by Lyn Gardner
The hump under the bedclothes didn’t move.
“Mum,” said Katie. “I know you’re not asleep and can hear me. Please drink your tea and at least try to eat the toast. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Leave me alone,” groaned the voice from the bed.
“Have you taken your tablets?” asked Katie. “The doctor told you that you had to keep taking them at regular intervals or they won’t do any good.”
“They don’t do any good anyway.”
“That’s because they take a few weeks to kick in. You’ll soon start feeling better,” said Katie brightly, although she felt like crying inside.
“I couldn’t feel worse,” said her mother in a flat voice, appearing from under the quilt. “Oh, Katie,” she suddenly sobbed. “What happened to our lives? How did it come to this?” And she waved her arm weakly at the dismal room with the damp patches on one wall.
“Things will get better,” said Katie. But she didn’t see how they could. When they had been evicted from their opulent mansion after her dad had left, Katie had appealed to her uncle, the theatre producer Chuck Daniels, to help them. He had sent a note expressing his sympathy but saying that he couldn’t get involved. He had his career to think about. He offered to pay the rent on a cheap unfurnished flat for them for a year but after that they would be on their own. Katie tried not to think what would happen at the end of the year. If her mother didn’t find herself a job she supposed they would be homeless.
But she couldn’t worry about the future: she had more pressing things to deal with, including her mum’s depression and the problems that had followed them from their old address. Almost every day brown envelopes covered with angry red writing poured through the letter box from creditors demanding money. No wonder her mum was depressed. If it wasn’t for the Swan, Katie wouldn’t have a reason to get up either.
She wondered whether she should phone the doctor and tell her how worried she was about her mum. That she seemed worse not better. She glanced at her watch. She didn’t really have time. She’d already got two misconducts this week for being late to school, and if she got another one she’d get a detention. She couldn’t let that happen, as she barely had enough hours in the day even now. She thought bitterly about the old days when delicious fresh food appeared miraculously at every meal, the fridge was always full of treats and out-of-season strawberries and mangoes if she fancied a snack, and there was a constant supply of clean clothes and dancewear in her wardrobe. She had been ferried to and from school every day. Now she had to wash everything by hand, because even the launderette was beyond their means except once a week for the sheets and towels, buy and cook all the food and still keep up with her classes and her homework. It was exhausting. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked like a ghost.
“I’ve got to go, Mum,” she said, and she dropped a kiss on her mother’s head where it was just visible above the duvet. “I love you.”
Her mum struggled to sit up. “I’m no good to you, Katie. I’m sorry, lovely. I am trying.”
“I know you are, Mum. We will get through this. See you later.”
Katie ran downstairs, gathered up her bag and went to the front door. As she opened it, two sharp-suited men appeared instantly; they had obviously been lurking outside just waiting for somebody to open the door. Katie’s heart began to hammer. She longed to slam the door shut, but then how would she get to school? From past experience she could hazard a pretty good guess that this unsavoury duo were either tabloid reporters or bailiffs. She’d had bad experiences with both. But these men didn’t look like reporters. She felt relieved that it was her and not her mum who had answered the door. They couldn’t come in if she was there alone. She prayed that her mum wouldn’t hear the voices, but she doubted anything would rouse her.
“Can I help you?” she asked in her politest but steeliest of voices.
“Is your mum in?” asked one of men. “We need to talk to her.” He flashed a piece of paper at her that had a name and “Debt Recovery Agency” written across the top.
“Sorry,” said Katie smoothly. “She’s out. Gone to work. She won’t be back until really late.”
The men looked at each other. The kid may be lying, but there was nothing they could do. “Mrs Wilkes-Cox! Are you there?” bawled one of them loudly.
“Will you give her this?” said the other man, shoving a brown envelope towards her.
“I can’t take it. You’ll have to come back another time,” said Katie, eager to get rid of them. But luck was against her. Her mother, who so seldom ventured out of bed these days, suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Who is it, Katie?” she asked.
“Can we come in, Mrs Wilkes-Cox?” asked one of the men, while the other glared at Katie.
“You don’t have to let them in, Mum,” said Katie urgently, but it was too late. Mrs Wilkes-Cox had come down the stairs and opened the door wide. She waved them in as if welcoming guests to a dinner party.
The man shoved the envelope into her hand, and as she opened it and stared at the contents, he said gruffly, “You know what this means?”
Mrs Wilkes-Cox said nothing but nodded. She sank down on to a chair and said, “Do what you have to do. You will anyway. I’m too tired to try and stop you.” Then she added bitterly, “I just hope it’s worth your time and trouble. There’s almost nothing worth having. It’s all already been taken from us.”
One of the men went outside and whistled for a third. Together the three of them looked around and began to remove items including the TV and the old sofa. Mrs Wilkes-Cox and Katie watched in silence as the men struggled to get the sofa out of the door.
After they had gone, Katie and her mum sat for a few moments looking at the room around them. It was now empty, apart from the table and the two wooden chairs on which they were sitting.
“Why? Why, Mum, did you let them in?” asked Katie fiercely.
“Because they’d only have come back again,” said her mum. “I can’t do this any more, Katie. I can’t fight against it any more. It’s like drowning. We’re going to go under. Why struggle against it?” She looked at her daughter. “You better get off to school. You’re going to be very late.”
“I’m not going. I can’t leave you, not like this,” said Katie.
“You can and you must,” said Mrs Wilkes-Cox quietly. “You’re my only hope. My reason for living.”
Katie dashed up the steps of the Swan. She had had to wait ages for a bus and she was really, really late. She scuttled into the girls’ changing room to leave her stuff, hoping against hope that she might be able to sidle into her maths lesson without being seen.
She was heading up the stairs when she heard a voice call, “Katie Wilkes-Cox! Are you late again?”
Katie took a deep breath and turned round. “Yes, Miss Hanbury. I’m sorry, Miss Hanbury.”
“Do you have a good reason?” asked Miss Hanbury.
“My bus didn’t come,” whispered Katie.
“That’s not good enough. Other children manage to get here on time, and I’m sure many of them have much longer journeys than you. You must learn to organise yourself better and leave home earlier. Take a misconduct and I’ll see you in detention tomorrow after school.” Miss Hanbury stalked away to the staffroom.
“I won’t cry. I won’t cry,” repeated Katie to herself like a mantra as she made her way to her maths lesson.
Chapter Six
Olivia and Tom were in a strange little cul-de-sac called Hangman’s Alley a few streets away from the Swan. It wasn’t somewhere they usually went. The alley was a dead end off another small side street called Henley Street, a gloomy, dank place with tottering buildings and warehouses, many of them half boarded up and in some cases overwhelmed by the curling tendrils of green creepers. The creeping tide of regeneration that was taking place down by the river hadn’t yet reached this intricate maze of dark streets that looked straight out of a Dickens novel. Olivia
and Eel had twice spotted a film crew there.
Olivia and Tom were trying out the little glider that Tom had made over the summer holidays. Tom was good with his hands and proud of the little aeroplane that he had painstakingly fashioned out of balsa wood and carefully painted.
“None of those plastic kits for me. All made from scratch,” he had said proudly as he carefully lifted the glider from its box. Aeysha and Georgia had admired the aeroplane politely, but they weren’t really interested. They were preoccupied with the upcoming auditions for the Zelda movie and had gone off to carry on reading the novel out loud to each other in preparation. But Olivia’s eyes had lit up.
“Can we try it?” she had asked enthusiastically.
“I thought you’d never ask,” replied Tom delightedly. He had been certain that Olivia wouldn’t fail him. “She goes like a dream in the right conditions.” Initially they had gone down behind the Swan but it was too exposed and windy. There had been a nasty moment when the glider had been blown into the branch of a tree and got caught there, and Olivia had to climb up with the agility of a squirrel and get it down.
“I think we’d better stop before it’s damaged or gets blown into the river,” she said as she handed the plane back to Tom. There was disappointment in her voice. That was when Tom thought of the alleyway, which was protected from the worst of the wind by the tall, unloved buildings on either side. He and Will Todd and some of the other boys had sometimes kicked a football around there, although Will always said it was creepy and it often felt as if someone was watching them.
The alley was perfect for flying the glider, providing just enough wind for it to take flight, but also largely protecting it from the sudden gusts that had proved so troublesome down by the river.
“It’s brilliant, Tom. You are a boy of many talents,” said Olivia as she sent the glider sailing true and straight from one end of the alley to the other. “Do you think you could make a bigger version?”
“If I had the time. I like making things, and my dad says I’m good at it,” said Tom. “But the Swan doesn’t leave much time for outside hobbies. I’d never finish it. Even fitting in tightrope-walking is going to get tricky as we get higher up the school.” He sighed.
Olivia looked aghast. “But you wouldn’t give up the wire, would you?”
“No, of course not. I love it too much. But something has to give. You can’t do everything.”
“I want to do everything,” said Olivia fiercely. “I want to walk the wire, fly on the trapeze at the Royal Albert Hall, learn to do stunts for movies, fly a plane into the eye of a storm, read the whole of The Lord of the Rings, climb Everest and find a recipe for chocolate fudge cake that never fails.”
Tom grinned. “I bet you will too, Liv Marvell.” He looked anxiously at the sky. “It’s starting to get dark, and looks as if it might be blowing up a storm. We should head off soon.”
“One last go,” said Olivia, and she stood on tiptoe and sent the glider upwards. It caught the wind and sailed up through the air, but when it got halfway down the alley a sudden gust of wind tossed the little plane off course. For a second the glider looked as if it would plunge downwards and be smashed to smithereens on the road but just in time another squally gust gripped it. The plane veered to the right and the children watched horrified as it disappeared through the half-open top window of a crumbling building that was flanked by two apparently derelict houses.
“Oh, Tom, I’m so sorry,” said Olivia.
“It wasn’t your fault. It was the wind,” said Tom stoically, but she could see he was upset. Olivia walked over to the entrance of the building. A brownish, mottled, double-fronted door was flanked by intricate plasterwork decorated with fruit and vines that would have been rather grand if the paint had not been peeling and the plasterwork chipped and crumbling. She rapped hard on the wooden door with her knuckles. The sound echoed. A shower of paint flakes fell at her feet like snow. There was an empty silence.
“It’s no good, Liv. The place is derelict. It’s obvious that nobody’s been here for years. We’ll have to let it go.”
Olivia stood back from the building and appraised it. She thought that Tom was right about it being empty. The door didn’t look as if it had been opened for centuries. The downstairs windows were shuttered and blind. Over the front of the building she could just make out some tired, faded writing that read “Campion’s Palace of Variet”. The last few letters were indecipherable.
She smiled. “It doesn’t look much like a palace to me.” She moved over to an old drainage pipe that ran down between the house next door and the derelict building and tugged it. It seemed secure. She reckoned she could shimmy up it and get on to the window ledge. Provided the ledge was sound she would be able to stand on it and maybe push the top sash of the window down far enough to climb in. She clambered on to a lower ledge and then on to the pipe.
Tom shook his head. “Don’t even think about it, Liv,” he warned. “It’s not worth breaking your neck to get it back. It’s only a bit of painted wood.”
But Olivia ignored him. She pulled herself up the pipe as if it was no effort at all, swung over on to the ledge below the open window and tested it with her foot. It felt quite safe. She put her entire weight on it, stood up carefully and peered into the room. It was empty, with sepia-stained plaster walls and bare boards. She could see the glider lying near the door. She pushed down on the window and it gave easily. She looked down at Tom and grinned.
“Easy-peasy. Won’t be a sec.” She clambered over the top of the window and into the room, taking care to check that the dusty floorboards were sound. She walked lightly over to where the aeroplane lay, picked it up and was about to leave when she caught a glimpse of something and stifled a small scream. Then she realised she’d jumped at her own reflection in a tarnished gilt mirror in the next room. A trick of the light made her look like a little ghost.
“Liv! Liv!” Tom was calling her. There was a slight edge of panic in his voice because she hadn’t immediately reappeared at the window. She took a reluctant step towards the window, but it felt as if something was drawing her back into the building. Looking beyond the doorway of the second room she could just see a glimpse of eggshell-blue paint, a touch of gilt and glitter. She thought she heard the sound of children whispering and laughing. She shook herself. She was imagining things. She wasn’t frightened. She simply longed to go further into the building, but she didn’t want to worry Tom. She ran over to the window and smiled down at him, waving the glider.
“Come up,” she said. “It’s really interesting. We can explore.”
Tom looked pained. “It really will be dark soon, Liv. We don’t want to be wandering around an empty building in the pitch-black.” But he saw the determined look on her face and, with a sigh, began to climb up the pipe until he could swing over to the window ledge and into the room. Olivia took Tom’s hand and pulled him through into the house. There was something sleepy and enchanted about the place, as if it had been waiting for them to arrive and wake it up like the castle in Sleeping Beauty. They peered into one room and found an ancient carved mahogany bar. Bottles of spirits and empty glasses stood on the dark wood, laced with cobwebs.
They moved silently, as if pulled by an invisible thread, towards the room where Olivia had glimpsed the eggshell-blue paint. They stepped into it and both of them gasped out loud. They were standing on a horseshoe-shaped balcony supported by golden candy cane pillars. Huge, highly polished gilt mirrors set within large niches in the walls of the balcony reflected back the glitter of a thousand crystal drops that dripped from a vast chandelier, which hung over rows of patched burgundy velvet seats.
“It’s a theatre!” breathed Olivia. “A forgotten empty theatre.” And she and Tom turned to face the stage with its high proscenium arch and bare boards.
“It’s so beautiful,” whispered Olivia, completely entranced.
“It is beautiful,” agreed Tom. “But you’re wrong about one thing: it�
�s not empty.” He pointed towards the centre of the stage, where a single candle burned in a jam jar. “Somebody must have lit that. It didn’t do it by itself.” His voice was shaking. “Come on, Olivia, we’ve got to get out. I’ve got a feeling something bad, really bad, is going to happen.”
Chapter Seven
Katie had almost finished writing her detention essay – “Why I Must be More Organised and How I Intend to Achieve It” – in the empty classroom. She was pressing so hard with her pen it was as if she was chiselling the words on to the paper, not writing on it. The pressure helped to relieve the mix of anger and despair she felt inside. She wrote the final sentence, “I really will try better in future.” and leaned back on her chair to quickly read through what she had written. It would have to do.
She looked at her watch. Her hour was almost up. Miss Hanbury had sat with her for most of the detention but twenty minutes before the end she’d told Katie that she had an appointment.
“I’m trusting you, Katie, to finish your essay and wait until your hour is up. Then put it in my pigeonhole and sign out in the book with Mrs Gibbs in reception. She’ll note the time so don’t try and leave early because I’ll be sure to hear about it.” She had swept off, leaving Katie in the cold classroom by herself.
Katie picked up her essay, walked downstairs with it and posted it in Miss Hanbury’s pigeonhole. She collected her things from the cloakroom, checked that it was dead on the hour and walked into reception. There was no sign of Mrs Gibbs but she was clearly around because the email she was in the middle of writing was still open on her computer screen. Katie’s eye was drawn to the words “Zelda Auditions”. The email was to someone called Poppet at the film production company. Below was a list of the names and mobile numbers of all the Swan girls who were being put up for the role. Mrs Gibbs was transferring them from a handwritten list made by Alicia and she had almost finished.
