Zara

by Mary Hooper

  Mum gave a long drawn-out gasp. She came across and put her arm around me, and I knew that above my head she and Dad were mouthing words to each other.

  ‘Is it true?’ I asked again, more fearfully, because if it wasn’t, then why weren’t they laughing and saying that they’d never heard anything so stupid in all their lives?

  ‘We should have told her,’ Mum said to Dad in a whisper.

  I gave a little cry and suddenly felt all swimmy in the head. I’ve never fainted in my life but I thought I was about to then.

  Mum led me to the sofa, sat me down and began rubbing at my hands. ‘We should have told you,’ I heard her say through the swimminess. ‘I know we should have told you. It was just that the time never seemed right.’

  ‘And you couldn’t talk about it,’ Dad said to her in a low voice.

  ‘No, I couldn’t,’ Mum agreed.

  ‘Tell me now,’ I said fearfully. ‘Is there someone buried in the woods?’

  Zara wrenched herself away from Dad and he grabbed hold of her again. ‘You’re staying,’ he said. ‘You can’t just say something like this and then run away.’

  ‘Just tell me!’ I said desperately to Mum, because I was so so scared.

  ‘Darling, it’s quite simple,’ Mum said. ‘As soon as Zara said something about being buried in the woods I realised what this was all about …’

  ‘What?’ I said urgently.

  ‘Well, you know there’s a big gap between you and your brother?’

  I nodded.

  ‘There was another baby in between. A baby who died.’

  ‘There would have been three of you,’ Dad put in.

  ‘And you killed it?’ I asked fearfully.

  Dad looked at me and sighed. ‘Ella,’ he said. ‘Do you really believe I’m a child murderer?’

  ‘The baby was stillborn,’ Mum said, and she was crying a little. ‘It was a girl and she went to eight months, but she died.’

  I swallowed. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘We didn’t name her,’ Dad said. ‘We thought that would make her more real.’

  ‘And we didn’t want to have a funeral or anything so we just brought her home with us.’

  I was silent, taking all this in. Dad looked out of the window. ‘She’s buried in the woods,’ he said. ‘There’s a woodland burial ground over the back – you probably didn’t know that.’

  ‘So she’s quite close to us; just under the trees,’ Mum said.

  I looked at Zara. ‘That’s what she said – under the trees.’

  No one spoke for a while; the only sound was of Mum giving little gaspy sobs.

  ‘OK, then,’ Dad said to Zara eventually. ‘What do you know, how do you know it – and what was the idea of doing all this?’

  She shrugged. ‘I was just having a laugh! God, some people really get their knickers in a twist, don’t they?’ This was such a gross thing to say that no one bothered to respond to it. She went on, ‘I was pretending to be psychic, that’s all. Giving everyone a bit of excitement in their lives.’

  ‘Pretending?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course she was pretending,’ Dad said. ‘But why don’t we call it lying, because that’s what it was.’

  ‘But how could you find out all that stuff about everyone?’ I asked Zara.

  She shrugged. ‘By using my eyes and my ears, that’s how.’

  ‘What about Sophie and Anton?’

  ‘I saw them out together! Easy.’

  ‘And Lois’s mum – all that stuff about the flowers by the photo?’

  ‘The photo of her mum is on the table in her front room, Dumbo. You can see it from the street.’

  ‘So all that tonight, with the glass … were you pushing it round?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘But then once everyone got an inkling of where it might go, they pushed it there themselves.’

  I opened and closed my mouth, thoughts hammering through my head. ‘But all that other stuff. What about Chloe?’

  ‘Her brother’s case was reported in the paper,’ she said. ‘The case was there in the small print for anyone to see. It was obvious that that was why they didn’t go abroad to live.’

  ‘But what about this, tonight?’

  ‘Yes. How did you know about our baby?’ Dad asked.

  Zara pursed her lips and looked away.

  Dad said. ‘Well, we can wait. All night if needs be.’

  ‘Or we can go to the police …’ Mum said.

  There was a long silence. ‘All right,’ Zara said after some moments. ‘I’ll tell you how I knew – my mum used to be a nurse on a maternity ward.’

  Mum gasped. ‘At St Luke’s?’ she asked.

  Zara nodded. ‘When we met you out shopping, she recognised you and told me that you’d lost a baby. When I asked her what happened when babies died, she told me what you’d done.’

  ‘How dare she!’ Mum said. ‘She had no business doing that. That’s confidential information.’

  Zara shrugged and I just sat there, stunned, trying to sort things out in my head. All the stuff she’d said, all of it, just found-out stuff. She wasn’t psychic at all. Just clever. Very clever and very devious.

  ‘So, I can go now, can I?’ Zara said, moving away from Dad.

  ‘Do what you like,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t want to see you round here again.’

  She went out of the room and they didn’t even look at her. I went after her because there was something I really wanted to know.

  ‘Why did you do all this?’ I asked.

  She compressed her lips again, staring at me.

  ‘I thought it was just to make ourselves popular,’ I persisted. ‘Why did you turn on me and try and ruin my life? You’ve got to tell me!’

  ‘Oh, have I?’ she said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, how about because you’re so bloody smug with your big house and your perfect family and your patronising ways! I can see the way you look down on me and my mum! “Shall we go to my house because your mum’s drunk?”’ she said in an imitation of my voice. ‘Make sure everyone knows, why don’t you?’

  I stared at her.

  ‘And what about when you were out with your brother and hid so you wouldn’t have to say hello? Ashamed of me, were you?’ she demanded. ‘You’d rather be with the others than be friends with me, wouldn’t you? Admit it!’

  Of course I would, I felt like saying, but I didn’t speak.

  ‘I wanted to show you what it was like to have a real problem in your life. Give you something else to think about. Besides,’ she added, ‘I just wanted to see if I could get away with it. Your dad was horrible to me; it was something to do.’

  It was something to do. All the pain she’d caused, just for something to do.

  I stared at her and all the stuffing seemed to go out of me, leaving me tired, confused and miserable. I just couldn’t think of anything else to say to her.

  I went back indoors to talk to Mum and Dad and they told me everything, and all three of us cried a bit and they said they really wished they’d told me about the baby – my sister – before. Eventually, hours later, we all went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of all the things between Zara and me which couldn’t be unsaid, and how everything was now all wrong and horrible. Had I been awful to her? Thoughtless? Patronising? If I’d been nicer, a better friend, would she have done what she had? If I hadn’t snubbed her when I’d been with my brother? If I hadn’t sneakily thought she was a bit of a pikey? If I hadn’t wanted to be accepted by The Four so much? If …if… There were so many ifs, but I didn’t think any of them added up to doing what she’d done – or had tried to do – to my family.

  And After…

  I was dreading seeing Zara at school the following week, but she didn’t come back. She was absent for the rest of that term and then I heard that because her mum was still drinking and she’d got so much in debt, the landlord had chucked them out of their flat. They’d had to go and live with Za
ra’s aunt in Wales.

  I felt a bit sorry for her then, but not much. I never tried to get in touch with her or anything. Things had gone too bad between us for that.

  At school, everything gradually got back to normal. Anton went back to France and by then Sophie wasn’t even seeing him. Pretty soon – by the middle of the following term – she and Sky began speaking again, and there was a big reconciliation scene at school with them throwing their arms around each other and crying. India and Chloe became friends again too – I helped that by telling Chloe how Zara had found out about her brother. I explained to everyone about my mum and dad and the baby, too.

  Of course, we talked about Zara pretty much nonstop for weeks and weeks, and I told them that at the start she and I had planned some of the tricks together, just for a laugh, but that what had happened afterwards I’d believed just as much as they had.

  At Christmas Lois paid to go to a psychic gypsy woman who told her that inexperienced people should never try to contact the dead, and that doing stuff with a ouija board was just asking for trouble. She didn’t get any message from her mum, anyway, even from the real deal. And I never again saw the boy I called Lofty, so all the things Zara said about him and me having a future were just a load of rubbish.

  Things at school are pretty good again now. I go round with Poppy most of the time because Lois’s dad got a contract in Germany and they’ve gone to live there for a year, and Poppy and I have quite a laugh. I do think about Zara sometimes – but not often. And if no one shouts goodbye when I get off the school bus I try not to mind too much …

  Also by Mary Hooper

  CONTEMPORARY FICTION

  Chelsea and Astra: Two Sides of the Story

  FOR OLDER TEEN READERS

  Megan

  Megan 2

  Megan 3

  Holly

  Amy

  HISTORICAL FICTION

  At the Sign of the Sugared Plum

  Petals in the Ashes

  The Fever and the Flame

  (a special omnibus edition of the two books above)

  The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose

  At the House of the Magician

  By Royal Command

  The Betrayal

  Also by Mary Hooper

  For older teen readers:

  To order direct from Bloomsbury Publishing visit www.bloomsbury.com/maryhooper or call 020 7440 2475

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Turn over for a taster of

  CHELSEA AND ASTRA

  by Mary Hooper…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Monday, 10th October

  ASTRA

  The first words I heard him say were: ‘Is this Mrs Konya’s class?’

  Chelsea and I were sitting near the front of the room as usual, and we both looked up when the strange boy came in. I say strange, but I don’t mean he was weird, just that he was a stranger. He was wearing our uniform – which isn’t much of a uniform, just black jeans with a blue sweatshirt – and he was thin and dark and good-looking, with long, straight slicked-back hair and eyes which were slightly slanted.

  He was speaking to me, but I blinked at him and didn’t reply. I’ve never really liked – really fancied – a boy before and I was just struck dumb.

  Under cover of the desk, Chelsea nudged me and made a squealy noise in her throat. The noise meant that she thought he was a hunk. I knew this because I’d heard it before.

  ‘Yes, this is her tutor group,’ she said to the boy eagerly. ‘She’ll be in in a minute.’

  He nodded and stared from one to the other of us, slowly, gravely.

  Chelsea said, ‘Are you coming in here, then? You joining this class?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and I felt my stomach give this strange little leap of excitement.

  He looked round the class as if looking for somewhere to sit. Most of the boys are lumped near the back – they think they’re not going to get noticed so much there – and they weren’t taking much notice of the new boy. The girls, though … well, more than a few of them were watching him. There was just something about him, you see. Something different. He wasn’t like the other boys. He looked (and I could never tell Chelsea this because she’d have hysterics) like one of those old-time poets: thin and a bit tortured.

  ‘I’ll sit here, I reckon,’ he said, and he moved towards an empty chair just in front of us. He sat down, stretched out his legs and began to whistle softly under his breath. He was so cool.

  Chelsea nudged me again and made gleeful faces in his direction to indicate that she fancied him. This was nothing new, either, Chelsea’s always finding boys that she fancies: boys in the street; boys when we go skating; boys in the Aussie Soaps. They – the Soap stars she’s mad on – are too brash and blond and loud for me, they fancy themselves too much.

  If it comes to that, I don’t reckon that boys in real life are much better: they’re usually noisy and rude; always going on about sex and looking you up and down; then sniggering together. Chelsea and I don’t like that.

  Chelsea and I agree on all those sorts of things, and we make each other laugh, too, but we’re different in other ways. She calls me a hippy because I’m interested in New Age stuff: star signs and crystals and omens; whereas she’s a bit of a trendo: she’s mad on clothes and whatever band’s in at the moment – and she’s completely potty on the Soaps, never misses a single one. I mean, I like them too, but she lives and breathes them. Once we had to spend a whole Saturday at the railway station because this Soap star guy was coming to open a supermarket.

  A moment or two later Mrs Konya – Konnie – came into class and, because she was in a rush, sat down with the register and started calling it out without looking round the room.

  I looked sideways at the new boy, wondering what colour his eyes were and dying to know what his name was, trying to think what he suited. Konnie didn’t call out any new names, though. She got right to the end of the register and was just about to dismiss us when Chelsea said, ‘Mrs Konya! There’s someone else here!’

  Konnie sighed under her breath. We were only three weeks into a new term and already our tutor room had been changed twice and four boys had been brought in from another group.

  She looked across, saw the boy and frowned. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  I held my breath. I wanted him to have a good name; I didn’t want him to be called something fancy or posh or stupid.

  ‘My name’s Ben Adams,’ he said, and I relaxed, pleased. Ben Adams, as a name, was near-perfect: straight, clean, uncomplicated. I printed Ben Adams on a new page in my rough book and wrote my own name underneath. I’d do a number check later to see if they matched.

  I waited for Konnie to ask him his address and date of birth for the register. I wanted him to be an air sign, same as me – that would mean we went well together. Maybe, though, he’d be a fire sign. That would be OK too; it would mean we complemented each other: fire and air need each other to survive.

  She didn’t ask him anything like that, though, she just looked impatient. ‘And where have you come from?’ she snapped.

  ‘Just moved to the area,’ he said. ‘I came to the nearest school.’

  ‘Are you enrolled here?’

  He gave a shrug.

  Konnie sighed again, more loudly. ‘Have your parents enrolled you?’ she said impatiently, and I wanted to tell her not to speak to him like that.

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said.

  She hesitated for a moment, then the bell went for our first class and she slapped the register shut. ‘You’d better go and see Miss Waters, the school secretary,’ she said. ‘Give her your details and get things organised.’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ Chelsea said to Ben eagerly, before I could speak. I thought to myself then that it was funny she didn’t say, we’ll take you, when we always did everything at school together.

  CHELSEA AND ASTRA

  available now

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Del
hi, New York and London

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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  This electronic edition published in October 2012

  Text copyright © Mary Hooper 2005

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  eISBN: 978-1-4088-3708-5

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