Kitabı oku: «The Glitter Collection», sayfa 6
Chapter 14
we have to walk from here…
“Take your first step on Sark soil,” says Auntie Cass, guiding me off the ferry.
It doesn’t look much like home to me. The dock is full of noisy tractors with rumbling engines and people are scurrying all over the place, taking cargo from the ferry and loading it on to tractors. Auntie Cass leads me to a tractor that has a trailer attached to it and we climb on board. I’m not exactly pleased to see that Mandy and her daughter, Holly, have joined us.
“I’ll be keeping a good eye on you, Tiffany Morris,” spits Mandy as we rumble our way up the steep black cliffs. “If you’re anything like your mother you’ll be too busy getting what you want for yourself to worry about other people’s feelings. You leave my Holly alone, do you hear?”
“Mandy, I thought I told you to leave her out of it,” says Auntie Cass. “The past has nothing to do with Tiffany. Give her a chance, she’s a child.”
“Give her a chance! You must be joking! After what Carla put me through? She ruined my life unless you forgot. And this one, she’s her mother’s daughter and you know it. Two peas in a pod. Trouble.”
Holly pokes out her tongue at me again and gives me a nasty look. I’m glad that the tractor has stopped and we’re getting out.
“We have to walk from here,” says Auntie Cass, not mentioning Mandy’s comments.
A dirt track takes us through a small row of old shops, which Auntie Cass says is the main street, called The Avenue. It doesn’t look much like a main street to me. She keeps on chattering away, pointing everything out to me, and introducing me to people who cycle past. I can’t take it all in. Everything seems blurry and unreal and her voice keeps getting lost in the wind. All I can hear is Mandy’s harsh voice echoing round my mind. The bad penny rolls home…She ruined my life…
“What did she do?” I ask. “What did Mum do to Mandy?”
“Don’t worry about it, Tiff, it was years ago. Don’t let it spoil your first day here.”
“How can you say that?” I shriek. “My day was spoiled before her. I want to know what happened. No wonder my mum never wanted to come back to this dump. I should never have asked her to call you.”
Auntie Cass winces. I’ve hurt her and I don’t care. Maybe Mandy’s right, maybe I am trouble. In my mind I draw a big black smudge on the fresh white page of my new life. My mum isn’t even here; she’s miles away. A long drive and two ferry rides away. She hasn’t even been here for thirteen years and yet she’s still managing to ruin my day, ruin my new start, ruin my whole life. A thunderstorm of hatred brews away inside.
Everything around me looks muddy and bleak. Most of the shops are closed. Some of them have tourist stuff like teddies and ornaments with “Sark” written on them, all stuffed together. Some shops are closed for the whole winter and they look all dark and dingy and sad, waiting for spring. When the shops end there are just houses, a grey church and empty space.
Windswept fields, like in Dorothy’s windy world, have bare trees in them that have grown bent and crooked from so much bad weather. It’s quiet too, except for our footsteps crunching on the dirt, the occasional rumble of a tractor and the swish of the breeze. It’s too quiet and that spooks me. This is a dead-land and I wonder what ghostly old people live behind the dark windows of the funny little houses. I long for London traffic jams and bright lights and red buses and loads of noise and open shops full of new things and shiny things and pizza places and beauty salons. I want piles of people bumping into me, busy people going somewhere, hopping into cars, running for trains. I long for my own home, how it used to be, and my own life and Chelsea and our Wizard of Oz nights. I long for anywhere but here.
“It’s a bit different from London, I know,” says Auntie Cass, reading my thoughts and ignoring the question about my mum. “I remember when we arrived we thought we’d been brought to the worst place in the world, to a desert land with nothing beyond. We kept planning to run back to London until our dad bought us ponies and we made new friends. Then we loved it here. You wait and see, you’ll get used to it soon enough. Sark is like a beautiful jewel still hidden in the rock, waiting to be discovered.”
She takes hold of my hand and gives it a friendly squeeze. I pull it away, stuff it back into my pocket and kick some random stones into the hedge.
“Look,” she says, pointing to a long low building with a steep roof. “That’s the Island Hall. The bit at the end is your new school and the rest is a café and community space where all sorts of fun things happen.”
The thought of starting school and meeting more new people and having to face Holly’s spiteful tongue every day turns my tummy into a hard ball. My brain feels squished and tight, like everything inside it is being pressed down, crowding in. It’s busy trying to make sense of everything, trying to understand. I’m so tired, I want to run away and hide in a dark hole, with no one around. I want to run away to a land where Mums don’t do bad things, somewhere over the rainbow where dreams come true. Matilda’s gloomy words of warning dance round my brain. She was right. I will always remember this. Always remember what my mum has done to our lives.
A quiet space grows between my Auntie Cass and me. All our words have disappeared. Our footsteps crunch, crunch, crunch, my suitcase drags and our shopping bags crinkle and swish when they bang against our knees. We make our way down a really long track, lined with gnarly old trees. Finally, it opens out on to a cobbled courtyard. Two grey stone buildings stand blinking in the breeze.
“Here we are, Tiff,” says Auntie Cass. “Welcome home.”
Chapter 15
a small silver picture frame keeps glinting…
“Muuummmyyy,” shrieks a little girl, wrapping herself around Auntie Cass’s legs. “You’re home!”
Auntie Cass lifts her high into the air and swings her round and around, and thrusts the pink fairy-wings and wand into her hands.
“This is Indigo,” says Auntie Cass, catching her breath and introducing us, “and Indigo, this is Tiff, your cousin.”
I smile at the little fairy girl, because none of this is her fault. Indigo sticks her thumb into her mouth and buries a shy face into Auntie Cass’s jumper.
“Say hello to Tiff,” says Auntie Cass, “she’s come to stay.”
Indigo’s big blue eyes peep through her dark curly fringe. “Gello, Gtiff,” she says in thumb-speak.
A tall man with a beard joins us in the big square hall. “Hi, Tiff,” he says, gathering some of our carrier bags and shaking my hand. He kisses Auntie Cass and turns back to me, “I’m your Uncle Dan, come on in, you must be exhausted. Let’s get you a nice mug of something hot.”
He leads us into a large room that has a real fire blasting out heat, making a cosy glow around the walls. Two soft, pale-blue sofas with fat cushions on them invite me to snuggle down.
“Make yourself at home, Tiff,” says Auntie Cass, heading for the kitchen next door. “I’ll bring in some drinks and a snack then we’ll give you a guided tour of the place.”
I take off my shoes and curl up on the sofa that’s closest to the fire. I watch the flames dancing on the logs, chasing each other, twirling around. They start off as tiny blue sparks but quickly grow into big golden glows, making patterns and shapes that flicker shadows across the floor. I look around. One wall is completely covered in books and there’s a scruffy wooden chest with an old fashioned TV balanced on top and a tatty old stereo with piles of CDs and DVDs making a tall tower. There are faded, old pink rugs covering the wooden floor and some fluffy sheepskin ones piled up in front of the fire. Everything here is old. My mum would hate it. Nothing’s new. Nothing’s shiny. Except for one thing.
Out of the corner of my eye a small, silver picture frame keeps glinting in the fiery glow. I drag myself from the sofa to take a look. In the frame is a picture of two girls on ponies. One has white-blonde hair and looks just like me, and the other has long, dark curls. I carefully pick up the frame and peer at it more closely. My eyes want to burrow right into the picture in the hope that it will come alive. I want to hear what the girls are chatting about, to know what they’re doing. I stroke the blonde hair. I’ve never seen a photo of my mum when she was small. I’ve never even been able to imagine what she was like or what her life was like. I’ve only ever known my mum how she is now. Always trying harder and harder to look perfect. But in this picture she looks so beautiful because her shine is coming from the inside, lighting her face, twinkling in her eyes. She’s smiling and shining brightly even though she’s wearing smelly wellies that are covered in mud. And I wonder whatever could have happened to her to make her shine just disappear?
“Oh, you found the photo,” says Auntie Cass, bringing in a tray of food and drinks. “Look at us, we were so sweet, and so happy. I’ve got loads more photos to show you, Tiff, hundreds of them. Let’s spend the weekend going through them, shall we? There’s so much you don’t know.”
While we’re eating our snacks Auntie Cass tells me the story of my mum’s life. She was born in Essex, near London. And when she was eight years old and Auntie Cass was twelve, their mum and dad decided to sell up and move to Sark to run a hotel. Apparently, my mum loved ponies and old films and chocolate and making shows and plays and dances for everyone to come and see. Then she became a teenager and started hanging out with a bad crowd on Guernsey, and then one day, without warning, she ran away.
“It was like she just disappeared,” sighs Auntie Cass. “We all searched so hard for ages and ages. Then we had a couple of calls from her saying she was never coming back and that was that. We didn’t know where she was, so there was nothing we could do. A few years later Mum and Dad decided that they just couldn’t stay here any more; the place was too full of memories. So they bought a place in Spain and moved there. I never gave up though, Tiff. That’s why I stayed on and took over the hotel. I’ve been waiting and waiting ever since.” Her voice cracks and she starts to cry. “Then when your mum phoned from the police station, I just couldn’t believe it. It was like talking to a ghost from the past. I was so happy. I just hopped on the first ferry I could get and raced like mad to see her.” She blows her nose and strokes my cheek. “I’m just so happy you’re both safe, Tiff, so happy you’re here.”
A little worry lump grows in my throat and my eyes start brimming over. “Why did she run away?” I ask, “Why did she do that to you all?” Guilty feelings start gnawing away in my tummy. It’s stupid; I’m feeling guilty for what she’s done and yet I hadn’t even been born when all of this happened. “I hate her even more now,” I spit. “How could she have done that to you? It’s typical: Mandy’s right, she just does what she wants all the time and never really cares about other people’s feelings.”
“Don’t be too harsh on her,” says Auntie Cass. “She was only seventeen. I know something bad happened between her and Mandy, but we never really got to the bottom of it. Mandy just stayed quiet and turned in on herself…and then Holly came along.”
“So that’s why Mandy hates me?”
“She doesn’t hate you, Tiff, she’s just bitter.”
“And your mum and dad in Spain, they’re my grandparents?”
“Of course, and they’re flying over from Spain to visit your mum today. They’re so happy she’s OK, even though she’s in this mess. And they’re coming to meet you at Christmas. They’re so excited. But just to warn you, Tiff, they’re not like your traditional grandparents,” she laughs. “They’re loud and boisterous like your mum. Always getting themselves into mischief.”
“Come on girls, that’s enough chat for now,” says Uncle Dan. “Let’s have the grand tour. I don’t know what your favourite colour is, but I’ve spent the past couple of days decorating your mum’s old bedroom for you. I thought you might like to wake up in the morning and look out of the same window that she did when she was twelve. To see the same view.”
And I can’t pretend that he isn’t a little bit right.
