by Ross Welford
We are all in and out of interview rooms, with police officers. I have been given some spare clothes to wear, and the life-pearl is safe in my pocket. I am staring out of the window during a lull, worrying about Biffa, when Sangeeta comes over and sits down on the hard sofa next to me.
She murmurs, ‘You know I don’t believe a word of this, don’t you, Alfie? I have no idea what’s really going on, but I know – in my heart, I just know – that you are not telling me the full truth. Or even part of the truth, for that matter.’
I look at her, really look at her, and I feel sorry. Sangeeta has not been unkind. I nod. ‘I understand.’
She laughs softly. ‘You understand! I think you understand a lot, Alfie.’
‘Can we go soon, Sangeeta? I need to see my cat.’
About an hour later, the station inspector arrives. It is her day off and she is not in uniform. She decides that no arrests will be made today, and we are all to be released ‘pending further investigations’.
Turns out Jasper Hooke was known to the local police, although I do not know what for. Known enough, though, for Inspector MacAllan to at least be inclined to believe us.
By 7pm, we are on our way back.
Apparently mobile telephones are not very water-resistant, which I think is odd given that you all use them so much. Anyhow mine was in my shorts when I dived off the Jolly Roger and it is now ruined.
I turn to Sangeeta, who is driving and who has been very quiet.
‘May I borrow your mobile telephone, Sangeeta? I should like to send a text message.’
‘Who are you texting?’
‘Oh, just Roxy.’
Sangeeta presses a button to unlock her telephone and hands it to me. It is different from mine, but eventually I manage to compose a text:
Dear Roxy,
Please come to Dr Heinz’s house at 8pm tonight with Aidan.
Yours sincerely,
Alfie
When I have pressed the button marked SEND, I put my hand back into my pocket to check for the reassuring presence of the small, smooth life-pearl.
I am expecting the house to smell of cats, but it does not. Not at all. The three of us are greeted at the door by Dr Heinz.
‘I sink …’ she says, ‘I sink it should be Alfie on his own who comes to see his cat. I do not vant to disturb her.’
I shake my head. ‘They are part of this as well, Dr Heinz.’
‘Ach, call me Sue. Everyone else does!’
And so we go in, and in the back room is a cat basket, and lying on it is a cat. My cat. Me and Mam’s cat. Skinny, with some patches of fur missing, and a crooked tail … but it is definitely Biffa.
And she is alive, found near-starving by Prudence in the alleyway between our houses. Next to her is an empty food bowl. Straight away I sink to my knees and bury my face in her neck. She responds by twitching her tail and making her strange, vocal mewling.
‘You were right about the crab,’ says Pru, who is standing above me with a soppy smile. ‘She ate it all.’
I want to say thank you. I want to say something, but I cannot, for if I do I will start to cry. With sadness for everything that has happened, with sorrow for Biffa’s suffering, with happiness that I have her back, with relief, with …
Everything.
I look up and smile broadly to stop myself from crying, and then lower my head again into Biffa’s fur, which smells of woodsmoke, and caves, and ship’s tar, and sea spray, and centuries and centuries of Mam. I scratch her ears and tell her again and again in our old language how much I have missed her.
I do not know how long I stay there, but, when I look up again, Dr Heinz, Prudence, Roxy and Aidan have all gone; it is just me and Biffa: the thousand-year-old boy and his thousand-year-old cat; and I know now how I will do the one remaining thing that I need to do.
The people on the Metro do not even look up when I get on, carrying a rucksack with wood in it, and a pet-carrier with a cat in it.
They all keep on staring at their mobile telephones, which seems to be the modern way. A little while ago, I would have been glad that nobody noticed me; now I am not so sure. Either way, after a couple of stops, I take out my ‘phone’ as well. (Sangeeta bought me a new one, and it plays films!)
I think about how amazed Mam would be at everyone travelling so fast to places that – not so long ago – might have taken a whole day or more to walk to.
She is with me all the time, is Mam. Not just in my head, and in my heart, but in my mobile telephone. Roxy has given me a ‘digital copy’ of a film she was taking (secretly) the day we first met. It has Mam’s voice, her face, her hands, our old house. It made me sad the first time I saw it, but now it makes me smile.
The Metro trundles on. South Gosforth, Ilford Road, West Jesmond … I keep looking up at the diagram on the side of the train, counting off the stations. Sixteen to go. Lots of people get off and on at Newcastle, then there is a long section when we go under the River Tyne.
The Teen, I think.
Not long now, I think, as I look at the picture of Mam on my phone. A young man opposite gives me a funny look. Did I say it out loud? Oh well.
Pelaw, Hebburn, Jarrow. I smile and remember Johannes, and Old Paul. We are heading back along the south side of the river now, towards the sea. There is a station called Bede, named after the old historian. I knew an old monk once who told me his great-great-grandfather had met Bede. The thought makes me chuckle, and the man opposite looks up again, now convinced I am mad.
Finally the end of the line: South Shields, where this whole thing began.
It was not called that then, of course. I do not think it even had a name a thousand years ago.
I come out of the station with Biffa in her carrier, and look around me. It is odd to realise that, in a thousand years, I have never once been back here. I think, Gosh, it has changed, and then start laughing at myself. Properly laughing, out loud. The man from the train walks past me, shaking his head. But I do not care.
It is all houses and shops; everything is these days.
The beach does not change, though, or the cliffs. I know that, when I see it, I will remember the little cave where my whole adventure began, so I start walking south, along the wide clifftop, and, when I gaze out over the flat, iron-grey sea, I try to imagine that I am back there with my mam, and eleven years old. High above me seagulls hover, and kittiwakes swoop in and out of their cliffside roosts. I am brought back to the twenty-first century by the sound of a motor car swishing past on the distant road.
My rucksack has begun to dig into my shoulders, and Biffa is getting heavy, but I do not mind. On I walk, until I come to a little semicircular bay, like a giant has taken a bite out of the earth. There is a concrete stairway leading to the beach now; Mam and I had to carry our belongings down a rocky path.
Even though it is summer, the bay is deserted. The cave is unchanged, although there are signs that people have been here: empty beer cans, mainly.
I let Biffa out of the pet carrier. Normally she would go and explore; instead she sniffs the air and plods over to the rocky shelf where she made herself comfortable all those years ago. She cannot remember, surely? On the other hand, if I can remember, maybe she does too. She mewls loudly and settles down to watch.
From my bag, I take the wood, a big wax firelighter and some matches. I thought about doing it the old way. The lenses of my spectacles would have worked to create a flame in the same way as Da’s fire-glass, but today the sun is behind a sky-wide white sheet of cloud.
In a moment, the fire is flickering to life.
In the top section of my rucksack is a small square box: a tiny, battery-operated projector – another find from Roxy’s skip-diving. The surface has a deep scratch, and the audio does not work, which is perhaps why it was thrown out, but it is otherwise fine. I push my mobile telephone into the slot and press PLAY.
And there she is, life-size, on the ridged and rocky cave wall. My mam. Biffa yawns and gives a
little growl of approval.
By now, my hands are sweating as I pull the last item from my bag: Da’s little steel knife. From my pocket, I take the last remaining life-pearl in the world: warm and smooth.
I know the film of Mam second by second, and I look up at the projected image. There is a bit coming up when Mam looks at the camera and gives a little nod. That is the bit I am waiting for as I hold the knife to the flame.
When it comes, I do not hesitate. With two swift slashes, I cut into the scars on my arm, and crack open the life-pearl between my teeth. My heart is racing, which is probably a good thing: it will propel the droplets through my body all the quicker. A drop oozes out, which I pour into the bloody wound on my arm. Another one, and another.
It stings, as it should, like fresh nettles, as I wrap a bandage round my arm.
I have done it exactly right. I know I have, because on the cave wall Mam is mouthing the words, Gother-swain, Alve. Good boy, Alve.
She smiles her gentle, gappy smile and the picture freezes. Whether it is the amber liquid from the life-pearl, or just my imagination, I feel a warmth coursing through me. From her stone shelf, Biffa rouses herself, stretches and hops down, wrapping her soft fur round my ankles, and I am happier than I have been for a thousand years.
One Week Later
My cellular age test was done three days ago. It involved skin and blood samples in a little room at the local hospital. They then send off the samples for analysis.
Sangeeta went with me, and is with me now as we wait for the doctor to come with the results.
A friendly-looking lady approaches us with a brown envelope.
‘Shall we go in?’ she says, indicating a little consulting room.
‘No!’ I want to say. ‘Just tell me now!’ But we follow her, and sit opposite her, a wooden desk between us.
‘Well, as you know, Alfie,’ she begins, ‘there has been some doubt about your age.’
I glance over at Sangeeta, who is stony-faced.
‘Cellular tests such as we have carried out cannot be a hundred per cent accurate,’ she says as she opens the envelope. ‘But we can say with near certainty that your cells reveal your age to be …’
Here she looks at the paper in her hand and pauses as she peers through her glasses. It is as if she is doing it deliberately, to build suspense, but I do not think she is.
‘… Between four thousand …’
Wait. What?
‘… and four thousand two hundred …’
What is she saying?
‘… days. Which is roughly between eleven years, and eleven years and three months. Completely consistent with your stated age, Alfie.’
I start back at school tomorrow.
Six Months Later
Jasper died in hospital ‘without regaining consciousness’.
It turns out he was rather rich and it all went to Aunty Alice: he had no other relatives.
She has been ‘very generous’, Mum said, which means, I think, that our money worries are over, for the time being at any rate. Mum has been promoted at the call centre and Dad has had loads of job interviews. I expect we’ll be moving house again, just as the redecorating has been completed. (‘No thanks to you, matey!’ said Dad, but he was joking. Sort of.)
It has to be a house that’s big enough to have a room for Alfie. Mum and Dad are starting the process that will enable us to adopt him. Sangeeta has been round our house a lot, and other people too from social services. It’s all looking good.
Alfie will be my older brother. (My much older brother!) And there’ll be a huge bookshelf to house a very special collection of Charles Dickens books.
Libby is pleased too, but maybe she’s just happy that we’ll get Biffa.
Inigo Delombra, by the way, has moved school. Only to Monkseaton High but it’s far enough away for me. On his last day, he came up to me and Alfie and said, ‘Linklater, Monk, what is it with you two? There’s something you’re hiding, and it’s gonna bug me forever.’
‘Forever, eh?’ said Alfie. ‘That’s a long time, Delombra. Just so long as you’re OK with that,’ and we walked off, leaving Inigo to stew. We high-fived when we were out of his sight.
And Roxy? Roxy’s just … Roxy. She’s taken to calling Alfie ‘old chap’, as in ‘Good to see you, Alfie, old chap!’ It’s kind of funny but only we understand the joke.
Alfie’s had his teeth done, and he’s OK-looking. He’s joined Roxy’s drama group and she says he’s very good at playing old men. Funny that.
Thanks to Sangeeta (who said she ‘called in some favours’), Precious Minto has had a stair lift installed. She’s stopped walking with sticks, and every few days her loud, warbling voice penetrates the thin walls, singing hymns.
‘Thine be tha gloree, risen conquerin’ son!
Endless is tha vict’ry thou o’er deat’ hast won!’
It is not at all tuneful, but Roxy says it’s the best thing she’s ever heard.
Talking of singing … we were in the car, singing along to a song on the radio (Alfie still calls it the wireless, which is hilarious), and he hit this really deep note. A proper man’s bass note that went, ‘Oh yeahhhh!’
Mum overheard us.
‘Listen to you, Alfie!’ she said. ‘Your voice is breaking! You’re growing up!’
I looked over at Alfie, and he gave a shy smile, and then blinked really hard as if he was crying. But it’s hard to tell with Alfie, even though he’s such an old friend.
This is not a ‘historical novel’. Nor is it a geography lesson, or a linguistics guide. In other words: I made most of it up. References to historical dates, places and words in old languages are accurate only in the sense of being ‘not very’.
As always, I owe a huge debt to a lot of people who do not get to have their names on the front cover, especially Nick Lake, my ever-patient editor; Samantha Stewart; Jane Tait; Mary O’Riordan; and everyone else at HarperCollins whose job is to make me appear to be a better writer than I really am.
To them all: thank you.
An astonishing and funny novel about a girl who – by disappearing – will write herself into your heart for ever …
Twelve-year-old Ethel only meant to cure her spots, not turn herself invisible.
It’s terrifying at first – and exciting – but the effect fails to wear off and Ethel is thrown into a heart-stopping adventure as she struggles to conceal her invisibility while uncovering the biggest secret of all: who she really is.
Books by Ross Welford
THE 1,000-YEAR-OLD BOY
TIME TRAVELLING WITH A HAMSTER
WHAT NOT TO DO IF YOU TURN INVISIBLE
About the Publisher
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http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
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