Angels Next Door

by Karen McCombie

  ‘ROLL OVER, Alastair!’ Dot booms.

  ‘He’s not rolling over,’ Coco is saying. ‘Why don’t you try a treat?’

  ‘Hey …’ Woody grins as he peers into our garden. ‘Isn’t that a –’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, hurrying through my gate and slamming it shut as if that’ll block out his laughter.

  I hope he’s got the message and is leaving, but I’m not going to turn and check because my cheeks are on fire. I know what’ll happen tomorrow morning. Those brain-dead Year 8 boys he calls mates? They’ll all pass here, pointing and cracking up at me and my dumb kid ‘sister’ and her stupid lump of wood on a lead.

  ‘Riley!!’ Dot squeals now, passing the lead to Coco so she can come running over and give me a squeeze-of-death.

  ‘Gently! I like my lungs the shape they are!’ I tell her, trying to ease Dot’s grip. Out of the corner of my eye I peek and see Woody ambling off up the street. Good. ‘Dot, I said let go!’

  I’m just about to try wrangling myself free again when I feel an odd sensation.

  Tickle.

  Prickles of tickles.

  The hairs on my arms are standing up as if something or someone is stroking my skin with a feather-soft touch. It’s just the chill of a sudden breeze, but it surprises me enough to spin back round in the direction of Woody, though I’m not looking at him any more. I’m staring at the silver estate car that’s pulling up to the pavement.

  It’s parking.

  Parking right outside number thirty-three.

  Like a thunderbolt in my head, I remember a conversation with Tia just last week. ‘Hey, who’s bought your house?’ I’d asked as I’d helped her pack her beautiful room full of stuff into a huddle of dull cardboard boxes.

  ‘Don’t know.’ She’d shrugged, not seeming to care. ‘The estate agent just said it’s a family.’

  Well, that looks like a family car. I can’t see anyone clearly, but there’s more than one person inside. Enough to be a whole family?

  ‘Hee, hee, hee!’ Dot giggles, squeezing me tighter. I hardly notice; I’m not really concentrating on my squashed ribs at the moment. Cos the driver’s door is opening.

  And, oh … now there’s a rumble as a removal van veers round the bend in the road and grumbles to a stop behind the car.

  ‘Hey, looks like that might be the Angelos!’

  Hazel’s voice makes me jump as she appears in the doorway, the laundry basket in her arms.

  ‘The Angelos?’ I say, with Dot still wrapped round me like an affectionate apron.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Angelo – the postman told me he’d already started delivering mail for them,’ explains Hazel. ‘I’d better get this lot in the machine. Keep an eye out and tell me what our new neighbours are like!’

  It still feels odd to me when Hazel says stuff like that: ‘our’ neighbours, ‘our’ house. It’s mine and Dad’s. She and Dot just happen to share it with us.

  Which reminds me, Hazel and Dad haven’t seen the glitter trail on the fence yet. I might have to help Dot scrub that off before they do …

  ‘Dotty! Dotty!’ yelps Coco, cottoning on to what Hazel’s just said. ‘The angels are here! Look, look!’

  ‘Lemme see!’ shrieks Dot, dropping her hug-of-death and craning for a better look.

  How funny, Dot and Coco are going to be mighty disappointed when an ordinary family pour out of the car. They’re hoping for heavenly wings and harp backing music, and all they’ll probably get is a harassed mum and dad with a squad of squawking babies and toddlers.

  Yep, just as I thought, there’s a perfectly normal-looking woman coming out of the driver’s side now, and a matching normal man coming out of the passenger side.

  They’re wandering off to talk to three big, muscly blokes in canary-yellow polo shirts who’ve jumped out of the lorry cab and started thunking open its back doors.

  Creak!

  At that small metallic sound I focus again on the parked silver car, and see its back passenger door swing open.

  A girl.

  Tall, with waist-length wavy gold-red hair. She unfurls herself on to the pavement, brushing an unruly wisp off her face and blinking dreamily at the house – as if she’s just woken up.

  A short denim dungaree dress, that’s what she’s wearing, a thick, hand-knitted, pillar-box-red cardie slouched on top. Her longs legs like liquorice in black woolly tights and loosely tied ankle boots.

  I guess she must be about twelve, same as me and Tia. (Well, just me, I suppose I should say now.)

  ‘Is SHE an angel, Riley?’ Dot asks me loudly, her nose crinkling, her arm pointing.

  ‘Shhh!’ I say sharply, shoving Dot’s arm down. ‘No, she’s just a girl.’

  ‘Well, what about HER?’ Dot roars now, pointing her other arm in the direction of the car.

  Another girl, following the first one out on to the pavement.

  Shorter this time, wearing thick-rimmed black glasses, a long, baggy grey jumper, leggings and pumps. But what I really notice is the two tight dark buns on her head. They look a little like diddy Mickey Mouse ears.

  What she seems to notice is her new home. Her eyes are narrowed, sternly scanning number thirty-three as if she’s sussing the house out and seeing if it meets with her approval.

  ‘No, Dot,’ I whisper, pushing that arm down too. ‘She’s not an angel either.’

  I reckon this second girl is about my age too … Twins, maybe? Non-identical, that’s for sure.

  ‘Then this one, Riley? What about her?’ Coco joins in with the questions and pointing.

  Huh? Someone else is clambering out of the rear passenger door.

  It’s a third girl. Another sister?

  Skinny as a whippet, stubby white-blonde plaits, beaming a smile as she blinks. I feel myself blinking too. Her outfit’s a bedazzling mix of a bright pink duffel jacket, denim shorts, stripy tights and sequinned baseball boots.

  ‘Sorry, but she’s just another ordinary girl,’ I tell Coco, though her style is anything but ordinary. No one I know has the courage to wear colours that bright, shoes that sparkly – at least not all together. At our school all the girls mostly like to dress in shades of black and grey, in school and out.

  This third new neighbour … although she’s quite dainty now I look at her, I’m sure she’s around the same age as the first two girls.

  Triplets?!

  Is there such a thing as extremely non-identical triplets?

  ‘They’re WEIRD!’ Dot suddenly announces loudly, while Coco gawps open-mouthed, her little button eyes desperately searching for signs of white feathers.

  ‘Dot, they are not weird,’ I whisper, desperate for my sort-of-stepsis to shut up.

  Looking after Dot can be a bit like trying to herd snakes. It is seriously dangerous. She’s the kid on the bus who’ll shout, ‘WHY’S that man got such a BIG NOSE?’ or be the only person brave/stupid enough to hug a growling Staffie when other people cross the road to avoid it.

  Still, I kind of know what Dot is getting at. Labelling these girls ‘weird’ is her five-year-old shorthand for ‘different’. And, somehow, they are different. Different-looking from each other (the tall dreamy one, the stern-looking one, the pretty, ditzy one) but together they don’t look like anyone in my neighbourhood. It’s as if a small flock of flamingos has just elegantly flapped its way into a drab old penguin colony.

  ‘They do TOO look weird!’ Dot practically hollers.

  OK, that’s too much – I wrap a hand over Dot’s mouth, and hope it looks like I’m giving her a sisterly hug if any of the girls look over. Not that they do. They’re all drifting towards their house, staring, staring. The tall one gazes up at what used to be Tia’s room, her hair flaming behind her in the breeze. The stern one steps slowly and surely up the path as if she’s on a tightrope or a catwalk. The third girl goes to join the others, by way of the shrubs, gently running her fingers over the autumn foliage.

  ‘Are they maybe people off the telly, Riley?’ Coco sugge
sts, spotting their specialness and trying to find her own way to describe it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say with a shrug.

  Perhaps they are. I could sort of see them as actresses, or even models. If they were a few years older, I might have guessed they were in some cool, quirky girl band or something.

  ‘Urgh!’ I suddenly groan as Dot frees herself by licking the hand that I’ve slapped over her mouth.

  ‘Look, Riley!’ she trills, pointing frantically. ‘The weird people HAVE GOT A DOG!’

  I’ve been so busy failing to shush Dot that I hadn’t spotted it hopping out of the car last.

  But now I see it, and I’m going to get a closer look than I’d really like to, cos I’ll have to go after Dot. She’s just flown out of our garden, desperate to introduce herself and Alastair – being dragged behind by his lead – to the newest four-legged resident on the street.

  Put it this way: since Dot won’t bother to stop and wonder whether or not the new dog on the block might chew her or Alastair to pieces, I have to do her thinking for her.

  ‘Dot! DOT!’ I call out as I career round the gate and along the pavement, Coco trailing after me.

  Too late – Dot’s already thrown her arms round the dog’s furry neck. But luckily it isn’t a wolverine or anything too obviously carnivorous.

  It’s just … well, it’s just a big blob of snow-blond downy fluff, like one of those poodle mash-ups. A poodle crossed with a golden retriever, crossed with … with a cloud? Whatever it is, it seems to be grinning.

  ‘Dot!’ another voice repeats, and I gaze over at the pretty, ditzy-looking girl, who is speaking. ‘Dot!’

  Is she taking the mickey out of me? I wonder to myself.

  It’s the sort of thing Lauren, Joelle and Nancy would do, and then smirk behind their hands and pretend they hadn’t said a word.

  But the girl isn’t smirking; she’s smiling as if she’s just spotted a cute bunny or been offered a free ice cream with sprinkles. I notice that her Arctic-blonde plaits are fastened with cherry-shaped bobbles. (What would Lauren, Joelle and Nancy – our class’s reigning queens of style as well as mean – have to say about those? Nothing nice, I’d bet.)

  ‘Dot!’ she says again in delight.

  I think I’m staring too much.

  But then so is someone else.

  The girl with the black glasses and twin top-knots is studying me intently, as if I’m something extremely old and odd in a museum. I’ve never exactly known what the heebie-jeebies are, but now I feel like I’ve got a serious case of them.

  ‘Uh, yes, this is … Dot,’ I reply, nodding down at my sort-of-stepsister. ‘And I’m Riley. We live next door.’

  ‘Riley!’ the blonde girl repeats in that same strangely delighted way.

  She really is taking the mickey out of me, isn’t she? I fret silently, feeling a tug of dread in my stomach. It’s bad enough to have triple trouble in the shape of Lauren and her buddies at school – I could really do without having the same sort of hassle so close to home.

  ‘What are YOUR names?’ Dot asks bluntly, while pushing the fur off the dog’s face so she can see its eyes. Eyes bright and shiny as two fivepences. The dog doesn’t seem to mind and keeps right on grinning.

  At Dot’s question, the pretty, ditzy girl looks a little confused and glances sideways at the redhead.

  Ah, wait a minute.

  Are they foreign?

  Maybe they don’t understand English!

  ‘Hello, Dot! Hello, Riley!’ the redhead suddenly replies in what sounds like perfect, not-foreign-at-all English. ‘I’m Sunshine, and this is Pearl.’

  The one doing the talking, her voice is sort of … calm and chilled out. She sounds a bit like a much younger version of the spacey woman who used to do a kids’ after-school yoga club at my primary.

  But Sunshine? Her name is Sunshine? Really?

  Sunshine and Pearl?!

  The girl who is Pearl gives a funny little bow and grins. (Coco might be on to something when she mentioned the telly – I could imagine this Pearl girl bouncing around on CBBC, no problem.)

  ‘Hi!’ says Dot, remembering her manners, even if I’ve temporarily forgotten mine.

  ‘And I’m Kitt,’ says the serious-looking girl in glasses.

  If Sunshine is like the yoga woman, and Pearl is like some bubbly TV presenter, then who does this Kitt remind me of? Maybe Mr Thomlinson, our deputy head. He does a mean stare through his glasses when he catches you doing something you shouldn’t be doing, like running down the stairs. Though he has never worn his hair in Mickey Mouse ear buns. Mainly because he’s got hardly any hair at all.

  But, hey, at least this third girl’s name sounds more normal.

  ‘Dot is short for Dorothea,’ my sort-of-stepsister blurts out as she pulls a rainbow-striped clip out of her hair and uses it to pin back the fur from the dog’s face. ‘Is Kitt short for something?’

  ‘Yes,’ says the stern, staring girl. ‘It’s short for Kitten.’

  Kitten?

  Wow – I had no idea that could even be a name. And, if it is, this very assured, non-smiling person in front of me is so not a soft and sweet baby cat. Her parents – still currently busy with the removal van – got that well wrong.

  ‘Ooh, Kitten! THAT’S pretty!’ Dot chatters on happily, now studying a tag on the startled-looking fluffball’s collar. ‘I like your dog. Ha! “BEE”! That’s nice too! Look, Coco, it’s called Bee!’

  ‘Hee hee!’ giggles Coco, helping to strangle the dog with more hugs.

  ‘Why did you call your dog BEE?’ Dot demands, staring up at the girls.

  ‘We just love bees,’ Pearl answers for all of them as she starts to sway from side to side on her sparkly tiptoes, like she can hear music that we can’t. ‘It’s the way they flutter about, with their beautiful wings!’

  Pearl wafts her arms up and down a bit.

  Coco gawps open-mouthed.

  Dot frowns.

  I can tell one or other of them is about to give Pearl a short lecture about the difference between buzzy bees and flutterbies.

  They have no idea that she’s teasing them, but I know that’s what’s going on.

  Kitt turns to me and says sharply, ‘She’s joking.’ But in a flat sort of voice that sounds anything but funny.

  Why do I get the sudden feeling that she doesn’t like me, when she doesn’t even know me?

  Then Sunshine speaks again, in her calm and chilled-out way. ‘I like your dog,’ she tells Dot, pointing down at Alastair.

  Wait a sec – behind all that dreaminess, is she actually being sarcastic? I mean, I wouldn’t blame her. Most people snicker at Dot and her driftwood dog, just like Woody did. But Dot simply beams proudly and wiggles her finger, indicating that Sunshine should come closer.

  As the tall girl bends down, I notice that she has the most amazing colour eyes, like the purply-greeny-blue of oil in puddles. I glance quickly at the other two – Kitt’s are pretty startling too, the same shade as today’s cloudless sky. Pearl’s got her head down just now, but I think hers are pale grey, like a husky’s.

  ‘He’s not real, you know!’ I hear Dot whisper loudly as she points down at her precious wood-lump.

  ‘Really?’ says Sunshine, pretending to be surprised.

  Please let her be kind to Dot and not burst my sort-of-stepsister’s ‘let’s pretend’ bubble. Let her act like Dad or Hazel when Dot tells them that there’s a fairy living in her sock drawer or me when she announces I’m the person she’ll marry when she grows up …

  ‘Dot! Coco! Riley! I’ve got some snacks for you!’ Hazel’s voice drifts from the open kitchen window at the side of my house.

  With a sense of relief, I yell, ‘Coming!’ and begin to shoo Dot and Coco towards the front steps.

  ‘Riley Roberts!’ one or other of the girls calls after me.

  ‘Uh-huh?’ I mumble, glancing over my shoulder, pretty sure it was Sunshine’s voice I heard.

  But the
tall girl is standing still as a statue, except for her gently waving gold-red flag of hair. Beside her, Kitt’s intense glare seems to be boring straight into my head. As for Pearl, her grin might be genuine, or she might be laughing right at me.

  ‘What?’ I ask again warily.

  The three girls glance at each other with expressions I can’t read and eyes that now seem almost silvery in this light.

  ‘We didn’t say anything,’ Kitt announces, her metallic eyes mocking me from behind her glasses.

  I clumsily back away, feeling my face flush pink. Prickles of embarrassment and confusion make the hairs on my arms stand to attention and sort of … vibrate.

  As I hurry into the house, a jumble of disconnected thoughts tumble into my head all at once.

  I’m not sure if I’m going to like these new neighbours.

  I didn’t imagine it: Sunshine did speak, I’m sure.

  And exactly how could they have known my last name …?

  ‘RAAAAAARGHHHHHHH!’

  I wish the roaring was coming from somewhere in the house that was far enough away for me to turn over in bed and ignore it.

  ‘RAAAAAARGHHHHHHH!’

  Sadly, it’s not. The wild animal seems to be on the other side of my bedroom door.

  Reluctantly, I flip open my eyes and see two things …

  1) an alarm clock with hands pointing to seven, and

  2) Mum smiling at my curtains.

  Mum’s photo – I know this is going to sound mad, but last night I took it out of my knicker drawer and propped it up against the clock, so I could talk to her about stuff. About Tia, about how awful and lonely school is, about how rubbish my birthday and the school trip to Wildwoods will be, and about the girls who’ve moved in next door.

  It helped. Sort of.

  I mean it made sense of the last name thing, at least. Cos some time in the dark it dawned on me that Tia’s parents probably left a bunch of useful info for the estate agent to pass on to the new owners of number thirty-three. Useful info like the names of the neighbours, which is how those girls would’ve known I’m not just Riley, but Riley Roberts.

  And so eventually I must’ve nodded off without realizing, even though there was plenty of stuff I hadn’t figured out. Stuff like whether the Angelos were really winding me up, or was I freaking out for no reason? Maybe I was. I haven’t slept much lately, always tossing and turning, dreading Tia leaving.