Olivia's Winter Wonderland

by Lyn Gardner

  “This came for you,” she said, holding out a cream manila envelope with foreign stamps all over it. “It looks as if it’s from South Africa. Do you know anyone in South Africa?”

  Katie’s heart began to thud. Her mouth was dry. There was only one person that it could possibly be from. Her father. Part of her desperately wanted to know what the letter said and part of her wanted it to spontaneously combust in Mrs Gibbs’ hand so she would never have to read it.

  “I expect it’s from my cousins,” she said with a bright smile. She’d always been good at lying but it still surprised her how easy she found it. She reached for the letter, half expecting it to burn her hand.

  She stuffed the letter in her bag and made her way up to the little studio at the top of the school, which she knew would be empty. She put down her bag and looked at herself in the mirrored wall. The face that stared back at her was a pretty one with serious, anxious eyes. She laid her head against the glass and whispered, “Who are you? Katie Wilkes-Cox? Kate Carmichael? Katie Nobody? Katie Somebody? Katie Liar?”

  Her phone rang. She let it go to voicemail. When her phone bleeped to tell her that a message had been left, she pressed a button to access it. She recognised the voice immediately. It was the director of the Zelda movie. She could hear the barely suppressed excitement in his voice.

  “Kate, it’s Doug here. Call me back as soon as you can. I need to talk to you. I’ve exciting news for you.”

  Katie stared at the phone in her hand as if it was about to explode. Doug’s message could only mean one thing. She had got it. She had got Zelda! She should be screaming with happiness but she just felt empty, wrung out. All the skulking about to get the role, all the lies, all the pretence, made her feel tired rather than triumphant. It was as if jumping all the hurdles and overcoming all the obstacles had become the purpose rather than reaching the finishing line in a winning position. She didn’t feel like a winner. She felt as if she was a loser. She had barely had time to get used to the new Katie Wilkes-Cox and already she had mislaid her.

  She reached inside her bag and pulled out the letter. What could he want with her? Why would he get in touch after everything that had happened? She held the letter a little away from her as if it was an unexploded bomb as she ran her thumbnail under the flap of the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper. She recognised the writing immediately. She took a deep breath and began to read the letter.

  Dear Kitten,

  I bet you’ll be surprised to hear from me after everything that’s happened. To be honest, I’m quite surprised to be writing this. It wasn’t hard to find out that you were back at the Swan. After everything you did for them, I guessed that’s where you’d go. I hope they realise that my little girl is doing them a big favour. I wish I could understand your attachment to the place. It’s a little two-bit stage school; it can’t contain you, not somebody of your looks and talent. You’re better than the Swan. Which is why I’m writing. I miss you, Kitten. I miss your spark, the way you make things happen. You and me, we’re two peas in a pod. Together we could be a great team. There are opportunities here in South Africa. It’s a go-getting place and you and me, we could go-get together. So here’s the deal. You come join me and we’ll embark on Project Kitten: turning Katie Wilkes-Cox into a global brand, a massive star. Don’t think you’ll have to live in poverty. I managed to get away with a couple of million. Had it squirrelled away in a Swiss bank account against hard times. Not a lot, I know, but together we can turn it into a billion. Think about it. The world’s your oyster. Get in touch, Katie. Ring the number below and I’ll get right back to you.

  Dad

  Katie stared at the letter. She couldn’t believe what he was saying. Her father lived in his own delusional bubble. Anger began to rise in her throat. He had money. Two million pounds! And he talked about it as if it was loose change, while she and her mum had been living for months in a way that made every extra two pounds seem like a lottery win. To think she had once admired him, and had aspired to be just like him: someone who lied and cheated to get wherever he wanted to be. She shuddered. She felt as if she had just had a very lucky escape.

  Katie stood up, walked to the window and opened it wide, and then she hauled herself up on to the sill and crouched there, the skyline of London spread out in front of her. She tore the letter into tiny pieces and threw it into the wind, where it whirled like confetti and made Katie think of snow. When she had shredded the final piece, she jumped back off the sill. As she did so, her phone rang. It was Doug again. She pressed answer. The news he was giving her felt all the sweeter because she had already made her decision, made her choice.

  After she had finished her brief call with Doug, she curled up on the floor like a baby.

  After a few minutes, the door of the rehearsal room swung slowly open. Miss Swan was standing there, leaning heavily on her stick. Katie sat up and looked at her questioningly.

  “Mrs Gibbs seemed to think you might be heading in this direction. She told me she had given you a letter. From South Africa. From your father, I imagine,” said Alicia.

  Katie nodded.

  “I feared as much. Do you want to come down to my office and talk about it?”

  Katie nodded and stood up.

  “The letter?” asked Alicia, when they were settled in Alicia’s office.

  “He wanted me to join him in South Africa,” said Katie fiercely. “He said he could make me a star.”

  “And are you going to?”

  Katie shook her head vigorously. “I tore it up into a million pieces.”

  “Probably the best thing for it,” said Alicia softly. “Although I expect the police might have wanted to take a look. He is a wanted man.”

  “There was a mobile number. I memorised it,” said Katie.

  Alicia smiled. “Clever girl.” She paused for a moment and then she said, “I’ve been wanting to have a chat with you in any case. I thought you might be able to shed some light on the mysterious Kate Carmichael.”

  Katie’s eyes darkened in fear. “It’s not what you think, Miss Swan…” she said urgently, but then tailed off. She gave a massive sigh. “Maybe it is … but it’s not quite … I can explain.”

  Alicia smiled a forgiving smile. “I don’t doubt for a minute that you can, Katie.” There was a slight pause. “I think that when you first returned to the Swan I underestimated how difficult things were for you. Since your mother has been working on Cinderella, she’s confided in me a bit and I’ve an inkling of how hard life was in those early weeks both at home and here at the Swan. I think I may have failed you, Katie, and pushed you towards taking some ill-considered decisions. Looking back, I think there may have been a couple of times when you tried to confess and I wasn’t patient enough with you, or ready to listen because I was too taken up with unimportant things. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry,” whispered Katie. “I’ve let everyone down. You, the Swan, my mum, myself.”

  “We all make bad choices, Katie.”

  “Yes,” said Katie, tears sliding down her face. “But I keep making them. I think I must just be a bad person.”

  Alicia took her hand. “You know that’s not true, my dear. When I asked you to leave the Swan almost a year ago it was as much because of your dad as it was because of you, and because of the example he set you. Your reaction to the letter proves that you’ve turned your back on walking all over people just to become a star. But there’s something more. I had to ask you to leave the Swan last year because it was clear to me that you weren’t really sorry for what you did to Olivia and Georgia; you were only sorry that you’d been found out. Something has changed in you, Katie, and it’s a change immeasurably for the better.”

  “So you’re not going to ask me to leave the school?” whispered Katie.

  “Not if, as I suspect, you are really sorry and you’ve made the right choice about Zelda. I assume I’m correct in thinking that you’ve got the role?”

&
nbsp; “Yes,” said Katie. “I did get it. But I’m not going to do it. I’ve told them. I want to stay here and learn everything I can and have proper friends and work so hard that I will become a great actress when I’m older. I want people to say that Katie Wilkes-Cox is a name to be proud of, not ashamed.”

  “Well,” said Alicia, “in that case you’d better tell me about how you came to make your wrong decisions so that I can make some right ones.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Olivia, Tom and Eel were walking towards the Swan. It was almost nine o clock at night and bitterly cold. They had just walked Emmy Lovedale back to her house after a marathon trick-or-treating session. Olivia and Tom had been supervising a very excited Eel and three of her friends as they collected enough sweets and chocolate to give them toothache for days. Afterwards they had all gone back to the Swan, where Alicia had fed them sausages and mash with eyeball jelly for pudding. The green jelly with lychees suspended in it looked a bit too realistic for Olivia.

  It had only started snowing when they had left the Swan to walk Emmy home, but already London had been transformed into a winter wonderland. The flakes were huge, great white moths fluttering around the street lamps, and it had quickly settled like a white blanket over the streets, muffling the sound and making London seem eerily peaceful. Everyone seemed to have retreated indoors and the three children felt as if they had London entirely to themselves.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Eel as she held out her hands to catch the flakes.

  “It is,” agreed Olivia, “but it’s far too early for snow.”

  “If the snow has come early, maybe Christmas will too,” said Eel. “I’ve already written my Christmas list. I don’t think I can wait until the twenty-fifth of December.”

  “What have you asked for, Eel?” asked Tom.

  “Chocolate. Tickets to see the Royal Ballet do Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House and more chocolate.”

  She took a huge bite from one of the many bars she was carrying.

  “You’ll be sick, Eel Marvell, if you eat any more chocolate,” said her sister.

  “But I’ve got tons of it!” she said. “I love Hallowe’en. I love trick-or-treating.” She skipped happily ahead and started scraping together snow from a parked car to make a snowball.

  “I’m glad somebody’s happy,” said Olivia moodily.

  “Liv,” said Tom, “you’ve done everything you possibly could to try to save the Swan panto. So has your gran. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  Olivia kicked at a little mound of snow that had banked against a lamppost.

  “I just thought I could make it happen. I really thought that when Ella realised how important it was that she’d let us use Campion’s. Instead I’ve just made her angry and upset.”

  “You’ve not heard anything from her or Arthur?”

  Olivia shook her head. “No, I slid our note saying sorry under the back door, and left the flowers we bought. But there’s been nothing. I feel awful. Gran always says that it’s worth asking for what you want because even if the person you ask says no, you’re in no worse a position than you were before. But in this case we are. We’ve upset Ella and we still haven’t got a theatre for the Swan pantomime and in two or so hours’ time it will be too late because Theo will sign up for his movie.”

  “I heard your gran say that he’s already rung three times today asking if there’s any news.”

  “It just shows how much he wants to do Cinderella,” said Olivia. “He’s itching to get into rehearsals.”

  “Maybe he’ll hold out against Sheridan another few days.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Olivia gloomily. “He gave us the chance to make Cinderella happen and we failed.” Her voice cracked with emotion. Tom hugged her.

  “And there’s something else,” she whispered. “The dreams have stopped.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he said.

  Olivia frowned. “I don’t know. It’s as if some kind of connection has been broken.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It makes me think we’re never going to see Ella and Arthur and Campion’s again.”

  Tom went to give her another hug but at that moment a snowball whizzed past her right ear and hit Tom full on.

  “Right,” said Tom with a grin. “You’re going to regret that, Eel Marvell!” He gathered up some snow and chased after her. He thought Liv probably needed a moment or two alone.

  Olivia watched the two of them throw snow around. She looked down a side street and saw a gaggle of witches and skeletons, led by a taller grim reaper, walking away in the distance. It was a strange sight in the empty city. The silence was eerie, as if the whole of London was holding its breath, broken only by Eel’s indignant screeches as Tom stuffed a snowball down her neck. Olivia shivered and stamped her feet. Tom threw a snowball at her but she didn’t respond so he continued pelting Eel, who eventually collapsed into the snow, gasping with laughter and begging for mercy. When she finally stood up, she was shivering uncontrollably.

  “I’m freezing,” she said.

  “Me too,” said Tom, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get moving.”

  “We can cut down Henley Street under the bridge and past the end of Hangman’s Alley,” said Eel. “It’s much quicker.”

  Olivia and Tom glanced at each other.

  “Bit spooky down there at this time of night,” said Tom evenly.

  “Please…” said Eel. “I’m so cold I think I’ve caught pneumonia.” Her teeth were chattering.

  Olivia nodded brusquely. “If you’re sure.”

  “Come on then,” said Tom, and they began walking as briskly as they could through the thickening snow. They passed the Tube station, cut through another side street and headed down Henley Street. They had just got to the railway bridge when Olivia suddenly stopped and stood very still. Her face was puzzled.

  “Did you hear that?” she said.

  Tom and Eel looked at her blankly. “I didn’t hear anything,” said Eel. “Come on, let’s get home.”

  “There it is again,” said Olivia. Tom and Eel looked at her. She was perched on one foot with her head to one side like a bird. “Children laughing.”

  “It’s the wind, Livy,” said Eel. The snow was falling faster and thicker. It was turning into a blizzard, dancing in front of their eyes.

  Olivia shrugged and said doubtfully, “Maybe you’re right.”

  They ran, sliding on the ice under the railway bridge, but as soon as they reached the other side, Olivia skidded to an abrupt halt.

  “There it is again! It’s definitely children. I can hear them, and …” She stared at Tom and Eel, white-faced, “they’re not laughing any more, they’re crying.”

  Tom looked worried. “It’s just trick-or-treaters somewhere in the distance,” he said.

  “Then why can’t you hear them?” asked Olivia seriously.

  “I want to go home,” said Eel. “You look strange, Livy. Like a ghost. Are you teasing us, Livy, because if you are, I don’t like it.”

  “Come on, Liv, we’re almost home. Down past Hangman’s Alley and then it’s no distance at all.” Tom tried to pull Olivia along but she wouldn’t budge. She was standing as still as a statue and listening intently. Suddenly a look of panic came over her face and she broke into a run. She called back over her shoulder to the others. “We’ve got to go to Campion’s. There’s something dreadfully wrong, I know there is!”

  “Liv! Liv!” called Tom. “Come back!” But she didn’t stop. He turned to Eel. “We’d better go after her.”

  They ran as fast as they could in the snow, following Olivia’s footprints until they turned sharply up Hangman’s Alley. Olivia was standing by Campion’s faded entrance, banging her fists against the door and calling, “Ella! Arthur!” Her voice echoed across the white, empty street.

  “Liv,” said Tom, touching her shoulder.

  She jumped and shook him off. “Get off me, Tom! There�
�s something wrong. I know there is!”

  “What about the back door?”

  “The door to the passageway is locked. We can’t get in that way.” Olivia banged again on the door.

  “What’s going on?” asked Eel in a small voice. “You’re scaring me, Livy.”

  Tom put his arm round her. A black cat suddenly yowled and appeared from nowhere behind them, making them all jump.

  “It’s no good, they can’t hear us,” said Olivia despairingly. She stepped back from the door and looked up at the little window. It was shut. “I’m going to climb up and see if I can force it open.”

  “Liv,” said Tom urgently. “You might not get a warm welcome from Ella if you just turn up uninvited. She’s already told you to stay away.”

  “It’s a risk I’m just going to have to take,” said Olivia, and she began to scramble up the drainpipe. “Wait for me here. If I’m not back in five minutes, call the police.” She quickly reached the window sill, brushed the snow away and heaved herself carefully on to it. She stood up against the window and found a gap at the top just big enough to get her fingers in. She leaned down on it and as she did so, one of her feet lost its grip, the other slipped as if in solidarity and for a heart-stopping moment she was hanging from the window by her fingertips.

  Eel screamed and the sound reverberated eerily around the alleyway. Olivia found her footing and pushed the window again. Perhaps because it had already taken her weight, it shifted easily. She pushed it down and climbed inside. She moved soundlessly past the old bar area. The whispering in her head was urging her on. She could see the glimmer of eggshell blue and gilt, but she could smell something too, something that shouldn’t be there: a strong smell of burning. Campion’s was on fire!

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Olivia ran frantically on to the horseshoe balcony. The fire was small and she could see immediately how it had started. The ghost-light had been placed too close to one of the stage curtains and now the curtain was smouldering gently, waiting to burst into flames and send the whole theatre up in smoke. The flames would lick up the ancient walls and across the roof and the diamond chandelier would come crashing down in the blink of an eye.