Tiger Moth (11 page)

A week after my sister with no name was born, I got down to Culver Cove a bit later than normal. Zack was already there and he had brought something with him. I put my rucksack
down and walked over to where he was standing.

‘This is a bodyboard, Alice. We’re gonna have a blast.’

I grinned back at him and that afternoon we spent the whole time surfing into the shore, being dunked under waves and getting salty seawater up our noses, but I didn’t care. I didn’t
care that the sand was in my ears or that I had sunburn on the tops of my ears. And I was really proud when Zack watched me spin round on the bodyboard all the way to the shore and he sort of
jumped up in the air.

‘Whoop! Whoop! Alice, you’re a proper surfer now!’

Zack is very greedy. Even when he brings twice the amount of food as I do, he nearly always wants some of my picnic too, but one day he didn’t bring anything to eat. I wandered down the
beach to look for shells and when I got back Zack had gobbled nearly my entire picnic and in his hand he had my notebook. I watched him stuff the last Jaffa cake into his mouth and then he burst
out laughing.

‘Ha!’ he said, looking up. ‘I have nice eyes, do I?’ He fluttered his eyelashes.

I felt my cheeks get hot, but Zack just laughed and laughed.

‘Ooh, Alice thinks I have nice eyes!’ he said in a silly voice, dancing round the towel. Before I knew what I was doing, I had grabbed the notebook out of his greedy hands and
smacked him over the head with it.

‘Oh my God, Alice, that really hurt! Are you mental?’

I said nothing and started packing my stuff away.

‘For God’s sake, Alice! I was only teasing!’

I turned round and glared at him, but I felt my bottom lip trembling.

‘Typical!’ he shouted. ‘Typical girl! Can’t take a little joke! How am I supposed to know what you’re like if you don’t even speak, you total
lunatic!’

A lunatic? What was a lunatic? Was that someone that was crazy? I felt myself get more upset. I tried to blink away the tears, but it was too late.

‘Oh great! Great!’ Zack sort of sighed, looked up at the sky and raised his hands in a way that made him look like he was totally fed up. ‘Go on! Cry! Cry if you like.
I’m used to it. Mum’s always crying. But you won’t see me cry!’ he said, getting angrier and more shouty with each word. ‘My dad never cried and I’m not about to
start either! I’m not as brave as him, I never will be, but he always used to say that sometimes being really brave is saying the thing that you’re too scared to say. So here’s
the real truth, Alice! You need to grow up and stop being such a baby. I don’t know why you’ve decided not to speak, but it’s pretty damn stupid. It’s stupid and childish
and I can’t be bothered with it!’

We stood on the beach, staring at each other for ages. The tears rolled down my cheeks and I saw Zack’s angry face frowning deeper and his hands clenched so tightly into fists that the
skin went sort of white.

I almost said something. I opened my mouth to speak and this time I realised that I could. I just didn’t know which words to use first. I wiped the tears from my face and looked up at him
once more, but a dark shadow came across his face and I felt scared, so I picked up my bag and went and sat on the other side of the beach next to the waterfall. Every so often I looked over at
him, but when he tried to say something I put my hands over my ears. We sat like that for ages, but when the tide started coming back in Zack got up and left without saying goodbye.

But I didn’t want to go home and back to the crying baby so I sat on the beach, watching the tide come in.

Finally I realised I had to go home, or they’d discover I was missing and ask lots of questions, so I stomped up the path quickly, swatting flies away from my sticky, sweaty face. When I
got to the little stone seat, I was so hot and out of breath I had to sit down and rest for a while. I could just make out the top of Zack’s head as he scrambled along the stony beach back
towards the harbour, and I felt a bit bad that we’d left each other in such a bad mood.

I dusted the sand off my legs, shoes and bag, so that there’d be no beachy evidence, and then I reached out to open the garden door. I tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. I
tried again and still it wouldn’t move. I pulled and twisted, but it was stuck. The rusty old bolt was stuck! My heart started pounding and I felt sort of sick. How could I get back into the
house? How would I sneak back in without being caught? I looked at the walls on either side of the door; I’d never be able to climb up there. They were twice as high as the boulder on the
beach and I’d needed Zack to help me get on top of that.

I felt panicked and scared and I tried to shout for help, but it was as though a giant was pressing down on my throat. If Mum and Dad knew I’d been to the beach, I’d be in trouble.
So much trouble they’d stop me leaving the house at all, and then I’d never see the cove again. What was I going to do? I looked for a way round the door, then I heard the waves
crashing on to the beach below and suddenly I had an idea. I could walk round the headland just like Zack! So I turned and quickly ran back down the path towards the cove where I could follow
Zack’s footsteps back to the harbour, through the village and be home in no time.

As soon as I got down to the shore, I saw there was a big problem. As I ran down the beach towards the water, my heart sank. The tide was now really high and I could only just see the top of the
boulder that Zack had climbed over. What was I going to do? I was locked out of the garden and now I was trapped on the beach! I took my rucksack off and sat down at the edge of the water. Perhaps
I could wait until the tide went back out and I could walk safely round the rocks. Perhaps someone would unlock the door and I could sneak in through the garden again. I sat for ages trying to
decide what to do and then I suddenly spied a black shape by the headland. I stood up to get a better look. It was a seal. One of them had come back. Zack had said that they’d guided him
here, so perhaps it was telling me what to do too?

I looked back up the beach to the waterfall and decided that if I wanted to get home I was going to have to be brave. I would have to swim faster than I’d ever swum before. So, carefully,
I tucked my rucksack behind one of the rocks at the top of the beach and, with one eye on the seal, I waded into the water and set off for the headland.

I tried breaststroke because that’s my favourite, but the water kept splashing into my eyes and in the end I ducked my head under the water like Zack always did. I kicked and splashed as
fast as I could. I had my thousand-metre swimming badge, I could swim a long way, but this was different. It felt like I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I took a big gulp of air and saw the
tip of the boulder.
Not much further
, I thought,
just a little more
. I saw the seal out of the corner of my eye, but it dived under the water and disappeared. It was leaving me! I
was alone in the dark, deep and cold waters.

My heart beat even faster and my legs felt as if they were being pulled down and down. It was like my arms couldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried. A hot, searing pain shot up and down
my legs until I couldn’t kick any more. My body started to sink under the water. Panicking, I took one last gulp of air before my head went under. I saw the surface get further away and then
everything went silent.

After those first few times on the beach, me and Alice became sort of friends, well, as much of a friend as you can be with someone that doesn’t actually talk. I
don’t really mind. I’ve never been ‘almost friends’ with a girl before. The thing is, because she doesn’t talk, I find that I chat a lot. Like Mum does; it’s
really weird. I think I’ve told Alice nearly everything about me, but she never looks like she’s bored or anything. And sometimes I notice she looks at me when I’ve said something
as though she’s confused.

One day we were sitting on the beach with our toes in the water when I noticed a bruise on her leg and it made me think about how I’d kicked the policeman at the airport. And for some
reason the whole story just came blurting out of me, but when I looked at Alice she wasn’t shocked or anything. She just looked like she hadn’t understood a word of what I’d said,
so I repeated the whole story again and, when I did that, I felt weird. As I heard myself tell the story once more, I felt totally stupid. Why hadn’t I just told Mum why I didn’t want
to go in an aeroplane ever again? Why had I waited till I got to the airport before having some total ‘kicking a policeman’ meltdown?

Alice tells me some things by writing in this notebook that she carries everywhere. Usually she hides it, but one day I had a look when she was having a swim. She’s really good at drawing
actually. And her handwriting is way nicer than mine, but I think all girls’ handwriting is better than boys’. It’s like they’re just made to fiddle around with pens and
biros like I’d seen Lexi and her friend Eddie doing for hours.

When I reached over to put the notebook back, a photograph fell out of the pages. I checked to see if Alice was looking and when I saw her duck under the water I took a closer look. I could see
straight away that it had to be Alice’s mum. They were so alike. The exact same eyes and hair. I didn’t have a chance to look any more because I heard Alice splashing in the water as if
she was getting out so I quickly put the photo and notebook away.

When I was walking back from the beach that day, I thought that if all the girls at Somerset Vale were like Alice it might not be so bad. I was just wondering how many girls there would be in my
new class when I heard a familiar noise. A chugging sound that I knew so well. The noise got louder and louder and I turned to look up at the sky. At first the last of the sunlight was shining too
brightly into my eyes to see it properly, but as it came closer and closer I saw it. A plane. A little blue plane. I thought of Dad once again and a smile came across my face as I followed it with
my eyes.

When I got home, I was feeling strange. Not happy, not really sad, but as though someone had just given me a brand-new guitar and then told me I wasn’t allowed to play
it. Mum was sitting in the living room, watching some rubbish soap.

‘Are you OK, sweetheart?’

I said nothing. I wasn’t in the mood for talking and besides it felt like I’d done nothing but talk all day. But Mum wouldn’t leave me alone. Where had I been? What had I been
doing all afternoon? Had I eaten? Could I pick my clothes off my bedroom floor? When did I have a shower last? What did I want for dinner? Would I like a new bag for school? On and on she went.
Question after question. It made me think of Alice and the fact that she could go for days without talking at all.

‘What would make someone not be able to talk?’ I said suddenly.

Mum eyed me suspiciously. ‘What makes you ask that?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘No reason,’ I said, trying to look like it was just an ordinary, everyday, Zack-type question, but my mum kept looking at me really strangely.

‘Is it because you’ve met Alice? The girl that lives up at Culver Manor. Apparently, she just stopped talking.’

‘No. I’ve not met anyone,’ I snapped. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’

She looked right at me as if to say, ‘I so know when you’re lying.’ Then she walked out of the room and I could hear her rummaging through the cupboard under the stairs. She
came back into the room with a large shoebox.

‘Here,’ she said, holding out a photograph she’d shown me before of her, Granddad and the other kids outside the cottage. I looked at the two older-looking boys and the girl,
but then I spotted another face peeping out from behind my granddad that I hadn’t seen last time. There he was, a smaller skinny-looking boy with dimples and a mass of curly hair which seemed
to spring up in every direction.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘you showed me this already.’

‘Well, that’s David, Dr Richardson,’ she said, pointing at one of the older boys. ‘He’s Alice’s dad. We used to be friends.’

I looked at the photograph more closely. Alice’s dad was grinning and underneath his arm he held a football. Alice definitely didn’t look like her dad, but the other taller boy and
the girl in the photograph looked just like him.

‘Who’s that then?’ I asked, pointing at the taller of the two boys.

Mum looked sad when she answered. ‘That’s Tom. David’s older brother. They were always hanging out down at the harbour when we were young. And that,’ she said, pointing
at the other girl, ‘is Aggy, David’s little sister.’

‘And him?’ I asked, pointing at the curly-haired boy.

Mum suddenly looked really sad. She held the photograph up to the light and sighed. ‘He was my favourite. The sweetest, kindest boy I ever knew.’ She sort of gazed off into a bit of
a daydream and I thought that she was going to cry. I waited for her to tell me more, but she started searching through the box until she pulled out a much larger photograph that I hadn’t
seen before.

‘Culver Manor,’ she said, holding it out to me, and I saw a house that looked almost as big as my old school. The front of it was covered in some kind of plant thing that made the
house look green. The windows were boarded up and the whole place made me think that it was somewhere I wouldn’t want to live in at all.
Poor Alice
, I thought,
she lives in a
well creepy house
.

‘I don’t know what it looks like these days, but the last time I went there it looked like this.’ Mum stopped to think for a bit and then she shook her head slowly and said,
‘That house was filled with sadness; that family had such bad luck.’

‘What bad luck?’ Suddenly I was really interested in the spooky house that Alice lived in. ‘Tell me! What happened?’ But Mum put the photograph back in the box and stood
up.

‘Oh, another time, Zack. I’m not in the mood for telling sad tales after all. What do you want for your dinner?’

I watched her disappear into the kitchen and for a minute I was going to ask again, but then one of those stupid ‘Back to school’ adverts came on and I thought about the new school
again. A feeling of dread started to crawl over me. I imagined the classroom filled with kids that all knew each other. I saw myself walking into the canteen and dropping my plate. I imagined
everyone laughing at me and when Mum brought us a bowl of pasta each I didn’t feel much like eating mine.