Saving Sophia (3 page)

Ned is not my twin

Buses on the whole make me vomit. Unfortunately, they have the same effect on Ned so we have to sit next to each other at the front of the coach. I’d like to make it perfectly clear at this point that Ned, although he’s in the same year at school, is NOT my twin. My birthday’s in September, three weeks’ time in fact, and his is in August, in one week. Fate just dealt us a terrible blow, because we SHOULD be in different year groups but for one very important fortnight of the year, we’re the same age.

Everyone thinks we must be twins – or, even
worse, because Ned’s birthday is a fortnight before mine, they think he’s my older brother. Instead he’s ten about to be eleven, and I’m eleven about to be twelve.

I turn around and face the window. This coach is not a good place to be. It smells of feet, and someone’s dropped a bag of gobstoppers that are rolling backwards and forwards under our seats.

I reach for
The Severed Foot
. I’ve just started a chapter where the hero discovers that his father is really an evil genius and has put a bomb under Big Ben, but reading on the bus’ll make me sick, so instead I watch a raindrop go from the top right of the window to the bottom left. I watch another make the same journey but now I’m so bored I could just be sick from raindrop observation.

I close my eyes and think about Irene Challis. I can’t quite match the image of the old lady with the veiny legs with the hero flying planes in all weathers – but then, I’ve probably always assumed that she was born old. I suppose all old people start off young, and even though they get covered in arthritis and old lady skin, the things they did when they were young live with them forever. I make a mental note to ask Mum about Irene’s personal
things again; I’d really like to have something to remember her by.

And I don’t want the pork-meat spy getting his hands on the Noah’s Ark. Or handing it over to some horrible junk shop in town.

I flip round and look across the coach. Sophia is sitting next to Miss Wesson. They’re both staring out of the window. Sophia looks furious.

I wonder why. But I can’t ask her now.

Ned gets up and fiddles about with his bag then sits back against my hair.

“OW!” I squeal.

“Sorreeeee,” he says, opening his SAS survival manual.

“It’ll make you sick,” I say.

“Won’t,” he says.

I stick my tongue out, but he ignores me. My whole family’s awful. For example, Mum could have left that chicken in the shed, but no, she had to bring it in, slap it down on the kitchen table in front of Sophia and Miss Sackbutt. She did it on purpose; she’s definitely trying to ruin my life. I know Sophia kept it quiet this time, but I can’t expect her to stay silent for ever and Miss Sackbutt’s a total blabbermouth, she’ll let something slip. It
won’t be long before Sarah-Jane finds out, and then the whole school’ll know about my dreadful homelife.

I close my eyes. No doubt I’ll soon be wishing I was dead, but sleep would do for now…

“Look, there’s a sheep. Look, there’s a corrugated iron shed. Hey, Lottie, there’s a boat just like Uncle Davy’s. Look, a beach! Look, a dog – it’s a chihuahua.” Ned can’t be quiet. It’s impossible for him.

“Shut up!” I say, jamming sweet wrappers into my ears, but Ned’s too loud, so I go back to staring out of the window. After twenty-seven raindrops have crossed the glass, we turn off the motorway and the landscape changes to moorland with small wooded patches. We leave the rain behind and the coach plunges down narrow-hedged lanes that brush against the windows. Finally, we burst out on to a grassy sunlit cliff, hanging over the blue sparkling sea stretching away towards France.

Miss Sackbutt struggles forward along the bus to talk to the driver and nearly sits on Ned, her huge bottom barely missing his rucksack. On her way back, she peers at Miss Wesson in the same way that she peered at the scorpion.

Miss Wesson’s looking at her phone but hiding it from Sophia. She’s either playing some rubbish arcade game, or sending secret codes.

They’re definitely connected. I wonder if she’s Sophia’s personal bodyguard. Perhaps Sophia is actually a Sardinian princess and Miss Wesson fights off all unsuitable suitors.

The coach driver swings around a corner and we have to hang on to our seats. I hear Sarah-Jane not hang on to hers.

Maybe Sophia’s dad just loves her so much he doesn’t want her to come to any harm. I think of the elegantly suited man in our kitchen and I revise my opinion from meat spy to racehorse trainer, and then to racecourse owner.

Or he is a secret service agent and she’s the living code to some terrifying discovery. In
Sandwiches for Satan
the main character’s hair contains a DNA sequence code that activates the American nuclear deterrent.

I wonder. Whatever it is, I suspect that Sophia could prove to be a first class mystery. In fact, I’m sure of it.

She loves me…

Bream Lodge is a dump. Actually, it's only half a dump because the other half slipped into the sea years ago. Since we last came, the ballroom's gone – or half gone. Someone must have built it on the cliff a hundred years ago without thinking and now all that stops you following are some flappy orange strips of plastic. It's not a lethal cliff, because it doesn't plunge straight into the water; it's a crumbly thing covered in broken toilets and half a swimming pool sliding gently to a big sandy beach.

The coach stops well away from the sea, among
the green and blue chalets. Someone's painted them up since last year, and it looks as if they've built a new assault course further inland. In fact, the whole thing seems to have moved inland, including the crumby collection of fairy lights that makes the whole place even sadder.

I wonder what Sophia thinks.

I wonder what her dad would think.

He's probably settling into his first cappuccino on the flight to New York, flashing a glance at his Rolex and selling racehorses over his iPad. Or talking to M and picking up his first assignment. Or perhaps he's already got the builders in at Irene's house and they're busy knocking through the wall of the walled garden. I'm surprised by a stab of sadness as I imagine one of the apple trees hoisted high in the air on a digger bucket.

No. It couldn't happen yet – could it?

Our mum and dad are almost certainly still trying to leave the house; in fact, they probably won't manage it for another day because it's almost impossible to find anyone to look after the hens. I lean against the window as everyone else pours off the bus, and try to work out if I'd rather be here or at home.

It's like choosing between two shades of brown.

“Come on, lazy bones!” Ned dumps my rucksack in my lap. “You want to get the best bed, don't you?”

I don't care, all the mattresses are lumpy and flea-ridden, but I lug the stupid bag off the stupid coach and drag it across the gravel. The girls are always in the blue cabins, the boys in the green, and it occurs to me that the blue cabin on the right is better because you can't hear the boys. I change tack and lug the bag faster over the grass.

Miss Wesson's dog comes with me, exploding out of a dog basket and racing between my legs. He spots something in the bushes and charges off along the cliff.

I hope very much that he and his owner are going to sleep somewhere else. I hate dogs and I don't like Miss Wesson. She's scary and he's smelly.

“Lottie,” says Miss Sackbutt. “Lottie – this way.” She's standing on a small concrete post, waving her arms at me. “You're in a curtained-off cubicle with me, dear, isn't that nice? Girls together.”

WHAT! Someone's just chucked a bucket of imaginary iced water over my head.

WHAT? A cubicle with Miss Sackbutt? Our
beds touching, her pale yellowness rubbing off all over me. Eeeew!

“But—”

“Well, Miss Wesson thought she'd share a cubicle with Sophia as neither of them know anybody much. So I need to share a cubicle with someone, and I thought,
Charlotte
– she's the girl for me.” Miss Sackbutt has this utterly stupid grin on her face.

“NO!” I say. Then, “Yes – I suppose so.”

“But I don't want to share with
you
!” It's Sophia. I turn. Miss Wesson has Sophia by the elbow; she's definitely dragging her towards the cabin. Sophia is flapping her arms in an attempt to escape, but Miss Wesson appears to be made of solid oak; there's no way Sophia could escape her.

“Ah!” says Miss Sackbutt, her grin twisting into a wince. “No physical contact, Miss Wesson. Remember, dear? County-council rules? Law suits? Child abuse?”

Miss Wesson's face goes from utter incomprehension to faint understanding, and she releases Sophia. “I only thought…”

I mentally move Miss Wesson from sports-personality-turned-security-guard into Russian assassin. Either way, she's still a robot.

We follow Miss Sackbutt into the cabin. It has eight beds, four of which are behind curtains in the same way hospital beds are, except the curtains don't separate individual beds, they pair them off.

In
The Mystery of the Dead Moth,
the murderer hides a body in a curtained booth just like these. No one finds it for days.

“Perhaps,” Miss Sackbutt says, looking from Miss Wesson to Sophia and then to me, “on reflection, you and I could get to know each other a little better, Miss Wesson?” Miss Sackbutt does her wide and stupid grin again and Miss Wesson stares in incomprehension. “Yes, dear, you and me.” Miss Wesson's shoulders droop in acceptance. “We could take these beds, behind this curtain here. After all, what young girl wants to share with a teacher? Eh? Lump us old things in together. And get rid of these curtains here…” Miss Sackbutt pushes one lot of curtains to the side, leaving only two beds cut off from the rest of the room.

Sophia lets a broad smile spread across her face and looks almost smug for a moment. I smile, too. Miss Wesson kicks the ground, sending up a puff of dust. She's irritated, but I sense that she can't say anything back to Miss Sackbutt because Miss
Sackbutt's in charge. I offer an imaginary prayer of thanks for Miss S; sometimes, just sometimes, she's a bit of a marvel.

“Oh – and you'll have Sarah-Jane and Emily, too,” calls Miss Sackbutt over her shoulder, picking her way across the cabin like a supermodel in a fat suit. “So make sure you leave enough space for everyone's clothes.”

Sarah-Jane?

Poo.

Miss Sackbutt and Miss Wesson leave the cabin. The door swings shut, but it's light and feeble so it sits in the rectangular door frame without actually bedding down into proper shutness and I can hear Miss Sackbutt's voice as she crosses the compound towards the swimming pool. Sophia and I are alone in the cabin for about ten seconds before Sarah-Jane appears. Then Emily comes in, then Sarah-Jane leaves to look in the coach for a lost trainer and Emily unpacks a long line of teddies.

“Phew,” I say, grabbing
The Severed Foot
from my bag and throwing myself on to the bed. Something occurs to me. I open the front cover of the book. There, in old-lady spidery writing, are the words
Property of Irene Challis
. So Mum's been reading Irene's
books, and all the time I thought they were Mum's. I lie back and stare at the missing polystyrene tiles on the ceiling and think about Mum and Irene and wonder if there isn't something about Mum that I've missed somehow.

I roll on to my side and watch Emily arrange her teddies. She places them big to small, and then swaps them round the other way and goes small to big.

Sophia is packing her clothes into a tiny drawer; she glances up at me, and then across at Emily. I slip down from the bed and stand next to her, both of us staring into the tiny drawer. “Do you like swimming?” she whispers.

“Yes – why?”

“Talk to you later, I want to tell you something in private,” she says, just as Sarah-Jane crashes in through the door and throws her trainer at my rucksack.