by CJ Bridgeman
Jamie rolled his eyes as he stood up from the computer. He looked at Felicity. “I hope you’re prepared to deal with this for the entire school day,” he sighed, gesturing towards his sister.
Felicity didn’t answer him. She clutched the strap of her satchel tightly.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jamie said. “Come on, Hollie.”
Jamie had been right about his sister. For the rest of the day, Hollie was in mourning. At first she complained quite openly and rather noisily, much to the irritation of her teachers, one of whom was compelled to remove her from the class for ten whole minutes. Her endless group of supporters sympathised greatly. Towards the afternoon, however, she began her silent grieving process, staring at the air before her eyes and staying close to Felicity, who could do nothing but be there, for providing comfort was not her speciality. This did nothing to deter Hollie; in fact, she seemed to feel better in the company of herself, Felicity and her own thoughts and, as a result, shunned the fellowship of the other girls.
As soon as she was able, which happened to be during last period, Felicity excused herself from lessons and headed to the girls’ toilets, where she locked herself within a cubicle and took out the book she had found in Mr Oakley’s office. She felt a warm surge in her stomach when she looked at it, for she was very aware that in taking it she had committed an offence. Still, she was so certain that the book belonged to her mother that she had felt she had no choice but to take it, as if she was returning it to its rightful owner. This sudden sense of duty was strange and new to her.
The book was very worn, and looked as though it was bound by leather and string. She opened it at random. It was definitely her mother’s handwriting. Felicity would have known the distinctive style anywhere. Although the two of them had not been close, Felicity often used to attempt to imitate her mother’s handwriting, especially when she was younger and had longed for her mother’s attention. The way she had formed the words in sweeping loops and joined each letter to the next, the way she had carefully placed dots and little squiggles above and below certain letters was unlike any other style that Felicity had ever seen. As a child, she had found it beautiful. It occurred to Felicity then that her young self had found many things about her mother beautiful.
Though she could make out some of the words, Felicity had no idea what the contents of the journal meant. Many of the pages were structured into lists, and the paragraphs appeared to be instructions, but it meant nothing to Felicity. Nor could she understand the many pictures, diagrams and symbols that her mother had drawn.
She traced the letters of ink with her fingertips, trying to imagine what the book had been for. Closing her eyes, she visualised her mother sitting in her study at their house in the countryside, one hand resting on the open pages and the other holding a pen, but she found it hard to see her face; her dark hair, blue eyes and pale skin were all a blur. Felicity wondered if she was starting to forget her.
She suddenly remembered the scrap of newspaper she had taken from the office and retrieved it from her pocket. She had not watched the news or read the papers around the time that her mother died. She hadn’t wanted to be faced with it. But time was a healer - wasn’t that how the saying went? Maybe now she was ready.
She straightened out the crumpled paper and was greeted by the monochrome image of the car crash. Debris from her mother’s vehicle littered the street. Police cars and ambulances were parked up nearby. There didn’t need to be a picture of Audrey’s lifeless body because Felicity could see it in her head. She could see the blood covering her mother’s pale skin. She could see her vacant eyes staring upwards.
The image made her feel nauseas, so she read the article itself instead. It didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. A tragic accident, the vehicle spun out of control, a mystery... various theories went that she had swerved to avoid a deer or fallen asleep at the wheel. The police had said all of these things to Felicity when they had turned up on her doorstep the next day.
It had been a Saturday. Felicity had thought that her mother had been working in Birmingham, so was quite surprised to find that the accident had happened just a few miles from their countryside home. Early that morning, before she had even got dressed, she had heard the sound of a car engine and tyres on gravel, followed by that knock on the door -
The door to the girls’ toilets opened, bringing Felicity unceremoniously back to reality. She shoved the journal back into her satchel and headed back along the quiet corridors to her classroom, feeling unsatisfied. She had hoped that she might have learnt something about her mother from reading the book. She had thought that perhaps she would have been able to understand her better somehow. But she had been wrong, and as she walked she wondered whether or not she would ever truly know who her mother was.
The hand that grabbed her roughly by the shoulder caught her by surprise, making her cry out, and she found herself shoved against the wall of the corridor and staring into the face of Mr Oakley.
“Miss Lucas,” he said in a hushed voice. “We didn’t finish our counselling session today.”
Felicity froze beneath his gaze, feeling suddenly terrified. “Um, I - I know,” she stammered. “I can come and see you tomorrow?”
Mr Oakley shook his head vigorously. “That won’t be good enough, I’m afraid,” he said, lowering his voice and glancing both ways down the corridor. “You see, you have something of mine, Miss Lucas, and I need it back.”
Felicity swallowed, pressing herself up against the wall in a vain attempt to put more distance between herself and the counsellor. Her eyes flicked desperately from side to side in search of aid.
“Just give it back to me,” Mr Oakley continued. “And I won’t report you to the head teacher.”
Felicity knew that the school would not take theft lightly, for that was the crime she had committed. She had taken something without permission, something that did not belong to her. But then, it did not belong to Mr Oakley, either.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” she breathed, her voice shaking.
Mr Oakley’s worried expression altered into one of anger. “I don’t have time to play silly, childish games,” he said. “Give me the book you stole from me. Now.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Felicity persisted, holding tightly onto the straps of her satchel.
“Don’t lie to me.” Mr Oakley’s face grew more severe. His eyes bored into hers. He moved his face so close that she could feel his breath on her skin. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, little girl.” And then, to Felicity’s horror, Mr Oakley dropped his eyes to her satchel.
The bell rang, distracting him, and Felicity took her chance. She slipped beneath his arm and ran down the corridor. The counsellor tried to follow her but was caught in the rush of students as they hurriedly and eagerly exited their classrooms. As she reached the door at the far end, Felicity flicked a final glance over her shoulder and saw Mr Oakley helplessly watching her leave the school premises.
Once she got outside, Felicity ran as fast as she could and did not stop until she got back to the flat.
6.
The months drew on and the season became colder. By mid-December, the temperature had dipped so much that it had already started to snow. The flakes floated down in their thousands, sometimes soft and gentle, and at other times caught up in the bitter winds of an angry storm. The only thing that kept spirits high when school remained open was the impending festivities of Christmas.
Christmas meant very little to Felicity. Usually she spent the time off boarding school studying. Her mother didn’t put up decorations or send cards, and she never disclosed to Felicity the reason why. The house was as gloomy and quiet at Christmastime as it was the rest of the year. Her father’s flat was much the same; as the festive holiday drew closer, there was no sign that Felicity’s father was going to purchase a tree or that he had an artificial one stuffed in a cupboard somewhere.
The atmosphere at school
was very different. In the last week of term, Felicity noticed students exchanging gifts wrapped in brightly coloured paper, ripping them open although it was still a week until Christmas Day. Felicity herself received a few cards from students with whom she had barely even held a conversation. Girls came to school with tinsel in their hair and tiny festive characters hanging from their ears. Mobile devices blared out the sounds of Christmas tunes in the corridors until the students responsible were shouted at by teachers trying unsuccessfully to implement the mobile phone ban. A huge tree with mismatched, secondhand decorations stood tall in the main foyer, the perfect target for the pranks and jokes of the Greenfields students; by the end of term, it looked more than a little worse for wear.
It had been just over three months since Felicity had joined the suburban school and she was finally starting to feel as though she was settling in. Her relationship with her father had not improved. The two of them barely spoke, only exchanging strained formalities as they accidentally met one another on their way somewhere else. It was for this reason that Greenfields had become a kind of haven for her.
Hollie still insisted on dragging her wherever she went and told everyone that the two of them were best friends, much to the disappointment of many of the girls in her entourage. Felicity had disclosed many things to her that she hadn’t previously, including admitting that her mother was dead. But she still couldn’t bring herself to go into detail, although a part of her wanted to. The only other person that Felicity felt she knew was Jamie, and although the three of them did not spend much time together in school (because Hollie had a reputation to protect), they frequently saw one another in their spare time. Hollie acted as though she begrudged spending time with her twin brother, but Felicity had learnt that it was all for show. However much she tried to hide it behind the insults and looks of disgust, Hollie enjoyed having Jamie around.
Felicity was reluctant to admit it, but she enjoyed having friends. Every day she went to school and Hollie had something new to tell her and Jamie had a new insult for his twin. The two of them bickered incessantly, but it was clear that they had a great affection for one another. Felicity was almost jealous, for she had tasted friendship for the first time in her life and could only imagine what closeness siblings had, let alone twins. Of course, she would never say any of these things aloud.
The twins approached the coming holiday with a sense of dread. Their father was going to Spain with their stepmother over Christmas and new year, so Jamie was being forced to stay with Hollie and their mother.
“It’s always the same,” he told Felicity at lunchtime one day. “Mum makes jibes at Dad that she thinks are subtle and it’s so agonisingly blatant that she wants me to pass them on. Then she spends the rest of the time making sure I’m doing my homework and that I know all my topics for next year. One time she even gave me a quiz.”
“Doesn’t she check Hollie’s homework?” Felicity asked, aware of her friend’s talent for avoiding deadlines and skipping lessons.
Jamie laughed. “Yeah, right. Hollie’s going to be a model, as far as our dear mother is concerned. Apparently that makes homework redundant in her case. As for me, well, I’m destined to become whatever requires the most training, the most qualifications and the most intelligence. One week it’s a doctor, the next it’s a lawyer... she has only the highest expectations of me.”
Felicity had wondered then what expectations her father had of her. He hadn’t mentioned any since she had moved in. He dutifully checked her homework planner and regularly asked how school was going, but Felicity sensed that he did so because he felt he should, rather than because he actually cared, and even this had become less and less of a priority as time went on. Had she been so inclined, she could have easily hidden homework tasks and lied to him about her progress, but she didn’t want to risk another confrontation like the one that had come from her going to the Talk, and she certainly didn’t want any trouble from the teachers, however ineffective some of them were.
Felicity and her father had never really recovered from that exchange, in spite of the time that had passed. She had been spending even more time in her bedroom than she used to, if that were even possible, but not only in an effort to avoid her father, but because she still had her mother’s journal. Every night before she went to sleep she would flick through the worn pages, reading the words and studying the strange pictures. She never made any more sense of it, but she was glad just to have it.
Mr Oakley had not returned to Greenfields, and nor had Oliver. Hollie had been upset for a week or two and had tried in vain to locate him using various social networking sites, but no one had seen or even heard anything from him. What was even more curious was that no one even seemed to know where he had come from. It was quite a mystery, which made it all the more enticing for Hollie. Still, as the weeks rolled by and they heard no news, she stopped talking about it altogether.
Felicity was relieved, though she said nothing. Although she could not fully recall the events of that night, Oliver still unnerved her, and she felt much more relaxed now that he and Mr Oakley were gone. No one seemed to know much about the school counsellor, either, but then his work was not limited to Greenfields; it had been his job to visit students in all of the schools in the area. The students didn’t much care that he wasn’t around at present, and Felicity didn’t show how much the counsellor bothered her. She was just glad that he had not come back, and given the fact that she had heard nothing from the head teacher regarding the apparent theft of her mother’s journal, she guessed that he had not reporting her for stealing.
It was snowing on Christmas Eve. Felicity’s father was working late, so she took the opportunity to spend time outside her tiny bedroom and watch some television. There had been many festive films on. For the most part Felicity had avoided them, but as the snow floated down outside and the coloured lights adorning the neighbouring buildings twinkled in through the windows of the flat, she found herself entirely absorbed in the story of a little girl trying to prove that Father Christmas really did exist.
When the film ended, Felicity went to bed. Dressed in her pyjamas and dressing gown, for her window was still stuck open, she nestled beneath her thick duvet and flicked through the pages of her mother’s notebook, just as she did every night. The words glared at her, challenging her to understand them and mocking her when she failed. She muttered them under her breath. She had looked online to find a translation to the words that were not in English but could find none. It was gibberish to her. She wondered how Mr Oakley had come to have been in possession of the book, and why he had been so desperate to get it back. You don’t know what you’re dealing with, that’s what he had said to her the last time she had seen him. The words chilled her more than the bitter winter air.
She drifted off to sleep before she even realised it, and when she awoke it was Christmas Day.
There were no bells. Felicity pushed the covers aside and got dressed, eager to be out of the flat before her father got up. She had arranged to meet Hollie and Jamie later, for the two of them were not looking forward to sharing the Christmas spirit in the style of the broken Clarke family. She opened her bedroom door and stopped abruptly when she saw the Christmas tree standing by the television.
Her father had been sitting on the sofa when she came in, but he stood up when he saw his daughter. He shuffled awkwardly on the spot, clearly unsure of what to say, before he settled for: “Merry Christmas.”
Felicity looked from the tree to her father and then back again. He was holding a beer.
He noticed at her attire. “Are you going out?”
She nodded.
“Oh.” He lowered his eyes. There was a pause, and then he put his bottle on the table and retrieved something from beneath the tree. “Well, open this before you go,” he said, and handed it to her.
Felicity looked at the gift. It was small and rectangular, and was poorly wrapped in thin, cheap wrapping paper with festive cartoon figures all ov
er it. Aware that her father was watching her expectantly, she slowly unwrapped it, and was surprised by the flicker of excitement that stirred within her.
It was a trinket box of some kind. Made of wood that had been finished in a dark varnish, it had intricate floral patterns carved all over it. On the top was a brass inlay of a rose.
“I thought you could put your, uh, mother’s things in there,” her father explained.
Felicity turned the box over in her hands, feeling the grooves of the carvings with her fingers. When she turned it upside down she caught sight of a white sticker that read: £6.99.
Her father’s shoulders slumped. “Uh, sorry. I uh, forgot to take that off.”
Felicity held the box in her hands and stared at it for the longest time. This was the first Christmas gift she had received in many years; she couldn’t even remember exactly when it was that her mother had stopped buying them for her. She felt strange and warm, and didn’t really know what to do.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Her father nodded, smiling slightly, and then he sat back down on the sofa and resumed his vigil of the television. Felicity had originally planned to go out that morning, to escape the flat and wander around town before meeting her friends, just to avoid spending any time with her father. But the gift and the Christmas tree changed her mind. With the box still in her hands, she slowly sat down on the sofa beside him. He didn’t look at her.
Later that day, when her father announced that he was going down to the pub, Felicity went to meet Hollie and Jamie at their father’s house. It was in a different part of the neighbourhood, a part where trees lined the streets and the tall, terraced houses were surrounded by black iron fences. Each house was at least three storeys high, and that didn’t even include the cellar. Felicity had visited once before and had been naturally intrigued as to why the twins had been sent to Greenfields when their parents could have easily afforded to buy them a private education, to which Hollie had explained that their mother was a local councillor and had to be seen as ‘doing her bit’ for the local community. Felicity wasn’t entirely sure how sending the twins to the worst school in the area could have been seen as a service, but she didn’t ask.
