by Gwyneth Rees
A Letter from the Author
Hi there,
I just wanted to say hello and tell you a bit about myself.
I live on the very outside of London near the River Thames, with my husband (who is Dutch and makes great pancakes!) and our two young daughters. We also have a Siamese cat called Hamish who came to us as a very timid rescue cat and spent the first few weeks hiding up the chimney! Now he is a real family cat and loves sitting on my lap (and trying to sit on my keyboard!) when I’m at my desk writing.
I’m half Welsh and half English but I grew up in Scotland. Before I became a writer I worked as a doctor, mainly with children and teenagers. From as far back as I can remember I’ve always loved stories in any form – reading books, watching films, playing make-believe games. As a child I always had one fantasy world or another on the go and as I grew older that changed to actual ongoing sagas that I wrote down in exercise books and worked on for weeks at a time.
I really hope you enjoy reading this – and that you’ll write to me at [email protected] to let me know what you think. I’d love it if you told me a bit about yourself too!
Best wishes,
For Eliza and Lottie, with love
Contents
A Letter from the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgements
Books by Gwyneth Rees
Chapter One
‘Nice work, Poppy,’ our English teacher, Mr Anderson, told me as he handed me back my book report. ‘I especially like the way you discussed the villain – very thoughtful and insightful. Well done.’
‘Thanks,’ I muttered, feeling myself blush as I pushed my glasses further back on my nose. Mr Anderson has got to be the coolest – and cutest – teacher in our school, and I know I’m not the only one in my class to have a bit of a crush on him.
My friend Anne-Marie, who sits beside me, gave me a nudge with her elbow. I knew she was going to start teasing me about Mr Anderson as soon as the bell rang.
It was last thing on Friday afternoon and Mr Anderson had given us ten minutes to complete the task of making a sketch and giving it a title. We then had to pass our drawing to the person next to us, who would have to take it home and write a poem to go with it to read out in class the following Friday. Mr Anderson is always coming up with stuff like that to do at the end of the day on a Friday afternoon. Normally I’d have been sketching away furiously along with everyone else, trying to make Anne-Marie’s homework task as tricky as possible, but today my heart wasn’t really in it. I couldn’t stop thinking about my foster-sister Amy and how much I was going to miss her. Then, with just a few minutes to go, I suddenly thought of something to draw.
‘Wow, Sadie!’ Mr Anderson was exclaiming as he reached the desk behind mine.
I twisted round to see what he was wowing about and saw that Sadie Shaw (who sits right behind me, unfortunately) had drawn a stuffed bird just like the one in our art department. It was beautifully drawn but she had used red pen to add an angry gash dripping with blood right across the bird’s neck. The title she had written was ‘MURDER’.
‘What are you looking at?’ she hissed when she saw me staring.
Sadie is new to our school, having started a few weeks ago, halfway through Year Eight. Despite the fact that we’re related, I have no memory of meeting Sadie before her first day at our school. I wouldn’t even have known who she was if Mum hadn’t recognised her name when I told her there was a new girl. So far Sadie had mostly avoided talking to me and had made it perfectly clear that the last thing she wanted was to be my friend. I’d stopped trying to be nice to her after the second week, when she’d grabbed me in the girls’ toilets and threatened to make my life miserable if I told anyone the truth about us. I’d told her I didn’t want anyone to know either, so keeping it a secret suited me fine.
Sadie acted cold and aloof towards everybody and pretty soon all sorts of rumours were flying around the school about her. The most popular one was that she was the delinquent niece of our headmaster, Mr Jamieson, and had been expelled from her last school. This was because she looks a bit like him (they both have reddish hair and blue eyes and scowl a lot), plus she’d been seen going into his office a few times. There was also the more colourful rumour someone had started that her dad was a hitman! I’d gone straight home and asked Mum if that could be true and she’d said she doubted it, but since she hadn’t had any contact with Sadie’s dad in years she couldn’t tell me anything for certain.
Of course I know better than to believe rumours, but Sadie certainly seemed a lot tougher than most of the kids in our school and nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of her. She’d recently moved to our fairly small grammar school from a big comprehensive school on the other side of town. Anne-Marie, who always seems to know everything about everybody, said she’d moved to one of the new houses on the other side of the park. (Mum was more interested in that fact than anything else, saying that she wondered where Sadie’s dad had got the money.)
Sadie might seem cold and detached on the surface but there were definitely a few things she was passionate about. The most obvious one was art. Ever since she’d arrived she’d been regularly impressing our art teacher with the work she produced, although the other day when Miss Hodge had brought out the stuffed birds for us to sketch, Sadie had left her paper totally blank, saying it was cruel to kill animals just to stuff them.
‘Maybe they died of natural causes and then they got stuffed,’ Anne-Marie had said with a grin.
‘It doesn’t even matter how they died!’ Sadie had blurted out angrily. ‘We don’t stuff humans and put them on display, do we? So why should we do it to animals?’
‘Same reason we eat animals and not humans, I suppose,’ Katy Clarkson put in smugly. ‘Cos they aren’t so high up the food chain.’
It had started off a heated debate in our class and Miss Hodge had looked really relieved when the bell rang.
Mr Anderson perched himself on the edge of Sadie’s desk, enthusing over her drawing and asking her questions about it. To say that the rest of the girls in our class were jealous would be an understatement. (If there is one teacher in our school who you would want perched on your desk it is definitely Mr Anderson.)
‘Sadie’s clearly making a point here,’ Mr Anderson said as he held up her drawing to show to the rest of us.
‘Too right!’ Sadie agreed with him angrily. ‘Taxidermy is completely gross and the school shouldn’t allow stuffed birds – or animals – on the premises!’
‘O … K …’ Mr Anderson gave Katy and her friend Julia Munro a stern look to stop them giggling. ‘So, Sadie, I can see you feel very strongly about this issue. Perhaps you can get the school council to bring it up for further discussion.’
‘School council’s useless,’ Sadie scoffed. ‘We had one at my last school. Goody-
goody teacher’s pets, all of them.’
Mr Anderson said something in reply but I didn’t really take it in because I was too busy feeling mortified and sliding down in my chair. I had been elected as the Year Eight representative on our school council at the start of the year after writing an admittedly cringe-inducing statement about why I thought I’d be good at the job. Hopefully nobody would mention that right now.
Of course straight away Anne-Marie (who has a bit of a big mouth) announced, ‘Poppy’s on the school council.’
‘Shut up, Anne-Marie,’ I hissed, ducking my head forward and letting my hair fall over my face so nobody would see me blushing. (I have shoulder-length brown hair, which I usually tie back, but today I had a couple of spots on my face that I was trying to hide.)
‘Don’t tell me that’s your school councillor’s badge, Poppy.’ Sadie was pointing to the little felt flower brooch pinned to the lapel of my blazer, which was over the back of my seat. ‘Looks like it was made by a five-year-old.’
‘A four-year-old, actually,’ I replied fiercely. Amy had made the brooch as a goodbye gift and presented it to me that morning just as I’d been going out the door to school.
The bell rang and there was a massive kerfuffle and loads of laughter as people swapped their drawings and got ready to go.
‘You three swap with each other,’ Mr Anderson said, since Sadie didn’t have a desk partner. Sadie quickly gave hers to Anne-Marie and I didn’t even get a look at Anne-Marie’s sketch as she shoved it straight into my bag. That just left mine, which I was obviously meant to give to Sadie.
I had sketched the face of a little girl with a wild Afro and called it ‘Amy’. Now I felt reluctant to part with it. I had visions of Sadie crumpling it up in a ball and trampling on it.
Sadie looked like she couldn’t care less either way, but unfortunately Mr Anderson noticed.
‘Is something wrong, Poppy?’
I suddenly felt teary as I remembered Amy wouldn’t be there to greet me when I got home.
I so had to pull myself together.
‘No,’ I mumbled as I handed Sadie the drawing and pulled a tissue out of my bag. I removed my glasses, which I only need for reading the board in any case, and quickly wiped my eyes.
That’s when I noticed Sadie staring at me. ‘What?’ I demanded crossly.
‘Nothing,’ she said with a small smile. ‘It’s just … you don’t look nearly as clever without your glasses.’
‘Gee … thanks,’ I grunted.
‘I’m just making an observation, that’s all. Glasses really do make people look brainier. It’s pretty weird considering that they just mean you’ve got defective eyesight, right?’
I glared at her. I hate my glasses, but I made a point of putting them back on my nose rather than away in my bag like I usually do at the end of a lesson. I didn’t want her to think I cared what she thought.
‘Are you coming, Poppy?’ Anne-Marie asked impatiently. I’d almost forgotten she was still there.
I hurried to catch her up. Anne-Marie can be a bit of a pain sometimes but we were at primary school together and we’ve been friends for a really long time. We were never best friends, but when we transferred to the grammar school our other friends mostly went to different schools, so we’d ended up becoming closer.
I’d quickly made a new best friend called Olivia in Year Seven, and Anne-Marie had been jealous, which was awkward, but then Olivia had moved away just before we started Year Eight. Anne-Marie had said I could have another chance to be her best friend if I wanted, even though she had other friends now, and I have to say it made me see that loyalty in a friendship is important too – it’s not just about how ‘close’ or ‘in tune’ the two of you are.
I miss Olivia though. Anne-Marie and I don’t always see things the same way and I have to be a lot more careful what I say to her. Plus she really embarrassed me one time in Year Seven by broadcasting something I’d told her in confidence.
She had asked me and some of the other girls to vote on who was the cutest male teacher in our school, getting us to fill out a silly questionnaire in which we had to give marks out of five for each attribute she’d named. One was ‘Cuteness of bum’ and she wanted to know why I hadn’t given Mr Anderson 5/5. So I had truthfully said that I’d knocked off a mark because when he’d taken off his jacket the day before I’d noticed that, compared to some of the other candidates, he had quite a chunky bum. And that if I was giving 5/5 to the compact muscly bottom of Mr Christie, our PE teacher, then I couldn’t in all fairness give the same mark to our English teacher.
Anne-Marie had thought that was hilarious and repeated it to loads of other people. Then Julia Munro – who can be really bitchy – related the story to Mr Anderson in front of the whole class a few days later. I thought I was going to die of embarrassment that day, and even now just thinking about it makes me blush. Olivia hadn’t wanted me to be friends at all with Anne-Marie after that, but Anne-Marie was so persistent in trying to win me back that I’d eventually agreed to forgive her. And I suppose I was glad I had when Olivia told me her dad had got a new job and they were moving away in the summer holiday.
‘What’s wrong, Poppy?’ Anne-Marie asked me now as we walked out of the classroom with Sadie hot on our heels. ‘You’ve been looking miserable all day.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I lied, not wanting to mention Amy while Sadie was listening in.
‘It’s probably something sappy like her pet hamster died,’ Julia said as she came up behind us.
Anne-Marie whirled round instantly. ‘That’s not funny!’ she snarled. ‘My hamster died last week and I was really upset!’ Anne-Marie is a real animal lover and for as long as I’ve known her she’s always kept loads of pets.
‘Katy told me you had a funeral in your back garden and that you even made a little gravestone for him,’ Julia said scornfully. ‘What does it say? Here lies Hammy.’ She started to laugh.
‘His name was Squeaky and he was like one of the family. And it’s perfectly normal to have a funeral for a pet! Isn’t it, Poppy?’ Anne-Marie looked at me for support.
But before I could speak Sadie said a little piously, ‘It’s normal for humans to have funerals. Having one for a hamster is unnatural and pretty silly if you ask me.’
‘Yeah – well, I didn’t ask you!’ Anne-Marie snapped.
‘Maybe you should’ve got it stuffed instead, Anne-Marie,’ I suggested coolly.
Anne-Marie had to rush off at that point so as not to be late for the piano lesson she has after school on a Friday. That left me alone with Sadie.
‘So who’s Amy?’ she asked before I could get away from her.
I sighed. Maybe I should give her a chance. Maybe if I told her, I’d discover that she did have a heart underneath all those tough layers.
‘Amy’s the little girl my mum’s been fostering,’ I explained. ‘She left this morning. She’s being adopted.’
‘Oh …’ She looked quite thoughtful and just for a second I thought she might be going to say something sympathetic.
But of course I was wrong.
‘My dad told me that your mum takes in other people’s kids.’ She paused. ‘So why’s that, then? Isn’t she happy with the one she’s got?’ And she gave me a mischievous grin before flouncing off.
Chapter Two
As I walked out of school a good twenty minutes later I was still thinking about Sadie. It’s just really hard to believe sometimes that we’re cousins.
Sadie is absolutely nothing like me – not in appearance, not in personality, and certainly not in the way she behaves. I mean, here I am with my mid-brown unruly hair which never sits nicely, my increasingly spotty face and my alarmingly growing boobs. (I’ve had to start wearing a bra recently.) Plus I’m always blushing these days and I seem to get embarrassed a lot more easily than I did when I first started secondary school eighteen months ago.
Sadie, on the other hand, always looks perfect. She’s got sleek reddish
hair cut in a swingy bob, striking blue eyes and of course she’s got perfect vision too. She never has a single spot and there isn’t an ounce of fat on her. And she hasn’t got embarrassingly noticeable boobs yet either. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her blush and she’s always super quick to say something smart to put other people down. It’s not even like she needs to most of the time, because in most subjects she easily holds her own despite having gone to a pretty rubbish school (according to her) before joining ours. As for art – well, there she makes everyone else’s work look like nursery school stuff.
‘Hey, Poppy!’ yelled a familiar voice.
I turned to see Josh coming out of school behind me. Josh and I have known each other since we were babies and now Olivia’s left I definitely consider him to be my best friend, even though I know I’m probably not his. Mind you, he never tries to hide the fact that we’re friendly. His mum and mine met at some baby and toddler class, where they became really good friends, and since he was an only child like me, we played together a lot when we were little.
I was thirteen last month and Josh is actually only six months older than me, though he’s in the year above me at school. Mum often comments on Josh’s looks – his big brown eyes and cute freckles in particular – and I know there are plenty of girls in our year and his own who fancy him something rotten. Occasionally I get to hang out with him and his Year Nine mates, which makes Anne-Marie really jealous.
‘So … what are you still doing here?’ Josh asked me.
‘Oh, just had some stuff to do,’ I muttered, not wanting to say I’d been wasting time in the toilets to avoid leaving the building at the same time as Sadie. ‘What about you?’
‘Had to go and get my phone back from Mrs Smee. She caught me and Sean texting each other in class again.’ Sean has been his best mate since the start of this year. I don’t really know Sean that well, but because he and his twin sister, Sasha, are Mr Anderson’s step-kids I suppose I’ve taken a bit more of an interest in him than any of Josh’s other mates. It was about this time last year when the news spread about Sean’s mum dating our English teacher, and then they got married in the summer holiday. It was a pretty major gossip-fest for a while.
