Secret Meeting (8 page)

On Sundays me and Mum always go off to visit my gran. It’s a really long journey, as we have to catch a bus into town, then another bus out of town. It takes over two hours and is quite boring. Unfortunately, it is equally boring when we get there, as Gran’s home where she lives is full of old ladies (and a few old men, though not very many) and there is absolutely nothing whatever to do. We can’t even talk to Gran any more, as her mind has wandered and she doesn’t know who we are. Sometimes
she calls Mum “Molly”, which we think was a friend of hers when she was young. Other times she calls her “Kathryn”. We don’t know who Kathryn was. She doesn’t call me anything at all, which is sad, ’cos me and Gran were the hugest of friends when she lived with us.

In those days I didn’t have to go round to Annie’s in holiday time, as Gran was always there to look after me. We used to have such fun! We used to play board games, and word games, and read things to each other. Sometimes Annie would come and spend the day, and then we’d have even more fun! Gran used to laugh at Annie and the things she got up to. That was when she called her doolally.

“That girl is completely
doolally
!”

I can’t remember when Gran stopped laughing; when I was about ten, I think. Now she just sits there, staring. I don’t really enjoy going to visit her. I don’t mind so much about being bored, as I can always take a book to read, but it makes me unhappy to see Gran just sitting staring. And I
hate
that she doesn’t know who I am! Mum says maybe she does know, somewhere deep inside. She says that is why we have to keep visiting.

“Imagine how hurt she’d be if there’s a little part of her which can still recognise us, and we didn’t come any more.”

I couldn’t bear for Gran to be hurt! Once or twice, when I’ve been really upset, Mum has said that perhaps she ought to leave me behind. Except that who could she leave me with?

“I can’t keep parking you at Annie’s.”

Annie wouldn’t mind; but when I think about what Mum said, that maybe there is a little part of Gran, somewhere deep down, that still recognises us, I know that I can’t let Mum go by herself. I have to go with her; just in case.

To make myself a bit braver I always remember Clover in
Daisy and Clover.
Clover has to go and visit
her
gran in a home, and she feels just the same as I do. When Clover’s gran doesn’t know who she is, Clover says, “I wanted to burst into tears and cry, ‘Gran, it’s me! Don’t you remember? All the things we used to do together?’ But I didn’t, because I knew it wouldn’t be any use. Gran had gone, and there was no way of reaching her.”

It is truly amazing how Harriet Chance describes every single thing I have ever felt or thought. Surely she must have been through it all herself? Or maybe she just has this incredible understanding of how it is to be a young person.

Some of the old ladies in Gran’s home are what Mum calls “real characters”. (What Gran would probably have called
doolally
.) There is one who is a particular friend of mine. Her name is Mrs Laski, but I call her Birdy as she is very tiny and fragile, and she speaks in this high twittery voice, like a bird. Me and Birdy have these long, interesting conversations together. Like Birdy might say, “It’s very whizzbang out there today.” That is one of her expressions:
whizzbang.
I don’t quite know what it means, but lots of things are whizzbang.

“Whizzbangs all over the place! They’re arriving in hordes! Did you find any?”

And I will cry, “Yes! I found loads!”

She likes it when I play the game the way she wants it played. She does
not
like it if I am stupid enough to say something such as, “Found any what?” That makes her cross. But so long as I answer
intelligently
, we can go on for ages! Birdy will ask me what colour they were, these
things that I had found loads of. I will say, “Red! Bright red!” Then Birdy will say, “Not green?” – I mean, this is just an example – and I will say, “Well, maybe some of them were,” and she will nod and say, “I thought so! It’s the time the of year. Very whizzbang! They’re all on their way. Swarms of them!” And before I know it we will be in outer space, surrounded by aliens, all whizzbanging about in their flying saucers, on their way to earth to suck out our brains. Everything always comes back to the aliens sucking out our brains.

Harriet Chance has never written about anyone like Birdy. Maybe I should write and suggest it to her! Except that I once read she almost never uses ideas that come from other people. She says she has “a resistance” to them.

There is another old lady in Gran’s home whose name I don’t know so I call her Mrs Yo-Yo, because her favourite toy is a yo-yo. She yo-yo’s away like crazy! I know it is very sad, when maybe she has been something important in life, and had a job and brought up children,
and now she does nothing but play with a yo-yo all day, but at least she is happy. She beams, and laughs, and skips. I would rather Gran played with a yo-yo than just sat in a chair doing nothing.

Mrs Yo-Yo wasn’t there that Sunday, but Birdy was. We had a bit of a chat about whizzbang dustbins full of aliens come to suck our brains out, then a woman that I think is her daughter came and took her away. She said, “She’s not on about aliens again, is she?”

I said, “Yes, they’re hiding in the dustbins,” and the woman looked embarrassed and said she was so sorry and that I wasn’t to take any notice. I don’t know what she said she was sorry for! I enjoy my conversations with Birdy. She has a really good imagination.

After she had gone, and Mum was sitting with Gran, telling her all the things that had been going on in our lives during the week (which was not a lot. Nothing as interesting as aliens hiding in dustbins) I settled down to finish my project for school. I’d done the review; now I had to do the biography. Biography of Harriet!

I’d looked her up on the Internet at school, and I’d also read about her in a book called
Children’s Writers.
Plus, of course, the little bits that publishers put at the front of books, like telling you where the author lives and how many children they’ve got. Plus an interview that she had done for a magazine which is in the school library. I knew everything there was to know! I could have written a whole book about Harriet. But our teacher had said not more than three hundred words, so I thought it would give me good practice in picking out the things which were most important. Otherwise I would just go on for ever! Annie had asked what was the
least
number of words, as she didn’t think she’d be able to manage more than about twenty. Other people were just going to copy out stuff they’d read. I don’t think there is any fun in that.

I settled myself at a little table in the corner and turned back the cover of my nice new writing block.

Harriet Chance was born in Epsom, Surrey, on 12th March 1962. She went to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She was very good at English, French and German, and very bad at maths and geography. She hated playing hockey. (Just like me!)