We reach another weird triangular-shaped room. In this one there’s a huge stone trough filled with faces made from flat metal discs. A sign on the wall explains that it’s a memorial to all the victims of war. As I look at the sea of faces it reminds me of the painting of all those faces bursting through the Berlin Wall. But these faces aren’t joyful, their mouths are wide in expressions of fear. I shiver at the horror of it all but also at the power of art to make me feel like this.
As we leave the room I turn to Clementine. “How did the Nazis get away with it? How were they able to kill so many Jews?”
“I don’t know.” Clementine shakes her head. “They tried to wipe out anyone who didn’t fit their so-called perfect ideal. Gypsies, people with disabilities, gay people.”
“I guess I wouldn’t have exactly gone down well with them either,” I say with a shiver. “I don’t understand why some people get so hung up on our so-called differences. Why can’t we just focus on what makes us the same?”
We go up some steps and into a room painted lime green. After the stark grey of the rest of the building the brightness feels dazzling. Long strings of small square cards hang like bunting from the ceiling. As we get closer I see that the cards are covered in handwriting.
“What are they?”
“Messages from people who’ve visited the museum. Do you want to write one?” Clementine nods towards a pile of blank cards on the side.
“Sure.”
I take a card, then read the cluster hanging closest to me. Politicians should be made to spend an hour a week in this place to get some perspective, one of them says. Love not hate, says another. Others are in languages I don’t understand but it doesn’t matter because I know exactly what the sentiment will be. Clementine sits down on one of the giant beanbags in the middle of the room and starts writing. As I think about what I could write on my card I feel overwhelmed with emotion. There’s so much hate in the world but there’s so much love too. All I know for certain is which side I want to be on. Then I get one of those magical creative downloads Clementine talks about and an idea for a picture drops fully formed into my mind. I quickly sketch it out on the card. It’s of my and Clementine’s faces in side profile, joined together to form a double-faced head. As I shade in my skin and hair with the pencil I wish I had some colours to make it more impactful.
“What did you write?” Clementine asks, coming over.
“I didn’t. I did a drawing.”
“Oh, let’s see.” She looks over my shoulder at the card. “Is that – is it you and me?”
“Yes,” I reply softly. So what if she thinks it’s cheesy. This place has stripped all of the pretence from me. “I just wanted to do something that celebrates diversity instead of fearing it.”
“I love it!”
“You do?”
“Yes. Could I – could I add something to it? Some words.”
“Of course.” I hand her the pencil and watch as she writes in bold capitals beneath the picture.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY
Four months later…
CLEMENTINE
The summer sunshine pours in through the long arched windows of the living room, causing the dust in the air to sparkle like glitter. I stand in the middle of the room, slowly turning, taking in the teal walls and the piles of books and the stacks of records and the squashy sofa, crammed with brightly coloured cushions. Then I have a sudden, freaky realization. I’m standing in the Brighton flat of my dreams. Only I’m not dreaming. This really is my new home – or Mum, Damon and my new home. And the best thing about it is, it’s in Kemptown, and only a five-minute walk from Rudy’s.
I hear Mum and Gina laughing in the kitchen and Rudy enters the room holding a paintbrush. Her hair’s wrapped in her skull-and-crossbones turban and her jeans and T-shirt are flecked with paint.
“Your mum and her friend are talking about sex,” she says with a shudder.
“Uh-oh.” I pretend groan, but privately I don’t care what Mum’s talking about, as long as it makes her happy.
It’s been four months since we got back from Berlin and Gina and I sprung our surprise intervention on Mum – or friend-tervention, as Gina now calls it. I’d taken Mum to Kale and Hearty, under the guise of going for a mother–daughter hot chocolate. When Gina walked in I thought I might be sick with nerves, especially when Mum’s first reaction was to burst into tears. But thankfully, they turned out to be happy tears. And thankfully, Gina was able to get through to Mum, and remind her of who she used to be, and give her the courage to finally leave Vincent. Of course, Vincent didn’t go down without a fight, but then a tabloid newspaper revealed that he was having an affair with an assistant on his show and it finally gave Mum the ammunition she needed. Vincent put the house up for sale and agreed to give Mum half the proceeds. He even stopped threatening to file for sole custody of Damon.
“I’ve finished the mural,” Rudy says with a grin.
“You have? Can I see it?”
“Of course.”
Mum comes flying into the room. Like Rudy, she’s also covered in flecks of paint. She and Gina are painting the kitchen hot pink.
“Aha, Rudy,” she says, “could you come and give us a hand? I was wondering if you might do some kind of special effect around the kitchen window.”
“Sure,” Rudy replies. “As long as you stop with your old-lady sex talk.”
Mum goes bright red and starts cracking up laughing and I feel another surge of joy course through me.
While Rudy and Mum head off to the kitchen I climb the narrow staircase at the end of the hall, leading to my attic bedroom.
Mum was worried that I’d feel claustrophobic up here after my much larger bedroom in Hove, but nothing could be further from the truth. The sloping ceilings make me feel snug and safe and if I stand on tiptoes, I can see the sea on the horizon between the rooftops opposite.
But I’m not interested in the sea right now. All I can look at is the wall by my bed. As happens so often with Rudy’s work, my first reaction is to gasp. The painting is based on the picture she drew in the Jewish Museum. Rudy worked it up when we got back home and we entered it for the street art competition for Bare-Faced Chic. We didn’t win in the end but we did come second and Sid got some proper prints of it made, which we’ve been selling in the café. But I love the version she’s done on my bedroom wall even more. The colours are so vivid. And our faces look so powerful. I sit on the floor and gaze up at it. It’s so strange to think that I started this year feeling so alone and hopeless but now I have the best best friend ever – and a picture symbolizing our friendship on my bedroom wall. It’s almost impossible to take in how much things have changed. One thing is for sure: whatever might happen in the future, I’ll always know that change can come calling when you least expect it, and make your bird of hope sing again.
RUDY
I get to Kale and Hearty right before it’s due to close.
“Hey, Rudy!” Sid calls, from where he’s cashing up behind the counter. “We had another great day with your prints. We totally sold out of the ‘Rise’ ones and there’s only a couple of the ‘Unity’ pictures left.”
“That’s great,” I reply, joining him behind the counter. “Have I got to the target yet?”
Sid nods and grins. Then he takes an envelope from the till and hands it to me.
“Thanks. Is Ty in the kitchen?”
“He certainly is.”
I go through and find Tyler busy cleaning a stack of dishes at the sink.
“Hey, dude, what’s up with the old-style washing-up?”
“The dishwasher broke,” he says with a sigh, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm.
“How did it go at Clem’s?”
“Great. I finished the mural.”
“Cool.”
“I’ve also got this.” I come over and hold the envelope out to him.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
Tyler takes
off his rubber gloves and opens the envelope. “It’s a load of cash,” he says, frowning.
“Not just any old load of cash,” I say, shaking my head.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a mixing console fund… For you,” I add.
“What – but – how – where did you get this?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t rob a bank. I’ve been saving up the money from our prints. I want you to have it.”
“Oh no,” he holds the envelope back out to me. “I can’t take your money.”
“We want you to have it.”
“We?”
“Me and Clementine. To be honest, I think she might want you to have it even more than I do.” I look at him knowingly.
“She does?” He starts to blush, but it doesn’t make me feel weird – well, only slightly.
“Yeah. She really likes you.” I swear, if heaven really does exist, what I just did must have surely qualified me for a freedom pass. I hope you’re watching, Jesus!
“Wow,” Tyler says. He looks back inside the envelope. “But there’s – there’s enough here to…”
“Get a console? Yes, I know.” I put my arm around his thin shoulders and give them a squeeze. “Me and Clem shouldn’t be the only ones living our dreams. It’s time you started too.”
Tyler swallows hard. When he looks at me his eyes are extra shiny. “I really love you, Jedi sis.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not so bad yourself,” I say gruffly. But deep inside it feels as if some kind of curse has finally been lifted, and the armour plating around my heart splits and falls away.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people compare writing a book to pregnancy and it’s true that some “book births” are definitely easier than others. I wrote Clementine and Rudy during the winter of 2018/19, fuelled by hot chocolate and pumpkin spiced coffee, and the book just poured out of me. I am indebted to a number of people for making it such an enjoyable and inspired process. Firstly, my wonderful editor at Walker Books, Mara Bergman, for believing in my vision for the novel right from the start and for being so excited with the finished product. Thank you for always pushing me to do my best work as a writer, right down to the very last word and em-dash! Massive thanks as always to Jane Willis at United Agents for being such a lovely and supportive agent; the bumpy writing road is so much smoother with you beside me. Huge thanks also to translator extraordinaire Marie Hermet for encouraging the first seed of this novel during our urban art hunt on the streets of Paris – not to mention introducing me to the work of Miss.Tic. Thank you also to Celine Vial and Helene Wadowski at my French publishers, Flammarion, for taking me to Les Frigos for some incredible street art inspiration. And speaking of which, I’m so grateful to all of the talented street artists who have turned Brighton into such a vibrant outdoor art gallery and in doing so, inspired the character of Rudy – Jane Mutiny, Minty, Mazcan, A. Pozas and TrustyScribe, to name but a few. If you don’t live in Brighton you can find them and their great work on Instagram.
Thank you to the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the world’s largest and most powerful outdoor art gallery, the Berlin Wall, for the vital work you do in reminding the world of the importance and fragility of unity.
Thank you to Greta Thunberg and all of the young activists out there doing such vital work in making the world a better and more compassionate place and giving us all hope for the future.
Thank you to Extinction Rebellion for using art in such a powerful way – seeing your creations pop up around my home town while I was writing this book was a huge inspiration to me.
As well as being a celebration of poetry, art and activism, Clementine and Rudy is a celebration of friendship and I am lucky enough to have a fantastic circle of close friends who constantly support and inspire me. Tina McKenzie, Sara Starbuck, Linda Lloyd, Sammie Venn, Pearl Bates, Steve O’Toole – thank you for being my “friend family”. And Jack Curham, Michael Curham, Anne Cumming, Bea, Luke, Alice, Katie Bird, Dan and John, thank you for being my family family. I love you.
Thank you to all of the friends I’ve made through my writing workshops and coaching. The Harrow and Uxbridge Writers and the Snowdroppers and now my Rebel Writers Community – I’m so grateful to have gathered such a brilliant circle of creatives. (If you’d like to join us – and I’d love you to join us – you can find Rebel Writers on Facebook and Instagram.)
Big love and gratitude to all of the inspirational women I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with over the past couple of years who have now become friends: Jessica Huie, Donna Hay, Kate Taylor, Sally Garozzo, thank you for all of the great work you are doing in the world.
Last but never least, colossal thanks to all of the school librarians and book bloggers and readers who have provided such vital support in helping raise awareness of my books. Special thanks to Mary Esther in Ireland and K-Ci in New Zealand for the international cheerleading. And to Nick Tomlinson, my fellow #TeamJaneMaraWalker author – hopefully one day we’ll all be in the same room together. And to all of my readers and my publishers in Australia – I’m blown away by your support and dream of the day when I come and thank you personally.
SIOBHAN CURHAM is an award-winning author, editor and writing coach. Her books for young adults are The Moonlight Dreamers, Tell It to the Moon, Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow (nominated for the Carnegie Medal), Dear Dylan (winner of the Young Minds Book Award), Finding Cherokee Brown, Shipwrecked, Dark of the Moon and True Face. She was also editorial consultant on Zoe Sugg’s international bestseller, Girl Online. Siobhan has lived in many different places but has finally found her spiritual home in Brighton, where she can mostly be found scouring the streets for art, the beach for hagstones and the cafés for coffee.
Connect with Siobhan online…
Website: siobhancurham.com
Instagram: @SiobhanCurham
Twitter: @SiobhanCurham
Facebook: Siobhan Curham Author
Praise for Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
“Friendship, unity and hope in a contemporary story highlighting topical issues surrounding young carers and refugees.” The Bookseller
Praise for The Moonlight Dreamers
“A charming and inspirational story about friendship, dreams and being true to yourself.” BookTrust
“Sensational and unforgettable, falling in love with this book came as naturally as breathing. The best book I’ve read all year.” Blog of a Bookaholic
“It has been what I can only describe as a transformative experience.” New Zealand bookseller
“A promising first novel with no lack of heart and soul.” School Library Association
“A heart-warming story told from the point of view of four girls who feel they don’t fit in. An inspirational story about friendship, life and finding your place in the world. A story that will have significance for many teenagers.” Carousel
“In her moving and inspiring story Siobhan Curham addresses the needs of teenagers today through the wonderful power of dreams and the imagination.” The School Librarian
“I liked all the characters, and although they were all different, I could relate to them and I started to know, like and worry about them, just like friends. I was kept reading right to the end and I would definitely recommend this book to my friends.” Teen Titles, reader review
“A brilliant read which I can’t recommend enough.” The Overflowing Library
“AMAZING! Really gorgeous holiday read about unlikely friendship, moonlight adventure and Oscar Wilde. A summer must-read!” @drawingonbooks
“An easy 5/5, The Moonlight Dreamers is a beautiful summer read. It contains everything you would want in a book: a seamless plot, a distinct writing style and characters with personalities that form together like a strong rainbow.” TeenBookHoots
“Absolutely brilliant. Heartfelt and real.” Australian bookseller
“A beautiful book about friendship, standing up for what you believe in and finding
the courage to be yourself and find your own unique place in the world.” Lamont Books
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used
fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information
and material of any other kind contained herein are included for
entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for
accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.
First published 2020 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
Text © 2020 Siobhan Curham
Cover illustration © 2020 Grace Lee
Cover typography © 2020 Jan Bielecki
The right of Siobhan Curham to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any
form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior
written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Clementine and Rudy Page 22
