The Ant Colony

by Jenny Valentine

  When the phone rang it cut through us all like a scream. Isabel made a lunge for it.

  “Who the hell’s that?” she said before she picked it up, and then, “Hello? Hello?”

  I was thinking it was the police and whether that was good news or bad. I was thinking it might be a wrong number, or a consumer survey, or one of those recordings that tells you you’ve won a new kitchen. I was thinking that I hadn’t heard Isabel’s phone ring once in all the time that I’d been there. I didn’t even know she had one.

  And then she said, “Sam? Yes, he’s here,” and she passed it to me.

  I watched the old spiral of cord stretch and open as she passed it.

  I said, “Who could be calling me here?”

  Isabel put the receiver in my hand and moved my hand to my ear.

  “It’s your mum,” she said.

  “Hello?” My mum was saying. “Hello, darling, is that you?” And then she was crying and I was crying too, and everyone in Isabel’s kitchen was watching me.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Mum,” and she said, “Come home and say that.”

  I said, “I’m different now,” and she said, “I want to see you.”

  I asked her how she found me.

  “A little girl came today, to the house. She came with Max. Bohemia.”

  “Bohemia?” I said.

  Twenty-three (Sam)

  We all went up in Steve’s car. It was an old Cortina and none of us thought it was going to make it, except for Steve.

  He suggested it as soon as Cherry put the phone down. Suddenly the clocks were ticking and the room was full of air again. She said, “She’s OK, she’s fine,” and she was crying, but she looked like herself again.

  “She’s with your mum?” Mick said to me.

  “Yeah. She’s at my house.”

  “How did she get all that way on her own?” said Isabel. “How did she know where to go?”

  “We’ll ask her when we get there,” Steve said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

  “What, all of us?” I said.

  They all stopped what they were doing then, Isabel putting the phone back on the table, Mick clearing the cups, Steve putting on his jacket, Cherry with her hands in her hair. They stopped and looked at me like they were one being, not four.

  “Of course all of us,” Isabel said. “Who were you thinking of leaving behind?”

  Isabel sat in the front with the dog between her feet. Whenever Steve took a corner she did this sharp intake of breath and said, “It’s OK, Doormat, calm down,” like Doormat was the one that was worried.

  I sat in the back with Cherry and Mick. He had his arm round her and she put her head on his shoulder and smiled at me. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “She’s safe. She made it all the way to your mum’s.”

  We stopped at a service station halfway there because none of us had eaten all day and good news had suddenly made us starving, and according to Isabel, Doormat needed to pee and stretch his legs. It was over-bright in there after the motion of the road. Isabel and Cherry had to go to the ladies’ and Steve needed a coffee and Mick said he could do with a fry up. I got a sandwich and sat on a green plastic bench waiting for them all to come back.

  One old and deeply wrinkled lady in an overcoat and flip flops.

  One blonde woman, hair scraped back, biting her nails, still wearing my sweatshirt.

  One lizard in shades and a leather jacket.

  One man with a gun tattooed on his leg and a ridiculous beard.

  I watched them, each one, and I thought how odd they looked alone, how I wouldn’t have picked one of them out in a line-up of my future friends, not in a million years.

  “What are you smiling at?” Isabel said.

  “Nothing,” I said, because I couldn’t tell them how good it felt to be part of something so unexpected. I wouldn’t know where to start.

  I went to London to be on my own and I ended up being the opposite. Maybe it was like Dr Bernard O Hopkins said in the only page of The Ant Colony I’d ever bothered to read – that ants on their own can’t accomplish much of anything, but together they can do the unthinkable.

  After the motorway ended, the roads were unlit and wound over the mountain in hair-pins and arcs. Steve drove slowly. The headlights picked out the hedgerows either side of us, the bends ahead.

  “Oh my God,” Mick said with his head out of the back window. “Look at all those stars.”

  “What a place to grow up,” Steve said.

  Cherry put her hand on my arm. “Are you all right?” she said.

  “Course I am. About what?”

  “About seeing your mum and dad and stuff.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”

  “It’ll be fine,” she said.

  I thought about it, about seeing them again. About seeing Max and his mum and dad. About coming back different. About convincing them all that I wasn’t the same.

  I thought about Bohemia coming all this way, acting like the magnet to pull us all together and pull us all here.

  The Story of My Life Part Five by B Hoban

  When Mum said we were moving into Mick’s flat I wasn’t sure about it. I said I didn’t see why we had to.

  Mum said, “It’s bigger.”

  I said, “He doesn’t really want me there.”

  She said, “Are you kidding? Wait till you see what he’s done for you.”

  “What’s he done?” I said.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said. “He’ll be cross if I ruin the surprise.”

  “Well, when can I see?”

  “Maybe later. It’s nearly finished.”

  I’ll tell you what it was. A room. An actual room of my own.

  Mick had painted it pink and the floor was white and the bed was pink and white too. There was a desk and a chest of drawers and everything. All painted to match. Our star lampshade was hanging from the ceiling. It was like a room from a magazine. It was like the most beautiful room I ever saw.

  Mum and Mick just stood there in the doorway with their arms round each other, grinning at me.

  I didn’t know where to look first. Inside the desk was all pens and paper, and inside the chest of drawers was new clothes folded up and tidy.

  “The clothes are from Steve,” Mick said.

  Mum said, “And the pens are from Isabel, for when you start school.”

  We went round the house and we told everybody, even though they knew already, and it turned into a party down at Isabel’s.

  I phoned Sam. I said, “I got my own room.”

  “No way,” he said. “Wait till I tell Max.”

  “I know,” I said. “Isn’t that the best news ever?”

  Twenty-four (Bohemia)

  I remember waking up at Sam’s mum’s house, before it was properly light. I looked out of the window and there was this thick white fog, all around us. The sound of the wind in the trees sounded like the sea and I thought, I wasn’t by the sea when I went to sleep.

  I was in Sam’s room. After his mum kissed me goodnight and shut the door, I got out of bed and had a good look around at his stuff. It was nice to see it all there, books and posters and CDs and a computer and football boots and pens and pencils and a globe that lit up when you plugged it in and clothes everywhere.

  I thought he must have felt so far from home in his empty room in London.

  When Max came with me to Sam’s house, Sam’s mum and dad were really surprised to see him. Max’s mum drove us over, but she wouldn’t come in and she wouldn’t stay. “Just give me a ring,” she said, “when you want me to come and get you.”

  It took Max quite a long time to get out of the car cos his right leg needed some encouragement. His mum opened her door to go round and help, but he told her not to. He said, “I’m fine, Mum. I can do it myself.”

  She watched him in her mirror, and I turned away and looked at where Sam lived, cos I wanted to see it and cos I didn’t think Max needed an audie
nce.

  Sam’s house was low and made of golden stone and the windows were all blue. And right behind the house, towering up and over it was a mountain. I could see trees leaning over in the wind near the top, and sheep like little white dots.

  Sam’s mum and dad opened the door before we got there.

  “Max,” they said, and they were looking at him like they were searching his eyes for something.

  “You look well,” Sam’s dad said, and Max smiled and said, “Thanks, Mr Cassidy. I’m feeling much better.”

  Sam’s mum had tears in her eyes already and she was smiling through them at Max, and then she looked at me. “Hello,” she said. “Are you Bohemia?”

  I said I was.

  “And you’re Sam’s friend?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I’m Max’s now too.”

  They smiled at me and then they both looked back at Max. “She’s very young,” Sam’s dad said, and then to me, “How old are you, Bohemia?”

  “I’m ten,” I said. “I’m older than I look.”

  Sam’s mum said, “Well, this is all such a surprise. Come in.”

  Max was concentrating quite hard on getting his foot up over the step. Everybody was waiting.

  “That’s it, Max,” I said. “You’ve nearly done it.”

  We sat in a room with soft chairs that looked out at the mountain. Sam’s mum offered us a drink, but you could see she just wanted to find out about Sam.

  “Let’s talk first,” Max said.

  She sat down then, on the arm of her husband’s chair. They held hands. They were much older than Cherry, but you could still see which bits of them made Sam. His dad’s long legs and big feet and eyebrows, his mum’s hair and nose and mouth. I was smiling at them so hard. I couldn’t help it.

  “It’s good,” Max said. “What Bohemia has to tell you is good.”

  They both looked at me then and you could see they were holding their breath, so I told them.

  There was a picture of Sam on a shelf above the fire. I said, “That’s Sam, right?” and I pointed at it and they nodded.

  I said, “Sam lives at 33 Georgiana Street, Camden Town, London, and I think he misses you and he’d like to come home.”

  Sam’s mum’s mouth opened and it wouldn’t close again. She was smiling with her mouth open and she tried to stand up, but Sam’s dad had hold of her hand and he said, “Wait a minute now, Suzie, wait a minute.”

  He said, “How do you know this, Bohemia?”

  “Cos I live there too,” I said. “With my mum Cherry, and Mick I suppose, at the moment.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “Oh, cos me and Sam had a fight and I stole Max’s address.”

  “I see.”

  “I wanted to make him not cross with me. I wanted him to stop being ALONE all the time. He’s always going on about being ALONE and he doesn’t even like it.”

  Sam’s mum was crying quietly.

  I said, “I’m sorry about your dog. I didn’t know about any of that till I got here.”

  She said, “Does 33 Georgiana Street have a phone number? Do you think we could speak to our son?”

  It took me a minute to remember Isabel’s number. I said, “It’s either a three at the end or a seven.”

  Sam’s mum tried the three first. It was the seven.

  I can’t remember what she said when Isabel answered, but I knew she heard Sam’s voice cos she just cried and cried, and she was smiling her heart out at the same time.

  When she told Sam that I was there, I sort of sank back in my chair a bit cos I did steal from him and stuff, and last time I saw him he was pretty angry. But when she said my name again, “Yes, Bohemia,” she held the phone away from her ear and I could hear them, all of them at home, cheering and calling my name. I could hear Cherry the loudest.

  I didn’t know who to smile at.

  Sam’s mum was looking at me then and listening to Sam, and her eyes were getting bigger and bigger. I thought maybe he was telling her about the money and I was going to get in trouble.

  Then she said, “Bohemia, somebody would like a word.”

  I took the phone and said, “Hello?” and I heard my mum’s smile before her voice.

  “Baby?” she said. “Is that you?”

  “Hi, Cherry.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I was so worried.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t you say sorry to me,” she said. “Just promise to stay there and don’t move cos we’re coming to get you.”

  “OK, Mum, I promise.”

  “I missed you,” she said. “Don’t leave me like that again.”

  I stood at Sam’s window looking out at the fog. His radiator was on and it was warm against my tummy. I had a bath before I went to bed, and loads to eat, and I was wearing a pair of pyjamas that must have been Sam’s years and years ago cos they actually nearly fit me. And I could smell my clean hair and my clean clothes in the warm room and I felt happy.

  And, as I looked, a car came through the fog. Its lights came first and they lit the fog up from within and it looked like a solid thing, and I could see the shadow of a tree inside it. Then the car came, yellow and old and pointy, and it turned to the left and stopped.

  The doors opened and I saw them, all of them. Mum and Sam and Isabel and Doormat and Mick and Steve. They stood looking up at the house, and I ran out of my room and knocked on Sam’s mum and dad’s bedroom door.

  I said, “He’s home! They’re here! Wake up!”

  And we went running downstairs to meet them.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank yous to:

  Veronique Baxter

  Laura West

  Stella Paskins

  Gillie Russell

  and Bohemia Houghton

  About the Author

  Jenny Valentine moved house every two years when she was growing up. She worked in a wholefood shop in Primrose Hill for fifteen years where she met many extraordinary people and sold more organic loaves than there are words in her first novel, Finding Violet Park. She has also worked as a teaching assistant and a jewellery maker. She studied English Literature at Goldsmiths College, which almost put her off reading but not quite.

  Jenny is married to a singer/songwriter and has two children. Her first novel, Finding Violet Park, won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 2007.

  Also by Jenny Valentine

  Finding Violet Park

  Broken Soup

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2009

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  FIRST EDITION

  Copyright © Jenny Valentine 2009

  Jenny Valentine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

  EPub Edition © MAY ISBN: 9780007381012

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.
harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com