Olivia's Winter Wonderland

by Lyn Gardner

  “I bet she wanted to,” said Olivia. “But Georgia’s right, Aeysha, you were brave to tackle Kylie. Do you think we should tell Gran what happened? I think she’d want to know.”

  Aeysha looked uncomfortable. “It would be too much like snitching.”

  “Maybe we should just wait and see if it all settles down?” said Georgia. “Now the others have seen Aeysha standing up to Kylie and humiliating her, with any luck they’ll be less trouble. Without Kylie as a ringleader I reckon they’ll give Katie-baiting a rest.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Olivia. “I’m not sure Tom’s so right about Katie being a survivor. I think with enough pressure she could break. Let’s try and find her.”

  Katie sat hunched in the little cupboard in the girls’ cloakroom. She rubbed the tears off her cheeks fiercely with the back of her hand and listened hard. Everyone else had long gone home and even Olivia and the others appeared to have given up looking for her. It was ages since she had heard them calling her name and the last thing she remembered was Georgia saying, “Well, maybe she did just go home without her things,” and Olivia replying uncertainly, “Without her coat? Tell you what, I’ll text her.”

  Katie looked at her tacky pay-as-you-go mobile that she had on silent. She hadn’t had a call or a text for a while. She decided that it must be safe to come out now. She would get her coat and bag and scoot off home and never come back. What was the point? Everybody hated her at the Swan. Nobody had stood up for her in the theatre. Not Georgia and Aeysha, not even Olivia and Tom, who must have been back in the auditorium by then. They had all stayed silent while Kylie Morris had sung that horrible, horrible song about her. They had just let her do it. She was sure they were only looking for her now because they felt guilty.

  It just proved to Katie that she would never be accepted as a Swan. It had been a mistake to come back. She should have just gone to the local comp and given up on her dream of performing. Whatever hopes she had had of making a go of things at the school and of being accepted had been crushed by the last few weeks. She should let her dreams wither and perish, quit the dancing and acting and singing and just hunker down to harsh, grey reality. What was the point of trying to keep your dreams alive when other people just stamped all over them?

  Katie felt overwhelmed by self-pity. Who was she to think that she could make a comeback at the Swan? Tomorrow she’d do what her mum did, and just stay in bed. She doubted anyone at the Swan would really miss her. They might not even notice.

  She scrambled out from the cupboard and collected her things. Peeping out of the door of the girls’ cloakroom to check that the coast was clear, she scurried along the corridor as quiet as a mouse. Alicia’s door was open and she could hear her talking to Mrs Gibbs. She paused. Before her panto audition she had vowed to confess to Miss Swan about putting her name on the Zelda audition list. But there was no point now. She wasn’t ever coming back to the Swan.

  She heard Alicia say, “So these are the Swan pupils that the Zelda production company wants to see?”

  “Yes, I just got the email from Poppet. She wants you to ring her to confirm that they are all still available. Their first auditions will be the day after tomorrow.”

  Katie couldn’t stop listening. Alicia was clearly scanning the list and thinking out loud.

  “Aeysha, Georgia, Poppy, Anouska, Betty and Chloe, that’s good. A pity about Nicola, she deserves her chance. I wonder if I can get them to reconsider. Can’t say I’m heartbroken they don’t want to see Kylie Morris; she’s being such a little minx at the moment. Jon said he thought something went down at the panto auditions this afternoon but he didn’t seem to know the details.”

  Katie was frozen outside the door, but her heart leapt to hear that Kylie wouldn’t be getting a shot at Zelda. She knew it was mean, but after what had happened this afternoon she couldn’t help but feel satisfied by the news. Kylie would be furious.

  Alicia was saying some other names out loud. “Kate Carmichael? Who’s she? Oh, there’s a note here. They can’t find her in Spotlight but they’ll see her anyway. I’ll tell Poppet when I ring her that she’s not one of ours. She must be from some other school and Poppet has put her on our list by mistake.”

  Katie’s brain was whirling. The Zelda people wanted to see her! Well, it had come too late! She crept past the open door. Fortunately Alicia and Mrs Gibbs were so engrossed in their conversation, they didn’t notice her. She heard Alicia ask for Poppet’s mobile number and Mrs Gibbs reel it off for Alicia to scribble down. It was easy to remember, thought Katie; only a couple of digits different from her own number. She crept miserably out through the doors of the Swan and walked slowly down the steps. At the bottom she turned and looked back at the school. Tears ran down her face and she felt as if her heart were breaking.

  “Goodbye,” she whispered. “Goodbye forever.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Georgia and Aeysha sat with the other Swan girls. They had already had their Zelda auditions and were waiting for the rest to finish so they could all set off back to the school together. It had been a very long morning. They saw Chloe leave the audition room and come over to join them. She pulled a face.

  “They call that an audition? I didn’t even get a chance to read.”

  “Me neither,” said Betty. “I can’t have been in there more than two minutes. They just looked me up and down and asked me a few questions.”

  “Stupid questions, if you ask me,” said Chloe. “They wanted to know, if I was an animal, what animal would I be? I was tempted to say a very grumpy camel after sitting around here half the morning.”

  “They asked me what kind of flower I’d be,” said Aeysha.

  “They asked me that too,” said Georgia eagerly. “What did you say?”

  “I said I’d be a rambling rose because they’re beautiful to look at and smell sweet but have wicked thorns if you get too close.”

  Georgia’s face dropped. “Oh, Aeysha, that’s so clever. I just said a daisy. I bet it was wrong.”

  “I don’t think there’s a wrong or a right answer, Georgie. I think they’re just trying to get us to talk so they could get a feel for what we’re like.”

  “I don’t know why they didn’t just let us read from the screenplay,” said Anouska.

  Aeysha waved an arm. “With all these girls to be seen? They’d be here for weeks if they let us all read for the part today. I guess they want to whittle us down first.”

  “I heard somebody say that they saw people all day yesterday and the day before too, and there’s another lot this afternoon,” said Nicola. “We don’t stand a chance. It’s like an open audition. We might just as well be auditioning for one of those TV reality shows.”

  “You know what will happen,” said Betty gloomily. “The usual thing. They’ll see hundreds of stage-school girls. Then they’ll announce that they can’t find anyone suitable and they want somebody completely fresh and untrained and launch a nationwide search in a blaze of publicity. We’re wasting our time.”

  “Well, somebody’s got to be lucky,” said Georgia stubbornly. She hugged herself. Maybe this time it would be her. She just wished she hadn’t said daisy. She really wished she’d said what Aeysha had said. She felt so envious of her friend.

  “Liv! Slow down,” said Tom. “We don’t have to run all the way to Campion’s.”

  Olivia swung round. Tom noticed how pale she was; her skin had a ghostly sheen. There were dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t been sleeping well.

  “I just want to get there. We don’t have much time. We have to be back again for afternoon lessons and I promised Gran that we wouldn’t be late. Come on. I want to check that Ella and Arthur are all right.”

  Tom sighed. They had checked that Ella and Arthur were all right yesterday and the day before that. They were really grateful to the old people for lending them the fantastic panto horse costume though. When Alicia had seen it, her mouth dropped open with delight and surprise. />
  “You do realise you’ve been entrusted with something very precious and you must take real care of it?” she had told Olivia and Tom. They’d nodded, although Tom noted that Olivia hadn’t explained the full extent of the treasure house that was Campion’s. Alicia had given them money to buy a huge bouquet of flowers for Ella, and had sent them to deliver it with a handwritten invitation to the Swan panto. She had encouraged Olivia and Tom to keep visiting, telling them it was the least they could do. “I’m sure they don’t get many visitors. Lots of old people get very lonely.”

  But Tom felt that Olivia was overdoing the visiting. She seemed to be obsessed by Campion’s. She wanted to spend every spare minute there, walking the high-wire and talking to Ella and Arthur about the theatre and its history. When she was there, something about her changed. She was dreamier and more distant, as if she was hearing somebody far away talking to her in her head. Tom found it spooky. It was as if she was possessed. If it was up to him, he’d keep away from Campion’s, but he felt he had to keep going with Olivia so he could keep an eye on her. He was concerned for his friend.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Liv? You look completely exhausted.”

  “I’m fine, Tom. I’m just not sleeping so good.” Olivia paused, and then she added, “I have this terrible nightmare almost every night. It’s always the same. You know Henley Street, by the bridge?”

  Tom nodded.

  “Well, I’m walking there alone and I can hear a clock striking midnight, and when it gets to the last chime, there’s a huge explosion like a bomb going off and then the bridge begins to fall down on top of me and I feel I’m going to suffocate, and that’s when I always wake up.”

  Tom grimaced. “It sounds horrid.”

  “It is,” said Olivia. “What do you think it means?” She sounded really anxious.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” said Tom. “It’s just a dream.” He grinned. “But to be on the safe side maybe you should avoid walking by the Henley Street bridge.”

  Ella had shown them the back entrance to Campion’s and it was this that they always used. It led straight into the dimly lit auditorium with its shadowy nooks and crannies. Olivia was struck each time by the theatre’s shabby, faded beauty. She glanced into one of the mottled mirrors and gasped. Instead of seeing herself and Tom reflected back, she thought she saw an image of two children dressed in the clothes from more than half a century before. She pointed speechlessly at the mirror.

  Tom was puzzled. “What? It’s only us, Liv. Anyone would think you’d just seen a ghost.” He peered at her suspiciously. “You didn’t think you had seen a ghost, did you?”

  Olivia shook her head a little too quickly. “Just a trick of the light,” she said casually, but Tom caught the quaver in her voice.

  Arthur was alone in the theatre, sweeping the stage. He looked pleased to see the two children.

  “Where’s Ella?” asked Olivia.

  “She’s having a little nap,” said Arthur. “She doesn’t sleep well.”

  “Just like you, Liv,” said Tom jokily.

  “Oh, Ella has such terrible dreams,” said Arthur sadly. “She dreams of clocks striking midnight, explosions and bridges falling…” He would have gone on but Olivia had made a choking sound and Tom’s eyes had darkened and a look of horror had crossed his face.

  Then they heard a noise behind them. It was Ella. She walked towards them as if she was sleepwalking and stretched out her arms as if to embrace them.

  “Lizzie, Davey. You’ve come back. You’ve come back to forgive me. At last.” Her tears began to fall, and then she drew back and her mood changed suddenly, just as it had the first time Olivia and Tom met her.

  “You’re not Lizzie and Davey! You’re spies. He’s sent you, hasn’t he? Well,” she drew herself up to her full height, “tell Prince from me that I know all about his tricks and schemes, and he’ll never get his hands on Campion’s. Never! Campion’s will stay the way it has always been – forever!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was another hour before the Swans were finished at the Zelda auditions, and as they set off back to the Tube station, Aeysha checked her phone.

  “I’ve got a text from Livy. Apparently Katie didn’t turn up for school again today, and she still hasn’t replied to any of our texts or calls,” she said.

  “Maybe she’s not very well?” said Georgia.

  “Possibly,” said Aeysha. “But what if she’s too upset to come back? I’ve been thinking about what happened. When Kylie started singing, none of us said anything. We were all too shocked. I couldn’t really believe what I was hearing. It took me a few moments to react.”

  “Yes, but then you did say something,” said Georgia.

  Aeysha shrugged. “But Katie doesn’t know that. She’d gone by then. From her point of view it would seem very much as if we all sat by and let Kylie get away with bullying her. Maybe she thinks we all secretly agreed with her? I’m going to talk to Livy. I think we should go to Katie’s house, find out what’s going on.”

  They stopped at some traffic lights at a busy road junction. Georgia peered into the window of a little café next to them. Through the half-steamed-up window she could see a girl with long, blonde and very straight hair sitting on her own at a table. From behind she looked just like Katie. The girl half turned and Georgia gave a little gasp. It was Katie! What was she doing there when she should be miles away at the Swan?

  “Look!” hissed Georgia, suddenly nudging Aeysha. “I don’t think Katie’s sick.”

  Aeysha looked through the window. But the girl had turned round again and a man had sat down at the table behind her, obscuring the view.

  “It’s probably just someone who looks like her,” said Aeysha as the lights changed and they started to cross the road. “There must be thousands of girls in London with long blonde hair.”

  Georgia glanced backwards. She had been certain it was Katie, but she must have been mistaken. But if it wasn’t her, then there was somebody running around London who looked remarkably like her.

  “Are you quite sure this is the right place?” said Aeysha doubtfully.

  Olivia looked at the address she had scribbled down on a sheet of paper. She nodded. “Gran gave it to me when I said Katie wanted us to take some work round.”

  “Well,” said Aeysha, “it’s certainly a bit different from what she’s used to.”

  The entrance to the flat was down an alley at the back of a row of mostly boarded-up shops. The alley was piled high with broken bags of rubbish, and as Olivia and Aeysha entered the alley something suspiciously like a rat scurried away.

  “Ugh,” said Aeysha. “To think Katie has to walk down here alone every day. Even when it’s dark and she comes back late after extra classes at school. And it took us ages to get here.”

  Olivia looked at the peeling front door. “I think we can safely say that there’s no luxury swimming pool or bathrooms with gold-plated taps behind there.”

  “Poor Katie,” sighed Aeysha. “And that’s something I never thought I’d say.”

  Olivia looked anxious. “Do you think Katie’s going to mind that we’ve seen where she lives? She’s got a lot of pride.”

  “Mmm, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Aeysha. “But if we just go away she might never come back to the Swan. It’s been a week. We’ll have to risk it.”

  “Mrs Gibbs told Gran that Mrs Wilkes-Cox had rung in to say she was ill. Maybe she really is sick.”

  “Sick at heart, more like,” said Aeysha. “Look, we may be about to hurt Katie’s pride and she may accuse us of sticking our noses in where we’re not wanted, but if we do nothing, if we don’t show her that we care about her and respect her, she may chuck the Swan in completely, and school could be all that’s keeping her afloat. We have to try to talk to her.”

  “You’re very persuasive, Aeysha. You should be a lawyer or a hostage negotiator,” said Olivia, and she lifted the knocker and let it fall. They waited but the
re was no answer.

  Olivia knocked again. “They must be out,” she said.

  “I’m not so sure. I think I saw a curtain twitch upstairs,” said Aeysha.

  Olivia bent down, pushed open the letter box and peered through. All she could see were uncarpeted stairs.

  “Try shouting,” said Aeysha.

  “Katie!” called Olivia. “Katie, it’s Livy and Aeysha. Please answer the door. We want to talk to you. We’re really missing you at the Swan.”

  They waited a moment. There was no sound or movement from inside the flat. Olivia straightened up. “We’re wasting our time. There’s nobody here.”

  Aeysha bent to the letter box and shouted through it. “Katie! Katie, please open the door. We’ve got things we need to say to you.”

  Silence.

  “Let’s go,” said Olivia. They’d started to walk down the little alley when they heard the sound of the front door being opened. They turned back expectantly, but it was not Katie but her mum who stood there, her head peering out of the half-open door. Her hair looked unwashed and she was clutching her dressing gown closed at the neck.

  “I thought it might be the bailiffs again, which was why I didn’t answer,” she said apologetically. “But then I realised it was Katie’s friends.” She tried to smile brightly, and Olivia was reminded of a little bird with a damaged wing she had once seen who was still singing cheerfully despite its injury.

  “Hello, Mrs Wilkes-Cox,” said Aeysha. “This is Livy and I’m Aeysha.”

  Mrs Wilkes-Cox smiled. “I remember you, Aeysha. You used to come to Katie’s swimming-pool parties…” Her voice trailed off.

  “We came to see Katie,” said Olivia. “Is she in?”

  Mrs Wilkes-Cox looked puzzled. “No, she’s still at school. She has an extra dance class on Thursday.”

  “But,” Olivia blurted out, “Katie wasn’t at school today.”

  Mrs Wilkes-Cox gasped. “But she left this morning as usual. We must call the police! Something terrible must have happened to her.”