by Anna James
‘If you say “imaginary friends”, I will never speak to you again,’ Tilly said, staring at him fiercely.
‘But Tilly, they’re from books … They’re imaginary by nature; they’re fictional by definition.’
‘I mean, they are fictional,’ Tilly said, ‘but they’re not imaginary! Anyway, I don’t want to talk to you about them; you obviously don’t get it. You know what, I have to hurry and get the milk for Grandma so she can make dinner. I’ll see you later.’ Tilly sped past Oskar in a self-conscious blur, leaving him scuffing his heels.
Twenty minutes later she thumped the milk down in front of Grandma, who raised her eyebrows.
‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine,’ Tilly said, and stormed off.
‘Tilly, clearly everything is not fine. Come back and tell me what’s going on,’ Grandma called after her.
‘No! Leave me alone. I’m going to read,’ Tilly shouted back and Grandma let her go.
Tilly reached the second floor, stewing in her frustration, and there she found Alice sitting primly on the sofa.
‘Ah! I’ve been waiting for you,’ Alice said, standing up. ‘Would you like to come to a tea party?’
illy stopped short.
‘Alice?’
‘Yes,’ Alice said impatiently. ‘It’s very rude to forget someone so quickly after you’ve first met them, you know.’
‘No,’ Tilly protested, ‘I haven’t forgotten you. I just … I’d started to wonder if you were really, well, real.’
‘Why, it’s even ruder to question if someone is real.’ Alice leaned across and pinched Tilly lightly on the arm.
‘Ow!’ yelled Tilly. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘To prove I am real, obviously,’ Alice retorted.
‘But it’s impossible!’ Tilly said in frustation.
‘I used to be very similar to you,’ Alice said, patting Tilly on the arm where she had just pinched her, ‘but so many out-of-the-way things happened to me that I began to think that very few things are indeed really impossible. I know a woman – who spoke a lot of nonsense most of the time, it has to be said – but she once told me that she sometimes believed as many as six impossible things a day and all before breakfast! So nowadays I try to make a little more space for the impossible to happen.’ Alice attempted to give Tilly a moment to take in everything she’d said, but couldn’t contain herself. ‘Anyway, do you want to come to a tea party or not? You said yourself that you want to be more curious.’
Tilly looked up and steeled herself. ‘Why not? How much stranger could things get?’
Alice bounced excitedly next to her and held out her hand.
Tilly shrugged and took hold of it.
All at once Pages & Co. seemed to divide into a grid of tiny tiles that click-clacked over each other like a wooden toy folding down on itself.
In only a few seconds the whole shop had dominoed down and seemed to wind itself in under Tilly and Alice as if pulled to them by a very powerful magnet.
Tilly’s stomach dropped, like the moment you go over the top of a roller coaster, and there was a smell of marshmallows toasting on a bonfire. Instead of the familiar bookshop, Tilly and Alice were standing in a colourful forest, with a thatched house tucked into the trees and a long table set out in front of it. At one end of the table sat a large hare in a bow tie, a dormouse who seemed to be asleep, and a man wearing a rather mad-looking hat.
‘Oh. You were talking about this tea party,’ Tilly said queasily.
Alice nodded merrily. ‘Welcome to Wonderland! It’s always teatime here. Let me introduce you,’ she said, skipping over to the table. ‘And please don’t mind them if they are a little rude until they get to know you, and quite likely for a while after that as well.’
Tilly followed Alice to the table, not quite believing that she could feel the grass under her feet and touch the wooden chair she was about to sit down on.
the hare shouted, and Tilly felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Was this the exact scene from the book she had read so many times?
‘Why, there’s plenty of room,’ Alice said sternly. ‘We’ve been over this before.’ She nodded encouragingly at Tilly. ‘Go on, sit down. It’s fine.’
Tilly perched on the edge of the huge, squishy cushion covering the chair and smiled nervously at the characters she knew so well who were now staring at her haughtily.
‘Would you like some cake?’ the Hatter asked, gesturing at the table that was entirely free of anything to eat and held only teapots and teacups.
‘No thank you,’ Tilly said. ‘May I have a cup of tea, please?’
‘I am ever so sorry, but we are completely out of tea. So sorry, so sorry. Would you like some wine?’ the Hatter said, while pouring himself a cup of tea.
‘I can’t drink wine, I’m eleven,’ Tilly said, confused.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ the Hatter replied. ‘How foolish of me; you are far too old to be drinking wine at teatime.’
‘Too old?’
‘Why, yes. One should have long broken the habit of wine drinking if one is already eleven. Your discipline is commendable, and we shall all be most inspired by it. Some tea?’ he said.
‘Well, yes. I wanted tea to begin with,’ Tilly said.
‘There’s no need to be demanding,’ the Hatter said, filling up a fresh teacup and then drinking it himself. ‘Do you like riddles?’ he asked.
‘Not particularly—’ Tilly started.
‘Wonderful! Do tell us some. We love a riddle to ponder over tea.’
‘I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I know any riddles,’ Tilly protested.
‘Well, make one up,’ the Hatter said sternly.
At that moment the dormouse woke up.
‘You stole my butter knife!’ it squawked, before going back to sleep. The hare looked expectantly at Tilly as she racked her brains for any riddles.
‘Okay, I’ve got one. What flies without wings?’ she tried.
‘Easy!’ yelled the hare, thumping his paw on to the table and making all the teacups dance and rattle. ‘Time! And we don’t speak of him around these parts. Next! Do try harder with the next one.’
Tilly desperately tried to remember another riddle. ‘How about … What belongs to you, but others use it more than you do?’ The hare paused, and stroked his chin.
The dormouse woke again. ‘Teaspoons,’ he said. ‘Everyone is always stealing my teaspoons.’
The hare nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, teaspoons. These teaspoons belong to me, but are used much more by others, and often used not at all properly.’ He glared at Alice, who was watching the conversation with delight.
‘No, the answer isn’t teaspoons,’ Tilly said a little crossly. ‘The answer is your name. Your name belongs to you, but others use it more than you do.’
‘You might as well say that your birthday belongs to you,’ the Hatter chimed in.
‘You may as well claim your age belongs to you,’ the dormouse called.
‘My birthday does belong to me! And so does my age. I think. Oh, I’m not at all sure.’
‘But you share both with an awful lot of other people,’ said the hare. ‘My teaspoons belong only to me. And I would like them all back now, if you please,’ he said, and yanked a teaspoon out of Alice’s hand as he spoke.
‘What did you mean when you said you don’t speak of time around these parts?’ Tilly asked, trying to change the subject.
‘The Hatter had a bit of a quarrel with Time,’ Alice explained quietly. ‘The Hatter was singing in a concert for the Queen of Hearts, and the queen accused him of murdering the time and since then, why, Time won’t help the Hatter out at all. He used to be ever so helpful with getting things straightened out. That’s why it’s always teatime here; Time has made it stick at six o’clock.’
At this the Hatter burst into noisy tears. ‘It was such a beautiful song as well; shall I sing it for you?’ He looked beseechingly at Tilly, who wasn’t at all sure if she wanted
to hear it until Alice kicked her under the table.
‘Please do,’ Alice said politely.
‘Yes, I’m sure it’s beautiful,’ Tilly agreed, trying to kick Alice back, but instead banging her knee hard on the leg of the table.
The Hatter wiped his nose with a very frilly sleeve, pushed back his chair and stood and Tilly was surprised to see that he didn’t appear much taller when he stood up than he did sitting down. He cleared his throat and began, to a tune that sounded remarkably similar to ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’:
‘Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle …’
And at this point the dormouse and hare both started swaying along and chanting ‘Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle’ to no recognisable tune at all, and the Hatter closed his eyes and started humming to himself as the dormouse fell asleep again.
Alice clapped delightedly. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’
Tilly clapped too, a little more hesitantly, as the Hatter bowed and sat back down.
‘Well now, do you know any songs, girl?’ the hare said to Tilly. ‘Or any stories?’ he added hopefully.
‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,’ Tilly said, shrinking back into her seat.
‘Boring!’ shouted the hare.
‘Do you know I had heard you were rude,’ Tilly snapped, ‘but I didn’t imagine you would be quite so rude as this.’
‘Who told you I was rude?’ the hare said. ‘What a terribly ill-mannered thing to say about someone. Was it that grinning Cheshire Cat?’
‘Oh no,’ Tilly said, immediately feeling bad. ‘Maybe I misheard, I’m sorry.’
‘Boring!’
At that the dormouse raised his head again. ‘Enough of all this. And anyway, who is that and does he want any tea?’ he said, gesturing with a lazy paw. Everyone turned to see a tall man in a grey bowler hat sitting at the far end of the long table.
Tilly’s blood ran cold. It was Mr Chalk, the man who had visited Grandad in the bookshop.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked, but everyone spoke at once and her question was drowned out by the noise.
‘How long have you been sitting there?’ shouted Alice.
‘Would you like some tea?’ said the dormouse.
‘You need a haircut,’ said the Hatter.
‘Are you using one of my teaspoons?’ the hare said suspiciously.
Tilly looked at Alice, panicked. ‘Alice, Alice,’ she whispered, trying to get her attention without the others noticing. ‘Alice! That man was in the bookshop the other day, talking to Grandad! What’s he doing here?’ But when she looked back up to where Chalk had been sitting he was gone.
‘Oh, he must be a friend of the Cheshire Cat,’ Alice said. ‘Although I’ve never seen him here before.’
‘I think I want to go home,’ Tilly said to Alice.
‘Really? But you’ve only just arrived,’ said Alice.
‘Yes, really. I really do want to go home.’
‘Already?’
‘Yes, already!’
‘If you insist,’ Alice said, and grasped her hand under the table.
This time everything seemed to happen in reverse: the tiles of Pages & Co. folded out from underneath them, stacking upwards as the walls of reality righted themselves around them, blocking out the tea party until Tilly was sitting in the bookshop again.
She slumped back against the sofa. ‘Alice, what was that?’ she said breathlessly. But when she turned to her side Alice was no longer there.
Tilly was not sure how long she had been sitting on the sofa, breathing heavily, when her grandma’s voice interrupted her.
‘Tilly, could you come and help with dinner?’ she shouted up the stairs.
‘Coming,’ Tilly called, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge the memory of what had just happened.
‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ Grandma asked as they topped and tailed green beans side by side. ‘You’ve been out of sorts today. Is whatever bothered you when you went to the shops still playing on your mind?’
‘I just had a weird afternoon,’ Tilly said tentatively. ‘I bumped into Oskar and we kind of disagreed about something, and then when I got back here I met some, well, unusual people.’
‘In the bookshop?’ Grandma said. ‘You know you don’t have to talk to any customers if you don’t want to, and you can come and get one of us or Jack at any point.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Tilly said. ‘I kind of knew them already.’
Grandma frowned. ‘Kind of? Were they from school? You’re talking in circles, Tils.’
‘It’s been that sort of day,’ Tilly said.
‘Okay, sweetheart, well, I’m here if you want to talk about it more. Speaking of friends from school, is there anyone you want to invite to the party on Wednesday? Oskar maybe?’
‘Maybe,’ Tilly said, still smarting from her last conversation with him. ‘Grandma, do you ever feel as if you read books, like, more than other people?’
‘Well, yes, of course. I read books for my job, so I definitely read more books than lots of people, although several of our regulars certainly like to tell me about everything I haven’t read,’ she said, carrying on trimming the beans.
‘No, I don’t mean more books; I mean, do you read more intensely, I guess? Like, sometimes when you’re reading do you feel like you’re really there or something?’
Grandma turned and looked intently at Tilly just as the phone rang, startling them both. Grandma’s knife slipped, catching the tip of her finger.
‘Oh shoot,’ she said, grabbing a nearby tea towel and pressing it on to her finger, which was undramatically but consistently leaking blood.
‘Tilly, I very much want to talk more about this, but right now I need you to go quickly and get me the first-aid box from the bathroom.’
Tilly nodded and went to get the box as the phone rang off. By the time Grandma’s finger had been thoroughly cleaned and bandaged their conversation seemed to have been forgotten.
he next morning brought a sheepish-looking Oskar to Pages & Co. carrying the book Tilly had helped him to pick out.
‘Hey,’ he opened with.
‘Hi,’ Tilly said shortly.
‘Can I come and hang out here for a bit?’
‘I guess.’
‘It’s really busy at Crumbs because of half-term and Mum says I can’t take up table space.’ Tilly nodded and went back to her book. Oskar shuffled his feet awkwardly. ‘Um, where should I sit?’ Tilly was in an armchair and there was nowhere else free apart from the floor. She made a big performance of standing up and gathering together her bits and pieces.
‘We can go to the third floor, I guess. It’s always quiet there, plus no kids come up so the beanbags stay nice and clean. I brought them up from the children’s floor to protect them.’
They went upstairs and settled themselves into the colourful beanbags nestled behind the philosophy shelves.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Oskar blurted out. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like I was laughing at you, or that I thought you were silly.’
‘I know the characters I’m seeing are fictional,’ Tilly conceded, glad that he’d raised the subject again. ‘But that doesn’t mean they’re not real. I don’t know what’s happening but I promise I’m not making it up.’
‘I know,’ Oskar said. ‘I’m not sure I know what’s going on either, but I believe you. Who did you say you’d seen? Your favourite characters, right?’
‘Yes,’ Tilly said, relief washing over her. ‘I saw Alice from Wonderland and Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. Anne was just like I’d hoped, although Alice is kind of blunt.’
‘I sort of wish I was seeing fictional characters,’ Oskar said, scratching his forehead. ‘There are plenty of everyday people I like fine, but I’m not sure I’d count on them as friends, if it came down to it.’
&n
bsp; ‘Apart from me,’ Tilly said quietly after a beat.
‘Apart from you,’ Oskar agreed with a smile that reached all the way to his eyes.
They were interrupted by the sound of Grandma and Grandad coming upstairs, and sitting down on the other side of the bookcase, where Oskar and Tilly were hidden from view.
‘We need to talk about Tilly,’ they heard Grandma say.
Oskar and Tilly exchanged a look. Oskar gestured to see if they should move, but Tilly shook her head fiercely and put her finger to her lips. Oskar looked uncomfortable, but stayed put.
‘You know what I’m talking about, Archie,’ Grandma said when Grandad didn’t reply. ‘Yesterday, she asked me if I sometimes felt like I was really inside a book when I read. Do you think it’s happened?’
‘She’s always had an active imagination, Elsie. Could it just be that?’ Grandad said.
‘You know it’s more than that, Archie – and she found those books of Bea’s. That could have been the trigger – you know there’s often one along those lines … She hasn’t asked about him, has she?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘But Archie, far more concerning at the moment is the fact that she seems to be able to see Holmes and Lizzy. You know that shouldn’t be possible.’
‘I know, I know,’ Grandad said quietly. ‘There’s something else. I should have told you straight away, but I hoped it was nothing. It’s about Chalk.’ Oskar and Tilly heard Grandma take a sharp breath. ‘He was here, Elsie; he came to the shop. He was asking about disturbances at the Library, and he met Tilly.’
‘Tilly? Does he know who she is? And what disturbances? What did you say?’ Grandma asked.
‘I told him I had no clue what he was talking about, of course. And yes, he knew she was my granddaughter. I had hoped he would never have found out about Tilly,’ he said, sighing.
‘What do we do?’ Grandma asked quietly.
‘I don’t know. Wait and see what happens, I suppose. Keep a close eye on Tilly. What else can we do?’
‘Is it worth speaking to Amelia, do you think?’
‘Not yet,’ Grandad said. ‘It could all still blow over.’