She went up to the wall and pressed her hands against it. It was solid, and impenetrable. She tapped on it, and it sounded just like a wall, nothing else. She sat on her bed. She felt as if she were going mad. The girl in the dressing-table mirror looked back at her, white-faced, more like a ghost than a real girl.
On Monday, after Grandpa Willy had taken her to see Dr Leeming for a check-up, she went back to school. She arrived in the middle of morning recess. Sue-Anne was sitting on her usual perch in the schoolyard, and there too were Renko and Elica and all her other cronies.
‘Return of the gimp!’ called Sue-Anne. ‘Now showing in a schoolyard near you!’
Jessica stopped, holding her schoolbag close to her chest. Renko caught her looking at him and said, ‘What’s your problem, Gimpy?’
Jessica said, ‘Nothing. I just wanted to thank you, that’s all.’
‘Thank me?’ he snorted. ‘What do you want to thank me for?’
‘I want you to know that whatever part of you it was that came with me, and said that you liked me, and risked your life for me, I won’t ever forget it, and I’ll always be grateful.’
‘The gimp finally flipped,’ said Micky. ‘That crack on the head must’ve been a real doozy.’
But for a flicker of a second Renko focused his gray eyes on her as if he could actually remember fighting with the wooden wolf, and crossing the painted lake, and helping her to run across the fields and deserts of Patternworld. Then he gave her a dismissive flap of his hand and turned away.
‘You see how irresistible I am? Even the gimp’s in love with me.’
Elica burst out laughing. ‘She has scramble-egg brain.’
That evening she went up to her bedroom as soon as supper was over and drew pictures of the overgrown garden, the forest of hat-stands and the seashore where Phoebe had sat swinging her bare toes in the incoming tide. She could remember it all, every detail. She could remember the teaspoons flying like ducks in the sunset, and the trees made of black lace, and the stained-glass house with its cozy light inside.
She adjusted the lamp on her desk so that she could see better, and as she did so something glinted in the corner of the bedroom and caught her eye. She went over and picked it up, and it was the sapphire ring that Mrs Fellowes had given to Mrs Crawford when she was a girl, to prove that she was still inside the wallpaper.
Jessica stared at it for a long time, and then she slipped it onto her finger.
The Hidden World Page 17