouth.

  “You’re in a very odd mood,” said Mum. “What’s brought all this on?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said.

  “Why can’t you tell me now?”

  “’cos I can’t! It’s a secret.”

  “I suppose Annie’s in on it?”

  I said, “Yes, but we’re sworn to utter silence.”

  “Oh! Well … in that case,” said Mum.

  She didn’t try to get it out of me. I am allowed to have secrets! She just told me to eat up my breakfast or I’d make her late for work.

  Needless to say I spent the morning jittering, in case for once Rachel didn’t go off to gaze at Tyrone and make sure her best friend wasn’t pinching him.

  “What’d we do? If she doesn’t go? How’d we get out?”

  “We could always climb through the window,” said Annie.

  I ran across to look. It’s true there is an apple tree outside Annie’s window, but I knew I’d never be able to reach it. Heights make me go dizzy. And Annie has never been able to get more than a quarter of the way up the ropes when we do gym.

  “We’d break our necks,” I wailed.

  “I wasn’t serious,” said Annie. “I only said it ’cos of all the dithering you do.”

  “But Rachel,” I moaned.

  “You don’t have to worry about Rachel. She couldn’t stay away from Tyrone if you offered her a million dollars. I heard her on the phone last night. She’s got it so bad she couldn’t even say his name without stuttering … T-T-Tyrone!”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  “I’m always right,” said Annie. “I’m your fairy godmother. When I wave my magic wand—” she snatched up a ruler from her desk and wafted it about “— all your wishes come true!”

  She was right about Rachel. She isn’t always right; she is sometimes spectacularly wrong. But in this case she was right! Rachel came upstairs a bit later, when we were sitting good as gold, quiet as mice, with the CD player turned low as low could be, to tell us that she was going out for a couple of hours.

  “You two just behave yourselves—”

  “Or else,” said Annie.

  “Yes! Or else. And keep that music down!”

  What cheek! We couldn’t have turned it any lower if we’d tried.

  “Some people are just never satisfied,” grumbled Annie.

  A few seconds later the front door slammed shut.

  “Now we can listen properly,” said Annie; and she turned the CD player up to practically full blast. “Let’s go and spy on her!”

  We raced along the landing, into Annie’s mum and dad’s bedroom, which is at the front of the house.

  “Hide behind the curtain! We don’t want her to see us.”

  Giggling, I wrapped myself up in the curtain and watched as Rachel set off down the road.

  “We’ll just give her time to get her bus,” said Annie. “We don’t want to go and bump into her at the bus stop.”

  Help! I hadn’t thought of that! Suppose the bus was cancelled? Suppose we got there and she was still waiting?

  “Oh, shut up!” said Annie, when I said this to her. “You’re behaving like your mum.”

  Well! The last thing anyone wants to do is behave like their mum, so I obediently kept quiet and just worried silently inside my head, instead of out loud.

  “You’re still doing it,” said Annie.

  “Doing what?” I said.

  “Flapping. I can tell from just looking at you.”

  “Well, but you don’t think—”

  “No, I don’t,” said Annie, without even waiting to hear what it was that I was going to say. “I’ve got it all planned. Just leave it to me.” She looked at her watch. “Every quarter of an hour. That’s when the buses run. We’ll go in quarter of an hour.”

  Unlike me, Annie hadn’t bothered to get dressed up. She was wearing the same pink joggers she’d been wearing all week, though she had put on a clean top and a big old swanky cap (all pink and puffy) that she’s had for ages. But that was all right! It wasn’t Annie’s birthday treat. She wasn’t Harriet’s number one fan.

  “I’ll just do a note for old Bossyboots,” she said.

  She showed me what she’d written: WE HAVE GONE TO HAVE TEA WITH HARRIET CHANCE. WE WILL BE BACK SOON.

  “Annieeee!” I stared at her, reproachfully. “I thought we weren’t supposed to tell anyone?”

  “I’ve got to leave her a note,” said Annie. “We don’t want her getting in a panic and phoning the police.”

  “But you promised!”

  Annie stuck out her lower lip. What I call her stubborn look.

  “Annie, you promised,” I said.

  “OK! I’ll write another one.”

  WE HAVE GONE TO TEA WITH HARRIET. WE WILL BE BACK SOON.

  “How’s that? If I just say Harriet?”

  I told her that that was much better. “It’ll keep her from worrying, but she won’t actually know where we’ve gone.”

  “Right. So now will you please just stop flapping?”

  I was still a bit scared what we might find when we got to the bus stop. If Rachel was there, we would have to hide in a shop doorway until after she’d gone. Then we’d miss our bus! Harriet would be kept waiting. She would be so cross – it would be so rude! I couldn’t bear it!

  But then we got there, and I breathed this huge sigh of relief. Rachel was nowhere to be seen!

  “Told you so,” said Annie. “All that flapping and fussing!”

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “It’s my anatomy.”

  “Your what?”

  I hesitated. Perhaps I’d got the wrong word. “It’s the way I’m made. You can’t help the way you’re made.”

  “You don’t have to give in to it,” said Annie. “When you feel a worry fit coming on, just think, everything will be all right … Annie says so!”

  I muttered that it hadn’t been all right when we’d fallen out of the stationery cupboard, but at that moment our bus came and Annie didn’t hear me. Which was probably just as well.

  All the way into town my heart was hammering, but now it was with excitement, not worry! I had a tiny touch of anxiety when we reached Market Square, for really no reason at all, but as soon as we were safely on the number six bus, headed for Brafferton Bridge, it disappeared. I suppose I could have started worrying about pile-ups, or being hijacked, but even I am not that sad.

  However … when the bus stopped at Brafferton Bridge, and we got out, and there wasn’t anyone there to meet us, my heart stopped hammering and went flomp! like a dead fish inside my rib cage. I could see that even Annie was a bit concerned.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” she said. “She’ll be here!”

  The bus went on its way, leaving us all by ourselves. Stranded! In the middle of absolutely nowhere.

  There aren’t any houses at Brafferton Bridge. No one actually lives there. It is just this old ancient bridge over a stream, with fields stretching out on either side as far as the eye can see.

  “She’ll be here,” said Annie.

  Even as Annie spoke, a red car drew up beside us and a woman got out. It had to be Harriet! She was holding a copy of Victoria Plum. A very old, battered copy, like my one of Candyfloss before Mum had replaced it. She came over to us, smiling.

  “Oh!” she said. “There are two of you! I hadn’t realised you were both coming.”

  I glanced anxiously at Annie. It takes a LOT to make Annie feel uncomfortable, but I could see she was a bit thrown. After all, she was the one who’d set everything up. In any case, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to come by myself.

  “I th-thought it was w-what we’d arranged,” mumbled Annie.

  “Of course! That’s all right. Two of you is lovely! So which one is the birthday girl?”

  Annie beamed and shoved me forwar
d. “Megan! She’s your number-one fan.”

  Harriet held out a hand. “Happy birthday, Megan! Sorry I’m late. I hope you haven’t been waiting long?”

  I shook my head. I wanted to say, “No, we only just got here,” but I couldn’t. I was suddenly struck dumb! I could feel my cheeks turning hot tomato. It was Annie who assured her that we had only that minute got off the bus.

  “Thank heavens for that! I had visions of you giving up and going back home.”

  “Wild horses wouldn’t get Megan back home,” said Annie. “She’s been, like, oh-my-goodness help-help I-can’t-believe-it ever since we set out!”

  By now, my cheeks were starting to sizzle. It was just too embarrassing!

  “Well, let’s get you into the car,” said Harriet, “and we’ll all go back and have some tea. Who wants to come in front? Megan?”

  Annie gave me another shove. “Go on! It’s your treat.” She then added, beaming, that “Megan always gets sick if she sits in the back.”

  I don’t know why she found it necessary to say that. Getting car sick is such a childish thing to do! But Harriet was really sympathetic. She said, “Oh, join the club! I always had to take pills if I was going a long journey.”

  “Megs has to stick her head out of the window,” said Annie. “Even then it doesn’t always stop her throwing up. One time she did it and it all went splat down the door. D’you remember?” She leaned forward, chummily, from the back seat. “That time we went to Alton Towers with Mum and Dad?”

  I did remember, but I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of it. Not in front of Harriet!

  “We’d been eating sardine sandwiches,” said Annie.

  “Oh, horrible! Sardine sandwiches aren’t at all the right thing to eat if you suffer from car sickness. But don’t worry, Megan! There are some peppermints in the glove compartment. They’ll help.”

  “She doesn’t usually get sick in front,” carolled Annie. “The worst things are those things at fairgrounds that go round and round.”

  Harriet looked puzzled. “Roundabouts?”

  “No, those things where you stick to the side.”

  “Oh! You mean, like a centrifuge.”

  “Yes. She gets really sick in those!”

  “Poor Megan!” Harriet smiled at me as she started the car. “You’re obviously like me, you have a delicate stomach.”

  “You could write a story about someone like that.” Annie draped herself, eagerly, over the back of Harriet’s seat. “Someone who throws up everywhere she goes … you could call it Sickly Susan!”

  “Well, it’s an idea,” said Harriet. “I’ll certainly bear it in mind.”

  She was only being polite; she never used other people’s ideas. I knew that, from my reading. She’d said she had “a resistance” to them. I felt like telling Annie to just be quiet. She’d done nothing but burble ever since Harriet had met us! But something had happened to my tongue; it was like a great wodge of foam rubber in my mouth. I couldn’t talk! It was really annoying. Although I am not as bubbly and up-front as Annie, I am not usually shy; but when you are in the presence of greatness it is all too easy to just shrivel. Yet I had so many things I wanted to say! So many questions I wanted to ask! Anyone would have thought it was Annie who was the number-one fan rather than me.

  “So how long have you been reading my books?” said Harriet.

  I whispered, “Since I was about … s-seven.”

  “She’s read them all!” crowed Annie.

  “I haven’t read them all,” I said.

  “Most of them!”

  “Have you read this one?” said Harriet. She pointed at her old battered copy of Victoria Plum.

  “Yes!” I found it a bit easier, now that we were talking about books. “It’s one of my favourites, ’cos Victoria’s always having bad hair days. I like the bit where she tries to make it curly and she goes to bed in rollers and says it’s like sleeping on a hedgehog!”

  “And then she goes to school,” – Annie just couldn’t resist joining in – “and is forced to play hockey, ugh, yuck! And it rains, and all the curls come out!”

  “And she says how for a little while she’d looked like a bubble bath but now she’s gone back to being a limp dish mop, and she’s just so ashamed she runs away and hides in the loo!”

  “We used to think that maybe you had hair like a limp dish mop,” said Annie. “But you haven’t! You’ve got nice hair.”

  Harriet’s hair was beautifully thick and curly – but it was going grey. Harriet was going grey! I felt sad about that, though I knew, of course, she couldn’t still look the same as she had fifteen years ago. She was wearing glasses, too. Just for a moment I wished that I could have met her when she was young; but then I thought that that was a very ageist thing to think, and very ungrateful. After all, she was still Harriet. She was still writing wonderful, marvellous books! And she did look warm and friendly; just a bit … mumsy. But that was quite comforting, in a way. If she had been young and glamorous I would probably have been struck dumb for all eternity.

  Rather timidly, I said, “How did you manage to know what it’s like, having limp hair?”

  “Megan’s got limp hair,” said Annie. “She’s always going on about it.”

  “Like Victoria,” I said. “I really love the way you understand how people feel. Like having bad hair, or spots, or being plump, or not having any boobs. Like Sugar Mouse. I don’t know how you do it!”

  “Well … there is such a thing as imagination,” said Harriet. “Very important, if you want to be a writer!”

  “Megan wants to be a writer,” said Annie.

  “In that case,” said Harriet, “I very much hope that you will be. Do you have a copy of this one, by the way?”

  “She’s got all of them,” said Annie.

  “I haven’t got all of them.” Annie did exaggerate so!

  “You’ve got a whole shelf full.”

  “I’ve got thirty-four,” I said.

  “Good heavens!” Harriet laughed. “You are a fan, aren’t you?”

  I nodded, bashfully. “Victoria Plum was one of the first ones I had.”

  “And I bet it’s in better condition than this! I’m afraid this one’s been read to bits.”

  I have read my copy over and over, but I do try to look after my books and keep them nice. I was only young when I ruined Candyfloss. Now that I’m older I wouldn’t ever turn down the corners of pages or stand mugs of hot chocolate on them or leave them out in the rain. Poor Victoria Plum looked as if all those things had happened to her. I picked her up, and opened her at the title page. Across the top someone had written, “For Jan, with all my love, Mummy”. I wondered who Jan was, and why she didn’t take better care of her books. Maybe she was Harriet’s niece and knew that she could always ask for new ones. It made me feel quite jealous. Imagine having a famous writer as your aunt!

  “Hey, look, Megs.” Annie lunged forward and poked a finger at me. “Isn’t that where we went when we visited your gran?”

  Annie had come with me a couple of times, to visit Gran. Mum had thought she would be company for me, but then she had said we couldn’t behave ourselves properly, and made too much noise, and upset the old people, so now I had to go on my own.

  “Megan’s gran is in a home,” said Annie. “She has Oldheimer’s.”

  “Alzheimer’s,” I said.

  “Oh, dear! That must be very upsetting,” said Harriet.

  I said, “Yes, it is, ’cos me and Gran used to be best friends. Now she doesn’t even know me … like Clover’s gran, in Daisy & Clover. I cried when I read the bit where Clover wants to burst into tears. That’s just how I feel, when I see Gran … you always seem to be writing about how I feel! Like when Clover says about remembering all the things that she and her gran used to do together—”

  “That was me,” said Harriet, “remembering my gran! She had Alzheimer’s, too. That’s what made me want to write about it.”

  “Exc
ept that … Clover’s gran doesn’t actually have Alzheimer’s,” I said.

  “She has a stroke,” said Annie.

  “Oh! Well, yes. I changed it to a stroke for the purposes of the book. It would have been too painful,” said Harriet, “actually writing about Alzheimer’s. It would have brought back too many memories. So you know this area quite well, do you, Megan?”

  “Only from coming to see Gran,” I said. “Over there’s where we get off the bus.”

  “Darnley Manor. A very pleasant spot! We’re just a few miles further on. Are you feeling all right? Not getting sick?”

  “She doesn’t give you any warning,” said Annie. “She just opens her mouth and does it … blurgh! All over the door.”

  Annie doesn’t say these things on purpose to embarrass me. She just opens her mouth and words come tumbling out. Mostly I try not to mind.

  “Well, just yell,” said Harriet, “if you want to stop. We’ve got a few twisty turny bits coming up. They’re always the worst, if you have a funny tum.”

  I thought that Harriet was so nice! Every bit as understanding as she seemed from her books. A girl at school had once met this other author she was keen on and said she had turned out to be really cold and snooty. A huge disappointment! Harriet wasn’t in the least bit snooty. Or cold. She was just like one of us.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said, “I must just quickly ring home and … bother!” She was rummaging with one hand in her bag. “Would you believe it, I’ve gone and forgotten my mobile! Honestly, I’d leave my head behind if it weren’t attached to my shoulders! I don’t suppose either of you has one I could borrow?”

  I said, “I do!” I felt quite honoured, offering my phone to Harriet! “You can use mine.”

  “Bless you!” Harriet slammed the glove compartment shut and blew me a kiss. “You’ve saved my bacon. I should have rung half an hour ago! I’ll just pull up in this lay-by … mustn’t use a mobile while you’re driving. Very dangerous!”

  I thought that Mum would approve of that. When we had gone to Alton Towers – the time I got sick and it sprayed over the door. On the outside, I should add – Annie’s dad had done lots of talking on his mobile. Mum had said afterwards that she hadn’t liked to say anything, as it wasn’t her car, but she had been on tenterhooks the whole time. So that was ten out of ten for Harriet. Hooray!