Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) (9 page)

Moreover, I’d been woken in the night not by a genuine thunderstorm but by the sound of the garbage men out in the street, and the clanking of bins and other containers. My heart had still been in my mouth as I struggled up from the floor and tried to sort my thoughts out. Crazy as the dream might have been, it had seemed to me so real that I’d switched on the golden lamp on my bedside table and taken a surreptitious look at the soles of my fluffy socks, to see if they showed traces of earth from the cemetery, then checked to see if I had resin on my hands or cedar needles in my hair. Of course there was nothing of the kind.

By then I could laugh at myself. At least I couldn’t accuse myself of a lack of imagination.

“Please can I have another piece of toast?” asked Mia, as I typed “Christina Rosetti” into the search field. It was her grave that Grayson had been looking for in the dream. I spelled the name wrong, but there were any number of hits.

“That’s your fifth piece of toast,” Mom said to Mia. And she told me, “Didn’t you hear what I said? No iPads at meals. Put it away.”

She was too late, because the display had just revealed some surprising facts: Christina Rossetti really was a poet of Victorian times, died 1894, buried in London—and in Highgate Cemetery at that.

This was getting a little sinister.

I closed the cover of the iPad and pushed it a little way away from me.

“Would you rather I was anorexic?” asked Mia. “Anorexia is a great danger to girls of my age, particularly in unstable family remonstrances.”

“Circumstances,” said Mom, automatically correcting Mia as she handed her the bread basket.

But it wasn’t as sinister as all that, when you came to consider it carefully. I ignored my goose bumps and opened up the iPad again. There was sure to be a logical explanation. And after all, my mother was a lecturer in English studies, so it was more than likely that I’d heard her mention the name of Christina Rossetti, particularly as she was a contemporary of Emily Dickinson, and Mom and I both loved Emily Dickinson’s poems. The information about where she was buried must have lodged itself somewhere in my unconscious mind, and last night it had made its way into my dream. Simple.

On the other hand … I couldn’t remember the precise wording of the poem that Grayson and Henry had quoted in my dream, but it had rhymed and it sounded genuine. And good. If my unconscious mind had made that up all by itself, I was probably a genius.

“Mom, do you know anything about Christina Rossetti?”

“Yes, of course. I have a lovely illustrated edition of
Goblin Market
. In one of my crates of books.”

“Did you maybe read it aloud to me when I was little?”

“I could have.” Mom took the iPad away from me and closed the cover. “But you really only liked poems with happy endings. The poetry of Christina Rossetti is rather gloomy.”

“Like the atmosphere in this apartment.” Mia looked at the kitchen doorway through which Lottie had disappeared just now. After her second cup of coffee, Lottie always disappeared into the bathroom for a quarter of an hour—every morning without fail. “Have you told Lottie that you and Mr. Spencer will soon be throwing her out, or do we have to do it?”

“No one is going to throw Lottie out,” said Mom. “Her time as an au pair in this family is simply coming to an end—and Lottie has known that for a long time. You two aren’t children anymore, even if the way you act is anything but grown-up. I was really ashamed of you last night.…”

“Ditto.” Mia had spread about half a pound of marmalade on her toast and was trying to cram the whole thing into her mouth, before it sagged and gave way in the middle.

“But where will Lottie go if she can’t work for us anymore?” I asked. Christina Rossetti and my crazy dream were forgotten for the time being. “She hasn’t studied or trained for anything. If you and Papa hadn’t persuaded her to stay on after her first year as an au pair with us, then she’d have studied and had a career. She gave all that up for us. And now she’s old, she has to be told that she isn’t wanted anymore. I call that shabby.”

Mom laughed briefly. “Good heavens, Liv, don’t be such a drama queen! First, it was Lottie’s own decision to stay on, and if you ask me, not a bad one. She’s seen a great deal of the world, she’s learned foreign languages, and goodness knows she’s not earned badly in all these years—all your father’s maintenance payments for you two have gone toward her salary. Second, she’s only thirty-one—and if that’s old, then what would you call me?”

“Ancient,” said Mia with her mouth full.

Mom sighed.

“What did Lottie say when you told her she was going to be fired?”

“I’m sure she cried.” Mia looked as if she were going to cry herself. “Poor old Lottie.”

“Nonsense,” said Mom. “Of course Lottie will miss you, but she’s looking forward to new challenges.”

“Oh, sure.” Did she think we were stupid?

“Anyway, it’s not going to be as soon as all that,” said Mom. “She’ll certainly be staying with us until Easter, probably until the end of the school year. We’ll see. And she has plenty of time to think what she’d like to do next.”

“Buttercup will pine away if Lottie isn’t here anymore,” said Mia. “Remember how Lottie had to go to Germany when her granny died? Buttercup didn’t eat for seven whole days.”

I looked at the door, but Lottie’s quarter of an hour wasn’t up yet. “Poor Lottie, I expect she’s trying to be brave. This will break her heart.”

“You may be taking yourselves a little too seriously,” said Mom. “Can’t you envisage someone enjoying her life even without you?”

“Yes. I bet that’s been
your
dream ever since you met Mr. Spencer,” said Mia.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Seriously, mousies, don’t be so selfish. Lottie might meet a man, settle down, and have children of her own.”

Mia and I looked at each other. I was pretty sure we were thinking exactly the same thing.

“That’s a great idea!” said Mia, her eyes shining. “If we want Lottie to be happy, we just have to find her a husband.”

Mom laughed at that. “Right,” she said. “Have fun.”

10

MY LOCKER AT SCHOOL
was number 0013 and was thus in a prime position right where the corridor began. However, I suspected that it was available only because no one wanted the number thirteen. Good thing I wasn’t superstitious. I didn’t believe in unlucky numbers any more than I believed in horoscopes, or four-leaf clovers and chimney sweeps that brought you luck. So far as I was concerned, mirrors could be broken on Friday the thirteenth, and on the same date hordes of black cats could cross my path—whether from left to right (lucky) or the other way around (unlucky), it made no difference to me. (Lottie had told us about the black cats; she also touched wood three times on the slightest provocation. She thought my disbelief in any kind of extrasensory perception was because of my star sign and that those born like me under Libra, with Sagittarius in the ascendant, were skeptics. They always wanted to find explanations for everything, and that, said Lottie, was why I had doubted the existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy even as a toddler.)

The locker was wonderfully large. I unloaded what felt like a hundred pounds of textbooks, exercise books, and files into it, as well as my sports bag, and I’d still have had room for a picnic basket and a tennis racket. Not that I’d have needed one; this term I’d signed up for track and field sports, in the absence of anything I considered a real alternative. I’d really have liked something typical of Great Britain, but the sports on offer at Frognal Academy, unfortunately, weren’t as British as the coat of arms on the school gates suggested. In my year you couldn’t opt for rowing, field hockey, cricket, or polo—very disappointing.

When I closed the door of the locker, I almost dropped my English books in a fright. I was looking straight into the face of Shaving Fun Ken, who was grinning at me for all he was worth, showing his white teeth. I immediately had every detail of my crazy dream in front of my eyes again, including the sight of Shaving Fun Ken in plaid flannel pajamas.

“Hi, Liz,” he said, putting out his hand. I was so startled that I actually shook it. “We had the pleasure of meeting yesterday,” he said, “but I entirely forgot to introduce myself. I’m Jasper. Jasper Grant.” When I didn’t react, he laughed. “Yes, that’s right.
The
Jasper Grant.” Extraordinarily, he was laughing exactly as he’d laughed in my dream: a sort of self-satisfied chuckle.

I withdrew my hand and tried not to show how confused I felt.

“But I hope you don’t believe everything Aphrodite Porter-Peregrin told you about me,” he went on. “The fact is, Madison didn’t dump me, I dumped her.”

What? I finally came back to my senses. “That really sets my mind at rest,” I said sarcastically. “I admit I’d wondered.”

“Well, you know how it is. Somehow it’s always kind of embarrassing to a girl when you say you’re tired of her.” Jasper’s glance moved down over me, stopping briefly at my legs. “Although I bet no one’s ever told you that, have they, Liz?” he said in an ingratiating tone of voice. “I can imagine you’d look stunning without those glasses … wouldn’t she, Henry?” He waved to someone behind me. “See who’s here.” This time he sounded positively triumphant. “Little Liz.”

Slowly, I turned around. Henry was standing in the milling throng right behind me, paler and with his hair untidier than ever.

Henry, then. And he’d had that name in my dream, too. The odd thing was that I could have sworn the name had never been mentioned during that business with Persephone and the grapefruit. So how on earth had I managed to name him Henry so accurately in my dream?

And why was I getting goose bumps now?

“
Jasper
,” said Henry, slowly and meaningfully.

On the other hand, perhaps Grayson had mentioned his name during their phone conversation, when I was eavesdropping. In addition, Henry was quite a common name, and he kind of looked like a Henry.

“What about it?” Jasper grinned at Henry. “I suppose it’s all right to renew old acquaintances.” He put an arm around my shoulders. “Liz is still stunned to think Jasper Grant remembered her name, right?”

“Yes, particularly as you got it wrong,” I said, freeing myself from his grip. “My name is Olivia.”

“That’s a pretty name too! A very sweet name for a very sweet girl,” Jasper said, not in the least deterred. Even the genuine Shaving Fun Ken must have a larger brain inside his plastic skull. “But I think you ought to wear your hair loose. I’m sure it would suit you much better, particularly when it’s a little untidy. Don’t you agree, Henry?”

Henry obviously preferred not to reply. He had opened locker number 0015, but he was still looking at me over the top of its door with the same thoughtful expression as in the dream.

I shook my head and tried to pull myself together.

Advice on my hairstyle from Shaving Fun Ken, silly looks from Bed-Head Henry—there really were better ways to begin the day. Clutching my books, I pushed past the two of them.

“Wait a minute,” Jasper called after me, but I pretended I couldn’t hear him.
You’d better get out of here
, I told myself,
or you’ll never stop thinking about that stupid dream!

But that was easier said than done. Everything, absolutely everything, today seemed bent on reminding me forcefully of my dream. The English lesson was about Victorian literature, and everyone was given a writer whose life and work he or she would introduce to the class in the coming weeks. In my shock at seeing Christina Rossetti on the list (was she following me around?), I entirely forgot to volunteer to sponsor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was very nearly landed with Emily Brontë. Luckily at the last moment it occurred to the boy who had opted for Elizabeth Barrett Browning that poetry was girlie stuff. I was very glad we were able to swap, because last year, in Pretoria, my English teacher had given me a bad grade because I didn’t see
Wuthering Heights
the same way she did. (I’d defended Heathcliff’s behavior by putting it down to his underprivileged background. Dickens’s David Copperfield had also had a bad time as a boy, said the teacher, but he had turned out all right.)

Music was my third class, and it might have made me think of other things, but the teacher’s name was Mrs. Beckett, and I was sure that I’d heard her name in my dream as well. In addition, the subject of Gregorian chant reminded me forcibly of Arthur’s singsong chant as he was conjuring up the Lord of Shadows.
Custos opacum
 …
Come and speak to us
. The dream had its hooks firmly into me, like a catchy tune that was particularly hard to get out of my mind.

In French, which was my next class, Persephone Puffed-Up unexpectedly sat down beside me. “Hi, Liv! I hope you don’t mind Julie and me changing places. I mean, I’m your big sister, so I have to look after you.” Ignoring my astonished expression, she produced a sugary-sweet smile. “What an achievement, Liv—first day at this school, and you’re already in the Tittle-Tattle blog.”

“In the what?”

“And those glasses really suit you—I meant to say so yesterday. There’s something so … so retro about them.”

Silly frump. I knew myself that those heavy-framed glasses were a bad buy. I’d chosen them only because, being so huge, they performed the optical illusion of making my nose look shorter. In retrospect, maybe that shouldn’t have been the deciding argument for choosing them, but now I had them, so I needed to make the best of it.

“Thank you. Emma Watson wears the same model,” I said.

“Oh, I didn’t know that Emma Watson wore glasses.”

She didn’t, but who was to know?

Persephone leaned a little closer and whispered, “Is it true that your mother is going to marry the Spencer twins’ father?”

Oh my God. I hadn’t even thought of that. No one had said a word about getting married so far. But the way things were going, it probably couldn’t be ruled out. “Well, in any case, they’re … they’re a couple,” I said stiffly.

“Crazy. Then you’ll be moving in with them?”