by Davina Bell
‘Hey, Lola? This is my mum,’ she says, and she looks kind of worried, kind of shy.
I wink at Matilda to say, Hey, don’t worry, I’ll be cool, and I stick out my hand with a big smile. ‘Hi!’
Her mum, well, she is beautiful – like an angel crossed with a pixie. Her eyes are brown and enormous – bigger than Matilda’s. Her hair is short and dyed peroxide blonde, so that it’s almost silver but not quite, and almost white, but not quite. Her hand, when she holds it out to me, is so fine and soft, I feel as if I’m shaking hands with a princess. She’s wearing a lilac skirt that looks like it’s made of unicorn’s breath, it’s so shimmery.
‘Hey, Lola,’ she says, and her voice is lower than I was expecting, kind of husky. Is it possible that her eyes are shinier than a normal human’s?! ‘I’m Ingrid. Congrats on your award. Those sets were incredible! Till said you were talented, but I couldn’t have imagined just how good they would be.’
ARGH! A movie star thinks my sets were incredible! Truly, I am dying.
‘Till didn’t want me to mention this,’ Ingrid says, and scruffles Matilda’s hair, ‘but if you ever want to visit me on set and see how they do things there, you’d be very welcome. Heaps of amazing artists get into set design.’
‘Mu-um,’ Matilda says, all embarrassed.
‘Everyone, get out here!’ someone yells. ‘Snowball fight!’
There’s a mass exodus from the clubhouse as people run out to see.
‘Go!’ say Matilda and Ingrid. ‘We’ll be out in a sec.’
‘Lovely to meet you, Ingrid,’ I say. ‘And if it’s OK with Matilda, I’d love to come and look at the sets.’
By the time I jostle my way down the clubhouse steps, the snowflakes are falling thick and fast. It’s like being in a Christmas carol, in a snow dome, in heaven. I stand there, fixated. I think about new beginnings, fresh starts, blank slates. And then a snowball goes whizzing past my nose, breaking my philosophical haze, and hits someone in the face.
‘Hey!’ yells Rishi, brushing the snow out of his eyebrows. ‘No fair!’
Judy laughs and says, ‘Sucker!’
‘Right,’ says Rishi, gathering up his own snowball. The thing about Rishi, though, is that, like Belle, he’s not very good at ball sports. He misses Judy completely and hits Fury. Fury tackles him to the ground, so Belle and I make our own snowballs and throw them at Fury. Mayor Magnus – I mean Mark – joins them. Charisma comes to Fury’s defence and puts snow down the back of Mark’s jumper. Meanwhile, Pop is building a snowman and steals Monsieur Flutard’s hat to put on top. Punk Sherman gives her his leather jacket to put around its shoulders. Mikie comes by to give it some arms made of sticks, but somehow he knocks the poor guy’s head off. Pony Soprano trots by and picks up the top hat in his teeth, and everyone ends up chasing him again, the scamp. I’ll miss looking after that guy.
Eventually, Soph and Maisie and Belle and I end up puffed and hot, catching our breath on a patch of snow on the oval that nobody has touched yet. It reminds me of a blank page in my sketchbook, calling me to turn it into something meaningful, something beautiful.
‘Guys,’ I say. ‘Want to make snow angels?’
And so we lie, looking up at the sky, our arms swishing back and forth, rubbing our heads into the snow. And then we jump up to see if it’s worked, and there we are, four angels in a row, like a string of paper dolls. Two tall, one short, one medium-height. It worked! Just like in the movies. Truly, tonight is once in a lifetime.
There are so many things I want to say – sorries as high as the sky, thank yous as deep as the sea. But I don’t want to break this spell, so I just link elbows with Maisie and pull Belle close to me with my other arm. Soph slings her arms around Maisie’s neck. As the snow falls, we don’t say anything. It’s almost too perfect, this moment together in the white, silent world.
We look down at those four snow angels, and it feels like something’s missing. Like someone’s missing. Well, two people actually. One can’t be with us. But the other one can. We turn to look at each other, and I can see we’re all having the same thought at the same time.
‘MATILDA!’ we yell across the oval, waving our arms. ‘We need you!’
As she runs towards us, the glow from the clubhouse is behind her, lighting up the swirl of snowflakes, so it looks like she’s running through golden glitter. She throws her head back and laughs, and her eyes squint up into little half-moons of happiness. I know that feeling because it’s in my heart every time I’m with these guys – a feeling that’s bigger than the Empire State Building.
Like there’s a place in this world to belong.
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About the author
Davina Bell is an award-winning writer for young readers of many ages. She writes picture books (including All the Ways to be Smart, Under the Love Umbrella and All of the Factors of Why I Love Tractors), junior fiction (Lemonade Jones) and middle-grade fiction (the Corner Park Clubhouse series and the Alice books in the Our Australian Girl series). Davina wishes she were a Lola but is probably more of a Soph with a splash of Belle. Originally from Western Australia, she now lives in Melbourne, where she works as a children’s book editor.
To all the mistakes I’ve made.
Thanks for the things you taught me.
The Secret Life of Lola
first published in 2019 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
eISBN 9781743586334
Text copyright © 2019 Davina Bell
Design copyright © 2019 Hardie Grant Egmont
Cover illustration by Samantha Woo
Cover design by Jess Cruickshank
Typeset by Julia Donkersley
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