Caddy Ever After, page 1
To Kirsten and Vivian
Contents
ROSE The Flying Feeling
Why I Fell Asleep In Class A Long Thought (Part 1)
Ghost Club
Hamsters
Saffron, Sarah, Spider-Man and the Dark
The Lightning in the Shed (Part 1)
The Lightning in the Shed (Part 2)
The Lightning in the Shed (Part 3)
The Lightning in the Shed (Part 4)
Why I Fell Asleep In Class A Long Thought (Part 2)
Appendices
INDIGO This Is How I Do Special (Part 1)
Rose
Appendices
SAFFY I, Saffron Casson, am Writing About Indigo’s Disco While Rose Watches
Watching Your Best Friend With Not Enough Oxygen
Change the Subject (Part 1)
CADDY Probably The Real Thing
ROSE Hot Gossip (Part 1)
Appendices
About the Author
ROSE
The Flying Feeling
Today I fell asleep in class. School had hardly begun (it was Literacy Hour). Miss Farley, my class teacher, touched me on my shoulder to wake me up.
‘NO, NO,’ I shouted very loudly, and fell on the floor and crawled under the table to escape.
Then I realized where I was, so I came out and sat down again as quietly as I could. I hoped that if I was quick and quiet enough Miss Farley almost would not notice I had done anything unusual. But she did.
Miss Farley said, ‘Rose, is there anything wrong? Here at school? Or at home, perhaps?’
I could tell by the way she looked at me that she had not forgotten about yesterday.
Why I Fell Asleep In Class
A Long Thought
(Part 1)
Miss Farley has a big cheek asking me if there is anything wrong like that. In front of everyone. How would she like it if I did it to her? On one of those days when she comes in with little eyes and no lipstick and snaps, ‘Right Class Four, we will separate these groups of tables into lines, since you cannot seem to behave as you are! Rose Casson, what is so interesting out of that window?’ (Sky.) ‘Also, Rose, since when have tie-dyed T-shirts been school uniform, may I ask? And before you do anything, go to the office and take out that earring and ask them for a recycled envelope to put it in, please.’
On those days, do I ask, ‘Miss Farley, is there anything wrong at home? Or at school, perhaps?’
No.
Luckily, she has not noticed my earring today. It is a gold hoop with dangling red crystals on gold links. My sister Saffron gave it to me this morning.
There is a clean patch on the carpet in the Reading Corner where one of the carpet tiles has been shampooed. So nobody in the class can forget about yesterday either.
Also Ghost Club has been banned.
Ghost Club
On wet lunch breaks at our school you can either go to the hall and play, or stay in your classroom and be as quiet as mice. (If mice are like hamsters, they are not very quiet.) That is when we do Ghost Club – Kiran (who used to be my best friend) and me and some of the others.
For Ghost Club we turn off the lights and pull down the blinds as far as they will go and sit in a circle on the floor, on the carpet tiles in the Reading Corner. Then we very quietly, very, very quietly, really quietly, take turns telling ghost stories.
Yesterday was a rainy day, and so we did Ghost Club. First Molly told us about her grandad whose false teeth slid out when he fell asleep watching football.
‘I don’t think that sounds very scary,’ I said.
‘Yes, well, OK, it is only slightly scary,’ agreed Molly, ‘but admit it, it’s totally gross!’
I admitted this at once, and then I told them about the strange scratchy noises in our house at night which cannot be my sister Caddy’s escaped hamsters because they would have died ages ago. According to the Hamster Book.
Everyone at Ghost Club said their houses made strange noises at night too, which their mothers told them were caused by Central Heating. I explained that we did not have Central Heating.
Kiran hummed like she was bored and picked at a carpet tile and said, ‘All houses creak a bit. Did you know you can get false-tooth glue to keep them in, they advertise it on daytime TV when they know only old people are watching. You know my cousin? No, carry on talking about Central Heating! Maybe I shouldn’t tell you!’
So of course we made her tell us.
Kiran’s stories are the worst because they are true. They are all about people in her family.
I used to think, thank goodness I am not related to Kiran. If I was related to Kiran I would not feel safe.
Terrible things happen all the time to that family.
‘Which cousin?’ we asked Kiran, because her family (as well as being unsafe) is enormous.
‘My cousin who doesn’t go to this school with the pink jacket,’ Kiran told us. ‘You know that one?’
‘No,’ we said.
‘Well, you know my aunty who came on visitors’ day who had to have all the windows opened very quickly?’
‘Yes,’ we said.
‘That’s her mother. She bought my cousin the pink jacket. From the market stall next to the mobile ear-piercing van. And anyway, you know that place by the park near Rose’s house where no one is allowed to go?’
‘No,’ we said.
‘Yes you do, it is all fenced in and a notice says: DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE.’
‘It is an electricity substation,’ said Molly, who always knows stuff like that because she goes on Intelligent Quality Time Walks with her mother. (I don’t.)
‘Well,’ continued Kiran very quickly, before Molly could start telling us about substations, ‘my cousin with the pink jacket was walking past that place and it was winter and it was nearly dark and you know how if you hold your hand up very close to your face and it is nearly dark, all the fingers look thick and not real?’
We said no, and then we tried it with our own hands sitting in the nearly darkness of the Reading Corner, and then we said, ‘Oh yes.’
‘A hand like that but much bigger,’ said Kiran. She is speaking very quietly indeed now, like she does not really want us to hear. ‘Over her shoulder. And no sound of footsteps. And not quite touching her. My cousin. And the fingers very thick and dark like a thick, dark leather glove. Not smooth leather. Reaching over her shoulder, just at that place by the park where you are not allowed to go. She saw it out of the corner of her eye.’
Nobody said anything.
‘She just caught sight of it for a moment. The first time.’
You could hear the clock and the sound of people being told off in the hall and you could hear us breathing.
‘But she saw it for longer the next time.’
‘Did she look around?’ whispered Molly.
‘Only once.’
‘What did she see?’
‘She won’t tell me.’
‘Ki . . . raaan!’ we wailed.
‘So now she won’t wear her pink jacket and my aunty says it is a waste because it was nearly new and she says I can have it and wear it with a scarf. Because they won’t wash off; they are burnt on.’
‘WHAT ARE BURNT ON?’ shouted several people.
‘The fingermarks,’ said Kiran, sounding very surprised that we did not know. ‘The thick burnt-brown fingermarks on the shoulder of the jacket.’
We didn’t say anything.
‘I’m not having that revolting jacket,’ said Kiran.
Still nobody said anything. We were thinking. We knew the place by the park where you are not allowed to go. We knew Kiran’s aunty who bought the jacket, and we knew the market stall it came from. We even knew the mobile ear-piercing van; my sister Saffron had her nose pierced there. When I thought about it, I thought I even knew Kiran’s cousin who doesn’t go to this school. And I knew, exactly as if I had seen them, what the thick dark fingermarks looked like scorched on to the shoulder of that pink jacket.
Someone grabbed my shoulder very hard and shouted, ‘ROSE’S TURN!’
I jumped so badly I felt sick and dizzy, and I shouted, ‘Not me!’ without even meaning to shout, but I don’t think it sounded very loud. Everyone was laughing so much.
Kiran said, ‘I am sorry Rose, I am sorry Rose, I am sorry Rose!’ but I will never forgive her.
If I had a choice between dying and wetting myself in class, I would choose dying.
Hamsters
These are the people who live at my house:
1. Me.
2. Mummy, who is called Eve. She is an artist. She does her art in a shed at the bottom of the garden. It is not true that Mummy calls everyone darling to save her bothering to remember names.
3. Indigo, who is my brother and is five years older than me. Indigo is very tall and thin. With his eyes closed he looks dead. He always has, but no one has ever got used to it. This is bad luck for Indigo. It means that ever since he was a baby, frightened people have been shaking him awake to make sure he is still alive. Over the years Indigo has grown more and more difficult to wake up.
4. Saffron. First she was my cousin, then for years she was my adopted sister, then it turned out she was actually my half-sister. Anyway, she is my sister and she is nearly sixteen and she is very pretty (like Caddy) and very clever (like Indigo). When Saffron found out about yesterday at Ghost Club she said, ‘One way of getting the carpet cleaned, Rosy Pose!’
Saffron is ruthless.
These are the people who do not live at my h
1. Daddy. He lives in London where he has a studio. Because he is an artist too. (He says.)
2. My grown-up sister Caddy, who is at university. Before she went to university she kept more guinea pigs and hamsters than most people would want to own. She kept them all over the place. There are still some guinea pigs left in a hutch in the garden, but the hamsters are all gone.
But where have they gone?
Yesterday evening when my sister Saffron was doing her homework and my brother Indigo was lying on the floor listening to terrible music with his headphones on (this is still about why I fell asleep in class), I told Mummy what happened at school. She was making an illuminated manuscript because she is having a display of illuminated manuscripts in the library. Poems in old-fashioned writing with little pictures around the capital letters and decorated edges. On this poem she was drawing singing birds, all different bright colours, among the leaves.
‘I know darling Bill would say it is Not Exactly Art,’ she said. (Darling Bill is Daddy.) ‘But it is fun and they sell amazingly well and the suspension on my car has more or less gone completely. These days it is more like sledging along on your bottom than real driving, so I will have to get it fixed and goodness knows what it will cost. Do you like the poem, Rosy Pose? It is tenth-century Irish. Translated. Caddy used to have accidents at school so often that I put dry knickers in every morning with her packed lunch. Until she started school dinners.’
There was a big bang and all the lights went out.
Indigo continued to lie on the floor with his eyes shut, droning away to his terrible music.
‘It isn’t just one bulb,’ said Mummy, worriedly, after flicking switches in the dark for a minute or two. ‘It’s all over the house.’
Then she accidentally trod on Indigo and he took off his headphones and said, ‘Candles.’
‘I know,’ said Mummy. ‘But unfortunately not. I threw them all away after I had a terrible dream about Rose accidentally setting the house on fire. In case it was a warning. And I took that big cinnamon-scented one into college to relax my Young Offenders only last week –’ (Mummy teaches Art to Young Offenders – so that they can do their vandalizing with style and confidence, Daddy says.) – ‘and it is still there.’
‘Did it relax them?’ enquired Indigo.
‘Yes and no,’ said Mummy. ‘I had to blow it out because a very naughty boy . . . Well, never mind! I wonder if the power is off in the shed?’
Indigo said he would go and see and he went outside and did, and it wasn’t off, because the shed was properly wired by an intelligent hippy who had lived in a tent and (briefly) fallen in love with Caddy and then Mummy. He had unblocked the sink too. But soon after that he went to Tangier in an old bus. His name was Derek, and he would have taken Mummy to Tangier with him, and me and Indy and Saffron too, and Caddy could have visited for holidays. There was plenty of room in the bus. But we didn’t go. Because Mummy said, ‘What about darling Bill?’
And Derek said there wasn’t that much room in the bus.
What has this got to do with why I fell asleep in class?
Everything.
But what has it got to do with hamsters?
We didn’t find out till morning.
Mummy said, ‘Oh good, that solves everything!’ when she heard there was still power in the shed.
Mummy would be perfectly happy to live in the shed.
Saffron, Sarah, Spider-Man and the Dark
Indigo found two torches, one for him and one for me, and he gave me the brightest because you do not need much light to listen to music. It is best in the dark.
Mummy went out to do her illuminated manuscript in the shed, and Saffron came groping and grumbling down the stairs because of her homework.
‘This is so not a good time to be plunged into darkness,’ she said, flapping her hands about. ‘Where has everyone gone?’
‘I am here,’ I said, shining my torch in my face so she screamed. ‘And Mummy is in the shed where it is still light and Indy is on the floor beside me. It is a power cut.’
‘If there is still light in the shed then it is not a power cut,’ said Saffron. ‘It is an Electrical Problem in this house. Right in the middle of my maths homework and I have just varnished my nails and they are still sticky.’ (That was why she was flapping her hands so much. To dry her nails.) ‘It is not fair. I wanted to get a hundred per cent because we have a new student teacher for maths until the end of term and he looks exactly like Spider-Man, and he will be marking it.’
She said this while groping her way very carefully to the phone so as not to ruin her nails. ‘I am ringing up Sarah,’ said Saffron. (Sarah is her best friend.) ‘I bet they haven’t got a power cut.’
So she did and they hadn’t.
Then Saffron and Sarah had a huge conversation in the dark (at our end) about nail varnish and maths homework, and it ended up as an argument.
‘Why do best friends argue so much more than ordinary friends?’ I asked Indigo, whose phone was going flat.
‘Because they listen to each other so much more than ordinary friends,’ said Indigo.
Sarah’s house is very close to ours, just down the road, past the park. After the telephone argument Saffron went to Sarah’s house to prove she was right. She took her maths homework with her, and her nail varnish, and her night things, because Sarah’s mother said she and Sarah’s father were going out and would not be back till late and if Saffron would like to stay the night, that would be perfect.
I like Sarah’s mother. She always makes you feel like just the person she was hoping to see. Especially if you go round at meal times, when she says, ‘Wonderful! I have cooked far too much for just us,’ and gets out extra bread and salad and lets me hunt in the freezer for pudding.
It is easy to stay the night at Sarah’s house because Sarah has an enormous bedroom with two beds and a hammock in it. Ever since I first saw it I have wanted to sleep in Sarah’s hammock.
When Saffron had gone, the house felt very lonely indeed. And dark.
‘What can you do when it is as dark as this?’ I asked Indigo.
‘Go to bed,’ said Indigo.
After a while I did go to bed. Mummy wasn’t coming back into the house, I knew. She would finish her manuscript and then she would lie down on the old pink sofa she keeps in her shed, and then she would accidentally fall asleep, and she would still be there in the morning.
I hate it when Mummy goes to sleep in the shed by accident.
Especially when there is no one in the house except Indigo and me.
And the lights don’t work.
And it has been a horrible day.
The Lightning in the Shed
(Part 1)
When I was in bed I tried very hard not to think about what had happened to me in the Reading Corner, or about Kiran’s cousin’s pink jacket, and the dark unreal hand over her shoulder, and the way she looked back once and would not tell Kiran what she saw. Or about how Kiran’s quiet voice sounded when she said, ‘I don’t want that revolting jacket.’
It was very hard not to think of these things. So I concentrated on what I could hear – and there were sounds in the walls. Scrabbly sounds, like giant spiders would make. I got up and made Indigo turn his music off and come and listen.
‘Nope,’ said Indigo. ‘I can’t hear a thing. Not a single spider. Not a leg. Go back to bed, Rosy Pose.’
I went back to bed, and to stop myself listening I felt my neck to see if I had any lumps growing there.
Kiran’s cousin once had a lump on her neck. Not the cousin with the jacket, another cousin with very long hair. She got the lump when she went on holiday to a very hot place where she bought Kiran a bracelet made of shells and silver beads and string which Kiran used to wear to school until the string got dirty. And then she washed it and all the silver came off the beads and they were plastic underneath.
At first Kiran’s cousin’s lump was little, but it got bigger. It grew. I know exactly where. On the back of her neck, just where her head joins on. I have a little mole in the same place. And the lump grew and it itched, but Kiran’s cousin’s hair covered it up and she did not tell anyone, and it grew bigger. And then one day when Kiran’s cousin was brushing her hair she banged the lump with her hairbrush and it opened. And Kiran’s cousin screamed and screamed and out poured spiders. Dozens and dozens of black spiders.
