Adrian was starting to look like a rabbit caught in the headlights, his eyes darting this way and that. Harriet flushed.
Bob laughed. “Really, Adrian,” he said with a wide grin. “Drinking all day with my wife when I’m away in the city? Sherry? Scotch? Martinis? Shocking.”
Adrian opened his mouth as if he was going to say something but then closed it again.
“Don’t encourage her, Bob,” said Harriet, sitting back as if Fizz’s words hadn’t bothered her at all. “You know what she’s like. It’s all lies.”
“Not all,” said Fizz.
“A complete exaggeration,” said Harriet. She took a careful sip of champagne. I could see that her hand was shaking, just a little. “As you very well know, Bob, Adrian and I have a drink together now and then when he visits to discuss the dollhouse. Fizz is making trouble the way she always does. Now she’s trying to ruin my birthday dinner, but I’m not going to let her.”
With an air of rising above such petty concerns, she smiled a bit too brightly at her husband. “Darling, perhaps you should finish pouring the champagne?”
Bob held her eyes for a moment. Her smile slipped.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I’m neglecting my duties.” He poured drinks and handed them round to Fred and Adrian. Then he picked up his glass and raised it to her.
“To my lovely and beautiful wife, Harriet,” he said. “Happy Birthday!”
Adrian and Fred both echoed the “Happy Birthday” and they all drank.
“Excellent champagne!” said Fred.
“Only the best for Harriet,” said Bob. “Always. Only the best. The best clothes, the best jewelry, the best—” He paused, and turned to Adrian. “The best architect. You know, when I hired you, Adrian, four years ago, I chose you because you were the best architect money could buy.”
Adrian swallowed nervously. “Well, I wouldn’t say that—”
“Oh, I would,” replied Bob. “Definitely. I wanted my wife to have the best dollhouse in the world. Better than Queen Mary’s. The best. And you must be congratulated, Adrian, because you have created it for her. The very best dollhouse.”
“Hear, hear,” said Fred, raising his glass. “To the dollhouse!”
Everyone held their glasses aloft and repeated, “To the dollhouse!”
The dollhouse.
Now they were moving around in the candlelight, talking to each other, drinking more champagne, laughing. The dresses swirled and sparkled, the light bouncing off them. The colors started to blend together, and I felt suddenly dizzy, like I was going to fall.
I closed my eyes and clutched at the doorway to steady myself. Everything was rocking as if I was in a small boat on a tossing sea.
I turned blindly into the hall. I needed to get back to bed.
The sounds of the party started to fade away as I slowly climbed the stairs. My dress kept getting in the way of my feet, threatening to trip me. When I got to the steepest curve of the stairs, I sank to my knees, hoping to crawl the rest of the way.
The doorbell rang. Harriet’s voice rang out clearly from the living room. “Now who could that be?”
I was dimly aware of a figure moving from the dining room across the hall to the front door. The door opened and then I heard a muffled voice saying, “Alice. I’m looking for Alice.” I tried to speak, but the shadows were gathering around me like a thick, heavy blanket, and soon I was engulfed in the darkness, unable to move or see. For a moment, everything went very still, and it was as if I winked out of existence. I had the sense of teetering on the brink of a vast dark abyss. And then there was nothing. Nothing at all.
* * *
—
It seemed like a very long time later when suddenly out of nothingness and nowhere my head started hurting again, and then I could feel the stairs under me. I began to pull myself up the last few feet to the upstairs hall. It was completely dark, and I could no longer hear any sounds of the party, or from the person at the front door. I crawled along the hall, thinking I would find my mom’s room, but I had no sense of where I was. I turned to the left and came up against a door that gave way when I pushed.
“Mom?” I whispered. I crawled through the doorway and into the room, which was as dark as everywhere else. Shouldn’t there be a moon somewhere? or some stars? or a nightlight?
I stumbled to my feet and moved slowly through the empty space, my arms stretched out ahead of me, like those sleepwalking zombies you see in the movies. Surely Mom’s room wasn’t this big? I just kept going and going, one foot after another.
“Mom?” I whispered again.
Then I heard a noise behind me. A kind of rustling, then a fumbling, then a small “click.”
A soft light spread around me. I was facing a fireplace.
“What on earth are you doing in my room, young lady?” came a piercing voice from the direction of the light.
I spun around to see Mrs. Bishop in her grand four-poster bed, sitting up among the bedclothes, her white hair disheveled, staring at me in outrage.
Chapter Thirty-Five
THE GROUCH
“This is the third night in a row you’ve woken me up,” said Mrs. Bishop. “That’s three times too many. I repeat, what are you doing in my room? And why are you wearing an evening dress?”
My head began to clear. Even though the old lady was glaring at me, and I knew I was probably in big trouble, it was so good to see the light again, as well as another human being, however grouchy.
I stood up and approached the bed. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess— I guess I was sleeping, and then I woke up and I was here.”
Mrs. Bishop narrowed her eyes. “Sleepwalking? You’re trying to tell me you’ve been sleepwalking?”
“I…I don’t know. I never have before. At least, I don’t think I have.”
“And the dress?” Mrs. Bishop was staring at my outfit with a strange expression on her face. Disapproval, I thought.
I smoothed down the midnight-blue party dress Fizz had lent me over my knees as I sat down on the chair beside Mrs. Bishop’s bed. The dress was a little the worse for wear since I had crawled up the stairs in it.
There was a glass of water on Mrs. Bishop’s bedside table, and without thinking, I took a long drink from it.
“Lily and I were playing dress-up,” I said, putting the glass back. “I guess we fell asleep in our dresses.”
She glared some more. “Well, this has got to stop,” she said briskly. “I don’t sleep well at the best of times, but if I’m woken up at—” She glanced at her bedside clock. “Three o’clock! Well, I’ll never make up the sleep. I’ll be out of sorts all day tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you always out of sorts?” I said it without thinking. Something about being alone with Mrs. Bishop in the middle of the night had made me forget to watch what I said. I held my breath and closed my eyes for a second, waiting for a blast from her.
A kind of snorting sound made me open my eyes and look at her.
She was laughing.
“You’ve got your nerve,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid of me?”
I thought about it. “Yes. But I forgot to be, for a minute.”
“Well, you should be afraid,” she said. “I could fire your mother first thing tomorrow morning and have you out on the streets with nowhere to go.”
“I don’t think you’d do that,” I said. “I think you’re more bark than bite.”
She laughed again. For such a crusty old lady, she had an unexpectedly pleasant laugh. “Maybe. But I used to have senior editors at the paper shaking with fear after just one look from me.”
“I guess you’re a bit of a bully, then,” I said. I don’t know what came over me. Words just kept coming out of my mouth.
“Yes. I probably am,” said Mrs. Bishop. “I have high standards, and I expect people to
meet them. Very high standards.”
“Does my mother meet your standards?”
“Yes. She’s a very good nurse, and she treats me with respect.”
“What about Mary?”
“Mary is an excellent cleaner. She talks too much, but she can also keep a secret if she has to.”
“What secret?”
Mrs. Bishop shot one of her razor-sharp looks at me. “Never mind what secret. You’re getting me off topic. We were discussing what we are going to do to stop all this nonsense in the middle of the night.”
I sighed. “I wish I could stop it. I have the strangest dreams.”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Bishop. “Dr. West says it’s the concussion, but I’m not so sure.”
“What do you dream about?” I asked.
“Oh, this and that,” she replied, picking at something on her crisp blue sheets. “Mostly the past. People who are long gone. But you’re too young to dream about the past.”
“I guess,” I said uncertainly. I was dreaming about the past, just not my past. At least, I thought I was.
Mrs. Bishop was watching me intently, as if waiting for me to say more.
“I suppose you miss your father,” she said, finally.
I sighed again. “Yes. I do. But for months now he hasn’t been around much.”
“Still,” said Mrs. Bishop. “He is your father.”
“Yes,” I said. “I just wish Mom and Dad would figure out a way to stay together. I don’t think they’ve tried very hard.”
“Sometimes things happen that we don’t like, but there’s nothing we can do about them,” said the old lady. She wasn’t looking at me now so much as past me, and I got the feeling she was thinking about something specific. Something she wasn’t very happy about.
“Like your broken leg?” I asked.
She started and looked back at me, as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Oh— yes. Certainly. Like my broken leg. That was unfortunate.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t paying attention. Thinking about something else when I was coming down the stairs, and I slipped.”
“The big stairs. You fell down the big stairs.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that? You’re a very curious Alice, aren’t you?”
“They’re so steep. I’m scared every time I go down them. And the taxi driver said—” I stopped.
She jumped on it. “What did Ben Johnson say? Honestly, that man! He can get more drama out of the tiniest little thing—”
“Not so tiny,” I said. “He said you lay for a long time after you broke your leg, all night, and if Mary had come any later you would have died.”
A red flush spread over her pale cheeks. “See what I mean? Nonsense! I was in no danger. Uncomfortable— yes, but I knew Mary would be in the next morning. That man exaggerates everything.”
“I guess it was lucky that you fell on one of Mary’s cleaning days,” I said.
“Lucky? Lucky?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you think it’s lucky that I’m lying here in bed for weeks, unable to do anything for myself, unable to walk around my own house? That I have to have strangers living here to take care of me, including a very rude little girl?” She glared at me. “I think I’ve had enough of your curiosity for one night, Miss Alice.” She raised her voice. “Ellie!” she yelled. “Ellie, your blasted child has woken me up again. Ellie!”
In a moment my mother came stumbling into the room.
“Whaaa? Mrs. Bishop? Alice?” She looked at each of us in turn. “What’s going on?”
“Sleepwalking,” snapped Mrs. Bishop. “She blundered in here and woke me up. I think you should send her to a psychiatrist. She’s obviously very disturbed.”
“Alice?” said Mom, her face creased with worry.
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to her,” I said crossly. “She’s just a grouch.”
“Alice!”
“Well, she is.” I flounced out of the room.
I went back to my room. The bed curtains were closed. I peeked in and there was Lily in her party dress, fast asleep with an angelic expression on her face.
As if she could feel my presence there, suddenly she opened her eyes.
“Hi, Alice,” she said sleepily. “Is it time for the party?”
“It’s all over,” I said. “It didn’t work. I went to the party, but you didn’t.”
Her face fell. “I missed it? I wanted to go to the party!”
“Sorry,” I said, collapsing onto the bed beside her. Suddenly I was very, very tired.
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE HOSPITAL
Mom bustled in at that point.
“Alice,” she began. “Oh, hello, Lily, you’re awake too. Why on earth are you two wearing those dresses?”
“We were going to go to a party,” said Lily, pouting. “We were supposed to go, but then Alice went without me. I think so.”
“Lily!” I said.
“Well, you did,” she replied.
“Never mind that,” said Mom, sitting down on the bed and stroking the hair back from my forehead. “Alice, I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
“Mom!”
She was quiet, but firm. “I’m sorry, Alice, but you’re showing more symptoms of concussion, and we need to get you checked out properly. Dr. West said if there were any changes, we should go to Emerg., and sleepwalking is definitely a change.”
“But Mom—”
“No arguments, miss! Get your clothes on. Lily, get out of that dress and into your pj’s. I’m calling your mother to come and stay with you and Mrs. Bishop.”
She was in bossy nurse mode and she wasn’t going to budge. She turned and went to make the phone call. Sighing, I slipped off the dress and found my shorts. Lily was very quiet, shooting worried looks at me as she got changed.
“Are you real sick?” she said, finally, sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up, hugging them.
“I’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” I pulled a T-shirt over my head.
“But you’re going to the hospital!” she said in a small voice. “People only go to the hospital when they’re real sick! I think so.”
I went over and gave her a hug. “Don’t worry,” I said again. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. All kinds of scary thoughts were racing through my head, and my stomach kept doing little flips.
What would they find at the hospital? Brain damage? Was that why all these weird things kept happening to me? Was it all in my head?
Would I have to have an operation? Would Dad come back and stand with Mom at my bedside, would that finally get them together, watching their only daughter die?
Tears started to my eyes as I pictured them, clinging to each other while I lay white and unmoving on the bed.
No. I couldn’t think about that.
“It’ll be okay, Lily,” I said in a shaky voice.
Mary got there amazingly quickly, and soon Mom and I were driving through the darkness to the hospital. At 2:30 in the morning, the Emergency Department at Lakeport Hospital was pretty quiet, and it didn’t take us long to get in to see the doctor, who just happened to be Dr. West.
I felt a rush of relief as he walked into our cubicle with his easy grin. He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze.
“So, what’s been going on, Sunshine?” he asked.
“Bad dreams,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “And headaches.”
“And sleepwalking,” put in Mom.
“And…and I’m dizzy a lot,” I added.
He arranged for some tests. I had a CAT scan, which was kind of scary, because I had to lie really still on this table that moved inside a big white metal ring. They took my blood, looked in my eyes with a light and asked me questions
.
And all the time I thought about what had been happening to me.
Being in the dollhouse world wasn’t like any dream I’d ever had before. Things had a logic that they never have in dreams. All my senses were working: I could feel the silk of the bed curtains on my fingers, and I could smell the bowl of roses. In my regular dreams I could see and hear things, but I never experienced my other senses so vividly, the way I did in the dollhouse. If I did feel my body in a dream, it was more general, like my legs feeling really heavy and not being able to take a step. And although time seemed to have moved on each time I went to the dollhouse, while I was there it progressed in the usual way and didn’t jump all over the place the way it did when I was dreaming.
It couldn’t be a dream.
But then what was it? Fizz said I was dead. That couldn’t be true either…could it? Nobody knew what being dead was like. Maybe it was like this: a lot like life, only even more confusing.
Something must be wrong with me. Maybe they could find out in the hospital.
The tests took a few hours, and in between, I dozed off. No dreams. Thank goodness.
It was mid-morning when Dr. West came in and told Mom she could take me home.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a slight concussion, just as we thought. No permanent damage. No bleeding. She just needs to take it easy.”
“But my dreams,” I said. “They seem so real. They’re scaring me.”
Mom and Dr. West exchanged glances. He sat down on the edge of my bed and gave me a friendly look.
“Your mother tells me you have a very good imagination, Alice,” he said.
“Yes, but—”
“Sometimes a good imagination can be a bad thing,” he went on. “It can scare you, if you let it run away with you.”
“Yes, but—”
“Your mother tells me this has happened before, that you’ve got carried away with ideas about things that haven’t actually happened.”
“Yes, but this is different.” I finally got the rest of my sentence in. “Before, I would always realize eventually that it was just one of my daydreams. Like this one time, Mom was late coming home, and I thought she had an accident and died, and I was thinking about how things would change, and I almost believed it until she walked in the door, and I realized it was all just in my head. Remember that, Mom?”
The Dollhouse Page 15
