Still, the answer is obviously much less exciting … she got them from her Aunt Maggie, of course.
“Look, Edie!”
We’re in a crowded, brightly-lit room filled with chatting and smiles, funky music and waiters swooshing around with trays laden with drinks and food.
It feels very grown-up. I feel nervously excited.
“Everyone who’s here,” I mutter, glancing around, “who are they? Are they famous?”
“No! They’re just ordinary people who like art, who’ve become members of the gallery. And if you’re a member, you get invited to previews like this.”
Her eyes aren’t on the milling men and women, though; they’re on the huge blow-up photos on the wall. All those tiny works of gum art, suddenly magnified to at least fifty times their true size. If they were fantastic when they were small and secretive, they’re truly gobsmacking large and unmissable.
“Where’s your aunt?” I ask as we bumble along, bumping into other admiring onlookers as we study the images.
“She’ll be somewhere here,” Alice B. Lovely murmurs, distracted by the pictures. “But she’ll have to chat to lots of people, so I said I wouldn’t bother her. I’ll catch up with her some other time.”
“Right,” I nodded, my gaze drifting from one amazing blow-up to another.
A roaring motorbike, fire coming out of its exhaust.
William and Kate.
A bunch of balloons.
Super Mario.
Hello Kitty.
A squirrel.
A rainbow.
A jar of jellybeans.
An angel.
A kid doing cartwheels.
An old-fashioned double-decker bus, and lots more besides.
The images are funny and clever and cute.
Especially – in my opinion – THIS particular one…
“Look! ‘Countdown to happiness’!!” I practically squeal, pointing at the clock I saw on the pavement outside the charity shop. “Here – here’s my phone. Can you take a photo of me beside it?”
I don’t care any more whether this clock matches the imaginary one in my head. I don’t care if it’s just some dumb coincidence. I just know I love it.
“Of course!” giggles Alice B. Lovely, delighted to see how excited I am to be here, to see and share this stuff with her.
And as the camera on my mobile clicks and the flash fades, I realize quite how much all this matters to her.
“You’d love to have an exhibition like this one day, wouldn’t you?” I say to Alice B. Lovely as she hands me my phone back.
“Definitely,” she says with a wistful sigh.
“I can just see all your bus-stop photos here!” I say encouragingly.
“Yes, but I want to do more than those,” she replies, turning her ice-blue beam on me. “I’ve got this crazy dream of decorating a bus shelter! I’d get lots of stuff from jumble sales: cushions for the plastic bench, net curtains to hang up, maybe get a rug down on the pavement—”
“And how about a little table, with a vase of fake flowers in it?” I suggest, inspired by the wall-to-wall florals of Mrs Kosma’s living room.
I wonder if I could ask Mum to lend me the clock of doom to put on the table too. Its chimes are well and truly broken (Mum took it to the jeweller to see if it could be repaired, but the answer was thankfully “no”), though it still tick-tocks in the middle of the night like someone’s playing a glockenspiel in the hall. Maybe it won’t sound so loud in the great outdoors?
Or maybe I could get especially lucky and someone might steal it?
“Yes! A table and flowers would be so cute,” Alice B. Lovely laughs her delight, reaching an arm around my back for a pleased squeeze, and dipping her head down on my shoulder closest to her. “You really get it, don’t you, Edie?”
She whispers those last few words, and I think of the yellow fluttering Post-its and their peculiar messages. (Let them understand pings into my mind.)
“Excuse me?” someone interrupts us. “But is that you over there?”
Alice B. Lovely lifts her head and we both look at a young guy who is pointing over to the other side of the huge room, the side we haven’t reached yet.
As the crowds part for a second, we see a wide-eyed face gazing back at us, with the name “Alice B. Lovely” encircling it.
“Yes,” my friend answers, of course, her cheeks pinking ever-so-slightly in her ivory-pale face.
“I thought so!” says the guy. “Listen, I work for the local newspaper. Can I interview you about being an artist’s muse?”
“Hey, tell him you’re her niece!” I mumble in the direction of Alice B. Lovely’s tumble of silken hair.
“What’s that?” smiles the reporter guy.
“Uh, it’s, um, nothing,” says Alice B. Lovely, blushing a little more pinkly.
You know, she is so amazingly unshowy. Other people would be acting all phoney, yelping out loud about how they were connected to someone even just a tiny bit famous. But not her; not Alice B. Lovely.
“Right. Well, could I maybe steal you away, anyway, for a chat? Over by your portrait?”
Alice B. Lovely gives a startled but happy shrug, her curtain of hair rippling and her silky shawl slipping off one shoulder.
She might look like the swan princess, but I’m suddenly feeling like an overcooked jacket potato, and I think I might look like one too. It’s getting really, really busy and stuffy in here, and right this second, I’m not really wanted.
“You go on,” I tell her. “I’ll catch up with you when you’re done!”
I’m suddenly, thankfully not shy any more, just sweaty. And while Alice B. Lovely gets “interviewed” by the newspaper bloke, I’m going to go leave my bulky hoodie in the cloakroom after all.
I head out of the packed, chit-chatting space into the cool marble corridor and follow the signs for where I need to be.
Not sure what to expect, I’m pleasantly surprised to walk into a small area with a smiley lady at a counter, a book of raffle tickets in her hand and a rail semi-filled with coats and jackets behind her.
“Can I help you, my love?” she says breezily.
I relax. Everyone at the show is quite trendy in their own way, but this lady – Norma Grimley, it says on her name badge – is as unfashionably ordinary as any of the mumsy, friendly dinner ladies at school, which makes me feel instantly as ease.
“Could I get this hung up, please?” I ask, placing my hoodie on the counter.
“Anything else, sweetie?” says the lady, selecting a raffle ticket from her book.
I instantly break into a grin.
She almost sounded like Buddy, there, with his “Smile, sweetie! Smile!” line. How funny!
“Yes. I mean no,” I correct myself, pulling off my grey cardie. “Can I put this in too?”
“Of course!” says the woman, taking it from me. “Having a nice time looking at all the funny pictures, are you, dear?”
“Um, yes,” I answer, trying not to smirk. It didn’t sound as if she was too impressed with the artwork. “I’m here with my friend. Her aunt did all the chewing gum paintings.”
“Really?” says the lady, raising her pencilled-in eyebrows as she slips my hoodie on a hanger and places it on the counter, ready to ticket. “Not really my cup of tea, I have to say. A bit … silly for my taste.”
I have an instant image in my head of Alice B. Lovely explaining her bus-stop art installation idea to Norma Grimley and nearly choke on my giggles.
“Right, that’s one done,” says the cloakroom lady all efficiently, going on to pick up my cardie. “Oh!”
“Oh!”?
What could be “oh!” about my plain little H&M cardigan?
The woman seems to have spotted something on it.
She picks the somethi
ng off, and for just a moment there – seeing the arcing white shape – I think it’s a feather from Buddy’s white chest.
“Is this Ali’s?” she says.
“What?” I say back.
“Is she here, dear? Did she come?”
I’m completely muddled and befuddled. I have no idea what – or who – Norma Grimley’s on about.
Tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap!
It’s a tiny delicate noise, but I’d recognize it anywhere.
Tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap!
Out there in the hall, Alice B. Lovely is running.
Running from what, exactly?
Dring!
“Excuse me – I have to go!” I babble at top speed, wrestling my hoodie off the hanger before charging out of the cloakroom while attempting to answer the phone I can now hear trilling urgently in my handbag.
Dring!
This is madness, I think, fiddling with the reluctant catch on my bag.
Dring!
If I was in the mood for daydreaming (and wasn’t suddenly spooked), I’d think my ringtone was like the clock in the old fairy tale, striking twelve as Cinderella ran from the ball.
Dring!
Perhaps there’s a chance I might just get out of here and find one of Alice B. Lovely’s gold shoes on the steps of the art gallery, being held up by the young reporter guy.
Dring!
“Miss? Here, miss, don’t forget this!” the cloakroom lady calls out to me, holding up my grey cardie in one hand.
Dring!
“Thank you!” I say, quickly doubling back and taking it, while finally managing to fumble my bag open.
Dring!
Good; I’ve got the phone in my hand now, but it’s hard to press the right button at the same time as running.
Dring!
As I hurtle out into the corridor and head for the main entrance and frantically press “answer”, I feel the cool evening breeze on my face.
Dring!
The chill stills me.
Dring!
And I can see mumsie Norma Grimley freeze-framed in my mind, the millisecond after I gratefully snatched my cardigan from her.
Dring!
The thing she’s still holding in her other hand; it’s not a white feather.
It’s an eyelash.
Dring!
“Hello? Hello? Where are you?” I say into the mouthpiece, glancing around for a sign, any sign, of Alice B. Lovely.
But it’s too late, I’ve missed the call…
“Let me see…”
We haven’t had a second together so far this morning; every time I tried to talk to her, to show her the message, something irritating (like our French teacher) got in the way.
“Here,” I say, handing my phone over to Tash.
We’re on the wall by the sixth-form block. It’s quiet and chilled compared to the main playground area, which is full of flying footballs, shrieking girls and roaring boys at break time.
So, SO sorry, Edie!! I felt really terrible. Just HAD to get out of there… Let me know you got home all right? A xxx
“And did you text back?” asks Tash, passing me the mobile back.
“Yeah, about a million times,” I tell her. “I kept saying it was fine, and asking where she was, and what was wrong. Then I texted her again when I got to Mum’s, to let her know I was there. And I texted her again and again and again, but she never replied.”
“What did your Mum say?” asks Tash. “She must have freaked out at your coming home all on your own!”
Secrets and lies … they’re not a great combination.
But I didn’t feel there was much else I could do, or I’d get Alice B. Lovely into terrible trouble.
“I told Mum she’d left me at the front door,” I admit to Tash. “I said that she’d waited till the door locked behind me and waved me night-night as I went up the stairs.”
“Oh, Edie!” says Tash, nibbling at her lip.
Uh-oh. She can’t put one of her positive spins on this.
This is serious.
“But what about today after school?” Tash frets. “Is she picking you and Stan up as normal, or…”
That “or…” hangs in the air.
The longer neither of us says anything, the bigger the “or” gets, like an ever-expanding bubble that’s about to—
PROD!
A sharp nail is in my back.
I turn round and see it is attached to a finger that is in turn attached to Cara Connelly.
Great.
She’s about to pull sixth-former rank and tell me and Tash to get back to our part of the school, isn’t she?
But instead of giving me a hard time, Cara’s passing me her phone.
Huh?
“This is your mate, isn’t it?” she says. “Dionne said I should show it to you.”
I’m looking at something that seems to be from the local newspaper’s website.
The headline says, “Art At Your Feet!” – with a photo of a woman with red, curly hair crouched down, dressed in a grubby boiler-suit and painting gum on the pavement. The caption says it’s Maggie Baxter, and the feature beside it is a review of the show at the gallery.
“Go further down,” Cara says, probably spotting my confused frown.
I scroll, and there; there, underneath the review, is the blow-up photo of Alice B. Lovely’s painted, fluttery-eyed face, with the real Alice B. Lovely standing beside it.
A smaller headline reads: “Who’s That Girl?”
My eyes quickly scan what comes next.
Mystery surrounds a girl claiming to be the niece of local artist Maggie Baxter. Our reporter tried to talk to the girl, known as Alice D. Lovely –
“It’s Alice B. Lovely!” I find myself raging, though it might as well have been “D”, since I’ve never found out what the “B” stands for.
“Shh!” Tash hushes me, already skimming ahead in her reading.
– who appeared in an outlandish outfit at last night’s private viewing.
Outlandish?! I bristle. Alice B. Lovely looked like the most beautiful, fantastical, special person in the entire room.
When interviewed about her likeness, the girl seemed happy. But the moment our interviewer spotted Ms Baxter and tried to get “niece” and “aunt” together, the teenage girl bolted. Ms Baxter was later quoted as saying she was no relation; the girl was simply someone she’d spotted on the high street one day, coming out of a charity shop. She seemed so unusual that the artist felt compelled to paint her. She had no idea how the girl had managed to get tickets for the exclusive preview show.
I keep opening and shutting my mouth, unsure what to say.
Luckily, Tash and Cara don’t seem to expect me to say anything.
“Here,” says Cara, using her index finger with its long, alien lobster claw to scroll down a little further.
And what she’s scrolled to is an embedded video, very probably shot by the “nice” young reporter guy.
It shows Alice B. Lovely looking into the lens, a hunted, panicked look on her face, and then she turns and runs, becoming a fuzzy blur of white as she disappears along the marble-tiled corridor. She’s heading for the open main doors and the enveloping black evening sky beyond.
“Have you got to this last bit?” says Holly, wandering over with Dionne.
Another set of alien lobster claws hold out a mobile that they want me to look at.
If you know this girl, please call, email or tweet us on…
It’s on the tip of my suddenly poisonous tongue to spin around and say, “What? So you want me to get in touch and tell them whatever I can?!”
But before I slip back into my bad old ways, to a time before I felt happy, I realize that no one – not Cara or Holly or Dionne – expects me to do
that.
They’re simply showing it to me as it is.
“Hey, check it out,” I hear Tash say. She has her own (normal) finger on the screen of Holly’s phone and she’s scrolling to something that’s caught her attention.
I hold my hand over the screen so I can see it easier in the sunlight.
It’s a Twitter thread.
This girl go 2 my skool: Mary Magdalen Girls High. Fact. Her name Ali sumfin. She in 6th Form. She well crazy. Fact. LOL
I’m cold and hot and cold and hot and cold again.
The hands of the happiness clock are trembling, straining to spring backwards.
“You OK?” says Cara, digging her alien lobster claws into my shoulder.
Ali.
I’ve heard that name before.
But the very end of last night seemed like such a blur I’d forgotten about it till now.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” I say with a non-committal nod. I don’t feel remotely OK, but even if Cara and her friends aren’t as bad and horribly obnoxious as I used to think, they’re still not people I trust to share my innermost thoughts with.
I save that for the trusted few: Tash, Stan, Alice B. Lovely … and maybe Buddy.
But since Alice B. Lovely has gone AWOL, I guess that just leaves the girl, the kid and the magpie.
“What are you thinking?” asks Tash, who, like I say, knows me way, way, way too well.
She’s frowning.
I think she might be guessing that I’m about to do something I shouldn’t.
“I’ve got a really bad headache, and I need to go home,” I lie, as I get up and walk off. “Can you let the teachers know?”
“Edie! EDIE!!” she calls after me, but I’m not looking back…
Mary Magdalene High School for Girls is on the other side of the park from my school.
According to its website …
the school motto is: “Every Girl Counts” (pretty lame; why not extend it to “Every Girl Counts And Is Quite Good At English Comprehension Too”?)
start time is a very early eight-thirty (ouch)
home time is an equally early three p.m. (nice)
I guess that early finish time is the reason Alice B. Lovely could offer her after-school nannying services; most other schools in town don’t get out till three-thirty. And with me and Stan in after-school clubs, Alice would have tons of time to wander home and transfer Buddy to his pet carrier before turning up outside our school gates.
Life According To...Alice B. Lovely Page 13
