Saving Sophia

Life with the stick insects

“Lottie,” says Ned, thundering uninvited into my bedroom. “Will they let me take Oddjob to Bream?”

I stare at the thing in his hand. It used to be a stick insect, it might still be a stick insect, but mostly, it just looks like a stick.

“Not now, Ned, I’m busy,” I say. “Actually, could you get out of my room?”

He’s still standing there. I can feel it, but I go back to the tricky business of hiding my makeup deep inside my bag and try to ignore him. It’s Dad’s old rucksack and I’m packing it to take with me to
Bream Lodge Active Pursuit Centre.

I don’t want to go.

I really don’t want to go. But Ned wants to go so I have to go – because we always do everything together, whether or not I want to, and anyway Mum and Dad want to go moth-hunting in Cornwall – WITHOUT US.

Not that I want to go moth-hunting.

I stuff two old paperbacks down the side of the bag.
The Mystery of the Severed Foot,
and
One Against Many
.

“Ned, go away – I didn’t ask you in.”

“Why are you stealing Mum’s books?”

“Ned, GO AWAY!”

He charges out, slamming my bedroom door behind him and the lump of plaster shaped like the Isle of Wight that’s been clinging to the ceiling finally gives up the struggle against gravity, and crashes to the floor.

“Soreeeeeee,” he says, sticking his head back around the door. “Actually, she – Mum – wants you.” And he slams the door again.

“Why?” I say, picking my way through a cloud of plaster dust.

Ned’s already halfway up the stepladder to the
loft. It replaces the stairs that fell down last August when Dad tried to fix them. “Dunno,” he says. “She’s not cross with you or anything.” He vanishes into the darkness.

Letting the rucksack slide to the ground, I creep out on to the landing. I don’t want to pack because I don’t want to go to stupid Bream Lodge, which is as utterly dull as this place; absolutely nothing happens here, absolutely nothing happens there. Perhaps if I haven’t packed, I won’t have to go and I can be bored in my own bed, or not bored, because in my bed I can read, and when I read, I can escape.

For a wonderful moment I let myself into the world of stories. It’s a place where things happen and interesting people live. I go there every night. I read and I dream, and I’m happy because it’s full of colour and excitement.

Behind me, a final small piece of plaster slips from the ceiling and plummets to the floor.

My life is not just dull, it’s skanky, too.

Mum, Dad and another woman’s voice float up from the kitchen below. It
sounds
like Miss Sackbutt from school but it can’t possibly be. I’ve kept this house a closely guarded secret for the whole year that I’ve been in her class and I’ve let
no one, absolutely no one, in or anywhere near the place. There is no way that I want anyone to know anything about our house; if they knew how grim it was, I’d never live it down.

I stand and listen at the top of the stairs.

It’s all because of my parents. They’re not normal; they’re scientists. For fun, they read pamphlets about soil composition. Visit the compost heap. Or, for a treat, they take us to the National Humus Society headquarters in Okehampton where we eat alfalfa sprout sandwiches.

Sunday lunch is road kill.

I bet no one else has parents like mine.

I think of the last parents’ evening – Dad smelled of silage, Mum wore a boiler suit – and I shudder.

I wish they could be like other people – wear suits, work in offices, eat ready meals. Watch telly. Then I could have friends home.

I could have friends. Full stop.

I approach the staircase. I’m going as quietly as I can, but the steps are tricky; the third tread’s missing and the rest creak like coffins. When I reach the bottom, I lurk in the dark shadow under the stairs so that I can see into the kitchen.

There’s a man. A stranger. He’s tall and wearing
a very expensive suit. I know it’s an expensive suit because Sarah-Jane Parkins’ dad wears one like it so it must be. His face is turned away from me but I can see there’s a twitch in his smoothly shaven jaw. Everything about him is perfectly turned out. Like a really smart bouncer.

I stare hard through the gap, collecting every clue I can from his appearance.

He’s spotless, and despite looking like he’s auditioning for the next James Bond movie, there’s something altogether piggily pink about him, something that reminds me of a sausage, or a pork chop. It’s probably the short blonde bristles sticking out over his collar.

Behind him bobs a minty green dress, stretched tight over a round shape. It
is
Miss Sackbutt and she’s talking. “So when Mr Pinehead asked if he could meet someone else who was going on the school trip to Bream Lodge, I thought of Lottie, she’s such a sensible girl, just the sort of influence Sophia needs, and I’m so sorry, I should have rung, but there’s so little time, and he very sweetly offered to give me a lift in his rather wonderful car, and I still need to pack, seeing as we’re off tomorrow…”

Her voice tails off. I wonder if she’s caught
sight of the South American fungi that Dad’s been cultivating on top of the fridge.

Wonderful car?
Definitely
a spy.

“Of course, of course.” That’s Dad’s voice. “Bream, excellent spot – home of the first Earl of Bream of course, he of the breadplants, eighteenth century castle, built in the baronial style—”

“Bob, shhhh,” says Mum. “They want to know about the outward-bound place.” She addresses the man. “It’s not very smart, you know.”

“We don’t need smart – just safe,” he says. He’s got a soft voice that doesn’t go with the twitchy jaw. “Somewhere to keep Sophia tucked up and cosy while we get on with one or two things. Good idea of yours, Miss Sackbutt, keeping the children busy over the holidays.”

“Oh – thank you, yes,” says Miss Sackbutt. She lets out a silly high-pitched laugh. The same one she does when the vicar comes to school. She fancies him, too. “It does prove helpful to some parents.”

“It’s supposed to be educational as well,” says Mum, grinding eggshells in a pestle and mortar with such force that she has to shout over the noise.

“Naturally, educational too,” says the man, “but
it’s very handy, and – like here – a long way from London. Almost remote.”

Mum looks at him over her pestle and mortar. “So,” she says. “What brings you here, Mr Pinehead? To our ‘remote’ patch of England?”

“Business,” he replies. He pulls at his cufflinks. They’re gold, they catch the light.

“Oh, how interesting – what kind of business?” asks Miss Sackbutt.

“Yes, what exactly?” says Mum, pausing in the demolition of the eggshells.

There’s a long silence. I wait for him to say MI5. Instead he says, “A bit of property development.”

“Gosh – how thrilling!” giggles Miss Sackbutt. “Do tell, where?”

“Place called the Grange?” he says. “It’s up a tiny lane…” His voice tails off and I hear Mum’s sharp intake of breath.

“Goodness – anyway,” she says, too loudly. “I wouldn’t really call Bream
cosy
. More like
shabby
. Your daughter might find it a bit basic.”

Miss Sackbutt raises her eyebrows. “Shabby? Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just back to nature; there are no frills, if that’s what you mean. Anyway, I thought it would be good if the girls met
before we left.”

“LOTTIE!” yells Mum. I can tell that the pink man mentioning the Grange has irritated her.

Miss Sackbutt sidesteps suddenly, as if she’s avoiding something on the floor. Mum’s got a broom out and she’s making the noises of someone who wants to drive people away: fierce sweeping and cupboard doors slamming. Then she says, “Do excuse me, Miss Sackbutt, Mr Pinehead. I just need to see to the chickens.”

A cold draught on my face, a clunk, and Mum goes out of the back door. She slams it so hard that it bounces back open and swings wide, letting all the cold damp of the outside join the warm damp of the inside.

“Of course they should meet – LOTTIE!” bellows Dad.

I’ll have to go in now.

The glazed eye

Apart from Miss Sackbutt and the man, there’s a girl I couldn’t see before: a slight, perfect girl probably my age. She looks absolutely nothing like the man, who has his hand resting on her shoulder. He’s too blond with sharp pale eyes, while she’s dark, her skin a delicious dark brown, her eyes practically black. She has a long plait threaded with gold running down her back. If she told me she was an Indian princess, I’d believe her.

She’s staring at the floor.

I blush. The floor’s filthy, even filthier than normal. Dad’s been taking plant cuttings on the
kitchen table all day. There are five hundred tiny pots lined up and waiting to go into the green house, each with its own twig. Then I realise she’s staring at my shoes. Mum’s old red-leather walking boots; I’ve been trying them on for size.

I blush again.

“Charlotte, meet Sophia; Sophia, Lottie,” says Miss Sackbutt, a particularly idiotic smile spreading across her face. “Lottie’s such a sensible girl, and she’s a big fan of detective novels, aren’t you, Lottie? Whodunnits,
Cluedo
, you know the kind. ‘Murder in the library’ and all that. Do you like that sort of thing, Sophia?”

A look of incomprehension crosses Sophia’s face and I glare at Miss Sackbutt. She’s made me sound like a frump and anyway she’s got it all wrong – I’m not sensible, I am never sensible. And I don’t like whodunnits, I like challenges: heroes facing the impossible, life and death situations, people clinging to the sides of mountains by their fingertips. Sophia looks up at me for an explanation.

“It’s only because there’s nothing else to do round here…” It sounds lame, and I realise that the best thing would be to keep my mouth shut but instead I keep talking.

“So I really like reading, especially adventure fiction. It’s really exciting…”

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

The kitchen falls silent, as if everyone’s run out of things to say. The blond man clears his throat and checks his phone. Miss Sackbutt coughs, and I hear Mum down by the chicken sheds, clanking bin lids and slamming gates. Dad rootles in a cupboard, searching for something.

A slug makes its way out of the kitchen door.

“What kind of thing do you read, Sophia?” I ask, my mouth forming the words of its own accord.

Sophia shrugs. I give myself an imaginary kick and vow not to say another word.

“So.” Miss Sackbutt must find the silence as agonising as I do because she touches the man on the sleeve and giggles. “Oh dear, yes, the Grange, my, what a place.” She stops.

The man looks at her as if he’d like to brush her hand away, but smiles instead. He doesn’t use his eyes, but his mouth stretches wide.

“I didn’t realise the Grange was even on the market,” says Dad, reaching into a cupboard.

“It wasn’t, isn’t,” the man says, smoothly. “We inherited it, unexpectedly. Now I’m toying with
how best to deal with it. Looking at the potential – turning it into a country-house hotel, golf, spa, you know the sort of thing.”

“I didn’t teach you, did I, Mr Pinehead?” asks Miss Sackbutt suddenly, peering into one of Mum’s glass tanks. “So many people have been through my hands.” About half a centimetre from the end of her nose a scorpion stops what it’s doing and peers back.

The man rubs his hair. It’s short, and I suspect that there’s less of it than he’d like. “Er – no. I’m not local – I’ve never been down here before, in fact. And what a lovely, unsophisticated part of the world it is. Anyway, the old lady that owned the Grange, she was a, er, distant relative.”

“Goodness – lucky you,” says Dad, not really listening. “Right,” he adds, slamming a plastic bottle on to the table and unscrewing the lid with his teeth. “New friends going to Bream Lodge, that calls for a celebration, don’t you think, Lottie? This year’s gooseberry champagne – who’d like to try a little?” He waves the bottle at Miss Sackbutt and grabs four smeary glasses from the draining board.

Miss Sackbutt wears spectacles that make her
look like an owl and she can do this thing with her eyes to make them perfectly round. She does this now and gazes owlishly at the thick yellow liquid, before resting her lip doubtfully on the edge of the cloudy glass. About now, she’ll get the smell of the gooseberries, slightly fermented and sour. I watch to see if she’ll go ahead and drink it.

It looks exactly like a cup of fresh horse wee.

The man’s got one, too. His eyebrows have gone up into his hairline. I don’t suppose this is his usual kind of drink, and I watch Sophia watching him. She’s got a smile on her face. She catches my eye before staring down at the floor again.

Dad picks up his glass and knocks the liquid back, then slams it on to the table before refilling it. “Nectar,” he declares. “Strained through Cleo’s winter tights to remove the yeast mothers and mixed with my secret ingredient.”

Oh no.

“What’s the secret ingredient?” asks Miss Sackbutt, her mouth shrinking to a tiny circle and her eyebrows lifting above the rims of her spectacles.

Dad leans to whisper in her ear and Miss Sackbutt’s mouth drops open; the glass, rescued by
Dad, makes it back to the table, and the man puts his by the sink. Untouched.

Dad starts talking about Bream Lodge, and I catch Sophia’s eye again; this time she risks a proper smile and I smile back.

Like a shadow, Ned appears at my elbow with a bag of Mum’s homemade parsnip and beetroot crisps. He offers them to Sophia. She takes a microscopic shard of beetroot crisp and slips it in between her teeth.

“Good, aren’t they?” says Ned, and she nods, presumably because she can’t speak. I grab a parsnip crisp and grind it with my molars. It’s horrible. Not only is it thick and chewy, but it’s stale. I sigh. Just as it looks like someone interesting’s going to Bream, she has to come to the house first. She’ll never be my friend now. Ever.

I watch as she takes the beetroot crisp out of her mouth and slips it into one of Dad’s flowerpots.

I can’t blame her.

The man’s talking. “Sophia’s between schools at the moment and I need a few business days – a quick trip to New York, tedious visits to the planners, bank manager, lots of dull stuff. Property development’s new to me, so it all takes longer than
it ought. That’s why I took advantage of the Bream Lodge trip, and there was a spare place, and Sophia seemed happy to go…”

He’s not a regular property developer? I revert to my earlier analysis. So he could still be a spy. Or a butcher who goes to New York? A meatball specialist, perhaps. Or is it industrial espionage? He’s off to spy on American fast-food companies. I look at him again. I can just see him sneaking past vats of boiling meat with a micro camera in his hand.

Sophia glides across the kitchen, eyeing the tanks of scorpions. She’s pretending to study her nails which, perfectly filed, lie at the end of her delicate fingers. She’s utterly beautiful.

I blush again, because I’m not. I’m an appleshaped thing; red-cheeked with hazel eyes, coarse mousey-brown hair and crooked teeth. My clothes don’t fit and I’m aware that, unlike Sophia’s, my stomach curls over the top of my trousers.

We might as well come from different planets, but I think I want Sophia as my friend. Quite badly.

Ned empties the few crisps he hasn’t eaten into a pudding basin and Mum bursts through the kitchen door, speckled with goosegrass seeds. She’s
holding a dead chicken upside down by its back legs.

“Supper,” she cries, thwacking it down on the table. “When I’ve plucked and drawn it.” She gazes round the room, challenging anyone to say anything.

The chicken’s glazed eye stares up at the lampshade.

I can’t even look.

I simply want to die.