“What’s wrong with it?” Andie felt herself putting on what Mum called her young madam voice. “There were hundreds of other people. Anyone could go – we just sat on the grass and listened. It’s this big park.”
“I know what Hyde Park is, Andrea. But a pop concert! The Rolling Stones! Who knows what you might have come across? Drug-taking…LSD or whatever they call it…flower people and all kinds of carry-on I don’t even want to think about –”
“Mu-um! Honestly, you could have been there, with Dad – you wouldn’t have seen anything wrong – and anyway, there were lots of police—”
“Well, that just proves it!” said Mum in triumph. “The police were there for a reason! On the lookout for drug dealers and pickpockets and the like, I don’t doubt. And you two young girls on your own, in the middle of all that! Anything could have happened!”
“But it didn’t!” Andie humphed. “We just listened like everyone else, and came home. We’re not little kids. Kris is thirteen –”
“Yes, and I think it was unwise of me to let you go out with her. We hardly know her, and she’s obviously got no idea of what’s appropriate. You’ve hardly begun to find your way around, and that’s the first place she takes you! And saying you were going to the Science Museum? I suppose you planned this yesterday, the two of you? You lied to me?”
“Come on now, Maureen!” Dad tried. “There’s no need to accuse Andie of telling lies.”
“Anyway, I didn’t lie! We did go to the Science Museum, and I didn’t know Kris wanted to go to Hyde Park!”
Mum didn’t look convinced. “All the same, I’m not happy about this. Not happy at all.” She rummaged in the cupboard for plates. “Could you go and call Prue, please? She’s in the garden, with Sushila. Tell her I’ve made sandwiches.”
Andie went. From experience, she knew that the best thing was to let Mum calm down, then try to pretend nothing had happened. After all, nothing had.
The garden behind the house was bigger than the one at home, and was shared by all three flats. “It’s a bit overgrown, especially at the back,” Patrick had said last night, “but I like it that way. And it’s great for the kids.”
“Kids!” Kris had mocked. “What kids?”
It was cool out there now, with dusk not far off. Andie had been surprised to find that there were gardens in London, and she liked this private jungly place far more than the begonias and lobelia Dad planted alongside the front path at home. Nothing here was neat. The high brick walls on three sides were clad in honeysuckle and ivy. Straggly roses breathed out their scent; the grass was rough and uncut, and an area at the back was thick with currant and gooseberry bushes, and a herb bed. Nearer the house stood a tall tree – black walnut, Patrick said it was – with a swing hung by ropes from one of its branches. Kiddish or not, Andie would have tried out the swing to see how high she could fly, if it hadn’t already been occupied by Sushila. Sushila wasn’t swinging, just idly swaying. Her sandals scuffed the bare earth where other feet had worn away the grass. Prune was sprawled on the ground, a cardigan slung round her shoulders.
“Well, I would,” Prune was saying, as Andie approached.
“I would what?”
Prune looked round, annoyed at Andie for butting in; Sushila smiled and said hello.
“What would you do?” Andie repeated.
Prune sighed; she propped herself up, leaning back on both arms. “Since you ask, we were in the King’s Road when someone came up to us. Well, up to Sushila. She was from a…a model agency. Andromeda, it’s called. She wants Sushila to go and have some photos taken.” She gave Andie a tight smile.
“Oh!” Andie swivelled round to look at Sushila. “And will you?”
“Course not. It’s probably just a trick,” Sushila said. “They’d take the photos and charge me a fortune for them, and that’s the last I’d ever hear.”
“You could at least ring them.” Prune’s voice was thick with envy. “Just to ask.”
“But I don’t want to be a model,” Sushila told her, swinging gently. “I want to be a doctor.”
Prune didn’t answer, but plucked a stem of grass and champed at it.
Andie guessed how it had been: this model agency person homing straight in on Sushila, ignoring poor old Prune. Sushila looked gorgeous enough, just as she was, with messy hair and no make-up, to be on the front cover of Honey – you just couldn’t help looking at her flawless milky-coffee skin, her dark eyes and the way her smile lit up her face. Isn’t that just typical, Andie thought, the way things get dished out? Sushila was not only beautiful, not only brainy enough to want to be a doctor, but – it seemed – nice as well, not at all conceited. Prune was just, well, ordinary. No matter how hard she tried with hair straighteners and foundation and mascara, she’d never look as good as Sushila, even when Sushila did nothing at all. Maybe Prune thought she’d be infected by Sushila’s glamour if she hung around with her.
“Did you have a good time, Andie?” Sushila asked.
“Er, yes. Kris and I went to see the Stones in the park.”
“Oh! So did we.”
Andie looked at her, then at Prune. “You went?” She wondered whether Prune would get an earful from Mum, too, when she went in.
“Couldn’t miss something like that, could we? Wasn’t it fab? Wasn’t it just out of this world? And so sad, the poem for Brian, the butterflies…” Prune gave a tearful smile.
“Don’t start, again,” Sushila said, nudging her with one foot. It was like they were already best friends. So Prune had cried in the park – well, Prune would, Andie thought. She could see it now, the kind of crying that’s actually quite enjoyable – look at me, I’m crying.
Sushila got up from the swing and stretched, then reached for a fringed bag that lay in the grass. “Let’s go in now. I’m hungry.”
“And Mum’s making our tea,” Andie remembered to tell Prune.
A small cream card, with Andromeda embossed on it in black, lay on the grass where Sushila’s bag had been. Andie saw Prune reach out for it. But she didn’t give it back to Sushila, or say, “Here, you dropped this.” Instead, with a warning look at Andie, she hid it in the palm of her hand, and slid it into her own bag.
Chapter Seven
Ascent
Andie might have guessed. As punishment for going to the Stones concert, she wasn’t to be allowed out with Kris for the next few days. “And then,” Mum stipulated, after tea, “only if you tell us where you’re going, and come back at the time we agree and not a moment later.”
“So it’s all right for Prune,” Andie grumbled, “but I do exactly the same thing and get clobbered for it?”
“Andie, Prue’s sixteen,” said Mum. “So’s Sushila. I can’t say I’m delighted about them going, either – but there’s a big difference between twelve and sixteen.”
“But you’re being so unreasonable!” Andie clattered the cat dishes into the washing-up bowl. “What’s the point of being in London if I’m not allowed to go anywhere? I might as well go back home and stay with Nan, if I’m going to be kept prisoner here.”
“Now you’re being unreasonable,” Mum told her. “Exaggerating ridiculously. No one’s locking you in prison. If the agency doesn’t come up with work for me tomorrow, I’ll take you to Selfridge’s. You need new shoes for school.”
“Don’t want to go to Selfridge’s,” Andie grumped. “’Specially not to buy stuff for school! Not before the summer holidays have even started properly!”
“I know they haven’t. And we’re going to enjoy being here,” Mum said firmly.
“Enjoy! When I’m not allowed out? I bet Marilyn and Patrick aren’t making all this fuss, just for Kris wandering over to Hyde Park!”
“No, I don’t suppose they are. But they’re – well, much more free and easy than we’re used to.” Mum made a tight, prim face. “I don’t think they’re even married. He’s Patrick Sharp, but her name’s Foley, I think she said. All this permissive carry-on we keep hearin
g about! They’re living together.” She made it sound like a criminal offence. “Not the sort of people we usually mix with.”
“You can say that again. They’re about five hundred times more interesting.”
Mum stood squarely, hands on hips. “Now you’re being rude, on top of everything else. I think it’s high time you were in bed, young lady. And try to get out on the right side, in the morning.”
Andie must have slept for a while – Prune had come in and got ready for bed without disturbing her – but she’d been fully awake for at least half an hour, her mind full of the day’s sights and sounds, excitements and arguments.
And now her eyes were wide open, and her ears straining for a sound from the stairs.
She was sure she’d heard something, a creak, like someone trying not to be heard. Yes – there it was, creeping on up, towards the attic.
A tremor ran down Andie’s spine – excitement, as much as fear. It could be Patrick, going up to fetch something from one of his boxes, or to put something up there. But why would he do that so late at night, when the whole house was asleep? Only if he had something to hide. What if he was an art thief? Andie’s thoughts raced. She imagined Patrick sneaking paintings – small ones, miniatures would be easiest – out of the National Gallery, tucking them inside the front of his jacket. Then he’d store them in the attic until the next dark night, when his accomplice would bring a riverboat to the nearby pier on the Thames, and smuggle them out to sea, to Holland or France…
Or what if it wasn’t Patrick at all, but a madwoman who lived in the attic? Patrick’s real wife, perhaps – the reason he wasn’t married to Marilyn! Andie’s class had read Jane Eyre this term, and her favourite bits had been about Mr. Rochester’s mad wife who roamed the corridors at night and clawed at people with her nails and set fire to bed curtains with the candles she carried. That would be even more exciting than stolen paintings. But if this was the Madwoman of Chelsea, she must be going back to the attic, not leaving it…
There was only one way to find out. Before Andie knew she’d decided what to do, her feet swung out of bed onto the rug and nudged themselves into her sandals. A dim light from the street lamp, filtering through curtains, was enough to show her the bedroom door, and out to the hallway. The door to Mum and Dad’s bedroom stood open; she heard Dad’s snuffles as he turned over.
She mustn’t lock herself out! Looking round for something to hold the door ajar, she found a sort of wooden rack with umbrellas in it. She managed to lift it into place without making a loud thunk, and slipped past it to the tiny, windowless landing outside.
Compared to the grand staircase that swept up from the ground floor to Kris’s halfway place, these stairs were plain and narrow, with a handrail fixed to the wall. After the top-floor landing, where she stood, another flight led to the attic rooms. Looking up, Andie felt the down-draught of dry, dusty air, and shivered. No light was showing. Who – or what – could be creaking round the attic in darkness? And why?
For a second she considered going back in, getting back into bed and forgetting she’d heard anything. Perhaps she hadn’t. Maybe the sounds were only those of an old house settling into itself, creaking under its own weight, settling for sleep. But then she heard, unmistakably, the sound of footsteps above her head.
Slowly, gripping the handrail, she mounted the stairs. On each one she paused, fumbling for the next with a raised foot. Her eyes and ears were boring into the dark, her heart thumping so strongly that she felt it would throw her off balance. At the turn of the stair she stopped and glanced back at the wedged-open door. If a spectral figure appeared ahead, or if someone flew out at her – a madwoman with nails like daggers – she could scuttle back down and in, and lock the door behind her.
Creak – creak. She couldn’t stop the pressure of her feet from making a faint sound, seeming to echo in her ears and up into the roof space.
But what if it were faster than her – the thing up there? It might rush down the stairs and into the flat ahead of her…shut her out…
Now the creaks were answered by the quick light steps of someone above. Someone moving towards her. She froze, unable after all to run back; fear clamped her feet to the stair, her hand to the rail.
A dark figure appeared in the attic doorway, and stopped there.
“Who’s that?” it said, in a quite ordinary voice: certainly not the way she’d expect a madwoman or a vengeful ghost to sound.
“It’s me,” Andie told it. “Andie.”
The figure seemed to nod. “Shh!” it went, and beckoned her to come on up.
More curious than frightened, Andie followed. A torch flicked on, and the dark space sprang into brightness. She was standing, with this other person, on a narrow landing, up in the very top of the house, beneath the slope of the roof. The torch beam turned to her face, harsh and dazzling.
“You gave me a fright,” said the voice.
Chapter Eight
Skyhopping
“Who’s that?” Andie said, blinking.
“Me.” The person holding the torch swung it back to show his own face. She saw glossy dark hair, brown eyes, white smiling teeth. It was only a boy, and a little shorter than her. Ravi! Ravi Kapoor, from the middle flat.
“What are you doing up here?” She was sagging with relief.
“Skywatching,” said Ravi. “Or I will be, in a minute.”
“But it’s dark!”
“I know! That’s the whole point! Wouldn’t see much in the daytime, would I?” Ravi shone his torch at the bare floorboards, illuminating a telescope and folded tripod, a notepad, and a book called The Sky at Night.
Andie was puzzled. There were no windows here, no way out that she could see. “Why from here? Why don’t you look out of your own window?”
“Because there’s a better view from the roof.”
“The roof? You climb the roof in the dark?”
“Haven’t you looked up at it, from outside? I don’t perch right on top, like an owl. There’s this flat bit.”
He was picking up his equipment – slinging the tripod over one shoulder by its strap, picking up the telescope with loving care. He nodded towards the book and notepad. “Bring those, if you’re coming. You want to come and see, don’t you?” he added, a touch impatiently, when she hesitated. He seemed so different from the painfully shy boy he’d been at the party.
“Course,” said Andie. It began to seem like an adventure.
Treading softly, Ravi led the way past two open doors that led into rooms stacked with cardboard boxes and crates. “Those used to be maids’ bedrooms. No one uses them now. There’s this bigger space behind for storing stuff, as well. If it were my house, I’d turn it into an observatory.”
Andie was tiptoeing behind. “Are you allowed up here?”
“Well, sort of. I used to come up with Dad. But now I come on my own.”
“Is it yours, the telescope?”
“It is now. Here’s where we go through.” Ravi reached into his pocket for a key, and unlocked a low door in the side of the storeroom. “My uncle gave it to me when he got a better one – he does a lot of birdwatching in India. But this one’s quite good. It’s a refractor. I got it in January – Dad and I used to come up in the evenings, then. But there’s not enough darkness this time of year, so I wake myself up in the night.”
Andie followed him through the door, surprised to see a narrow walkway, edged by a low wall. Peering over, she found herself at the front of the house – and saw, a long way down, the garden railings, the gate, and the row of trees that separated Chelsea Walk from the Embankment. It was brighter here than in the attic, because of the street lamps, the lights strung across the Albert Bridge, and the illuminated buildings on the south bank of the Thames.
“Don’t look over if it makes you dizzy,” said Ravi. “I’m not good with heights.”
Andie looked for a few moments longer, to show him that she wasn’t scared – even though the sight of the long
drop made her stomach clench tight.
“It’s fantastic!” She turned to face him. “It reminds me of Mary Poppins – have you seen it? That song about the rooftops of London?”
“The chimney-sweep’s song?” Ravi was moving along the walkway, his torch beam shining ahead. “Come on. I usually go round the back. You can’t get away from street lights in London, but it’s a bit better round the other side.”
Andie saw that the walkway led all the way around the top of the house – through a sort of valley between the downslope of this roof and the upslope of the one next door – to the back, where she now looked over the highest branches of the swing tree and over other gardens and roofs and chimneys. There was a steady, low hum of traffic.
Ravi was setting up his tripod, bracing its legs, screwing the telescope to its mount. “There was a bit of cloud earlier, but it’s clear now.”
Andie had been too busy looking down, and noticing where she was putting her feet, to glance up. Now she did, and the dazzle of stars seemed to fly at her. Look! Look at us! Why don’t you spend every night gazing in wonder? What could be more mysterious, more magnificent than we are? There were more and more stars as she gazed, as if they were pushing through blackness from as far as her eyes could see. And farther on than that, there would be stars and stars and more stars, and dizzying dark that must go on for ever. When Andie’s brain tried to stretch far enough to take in the idea of for ever, it baulked and jammed, refusing to believe something so impossible. But that only led to another impossibility: if for ever reached an end, what was beyond that?
“Come on,” said Ravi. “We’ll go skyhopping. It’ll be good tonight. Ever done it before?”
Andie stared. “Are you mad?” But what if he really is? she thought. What if he thinks we can balance on the wall and stretch out our arms and fly, like Superman to the planet Krypton? Or is he planning to call up some obedient little spacecraft to take us from one twinkling star to another, light years away?
Andie's Moon Page 4
