‘Why are you doing these things?’ I whispered. ‘You and Yaz? Can’t you just leave me alone?’
Lainey bit her lip.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and for a moment I thought I could see the old Lainey there, behind the dyed blonde hair and the swagger. It gave me hope. ‘It’s just, well, Savvy doesn’t like you.’
I took a sharp breath in.
‘So do you do everything Savvy tells you to?’ I challenged her, and Lainey just shrugged and looked sheepish. I saw her then for what she was: weak, cowardly, easily led. It made me feel sad.
I looked across the room to where Savvy was pulling on her blazer, picking up her teal-blue leather satchel, flicking back her hair. As I watched, she caught my eye and smiled and waved.
I hated Savvy Hunter more than anyone else alive, but I had to admit she had style.
7
Cafeteria, Ardenley General Hospital
It is one thing to huddle in the family waiting room at Accident and Emergency wearing mismatched nightwear, another entirely to be sitting in the hospital cafeteria at midday, wearing faded pyjamas with a grey coat thrown over the top, your hair still fluffy, tangled and uncombed. Laura Beech knows she looks a wreck, but she doesn’t care. She cradles a mug of tea that went stone cold half an hour ago and stares into the distance, wondering how exactly this can be happening to her.
Mark has taken Nate home to wash and dress; Mark’s mum will meet them at the house and look after Nate for the day.
Laura’s head is a whirl of fear. Two hours ago, Dr Fleet had explained that Alice’s CT scan showed a small area of internal bleeding.
‘We will operate to stop the bleed and relieve any pressure,’ he explained. ‘Alice’s condition is critical, but this operation will give her the best chance of a healthy recovery.’
Critical. What did that even mean?
Mark had signed a consent form, his hand shaking.
A nurse encouraged them to take Nate home and pass him into the care of his grandmother, but Laura would not leave the hospital. ‘Have you eaten?’ the nurse asked. ‘Had a drink, even? You need to stay strong, for Alice.’
Laura cannot imagine being able to eat, but the idea of tea sounded vaguely possible.
‘The operation will take time,’ the nurse had said. ‘There is nothing you can do until it’s over. Go and sit in the cafeteria for a while. Eat something. Dr Fleet is the best there is, and I will fetch you if there’s anything to report at all.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
Laura watches the clock on the wall, which seems to have been stuck at the same time for about a hundred years. Perhaps it is actually broken?
Upstairs somewhere, a surgeon is cutting into her daughter’s skull and lifting away a sliver of bone, poking a scalpel blade into the soft, dark space beneath.
Laura’s hands shake so hard she drops her mug of tea, splattering the table and the floor with rivers of pale brown liquid.
8
Alice
‘Alice, this is Dr Fleet. In a moment we’ll be taking you down to theatre. You’ve hurt your head and we have to stop the bleeding, and once we’ve done that, all being well, you will be on the mend again. I’ll be working alongside our consultant neurosurgeon, Mr Williams, and he has been doing this job for twenty-two years, so I promise you he knows what he is doing. I am confident that between us we can get you well again, Alice. We have a great team looking after you today. You’re in good hands.’
Good hands. A white furred paw presses down on my arm, insistent. Do paws count as hands?
‘She’s asleep again,’ a puzzled voice says. ‘Really, that girl is always sleeping!’
‘Has she hurt herself?’ a second voice wonders. ‘She’s very pale.’
‘Shhh, just let her rest.’
I can feel soft paws stroking hair back from my forehead, and just as I’m beginning to relax, something cold and sharp scrapes against my temple and a piercing pain shoots through my head.
Good hands, bad hands, safe hands, dangerous ones – how can you tell?
I remember other hands, jabbing and poking and pushing at me in the dark. And everything is darkness now, heavy and stifling, weighing me down like a blanket made of stone.
January
I didn’t tell anyone about the bullying.
I didn’t tell the teachers because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t believe me. Savvy had them all eating out of the palm of her hand; she was clever as well as pretty – she got good grades and earned extra good-girl kudos by being on the student council and running the local half-marathon to raise money for Children in Need. The teachers thought she was golden.
I didn’t tell Mum because I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me – well, sorrier than she already did. She knew I didn’t hang out with Lainey and Yaz any more and she must have guessed there was nobody at school I was close to because I never talked about anyone, never brought friends home.
‘I didn’t meet my best friends until I got to university,’ Mum told me once. ‘Not everybody finds the right people at school, you know. Whoever said that school days are the best days of your life was talking a lot of rubbish, Alice.’
I pretended not to know what she was talking about.
I didn’t tell any of my classmates either, because I didn’t think they’d care.
I became invisible. On rainy lunchtimes I lurked in the school library; on sunny days I sat outside on the wall by the gym and read a book or ploughed through some homework, hoping that nobody would notice me.
I was an outcast, a loser, a waste of space. I kept my eyes down so I couldn’t see my ex-best friends sneering at me, so I couldn’t see Savvy waving and smiling her fake, fickle, shiny bright smile.
I woke up every morning with a dull ache of dread inside me. I hated school. I had no clue how I was going to endure another five years of it.
And then one day my drama teacher asked me to stay behind after class. She told me the school was putting on a production of the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was mainly the Year 11, 12 and 13 students, but there were some openings for younger pupils too.
Drama was the only class I really loved, the only time in school I actually felt happy. It was partly to do with the fact that Savvy, Erin, Yaz and Lainey weren’t in the same class, but mostly because drama gave me the chance to escape my life. In drama, I didn’t have to be me any more.
Miss Copeland said I had talent, potential. She wanted me to get involved in the school play.
Just like that, I had something to wake up for, something to work for, something to be a part of. I was given the part of Cobweb, a servant of the Fairy Queen, and though it wasn’t a big part, it changed everything.
Finally, I had somewhere to go at lunchtime; somewhere I was useful, wanted, worthwhile. I didn’t have many lines to learn, but extra people were always needed to help paint scenery, make props or adapt costumes. People spoke to me, and I replied, and although I was rusty by then at knowing what to talk about, it was fun to talk about books and plays and acting techniques, exams and eyeliner and how weird it was for some of the girls who were dressing up as male characters in tights and boots and velvet hats with extravagant feathers.
Those rehearsals were a little window of normality and friendliness in my day. They made the rest bearable.
One day, I bumped into Keisha Carroll beside the lockers at breaktime. Keisha was a Year 13 girl with a lead role in the play – she was a brilliant actress, and she was also beautiful, cool and kind. She was friends with everybody, even the Year Eight nobody with a tiny role, the girl who painted scenery and helped with the props; me. Keisha was buzzing that day. She’d just heard she’d been offered a place at uni to study drama after the summer. She showed me the letter and I told her I was happy for her, and she gave me a little hug and said she was buying chocolate to share out at the rehearsal later, to celebrate.
I was grinning as I watched her walk
away, because I was genuinely pleased for her, and also because I couldn’t remember the last time someone had treated me as a friend, an equal, outside of the rehearsal rooms at least. As for the hug, it was like a small miracle. I hadn’t had a hug from a friend since primary school.
As I turned away from the lockers, Savvy Hunter appeared at my side.
‘I didn’t know you knew Keisha Carroll,’ she gushed, giving me a wide-eyed, smiley look that almost fooled me into trusting her.
‘We’re in the play together,’ I said. ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
Savvy raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow, that’s so cool! We should get together, Alice, talk about it sometime.’
I was pretty sure she was joking, but I was willing to play along. ‘Sure we should,’ I said.
Savvy smiled. ‘Well. I’m having a sleepover the weekend after next. You should come. Yeah, that would be cool! I’ll send you an invite.’
I didn’t believe for a minute that she meant it, of course. But it turned out that she did …
9
Intensive Care Unit, Ardenley General Hospital
By Sunday night, Alice is hooked up to an oxygen tank and an intravenous drip. A spaghetti dinner of wires and tubes and lines connect her to a jumble of monitors that purr and bleep and pulse. Her head is bandaged; her arm set in a plaster cast.
The family watch from behind a wide glass window as inside the room a nurse checks the machines, changes the IV drip and makes notes on a clipboard.
‘Everything went as well as we could have hoped,’ Dr Fleet is telling them. ‘The bleed has been stopped, there are no areas of pressure and of course the broken arm has been set; we have done everything we can for now. The rest is up to Alice.’
‘When will she come round?’ Laura Beech asks. ‘How long until the anaesthetic wears off?’
‘The anaesthetic should be out of her system soon,’ Dr Fleet says. ‘But as for when she might regain consciousness, it’s impossible to say. In other circumstances, Alice would have woken up by now, but as you know, that hasn’t happened. With a head injury like this, coma is not uncommon. It can last for a few minutes or hours, or it can last – well, very much longer than that.’
Mark Beech looks up, his face bleached of colour.
‘Are you saying that she could be unconscious for days?’ he demands. ‘Or weeks? Months? Years?’
Dr Fleet sighs. ‘I’m saying that we have no way of knowing.’
‘But, I don’t understand,’ Laura says. ‘The operation was a success; you’ve said so, doctor. So surely she’ll be fine?’
‘The human brain is a complex organ,’ the doctor explains. ‘There is a great deal we have yet to learn about it. In cases of head injury and trauma, the mind can shut down for a short time, even though there may be no obvious physical cause. We don’t yet fully understand why this happens; perhaps it is a way of dealing with the pain, or allowing all the body’s resources to focus on healing.’
‘Like sleep,’ Laura says, softly. ‘She’s sleeping …’
‘There are significant differences,’ Dr Fleet says. ‘At the moment, Alice is not responding well to external stimulus. Her breathing has been steady, and we are hoping to detach the ventilator shortly, but in every other respect her body is functioning at its lowest level. The coma may last for a few hours, a few days, or much longer, just as you have said. At this stage, we don’t know, but from a physical viewpoint there is no reason to believe Alice is not capable of making a full recovery. There is no longer any physical cause for the coma, so we are hoping she will regain consciousness in due course.’
‘Can she hear us?’ Laura asks. ‘Does she know we’re here?’
‘I can’t tell you that for certain,’ Dr Fleet replies. ‘Some coma patients can hear and understand what is going on around them, so by all means talk to Alice. Speak to her as if she were listening. For all we know, she may be.’
The doctor moves on to see another patient, another family, and Mark and Laura Beech go back into the ICU room to be with Alice. The lights have been dimmed and in the half-light, if you took away the ventilator, the drips, the constant flashing and bleeping of the monitors, you might imagine that Alice was just sleeping. She looks so peaceful, Laura thinks.
You would never guess that she’s drifting, lost in another world.
10
Alice
‘Alice, it’s Mum. The doctors say there is no reason why you should not make a good recovery, but head injuries can be complex and there are lots of things we don’t yet fully understand. Well, I don’t fully understand any of it. I can’t see how you would come to fall down a flight of stairs at one o’clock in the morning, all by yourself. If I could turn the clock back I would never have let you go to that sleepover. I’d have kept you close where I could look after you. I love you, Alice. Please come back to us soon …’
‘Alice!’ a voice roars. ‘Alice! Come back here at once!’
A firm hand tugs at my shoulder and I turn around to see the Duchess, grim-faced, a squalling baby wrapped in a blanket held firmly against her shoulder.
‘I must get ready for the Queen’s croquet match,’ she says. ‘Here. I want you to look after this.’
She shoves the squirming baby at me, and I hold it at arm’s length, unimpressed. It is a very ugly baby, with big flapping ears and a squashed red nose. I look more closely: I am holding a small, grunting pig. As I watch, the pig squirms and jumps right out of my arms, trotting off towards the woods, its curly tail waving, and I begin to follow.
‘Alice, come back!’ the Duchess bellows behind me. ‘Come back here right now!’
March
The Monday after Savvy Hunter had told me she might invite me to her sleepover, I was sitting alone in the corner of the school canteen as usual, picking at the remains of a veggie lasagne and killing time before rehearsals. A shadow fell across the table, and Savvy slid into the seat beside me, lining up her tray alongside mine.
Erin, Lainey and Yaz followed, filling the empty seats around me. Savvy, as always, radiated a shiny, smiley aura of happiness. The others were less enthusiastic, flicking uneasy glances at me and picking listlessly at their plates of salad. It was awkward.
‘So, I was thinking,’ Savvy began. ‘We’ve never got to know one another properly, have we, Alice? And I’d really like to, because I actually think you’re pretty cool.’
My first impulse was to laugh; big mistake.
As if to destroy Savvy’s misconceptions before she went any further, I ended up half-choking on a spoonful of fruit salad; Savvy patted me on the back and said something kind about how the canteen fruit salad couldn’t really count as salad because it seemed to be all apple and orange with never anything exciting like strawberry or kiwi. I just coughed and went a dark shade of crimson.
‘So yeah, I’m really interested in all your drama stuff and everything,’ Savvy ploughed on. ‘You’re just, like, soooo talented! Lainey and Yaz have been telling me how you had the lead part in the school play back at primary …’
I could just imagine.
‘Anyway, like I said, I’m having a sleepover this weekend,’ Savvy went on. ‘To celebrate the start of the Easter holidays and stuff. I’d love it if you could come – I’ve made you an invite, and everything!’
She took out an envelope with a photocopied image of Alice in Wonderland stuck to the front, pushing it across the table towards me.
‘It’s an Alice-themed sleepover,’ she explained, looking round at the girls. ‘We like to do cool, quirky stuff like that, don’t we? And I thought that if we were asking you, an Alice theme would be just perfect! We can have a Mad Hatter’s tea party and dress up and stuff …’
I looked across at Lainey, Yaz and Erin, who seemed uneasy, unimpressed.
‘You can be Alice, obviously,’ Savvy declared. ‘I mean, you probably have a costume and everything, don’t you? Or you could get something from the drama group. I just think it would be awesome, don’t you
?’
I couldn’t work out if Savvy honestly thought the idea of an Alice-themed sleepover was cool, or if it was some kind of elaborate joke designed to make fun of me. I noticed that Lainey was shaking her head slightly as if she really didn’t approve of what was going on.
That was my clue, surely. The girl who’d been getting her minions to bully me for the last year was raising the stakes, stepping things up a level. Savvy was a game player; she wanted to lure me right in, laugh at me, humiliate me. Did she really think I’d be stupid enough to fall for it?
I opened the envelope and looked at the homemade card inside, cut into the shape of a teacup. I tried to imagine Savvy decorating it with collaged Alice in Wonderland images, writing out the date, time, address and dress code in her cool, curly handwriting. It was a lot of trouble to go to, to make someone feel bad.
And an Alice in Wonderland theme – well, maybe that was a sign that I should take a risk and go? I couldn’t be sure.
‘Please come,’ Savvy was saying, and she turned that doe-eyed gaze on me again, the one that made me forget that behind the shiny, smiley mask she was a cold-hearted bully. ‘I think we’d really get on. I think we could be friends!’
I opened my mouth to say no, I really did.
‘That would be awesome,’ I said.
11
The Copper Kettle Cafe, Ardenley, Monday
Savannah, Erin, Lainey and Yaz are sitting at a window table, cradling mugs of hot chocolate, their faces shadowed and anxious.
‘She had to have brain surgery,’ Yaz says, stirring her hot chocolate listlessly. ‘That’s really serious, right? My dad and her dad work together, and apparently Mr Beech said it was a life or death situation.’
‘I heard she was in a coma,’ Lainey chips in. ‘My mum met her gran at the shops this morning. Apparently Alice has been unconscious ever since the accident. She might lose her memory. Or have brain damage or something. So yeah, that’s pretty serious, I’d say.’
Looking Glass Girl Page 3
