After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘And when we got to Warwick it was dark and we didn’t have any money for a taxi and we didn’t even know where Dad lived . . .’

  ‘And then I started to cry . . .’

  ‘It was very difficult,’ said Twig, ‘because we don’t have mobile phones. I do think after this we should. It’s very unfair that we don’t. We had to ask a complete stranger to call Dad for us. It’s very lucky we know his number by heart.’

  ‘He felt sorry for me because I was crying,’ said Jas. ‘And then Daddy came to fetch us in the helicopter.’

  And then it was all eyes on Dad, who coughed and looked embarrassed, and the stranger who had arrived with them and whom Dad had just introduced as Herbie stood up and gave a little bow and said that as it happened, the helicopter belonged to him.

  ‘YES BUT WHO ARE YOU?’ boomed Grandma.

  ‘My name is Herbert Goldman,’ said Herbie. ‘I am a director of the Goldman Picture Company, and I am pleased to say that this afternoon we finalised a contract with your son to write a major motion picture set in twelfth-century Britain called Daughters of King Arthur.’

  ‘We were in a meeting with our lawyers all day, and my phone was off,’ said Dad. ‘I couldn’t tell anyone before now because they swore me to secrecy, and also I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. I’ve been working on it all term.’

  ‘Oh my God, the glasses!’ said Flora. ‘The long hair! The phone! The designer jeans! All those crazy questions! We thought you were having an affair!’

  ‘No!’ Dad looked round the room at each of us in turn. We all nodded.

  ‘I TOLD YOU YOU SHOULD SAY SOMETHING,’ said Grandma.

  ‘Does Mum know?’ asked Flora, and we were all quiet for a moment, thinking about Mum.

  Mr Goldman’s phone rang at that moment, and he hurried out of the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Dad. ‘I know it’s been difficult, but you have to understand how much money they are paying me for this. To be honest, it’s rather obscene. I’ve never seen so many zeros on a cheque. I’ve actually resigned from the university.’

  Mr Goldman came back into the room and announced that his helicopter was going to take him to his hotel and did anyone need a lift anywhere? Constable Roberts looked sour and said no, he and Dad were going to walk to the station, and Dad said he could stick his walk to the station. Constable Roberts said Dad should be careful not to add resisting arrest to his charge of assaulting a minor, which was when Grandma asked Constable Roberts WHAT ON EARTH HE WAS DOING HERE ANYWAY and it was his turn to look embarrassed as he said he came to tell us the children had been sighted at Warwick station before being whisked away in a helicopter.

  ‘We believed they had been kidnapped,’ he said with dignity. ‘It’s not the sort of news you want to give someone over the phone.’

  ‘Why didn’t you phone when you found them?’ Flora asked Dad.

  ‘I tried,’ he said. ‘But the line was engaged.’

  ‘You are a danger to society and to these children,’ said Constable Roberts.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ shouted Dad, which can be a good line in a film but in our kitchen sounded a bit overdramatic.

  ‘I can prove it,’ I said. Everybody turned to stare at me then. I blushed and held out my camera. ‘He was only defending Flora. He was a hero. You’ll see, I filmed everything.’

  Saturday 24 December: Evening

  After he saw my film, Officer Roberts didn’t take Dad to the police station but marched him and Joss round to his grandparents instead. He said he could understand how Dad got so angry, but that Joss was a minor, and even though it did look like everyone had been attacking everyone else, breaking his nose was a bit of an overreaction and Joss’s family might want to press charges.

  Mr Goldman watched them go, looking thoughtful. ‘Maybe one day we could make a film about your family,’ he told me, and he gave me his business card. ‘Call me if you’re interested,’ he said.

  And then he said goodbye to everybody and he was gone, just like that, in his helicopter.

  Dad looked quite pleased with himself when he came back. He said Mr and Mrs Bateman weren’t going to press charges and had finally admitted that Joss came to London because he kept getting into trouble at his old school, not just for pranks like the rats or bunking off class but for more serious things like stealing and drinking and getting into fights. Apparently he and CJ and Sharky and Spudz used to fight all the time, and the final straw for Joss’s parents was when Joss punched someone in the face at a party because he didn’t like the way the guy was looking at Kiera. His grandparents said how pleased they were when Joss started going out with Flora, because she seemed to have such a calming influence on him, but then when Dad asked why he and Flora were fighting Joss admitted that he had been lying to her about Kiera. She had finished with him after he hit the boy who was supposedly looking at her, but then she heard he was seeing someone in London and decided she still really liked him after all. So he started going out with her again, but then when Flora found out and yelled at him over the phone it made him upset because he realised he really liked her too. So, he came to London to try to get back with her as well, only things didn’t quite go according to plan.

  ‘Nobody messes my daughter around,’ said Dad, Flora started to cry again and said did we think she should forgive Joss or should she actually never speak to him again, and Grandma said, ‘IF YOU FORGIVE THAT BOY I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN.’

  It was a strange day. We all went back to bed at about three o’clock in the morning, and when we got up it was properly Christmas Eve. Grandma was cooking an enormous breakfast and Dad was making mulled wine. There was a fire in the grate and lights on the tree and there were the four of us, building a snowman in the garden.

  But this is us, the Gadsbys. Christmas Eve is different for us, and the snowman actually looked more like a snowgirl, because without consulting us Jas had gone into my old bedroom and taken Iris’s red Father Christmas hat out of the box full of her things at the back of the wardrobe, the girl’s one with the long blonde plaits hanging down the side. We couldn’t help laughing when we saw it, except then we all cried a bit as well because Iris used to wear it every single Christmas since she was about five years old.

  ‘Was it wrong?’ asked Jas. ‘Just, I look in that box quite often, and I thought it would be nice.’

  ‘Oh Jazzy.’ Flora drew Jas into her arms for a kiss. ‘Of course it wasn’t wrong. It’s lovely.’

  ‘I look in her box too,’ said Twig. ‘And sometimes I lie on her bed.’

  ‘I pretend my shadow is actually her,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I talk to it.’

  They all stared. ‘That’s a bit mad, Blue,’ said Flora, but her smile got all twisted, and then Jas started to cry so hard it was quite difficult to understand what she was saying, but when I did I wanted to cry again too.

  ‘I don’t remember her!’ cried Jas. ‘I smell her clothes and I touch her things, but when I close my eyes I CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT SHE WAS REALLY LIKE!’

  ‘Me neither,’ whispered Twig. ‘That’s why I do it too.’

  Flora wrapped her arms round both of them.

  ‘Say something,’ she hissed at me. ‘Say something to make them remember.’

  I can’t, I wanted to say. I can’t talk about Iris, I just can’t. But they all carried on looking at me, with their big round eyes and wobbly lips and pleading expressions, and suddenly I knew exactly what to say and I started to smile.

  ‘She was bossy,’ I said. ‘And she was fearless, and she was good at climbing trees. She never paid attention to anything anyone said, and she used to make us shampoo cats.’

  ‘Not just cats.’ Flora was smiling too. ‘Dogs as well. Even, once, a gerbil.’

  ‘We had ice-cream competitions,’ remembered Twig. ‘To see who could eat the fastest. It used to give me a headache because of the cold, so she made me wear a hat.’

  ‘She taught me to ride on the living-room s
ofa,’ whispered Jas. ‘She made me sit on the arm and pretend to do the rising trot.’

  ‘She nicked all my best T-shirts,’ said Flora. ‘She sold them at the school fete, to raise money for Chinese pandas.’

  We sat out there together for ages, the four of us, snuggled up in the snow, and every memory and story led to more memories and stories. The cold and wet seeped through our jeans and coats. Jas’s lips turned blue and Twig’s teeth started to chatter, but when the light faded and Grandma called us in, we didn’t want to go.

  She’s still out there now, our snowgirl Iris, watching over the garden.

  Watching over us.

  There was a message from Mum on the answerphone this morning. She left it at half-past ten New York time, so just after we had gone to bed, saying that she had found a flight to Paris and that she wasn’t sure how she was going to get to us from there but that she loved us very much.

  ‘Paris?’ said Flora.

  We played it again. She did say Paris. Dad has been trying to call her all day. We know she is in Europe, because of the different ringtone, but we have no idea where.

  ‘There are no trains,’ moaned Dad. ‘There are no ferries, the airports are still closed. What earthly use is it her being in Paris?’

  ‘Maybe she’s with Zoran,’ whispered Jas.

  ‘Paris is a big place, pumpkin,’ said Dad.

  She called at lunchtime and spoke to Dad.

  ‘What did she say?’ asked Flora.

  ‘I couldn’t tell,’ he admitted. ‘She was crying too much.’

  Twig answered when she called at tea-time.

  ‘Something about a tunnel,’ he said. ‘And a queue, and a backlog, and having to wait.’

  Dad tried calling Mum back.

  ‘Also,’ said Twig, ‘something about using someone else’s phone because her battery is dead.’

  The doorbell rang at half-past nine. The Babes leaped off the sofa to answer.

  ‘IT BREAKS MY HEART.’ Grandma actually wiped away a tear. ‘IT CAN’T POSSIBLY BE HER.’

  The rest of us crowded around the window to look. Flora shrieked.

  ‘IT’S ZORAN!’ she cried, and tore out of the room. By the time Dad and I reached the hall, the front door was wide open and snow was pouring in. Zoran stood on the doorstep in a shearling coat and his fur hat, with a Babe on each leg and Flora hanging round his neck.

  ‘But, how?’ said Dad. ‘I mean, why? And where . . .’

  Zoran laughed. It’s amazing how two weeks in Paris can change a man. He’s shaved off his beard for a start, and I have never seen him look so happy, not even at the piano.

  He put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Come outside.’

  There was a new car parked in front of the house. By which I mean an old car, but one we had never seen before.

  A Renault 5, said Twig who notices such things, a model discontinued in 1991, with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

  A Renault 5 with the steering wheel on the wrong side, and Mum asleep in the passenger seat.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Zoran again. He was grinning from ear to ear. ‘She’s been asleep pretty much since we left Dover.’

  So we got our Christmas Eve, one way or another. Grandma made sandwiches and cut more cake, Dad heated more wine, and we sat around the fire until gone midnight. The Babes told the story again of how they went to fetch Dad in Warwick to bring him home. Dad told us all about Mr Goldman, the film, and his new career as a screenwriter.

  ‘I told you I could do it,’ he said to Mum, and she said she never doubted it for a moment, she just didn’t understand why he couldn’t do it at home. And then before they could start arguing Grandma said TELL US WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU, CASSIE. So Mum blew her nose and told us how she used up the last of her phone’s battery to call Zoran, who came to meet her at the airport in a borrowed car, and just kept on driving north until they got to England.

  ‘We waited for hours at the Tunnel,’ she said. ‘I told you, when I phoned.’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t really understand,’ said Twig.

  ‘I’ll drive the car back after Christmas,’ said Zoran. ‘When the snow has gone.’

  ‘But your family!’ cried Flora. ‘Christmas!’

  ‘It’s all about the people you love,’ he smiled.

  Grandma told the story of how Dad rescued Flora. Dad blushed and said, ‘I know I went a bit over the top’, and Mum actually laughed. Zoran glowered and said he never did trust that boy.

  ‘I’m never going away again,’ vowed Mum. ‘I don’t care about Bütylicious and their stupid job. I’m never leaving any of you again,’ and Dad looked like he didn’t completely believe her but was really happy just to hear her say that.

  Me, I didn’t say anything, as usual. I just watched. At midnight, Dad poured out more glasses of mulled wine, mugs of hot chocolate and cups of tea, and we drank to Iris.

  ‘And to all others who’ve gone before us,’ said Grandma softly after we had drunk, and I knew she was thinking about Grandpa.

  ‘To all others who’ve gone before us,’ murmured Zoran, and I knew that he was thinking about his parents.

  He caught me looking at him, and I smiled. Then, because a smile did not feel quite enough, I slid out of my armchair and hugged him.

  If this had been a film, the camera would have zoomed in on each of us in turn. When we drank to Iris, I saw how much it meant to all of us. Not just Mum and Dad and me, but to Flora and Jas and Twig and Grandma too. So the camera wouldn’t linger on any one of us. It would pan slowly from each person to the next and then it would pan outwards until we were all in the picture, her parents and her grandmother and her twin and her other siblings, and a man who never knew her but who loves us too, now, and who would have loved her if he had known her.

  Iris’s family. My family. All of us together.

  Sunday 25 December

  A lot of good things happened today.

  Today Mum and Dad kissed under the mistletoe. We had to make them, but once they started they didn’t stop.

  Today, somehow, despite late flights and snow and secret eleventh-hour film contracts, there were presents under the tree.

  Today, Zoran and Grandma together cooked the biggest meal I think I have ever eaten, and after lunch we sang carols around the piano.

  Jake came round while we were singing. He said he was dropping in on the way to the park because he was bored, like we didn’t all know that for him to come this way is a massive detour. Nobody said anything, but Flora winked. He stayed for tea, and it was nice.

  The Film Diaries Of Bluebell Gadsby

  Scene Twenty (Transcript)

  The Birth of Baby Jesus

  VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING. THE HOUSE AND GARDEN.

  Camera jerks up and down, revealing pyjama bottoms tucked into four sets of snow boots, running as quietly as it is possible for snow boots to run down stairs, over the black and white marble of the hall, slowing to a more careful pace on the icy steps of the veranda and picking up speed again on the trampled snow of the lawn. Camera pans upwards, still jerking every which way. FLORA runs ahead, her pink and green dressing-gown hanging down beneath a thick grey fleece. TWIG and JAS follow, wrapped in blankets. Dawn is not far off and colours are still muted, the sky a soft pale blue streaked with pink and gold.

  Camera stops, once more, by the rats’ two cages. Very carefully, Twig opens the lid of the female rats’ cage and separates the straw in the sleeping hatch to reveal a nest of tiny baby rats, curled around each other.

  TWIG

  (triumphant)

  I knew something was up! I sensed it! I knew they would come at Christmas.

  JAS

  Oh, sweet! Can we call one of them Jesus?

  FLORA

  But I thought this was the girls’ cage! Joss said . . .

  CAMERAMAN (BLUE)

  Joss wouldn’t know a female rat from a hibernating sloth.

  Flora and Blue begin to laugh. They laugh until the
camera is shaking, tears pour down Flora’s face and she has to cross her legs so as not to pee. They laugh until the picture is filled with nothing but the snowy ground, and the Babes laugh too. Their laughter gives way to gasps.

  FLORA

  Come on, let’s go and have breakfast before Zoran and Grandma get up and kick us out of the kitchen.

  Twig closes the lid of the rats’ cage and follows Jas and Flora into the house. Cameraman lingers a little longer. When she is alone, she steps away from the cover of the trees, and raises the camera towards the balcony of next door’s attic bedroom. A shadow is up there, watching. Picture comes back down, showing a view of the house from the back of the garden.

  CAMERAMAN

  Wait for me, I’m starving!

  Picture jerks as Blue begins to run. She stops at the top of the veranda steps. Flora leans in to the picture and plucks the camera from her hands.

  CAMERAMAN (FLORA)

  I’ve always wanted to have a go at this.

  Picture goes in and out of focus. Blue’s voice, off camera, tells Flora to give it back. Flora says no. Picture continues to dance, then settles on close-up of Blue’s face.

  CAMERAMAN

  Gotcha!

  Camera zooms closer still until the screen is full of nothing but Blue’s laughter.

  Camera goes black.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Natasha Farrant has worked in children’s publishing for almost twenty years, running her own literary scouting agency for the past ten. She is the author of two successful adult novels, Diving into Light and Some Other Eden, as well as the Carnegie and Branford Boase long-listed YA historical novel The Things We Did For Love. She grew up in London where she still lives with her husband, their two daughters, a large tortoiseshell cat and a black goldfish called Coco Chanel. She is the eldest of four siblings and has never dyed her hair pink, but her youngest daughter keeps trying to sneak it past her.