by Hilary McKay
‘For you!’ he said, as he presented a new blue envelope to Abi. ‘From Granny Grace! She didn’t put a flower in this time, but there’s a picture of her sniffing lovely roses!’
‘You opened my letter!’ said Abi, outraged.
‘Only to see if there was another flower.’
‘Well, it’s spoilt now,’ said Abi, pushing him aside to flounce across the kitchen and hurl it in the bin. ‘Ruined. Messed about. Covered in cold germs, probably. Sometimes, Louis, I hate–’
‘Abi!’ said Theo warningly.
‘Well, I have to guard everything from him. Rocky. My bedroom. Now Granny Grace’s letters. It’s not fair.’
‘It is fair!’ said Louis, sounding very surprised.
‘How is it?’
‘Because I don’t have a Granny Grace and I don’t have any letters.’
‘Doesn’t mean you can have mine,’ said Abi.
Louis looked at her, completely baffled. ‘I will share with you,’ he offered at last.
‘You haven’t got anything I want to share.’
‘I’ll share my mum when she comes back.’
Shame made Abi more bad-tempered than ever. She turned away, even when Louis asked, ‘Can I have it if you don’t want it?’ and fished her letter back out of the bin.
‘No,’ said Theo mildly, taking it from him. ‘And no more opening other people’s letters, Louis. Abi, look at the time! You’re going to miss that bus! Have you got your bag packed? What about you, Max?’
‘What about me?’
‘Don’t go off without your helmet, and it won’t do you much good hanging from your handlebars either. Louis, get moving! Teeth, shoes, we need to be out the house! I don’t know what we’d do without Esmé and I’ve been forgetting to pay her so there’s an envelope behind the clock. Max, can you see that she gets it?’
Max, who had just worked out that when he was nearly twenty-two Esmé would be only twenty five, which was an entirely reasonable age gap, especially as he was taller than her already and would probably be able to drive then, too, was somehow so horrified by this request that he exclaimed, ‘No, I can’t!’
Theo raised an eyebrow.
‘I’ll be back too late to even see her,’ said Max. ‘Football.’
Theo looked at him. The look said, ‘Football takes an hour.’
‘And then I’m going to Danny’s,’ snapped Max, cornered into a double lie.
‘You and Danny friends again, then?’ asked Theo.
‘What’s it to do with you?’ growled Max, in sudden fury. ‘I’m fourteen and I’ll do as I like. I didn’t ask you to marry my mum! You can boss that loser Louis, but you can’t boss me!’
‘Why am I a loser?’ demanded Louis.
‘Elephants, elephants, elephants!’ mimicked Max. ‘Conned you into reading, didn’t he?’
‘Dad was helping him!’ said Abi, flaring up in defence of Theo. ‘Everyone has to learn to read!’
‘And you can shut up too!’ snapped Max. ‘He can read. He just doesn’t want to. And Mum would be helping him if she hadn’t had to go to the other side of the planet to pay the rent on this stupid house you wanted so much!’
‘Hey!’ protested Theo, but it was no good. Max had grabbed his bike and slammed through the front door in a crashing temper, leaving Louis with his mouth turning ominously down at the corners, Abi seething and Theo clutching his head.
‘Handled that well, didn’t I?’ he moaned. ‘Louis, get your shoes on! Abi, your bus!’
It was too late. Abi had missed her bus. She knew there would be another one along in a few minutes, she only had to wait, although it was not a very nice place to do that, what with the piled bags of rubbish all around the bins next to the bus stop, and the way her hastily packed, half-open school bag was filling with rain. She wished she could repack her bag so it would close, but the only place where she could balance it to do that was the low wall round an empty flower planter. That was a depressing sight. There were fragments of broken glass, and takeaway boxes instead of flowers, and someone had not enjoyed their curry and splattered it everywhere. Abi looked at it in disgust and stepped away, and as she did so, of its own accord, her school bag tipped and dropped half her stuff on the ground. Pens scattered and she had to peel ruined pages of file paper one by one off the wet pavement.
Suddenly Abi had had enough – of the planter and the bus stop and the whole miserable morning.
I’m going home, thought Abi.
Almost back, a shiver of doubt nearly stopped her. She had never deliberately missed school before; she knew people who had, but they had not been brought up by Granny Grace.
‘Well, she’s in Jamaica now,’ Abi told herself. ‘Bossing someone else,’ and she felt in her pocket for the door key.
She’d never been alone in the house before, nor realized how big it was. She felt as exposed as the only book on a bookshelf, as alone as the last match in a matchbox, as watched as if all Granny Grace’s little birds had flocked to settle in the ivy.
The only sound was the dishwasher, swishing through the breakfast dishes.
Abi tiptoed around like a burglar. What if someone sees me through the windows? she wondered, and thought she might close the curtains, then straight away changed her mind. What if someone wondered at the curtains being closed?
Granny Grace’s letter was there on the table. Abi could hardly pick it up. She’d been horrible to Louis. She’d disgraced Granny Grace, who never in her life had missed a day of school. There was a story about that. ‘I and my three sisters loved our school. We did not miss a day. Not even when the storm rains took away our small bridge across the river. We put our school books on our heads and we waded across that river and we were not late!’
‘Are you sure,’ Theo would ask, winking at Abi, ‘about the rain and the bridge and the river?’
‘Quite sure, ’ Granny Grace would say.
‘One day . . .’ Theo would tell Abi solemnly, ‘you will tell your grandchildren about the time Westminster Bridge washed away, and you waded across the Thames and . . .’
Then Granny Grace would flounce out of the room to fetch her photograph box and find the picture of the small bright stream that was proof, she told them, that her memory was true, and Abi would nod consolingly, and say, ‘I believe you, Granny,’ and Granny Grace would say lovingly, ‘My sweet Abigail.’
To read a letter from Granny Grace was almost to hear her voice.
Abigail, my lovely girl, your daddy tells me that you are helping him in every possible way. I am very proud and happy . . .
Abi, feeling guiltier than ever, put the letter down again and looked around for a possible way to help, right then, at that moment. There were breakfast crumbs on the kitchen floor. She thought she might vacuum them up, and then remembered the noise of the vacuum cleaner, and instead swept them up silently with a dustpan and brush. The kitchen bin rattled when she opened the lid to drop them in, and she jumped.
‘Eerie,’ she had overheard Polly say to Theo.
Yes.
It was a little better up in her own room. No one could glance through that high window, and notice she was home. Not if she didn’t switch the lights on, anyway. She supposed even her fairy lights would show from outside. She thought she’d better not play music either.
The house creaked its daytime creaks. They sounded like people leaning on walls.
Thankfully, Abi remembered that she had her school bag with her, full of damp paper, cereal bar wrappers, odd PE socks, and hurriedly done homework: Maths and Spanish and English. She got it all out, sorted the litter, paired the socks, and did the homework over again, this time to Granny Grace standards, rewriting the maths and checking the answers, whispering the new Spanish words until they stuck in her head, opening the book they were reading in English: Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl.
Abi’s class had been working on it all term, reading excerpts, drawing plans of the house and writing their own diary entries. They
had even role-played an afternoon in the annexe. Abi had been Margot, Anne’s big sister. ‘Anne, half the time, you drive us ALL CRAZY!’ she had shouted. Her friends had clapped, but then the teacher had made her do it again, quietly, which ruined the moment.
All these things Abi had done in school, in warm, light classrooms, with cheerful groups of friends. What she hadn’t done was curl up in a quiet place, and read, starting at the beginning, with Anne’s birthday presents, and her cookies shared at school with friends, and progress, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, by way of clumsy sewn-on yellow stars, vanishing classmates and trembling secrets, to the narrow wooden staircase that led to the secret attic rooms where no one must know she was hiding.
Oh, Anne, thought Abi, huddled on her bed, wrapped in her quilt, and now she knew that her English teacher was right. There would have been no raised voices in those cramped, hidden rooms. However angry, scared or hurt, they would have whispered.
The morning passed. Abi tiptoed down to the kitchen for a handful of biscuits, dithered in the bathroom about flushing the loo, and hesitated on the landing, listening to a sound like slow breathing that came from Louis’ room. It was, she realized gradually, the wind in the open window, sucking the curtains in and out.
Louis’ door had been hard to open, and then swung suddenly with a crash so loud it stopped her heart. Ivy leaves scattered the floor and bed. Remembering Granny Grace’s letter about her helpfulness, Abi gathered them up, smoothed the rumpled quilt and closed the window. As she straightened the curtains, she noticed the yew trees round the churchyard. It was midday, but night still watched from their branches. Abi fled, still clutching the ivy leaves.
I’m never doing this again, she thought, back in her own room. Never, not like this. Shut in and shut out. She wished she could ask Anne, ‘How did you bear it?’
Hours became days, and days became weeks, and weeks turned to months and years. And yet, how slowly the time passed.
Thank goodness for the chestnut tree outside the attic window, nearly bare now, a few rusty leaves still clinging, but on clear days there was delft-blue sky between the branches. Small birds came to visit the tree, vanished and returned with friends. They showed their lives in quick, bright fragments. They had seasons, like the trees. Huddled, downy bundles through the winter frosts, and then transformed with spring to slim, swift motion, many voiced in the early mornings, until summer leaves came and hid them in green. There were purple evenings too, and white gulls weaving sky patterns. And the clouds blowing. Stars, now and then. Anne watched them all, and hoped and wrote, opinionated often, frightened often too, wistful, merry, very young and very brave: ‘Here is a good beginning to an interesting life . . . I’m young and strong and living through a big adventure . . . I feel liberation drawing nearer . . . every day . . .’
As Abi read those words, Anne’s courage unfurled like a banner and flew over the room. Fear vanished. At the same moment voices called in the hall below, high and clear, ‘Abi! Abi!’
Abi dropped her book, and raced down the stairs, being noisy, jumping at the turns. It was Louis and Esmé, shedding jackets, kicking off shoes, smelling of outdoors and school and well-lived days.
‘We knew you were here!’ said Louis, ‘We saw your coat! Are you still mad because I opened Granny Grace’s letter? Look at Esmé! She says she’s indisposée.’
‘Esmé?’
‘It is nothing,’ said Esmé, kissing the air politely by Abi’s ear.
‘She’s not very well,’ said Louis. ‘She went to a party last night, and now she feels awful. She felt awful all the way home.’
‘We’ll look after her,’ said Abi at once. ‘Come on, Esmé, you can have my room and . . .’
‘She feels so poorly she nearly left me at After-school Club,’ interrupted Louis. ‘But then she came because she needs her money.’
Esmé rolled her eyes and gave a beautiful shrug, but somehow she looked frailer than usual, and she said, ‘Yes, thank you. I am needing my money today, s’il vous plaît. If possible.’
‘It is possible,’ said Louis. ‘Theo left it in the kitchen. I saw him. Wait!’
He disappeared, and came back with it a moment later. ‘Pour vous!’ he said graciously, and Esmé smiled and took it, wavered for a moment and said, ‘I think I should go now. I think I have to, really.’
‘Oh, Esmé!’
‘Yes, can you manage, take care, cope? I think so,’ said Esmé, and then rushed out of the door without waiting for an answer.
‘Goodness!’ said Abi as Esmé half ran down the street.
‘She had a lot of rum by accident,’ said Louis, looking after her.
‘Is that what she said?’
‘Yes, ’n’ now she just wants to lie down and not move. That’s why she said can we cope.’
‘Poor, poor Esmé.’
‘Can we cope, Abi?’
‘Of course we can!’ said Abi, who had found courage that afternoon, brought it back with her, admired it and installed it in her heart.
‘Till Max or Theo come back?’ asked Louis, and his voice was rather doubtful. ‘It’ll be dark.’
‘It was dark when we first saw the house,’ Abi reminded him. ‘Don’t you remember? And the Narnia lamp switched on?’
Louis’ face became suddenly illuminated with memory.
‘You loved it,’ said Abi, and Louis nodded and said, ‘Anyway, Iffen . . .’ and raced up to his room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The first thing Louis saw when he opened his bedroom door was Iffen, impossibly balanced on the windowsill outside. Iffen’s amber eyes glared into his so compellingly that, for a moment, Louis hesitated.
The eyes narrowed, the ears went flat, Iffen lifted an imperious beanbag paw and Louis flew to let him in. He drew a deep breath as the aloof, regal head, the bronze-dappled coat, the heavy, black-tipped tail, flowed into the room and settled down on the creaking bed. Each time Iffen seemed more beautiful.
Then, most magically of all, Iffen purred.
It was a sound so deep as to be more felt than heard, a rumbling vibration, an immense echo of comfort, half lullaby, half drum roll. It brought Louis to his knees on the rug beside the bed.
‘Oh,’ he murmured, as he gazed in adoration, ‘you are better’n nowls, better’n a million nowls.’
After a while he became conscious of a rhythm, a regular thud-thud, a heartbeat even deeper than the purring. Louis sat back on his heels and looked into Iffen’s face, and then gradually, gradually, it came to Louis that Iffen had become huge.
Iffen yawned. A pink and crimson yawn, which could have fitted Louis’ head inside it. Black lips curled to show pale curving fangs. Madly, Louis reached out a finger to touch a pointed tip.
That was a mistake.
Iffen snarled, arched his back and bowled Louis over as he leaped down to the floor. There he stretched out two irritated sets of hooked black claws, and with a lovely canvas-tearing sound, he sliced eight long protesting rips into the patchwork bedside mat.
Louis gasped in shock, which seemed to please Iffen. He flopped down on his side, blocking off the door. Coloured shreds of carpet wool showed between the black pads of his feet. Very delicately, Iffen began removing them with his teeth.
‘Louis!’ called Abi, from a different world.
‘I’ve got to go,’ said Louis.
Iffen blinked.
‘’Scuse me, please,’ said Louis worriedly. ‘Else she might try and come in here.’
Iffen lay immobile.
‘Louis!’ called Abi, a second time.
Louis thought perhaps he could slide the rug with Iffen on it out of his way. He said apologetically, ‘Sorry,’ and picked up a corner and pulled.
Nothing happened.
Louis heaved again, two-handed, watching Iffen warily. The amber gleam beneath the half-closed eyes looked amused. The black lips smiled, with a glimpse of fang at each corner. The rug moved at last, just enough so that Louis could edge round
it.
At the door he paused, and looked down. He had never known before that love could be a weight. He felt bowed with it, the great warmth and the power and the joy. He felt terrified too. He didn’t know how it had happened, he hadn’t seen it coming, but he knew, beyond doubt, that Iffen had grown too big.
Abi had found a crisp brown leaf in her room, light as paper, chestnut-coloured. It was just a dry fragment, but it might have blown from a winter tree in Amsterdam. She had folded it between the pages of her book and gone down and made toast for herself and Louis, spread it with raspberry jam and called him from the bottom of the stairs. When he arrived, he seemed bothered, and he stood very close to her, looking into her face with his silvery eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Is it Granny Grace’s letter? I’m sorry I got so mad.’
He shook his head.
She pushed the plate of toast towards him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He said, ‘Abi?’
‘Yes?’
‘You know when I wanted a nowl?’
‘I remember.’
‘Iffen came.’
‘Iffen?’
‘He came through the ivy to my window.’
‘An owl?’ asked Abi, incredulously.
‘No’.
‘What then?’ asked Abi.
‘A cat-thing. Perhaps magic,’ whispered Louis.
Abi looked at him, remembering salt and seashells, the lurching bus, the chestnut leaf and the lonely fear of the afternoon. Remembering Granny Grace’s green magic.
‘Do you believe me?’ asked Louis, and she nodded.
‘He’s got very big,’ continued Louis, all in a rush. ‘I couldn’t step over him. He’s up there now, in my room.’
‘Will you show me?’ asked Abi, and saw the relief on his face.
Halfway up the stairs he asked, ‘Are you brave, Abi?’ and Abi, who had brought more than a dry brown leaf back from her time in the Amsterdam attic, said, ‘I’m braver than I was!’
‘Good,’ said Louis.
Outside his bedroom, with his hand on the door handle, he paused again to say, ‘We mustn’t put the light on. He doesn’t like it when I do. I’d better go in first . . . Oh!’