Beauty Sleep

by Kathryn Evans

  Guess who we’ve booked to play?

  The Cure.

  Well, it’s not actually them, it’s a holographic version of them but they’re so good it’s easy to believe they’re the real thing. It’s pretty expensive but I quite like that I’m spending some of Miss Lilly’s money on Stacey – her arch-enemy. It’s definitely going to be worth it. When I told Stacey she was going to see Robert Smith nearly live, she just about peed herself with excitement. She bounced around the grounds squealing and nearly put her back out.

  I’m hoping Marsha will come. She’s having a hard time dealing with how ashamed she feels. I genuinely don’t hold any grudges – I like her, I really do, and I get why she did what she did. I’d love it if she came back to school, if she’d let me pay to take care of her mum – she just won’t hear of it. I don’t know, it’s complicated, but I’m working on it.

  Shame is a weird thing. There was such an odd response after the story of Blackhurst became public. Nobody wanted to believe that the cream they’d been putting on their faces, that worked so well, contained cells extracted from children. They didn’t want to give it up, so they just ignored the evidence right in front of their noses. I swear, if we hadn’t got rid of the stock, people would still be buying it today. We destroyed all of it. Cleared out every last warehouse. I wanted to be sure it was over, that no one would ever benefit from what had happened to those children.

  I couldn’t destroy the research though. That was taken, along with all Miss Lilly’s papers, by the police. I think it’s entirely possible it will end up being used somehow – we need new methods to manage infection because of the antibiotic shortage. I really don’t know what to think. Does it mean the suffering wasn’t wasted? Or should it be obliterated because the methods of discovery were just too horrendous? I don’t know. I really don’t.

  Keisha thinks I’m crazy, but I’m still in touch with Miss Lilly. Well, I was. She stopped speaking to me when we shut down the clinic. She was furious and said I’d betrayed her, that she’d trusted me with everything and I’d let her down. Still, when Miss Lilly’s ready to speak to me again, I think I’ll visit her. It’s partly because I want to understand her, partly because there are still things I don’t know – like what really happened to Mum and Ima – but mostly it’s because I don’t want any dark corners left inside me. She’s being punished. I have to think about myself. No hate. No bitterness. No turning her into a monster. She’s just a deeply disturbed woman who cannot hurt me any more.

  There’s one important thing I have left to do and I’m heading to Shem’s shed to do it. I’m wearing my Choose Life T-shirt as a badge of honour and as a promise to Mum and Ima, who chose life for us. Me and my brother.

  I knock on Shem’s door. Scrag yaps as it opens, and he skips around my feet when he sees me. I look up at my brother and smile. He’s grown over the last year, and filled out. I miss the little boy he was but I’ve got quite attached to the grumpy teenager he is.

  “Come in then,” he says, still awkward but trying hard not to be. He takes the box I’m carrying and sets it down. I sit on his bed where Batfink is curled up. She stretches out her front paws and yawns widely before padding her way onto my lap. I kiss her soft warm head. Shem’s kettle whistles on the tiny stove that serves as his kitchen.

  “I thought you’d want tea,” he says.

  I nod but I can’t speak because sometimes it just feels so miraculous that I’m in the same room as him, my heart puffs up in a cloud of contentment. When he’s handed me my tea, I say, “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  We’ve got some letters to read, and we’re going to do it together. It’s going to be hard but it’s part of our story. The part we never got to live. There’s a cold corner inside of us, where Mum and Ima should be, and it needs warming up.

  I learned a few things from Vera’s book, How to be Calm in The Midst of A Storm. You can live your life with a partly frozen heart, but ice cracks under pressure. Far better to melt it gently, even if it hurts you. Even if it scares you.

  I pick up a letter.

  Our beautiful babies, today we walked by the pond in the park. There were two swans circling on the water, their heads dipped together to make the shape of a heart. They reminded us of you. Everything reminds us of you…

  No book is an island, and I have a few thank yous for those that helped in the creation of this one.

  Emily and Archie, try not to be sick when I say this, but seeing the bond between you two has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. I hope I’ve shown a fraction of that in this book. Also, thanks for endlessly answering my synonym questions. If you can think of another way of saying, “You’re the best,” it definitely applies to you.

  Nick, you turned your life upside down while I was writing this book and I know it was partly to make more space for me. Thank you. I am so glad you lives wiv me.

  Dr Blood, Helen Peters and the girls of Roedean School. Thank you for sharing so much with me. I genuinely couldn’t have written this book without your help – my school experience was so very different. Your generosity with your space and stories was invaluable. You gave me a cloth to embroider; I hope you don’t mind the liberties I took.

  To my hairdressers, Buzby and Blue in Chichester, where much of this book was written, especially to Albert Pascal, Kate Gibson, Sophie Yates – you’re all FABULOUS, darlings! And Kate, you so inspired Susan’s random sayings…I had to cut the “Did I blink or was that a power cut” line though – my editors didn’t believe anyone would actually say that.

  To all my SCBWI pals, especially my original online critique gang who met Laura and Shem a gazillion years ago in a very different story. You know the truth, it never would have happened without you.

  To every librarian that was, is and ever shall be. Unappreciated so much of the time, you change lives. We need you and not just for biscuits.

  Endless thanks, always, to my agent Sophie Hicks. Your faith in Laura and Shem made this story live.

  And finally, thanks to all at Usborne but particularly Will Steele for the glorious UK cover of this book and always, always to all my editors, but most especially Sarah Stewart and Anne Finnis, whose input is at least half the value of anything good I’ve ever written. The rhubarb gin is on me!

  Kathryn Evans has been an actor, a waitress, a celery cutter and a newspaper deliverer – she’s even scrubbed the decks of the Mary Rose. Now she combines being an author with being a mum, running a farm, volunteering as a co-regional advisor for SCBWI, dancing and fencing competitively. Kathryn’s debut novel More of Me was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and won the Crystal Kite Award, and also won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award – the first YA novel ever to do so.

  The world must not know about our freakery…

  Teva’s life seems normal: school, friends, boyfriend. But at home she hides an impossible secret.

  Eleven other Tevas.

  Because once a year, Teva separates into two, leaving a younger version of herself stuck at the same age, in the same house…watching the new Teva live the life that she’d been living. But as her seventeenth birthday rolls around, Teva is determined not to let it happen again. She’s going to fight for her future.

  Even if that means fighting herself.

  “Weird, wonderful and utterly fabulous.” Teri Terry

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  Every so often, two people are born who are the perfect match for each other: soulmates. But what if meeting your soulmate is earth-shattering – literally? After a chance meeting, Poppy and Noah find themselves swept up in a whirlwind romance unlike anything they’ve experienced before. But with a secret international agency preparing to separate them and a trail of destruction rumbling in their wake, they are left with an impossible choice between the end of the world, or a li
fe without love…

  The first time I was born, I was Emma. I was beautiful. I had everything to live for. But I died. I was 22.

  Ana struggles to live a normal life, bombarded by memories of her previous life as Emma. The worst memories are of a little girl who tragically drowned: was Emma responsible? Consumed by guilt, Ana will do anything to uncover the past.

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com

  Text © Kathryn Evans, 2019

  The right of Kathryn Evans to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Cover images: Test screen glitch texture © Shutterstock / Tomertu Closed eyes © Shutterstock / Dmytro Bochkov. Open eyes © Shutterstock / LUCKY_CAT

  The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.

  All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or used in any way except as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or loaned or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  EPUB: 9781474965729 KINDLE: 9781474965736

  05153/02