by Gwyneth Rees
In assembly, I sat there keeping much stiller than I normally do, wishing I could sink through the floor and disappear. Mum was wearing a very bright skirt-and-cardigan combination but it wasn’t her outfit that worried me most. She beamed at everyone as she announced that red was going to be our school colour from now on. She wanted everyone to wear red ties and a red jumper or cardigan to school tomorrow and if they didn’t have one they had to wear a red scarf or something else red instead. A ripple of murmurs went round the hall and I could see the teachers staring at each other as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
‘The morale in a school is very important,’ Mum continued rapidly. ‘And this greyness is enough to depress anyone.’
The whole hall was muttering noisily now. I wanted to crawl under my chair and stay there until assembly had finished. Any minute now someone was going to remember that the weirdo head teacher was my mother.
In science everyone was talking about Mum, but amazingly they weren’t saying horrible things. They kept saying she was cool or wicked as they discussed what red thing they were going to wear to school the next day. I started to swing my feet backwards and forwards impatiently. I wished our teacher, Mr Davie, would hurry up and get here before it dawned on anyone that what Mum was doing was actually pretty strange. Thankfully Calum wasn’t in my science class or I reckon he’d have been having a go at me already.
When Mr Davie hadn’t arrived ten minutes into the lesson, the noise level started to get pretty deafening. Mr Gregory, the head of science, came into the room, scowling at us. ‘Mr Davie seems to have mysteriously absented himself since assembly, so I have no option but to take the class instead,’ he grunted. ‘Get out your books, please.’
We all groaned. Mr Gregory is a scruffy little man with popping-out eyes, and I’d never liked him ever since Mum had made that comment about him staring at her legs. Science was usually fun with Mr Davie, who was always just as keen as we were to get the boring stuff over with so we could get on with our attempts to blow up the lab (which was how he always referred to our experiments). Mr Gregory seemed to be spending all his time going over the theory and it looked like we were going to be lucky if we got anywhere near an empty test tube today, let alone a Bunsen burner.
The room was hot and my head, which I was resting on my hands, felt really muzzy. Before I knew it, my head had slumped on to my desk and I couldn’t hear Mr Gregory’s drony voice any more. I don’t know how long I’d been like that before Mr Gregory came over and poked me in the arm.
‘You!’ he snapped. ‘Go outside and get some fresh air! You can come back when you’ve woken up again!’
A few of the other kids started to snigger as I stood up and headed groggily towards the door. I felt dizzy, as if all the blood was rushing back to my head at once.
I was just heading down the corridor towards the staircase when I saw someone hurrying towards me from the far end. The person was wearing a bright red skirt and a yellow cardigan.
‘Daniel! Daniel, it is you!’ Mum started to laugh in a delighted sort of way, as if she hadn’t seen me in several years instead of a couple of hours. She didn’t ask why I wasn’t in class. ‘I’m touring my school,’ she announced grandly. ‘I want to see what all my subjects are doing.’
‘Subjects?’ I queried, thinking that she had to be joking. I mean, a queen has subjects, right, not a headmistress?
‘Science, English, history, French, maths … Loyal subjects, to name but a few!’ Mum rattled on. ‘Oh, and I’ve locked that Davie man in the book cupboard with that French teaching assistant. That’ll teach the two of them to sneak in there for a snog when they should be working!’
I stared at her. I thought she was joking at first. Then I saw she had a strange look in her eyes – a shiny, whizzy sort of look as if she was up in the sky like a firework.
CHAPTER 10
I heard the pounding on the door before I got to the book cupboard. The book cupboard in the languages department is one of those big walk-in ones, more like a mini room than a cupboard really, except that there are no windows. It’s situated at the end of the corridor on the far side of the toilets and the language lab is the nearest classroom. Everyone in the lab probably had their headphones on and couldn’t hear the banging …
I didn’t know what I was going to say when I unlocked the door. I just knew that I had to unlock it quickly, before Mum got into trouble. She had laughed when I’d said what I was going to do, and headed off towards her own office on the floor below rather than coming with me.
Thankfully the key was in the lock when I got there. I opened the door and Mr Davie almost fell out. Yvette, our French student teacher, was right behind him.
‘Daniel, thank goodness!’ Mr Davie looked a mixture of relief and embarrassment. ‘Yvette and I were just … collecting some textbooks … when someone locked us in.’
‘Someone?’ I repeated, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt. ‘Didn’t you see who?’
‘No.’
‘I think it was one of the girls having a joke,’ Yvette said. ‘We heard a silly laugh outside.’
‘Do you think you’ll be able to find out who it was?’ I asked, trying to sound casual about it, which wasn’t how I felt at all.
The two teachers were looking at each other.
‘I think we will not make a fuss, Stephen – I mean, Mr Davie …’ Yvette said. ‘Since it was just a joke, no?’
Mr Davie nodded. ‘I agree. No point in making a fuss.’ He looked at me. ‘Daniel …’
I started to see that they were both just as anxious as I was that nobody else should find out about this and I began to feel more hopeful. ‘I won’t tell anyone either,’ I said. ‘If it means no one’s going to get into trouble for shutting you in. None of the other kids, I mean,’ I added quickly.
Mr Davie suddenly said, ‘You don’t know who shut us in here, do you, Daniel?’
I gulped. ‘Of course not! Mr Gregory’s taking our class,’ I added. ‘He’s wondering where you are. He sent me out for some fresh air because I fell asleep. I’d better hurry up and get back.’
Mr Davie called after me as I ran away down the corridor, ‘See you back in the classroom in ten minutes, OK?’
I went to find Mum in her office. Her door was open and her secretary wasn’t there. I could hear her on the phone to someone. ‘What do you mean, you can’t give me their address? I’m an old friend. And I’m a head teacher. I need to contact them urgently.’ She listened for a few moments longer, then slammed down the phone.
‘Mum …’ I paused nervously just inside the doorway and lowered my voice. ‘I let Mr Davie and Yvette out of the book cupboard. They don’t know it was you who shut them in. I think we’d better not tell them. It’ll be really embarrassing if anyone finds out.’
Mum ignored me like she’d forgotten all about that now. ‘They won’t give me Kate’s address!’ she said angrily.
‘Who won’t?’
‘That B & B where she was staying.’ Mum was drumming her fingers on the desk. ‘How can I find her? I must find her!’
‘Mum, why do you need to find Kate? Is it about what happened when Martha was a baby?’ I’d thought I’d have to beg her to tell me. But I was wrong.
She blurted it all out right there in her office. ‘It happened when she was a few days old, Daniel. Only a mother can recognise her own baby when it’s that tiny. That’s why I’m the only one who knows.’
‘Knows what, Mum?’
‘That she was swapped!’ She had that extra bright look in her eyes again.
‘Swapped?’
‘I knew she was a different baby!’
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. ‘Mum, that can’t be right! Martha couldn’t have been swapped … I mean, how could she …?’
But Mum had an answer for that. ‘There was a patient who thought all the babies were hers. She took some of them off the ward. She took mine and Kate’s.’ She shuddered. ‘We got the
m back but it must have happened then. Malcolm was frightened. He took Martha home with him. It was too late by the time I found out.’
‘Mum, stop it!’ I said angrily. ‘Dad wouldn’t let Martha be swapped for another baby.’
‘Kate knew the truth!’ Mum continued. ‘She knew, but she wanted my baby.’
‘Mum, stop it!’ I shouted again. ‘Why would Kate want your baby?’
‘Because she’s a royal baby!’ Mum shouted back. ‘Kate wanted a royal baby, of course!’
I just gaped at her. Now, she wasn’t making any sense at all.
I persuaded Mum to go home straight away. I wanted to go with her because she was so upset, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She insisted I stay in school and when I tried to refuse she started to shout at me again. I was scared people would hear us, so in the end I agreed to do as she said. She left a note for her secretary saying she was feeling unwell, and slipped away while everyone else was still in class. I was so relieved to get her out of there that I didn’t even think that she might not be going home for the rest of the day like she’d said.
I decided that after school I would call Dad and tell him everything. I actually found myself hoping my grandmother had died by now so he’d be able to come home straight away. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that. It was like my world had just flipped upside down and all the normal things in it had become abnormal. I went round the school for the rest of the day in a weird kind of daze, like I was a visitor from another planet instead of a normal human being who actually belonged on planet Earth.
When I got home after school the house was empty, but there was a message on the answerphone from Mum. She said she was going to London because she had got hold of Kate’s address after all.
I phoned her on her mobile straight away. She was in the car.
‘Mum, what are you doing? You can’t drive to London! You’ve got to pick Martha up from school!’
‘You can do that, darling. I’m halfway there now! I went to the B & B – there was a young woman there helping out. I got Kate’s address from her. I’m going to see her now.’
‘But Mum –’
She hung up.
I phoned her back. I was really worried now. ‘Mum, are you feeling OK?’ I asked when she answered.
‘Of course!’
‘You don’t seem … normal.’
She laughed. ‘I’m full of energy, Daniel. I’ve been a zombie for years on those tablets. For years I’ve been tranquillized. Now I’m feeling everything at last!’
I felt confused. Was she right? Was this normal? She didn’t seem very normal but then what was normal, exactly?
‘Must go, darling.’ And she hung up again.
I didn’t ring back this time. She hasn’t got a hands-free phone and I didn’t want her having an accident or getting arrested for using her mobile while she was driving. (Normally Mum is the one who’s always saying how dangerous it is to drive and do something else at the same time and she won’t even unwrap a sweet or fiddle with the radio like Dad does a lot.)
If only Dad was here now, I thought for the zillionth time. I rang his phone first and then my aunt’s home number but there was no reply from either. Then I remembered it would be four o’clock in the morning over there, so they would all be asleep.
I didn’t know what to do. It just wasn’t like Mum not to care that Martha needed collecting from her after-school club or that our tea needed making or that I had asked her to take me to the library tonight. It was like she had forgotten all about Martha and me. And I couldn’t believe what she had said about Martha being swapped as a baby. She had never said anything like that before. And all that stuff she had said about Kate having her baby … I mean, babies being accidently swapped in hospital and getting sent home with the wrong parents … that stuff only ever happens in films, right? And as for Kate knowing about it and wanting to keep Martha because she was royal …
I kept turning everything over in my head as I walked to Martha’s school to collect her, but I couldn’t make any sense out of it. I had another problem, too. Normally the teachers at Martha’s school will only hand children over to a parent or a particular adult they know is going to be doing pickup. I honestly wasn’t sure if they’d let me take her.
Luckily it was a busy after-school club and I arrived at the same time as a big group of parents.
‘Mum’s double-parked,’ I told the teacher, grabbing Martha’s hand and pulling her away with me quickly before there was time for anyone to ask questions.
As soon as we got outside the school gates Martha started looking for our car. I quickly explained that I’d had to lie so they’d let her come with me. I told her that Mum had actually gone to London but would be back tonight.
Martha frowned. ‘But there has to be a grown-up at home to look after us.’
‘I’ll look after you,’ I said. ‘It’ll be cool. It’ll be like that movie we saw at Uncle Robert’s, Home Alone!’
Her face crumpled and too late I remembered that Martha had got scared watching Home Alone and had to be taken out of the room by Mum when the bit with the nasty burglars came on.
‘I don’t want you to look after me. I want Mummy,’ she whined.
‘Well, Mummy’s not here. And even if she was –’ I stopped myself just in time. I’d been about to say that even if she was here, the way Mum was acting right now, she’d be more likely to invite scary burglars into our house rather than protect us from them.
On the walk home we had to pass the park and Martha begged to have a go on the swings, so I said OK.
‘Hey!’ someone shouted to me. It was Abby. She had a friend with her – nobody I recognised from school.
‘Hi,’ I said, walking up to them.
Abby’s friend was saying, ‘I can’t come back with you, Abby, I’ve got to get home.’ She had short red hair and a freckled face and she was wearing shorts and an England football shirt.
Abby turned and smiled at me. ‘Hiya.’ She turned back to her friend, who was looking me over now. ‘This is Daniel. He’s in my class at school. He’s just moved here and his mum’s our head teacher.’
‘Really?’ Abby’s friend looked like she found that horrific. ‘Poor you.’
I nodded, flushing slightly. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed.
Abby laughed. ‘This is Rachel. She’s being really boring and going home now so she’s not late for her tea.’ She looked at me. ‘But you can hang around with me for a bit, can’t you?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to look after my little sister. Mum’s gone out.’
Abby didn’t seem fazed. ‘No problem. We can all hang out together.’
I still wasn’t sure. I mean, what if Dad phoned? But on the other hand, Dad wasn’t likely to phone since it was still night-time in New Zealand.
Rachel said, ‘See you later. Michael says he’s gonna get you back for the other day, by the way.’
‘Fat chance!’ Abby grinned, waving her friend goodbye. ‘Michael’s her twin brother,’ she told me. ‘I beat him scoring goals the other week. He’s a rubbish goalie.’
‘You play football?’
She nodded. ‘Why? Don’t you think girls can kick a ball?’
I flushed. ‘No, it’s just –’
‘I’m better than Michael, though he won’t admit that. Do you play?’
I nodded. ‘I used to play all the time back home … I mean, back where I used to live.’
‘Michael and his friends and Rachel and me play down the park most Saturdays. You can come too if you want.’
‘Great!’ I grinned, momentarily forgetting about everything else. Football down the park sounded like the best thing that had happened to me since I got here.
Abby and I sat on the swings while Martha ran about climbing on one thing after another. Normally in parks I climb on stuff too and chase Martha about, but since Abby was chatting to me I reckoned it would be rude not to stay put and listen. I tried to stop thinking about Mum, but i
t was difficult.
Abby asked where I lived and when I told her she offered to call in for me on her way to school the next day.
‘OK,’ I said, watching her bend down to pick up a sweet she’d just dropped on the ground. ‘Abby –’ I suddenly really wanted to ask her what she thought about the way my mum was acting, but I was interrupted by Martha shouting in her bossiest voice from the top of the slide, ‘You can’t eat that! Daddy says the ground is full of germs!’
‘Well my sister says eating stuff off the ground builds up your resistance to germs!’ Abby shouted back. She grinned sideways at me. ‘She says that every time she drops our dinner on the floor, anyway!’
I laughed, but I realised it was going to be difficult telling Abby about Mum while Martha was within earshot. ‘Abby,’ I began, glancing across at Martha who had slid down to the bottom of the slide and was heading towards us. ‘Can you keep a secret? Martha mustn’t know.’
Abby grinned. I could tell she liked secrets. ‘Of course. Why don’t you come round to mine for a bit? Martha can watch TV in the front room and we can talk in the kitchen. We can get something to eat as well. I’m starving.’
‘But what about your big sister?’ I wasn’t ready to let any other adults in on this until I’d spoken to Dad.
‘She’s still at work. Anyway, she won’t mind you coming round.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded impatiently, and when Martha came to tell us she was hungry Abby said that we were all invited to her house for tea.
Abby lived on the ground floor of a block of flats. They had a little garden at the back with a whirligig to hang out your washing. Abby didn’t know what a whirligig was when I pointed it out. She called it a rotating clothes line. We started telling each other what we called various other things then, to see if we could find any other differences that were good for a laugh.
Martha kept running in and out of the kitchen while Abby and I were making the crisp and tomato ketchup sandwiches we’d decided on for tea, but I figured once she was settled in front of the TV with her food in front of her, I’d be able to talk to Abby without her overhearing. Though I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to say yet.
