by Hilary McKay
‘Open it,’ said Max.
Louis, who had not forgotten the other letter he had opened from Granny Grace, looked at Abi.
‘Open it,’ said Abi, so Louis took the envelope and tore open the top very carefully, so as not to spoil the lovely stamps, and found a folded sheet of blue paper.
His own private letter from Granny Grace.
Louis’ face began to glow, as if he’d opened a small package of fresh Jamaican sunshine. He whispered to Rocky, ‘It’s true.’
Theo made a finger circle sign of perfection to Abi, gave a thumbs-up to Max and tiptoed out of the room.
‘Let’s hear what she says, then,’ said Max.
The handwriting on the blue paper reminded Abi of her own learning-to-read days, each letter carefully separated. However, Granny Grace didn’t believe in making things too easy. Just as when Abi was learning to read, she had included long words and commas, right from the start.
‘Shout if you need help,’ said Abi, but Louis, for the first words at least, didn’t need help.
‘My sweet Louis,’ he read aloud, and paused to look at Abi, and she saw his eyes were already alight with a silver shine of intense happiness.
‘My sweet Louis,’ he repeated. ‘I have in front of me your sm . . . sm . . . iling . . . smiling face in my . . . in my . . . in my p-h . . . my . . .’
‘Photograph,’ read Abi for him, ‘of the wedding . . .’
‘I did smile!’ agreed Louis, nodding. ‘I remember! I smiled extra because you and Max wouldn’t. I can read this now, listen! My sweet Louis, I have in front of me your smiling face in my photograph from the wedding. Now, Louis, Ab . . . Ab . . .’
‘Abigail,’ said Abigail. ‘That’s me!’
‘What?’
‘Abigail is me. I am Abigail.’
‘Why are you?’
‘It’s my name.’
‘Fancy not knowing your own sister’s name,’ remarked Max from his place by the window where the phone signal was best and he could see right down the street.
‘. . . Abigail tells me how you do not read your school books. I hope so much that she is . . . is . . .’
Louis was stuck again.
‘Mistaken,’ read Abi.
‘I hope you like school, Louis. 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,’ recited Abi. ‘We put our school books on our heads and we waded across that river and we were not late! ’
‘How do you know it says that?’ demanded Louis.
‘Does it?’
‘Yes,’ said Max, who could read upside-down writing as easily as right way up.
‘I’m going to read the rest myself,’ said Louis. ‘So don’t help!
‘If you had been with us, Louis, I think you would have done the same . . . Yes I would! I’d have swimmed! Easy.’
‘Swum,’ said Max severely. ‘Don’t talk baby!’
‘It wasn’t really a swimming river,’ said Abi. ‘It was a little tiny trickle. I’ve seen pictures. Go on. Read some more.’
‘I have sent you a flower . . . Oh! Oh!’ Louis gasped with delight, and scrabbled in the envelope. ‘I’ve got it! Here! . . . Is it purple or blue? It comes from the tree I like best. Now, Louis, please write back soon to your loving Granny Grace.’
He’d done it, the whole letter, with terrible words like ‘smiling’ and ‘photograph’ and ‘purple’. No paper-covered schoolbook had ever flung such obstacles in his path. But he hadn’t fallen – he’d leaped over them. He panted like a boy at the end of a race. He looked at Abi, and said, ‘For me from Granny Grace!’
‘Yes,’ said Abi.
‘This is my letter,’ gloated Louis. ‘And this is my flower.’
‘Purple or blue?’ asked Max.
Louis bent over the flower, shut his eyes, breathed in deep, looked again and laughed out loud. ‘I know, I know, I know!’ he said. ‘Paper! I need paper!’
‘What for?’ asked Max, but Abi understood and fetched him her own airmail pad.
Dear Granny Grace –
Louis paused to wipe his nose on his hand.
This is my letter. Abi helped. Max helped.
It was easiest, Louis found, to write on the floor with the paper tipped sideways and the pencil clutched to his heart.
The flower is purple –
Or was it? Was it?
AND pink AND blue.
I love you –
From your sweet Louis.
It had taken a long time. The whole morning had passed. Most of Abi’s paper was gone. Two pencils had been ground down to stumps. Many times Max had checked his phone; after the last he caught Abi’s eye and nodded and held it up so that she could read the message on the screen.
‘At last,’ said Abi, and Louis, thinking she was referring to his letter, agreed, ‘At last.’
The blue and purple flower was limp. Louis’ fingers were exhausted. He flapped them to uncramp them, while Abi found an envelope and wrote out the address. He watched her anxiously.
‘Will she like it?’ he asked. ‘Is it enough?’
It didn’t feel enough. It didn’t say anything about Iffen. The hugeness of Iffen, and knowing Iffen and losing Iffen. It didn’t say anything about the green magic that had swept through the house and bowled them over and changed their world, and fixed it, and given it back again.
Nevertheless, it was words on paper. It opened a door, it made a friend, it told a story.
Louis looked at it. He turned it over and felt the back, where his pencil had left patterns in runey ridges. He looked at the front again, and it was even better than he remembered. He sniffed it and thought he found the faintest trace of Iffen, whom one day he would find again, when he discovered where to look.
‘Where did it all come from?’ he asked Abi, and she knew at once what he meant.
Iffen, prowling among the shadow lines between real and unreal. The rocking-horse room a cave. The way that Rocky’s shadow had brought to life a herd of running deer. The worlds to be found in words and pictures.
‘It came out of books,’ said Abi, handing him the envelope. ‘I think you’d better start reading. And you should put in an ivy leaf.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Chauvet Cave, in the Ardèche region of France, contains a collection of Stone Age cave art that is over thirty thousand years old. It is – and I think always has been – closed to the public, in order to protect it from deterioration, as happened with the cave art in Lascaux, but there are books about it, and a French documentary film. The drawings are of animals, wonderfully lifelike. There are bison, antelope, bears, horses, hyena, panthers, mammoths, birds, reindeer, lions . . .
. . . and one spotted cat.
HM
January 2019
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book owes a great deal to the wisdom and encouragement of three wonderful editors: Venetia Gosling (Pan Macmillan), Karen Wojtyla (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books) and Jasmine Richards (StoryMix). My agent extraordinaire, Molly Ker Hawn, got the jokes with admirable speed, Dawn Cooper did the gorgeous cover art and Bella was the first reader.
Thank you so much to all of you.
H x
(All the mistakes were made by me with no help from anyone because I am so good at it.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hilary McKay is the critically-acclaimed author of many children’s novels, several of which have won awards, most notably The Skylarks’ War, which won the Costa Children’s Book Award. Hilary also won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for her first novel, The Exiles, and the Whitbread Award (now the Costa) for Saffy’s Angel.
She studied Botany and Zoology at the University of St Andrews, and worked as a biochemist before the draw of the pen became too strong and she decided to become a full-time writer. Hilary lives in Derbyshire with her family.
‘Beautifully written, witty, observant . . . Me
rits a place in the canon of children’s classics’
The Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Year
Winner of the Costa Children’s Book Award 2018
Also by Hilary McKay
from Macmillan Children’s Books
The Skylarks’ War
The Exiles
The Exiles at Home
The Exiles in Love
Straw into Gold: Fairy Tales Re-Spun
First published 2019 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2019 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London, EC1M 5NR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5290-1925-4
Copyright © Hilary McKay 2019
Cover Illustration © Dawn Cooper
The right of Hilary McKay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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