I started searching for boxes of Will’s toys, Will’s baby clothes, Will’s booties. I couldn’t find anything. I lifted boxes, sifting through them quickly, until I got to the far corner of the loft. There was just one box left, but it was heavily taped shut. This made me more curious. I pulled and tore at it until I got it open.
It was another box of baby things, all carefully wrapped in white tissue paper tied with blue silk ribbons. I undid each bow and found tiny cornflower-blue sleeping suits, little denim rompers, a cot-sized blue and white patchwork quilt, all in pristine condition. Right at the very bottom there was a baby book of photographs. I opened it up. I saw Mum’s writing on the first page.
Our darling little William.
I hugged the book to my chest. I knew I had to show it to Will. Mum and Dad obviously loved him so much, right from the day they adopted him.
Then I looked at the birth date in Mum’s royal-blue italic. It was the wrong date. I didn’t understand. I looked at the photographs. There was a tiny newborn baby in a hospital crib, with a peaky heart-shaped face and long tufts of black hair. He looked eerily like me. There were photos of Mum holding him. She looked so different, much younger, her eyes bright, cheeks pink, chubby and smiling. Dad had the baby in the next photo, holding his police cap comically above the baby’s head, smiling at his son so proudly. There was a big studio portrait in bright colour, the baby propped up on pillows, smiling sweetly, his eyes very big and very blue.
Will’s eyes are green.
I flicked through the album to the last page. There was a small, slightly out-of-focus snapshot of Mum in a hospital ward. She was holding the baby, clutching him tightly, as if she could never bear to let him go. The baby was lying very still in her arms. His eyes were shut.
Mum had written something at the bottom of the page, her writing barely legible this time. It was another date, only three months after the one at the beginning of the book. A birth date and a death date.
The timer went off. I slapped it sharply to shut it up. I waited for Will to call to me. I didn’t know what to do. He needed to see the baby book himself. I decided to wait until Jasmine went home. This was private, just about Will and me, and this first little baby brother I never knew. Mum and Dad had clearly adored this little blue-eyed boy, their first born. So they’d tried to replace him with Will.
Dear C.D.,
I don’t know what to write.
Everything’s changed.
I can’t believe it.
Love from
Violet
XXX
From Midnight by Casper Dream
Making a Wish . . .
Twelve
I LAID THE baby book back at the very bottom of the box, folded all the little clothes back into blue-ribboned parcels, stuck the brown tape back over the cardboard and put the box back in the corner.
I edged my way carefully back to the trapdoor, trying to sort things out in my head. I felt so sad, as if there were a real little dead baby brother cradled in that box. I switched off the light and then made my way gingerly down the ladder.
There was no sign of Will and Jasmine. I stood on the landing, still clutching the timer. Hadn’t they heard it go off? Where were they?
I was about to call them when I heard Jasmine murmur something. She was in Will’s room. Maybe they were hiding, waiting to jump out at me. I crept along the landing towards Will’s room. I pushed his door open cautiously and peeped round.
Will and Jasmine were standing in the middle of the floor. Will had his arms round Jasmine, his hands in her beautiful hair. His head was bent. Hers was tilted upwards.
They were kissing.
I stared at them. It could have been a second, a minute, an hour. Time stood still, even though the timer ticked away in my hand.
Then Will pulled away a little. ‘Your fairy’s digging into my chest,’ he said.
Jasmine swivelled her necklace round so that the fairy dangled over her shoulder. ‘Oh dear. Poor Violet,’ she said.
‘Poor Violet and her flipping fairies,’ said Will.
Then they both laughed.
I couldn’t bear it. I ran right into the room and snatched the Jasmine Fairy from her, yanking it hard over her head.
‘Yes, I know, have a good laugh! Laugh at me, both of you,’ I shouted, hurling the Jasmine Fairy into a corner.
I ran to my own room. Jasmine ran after me, starting to cry.
‘Oh Violet, I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes you did. And don’t worry, I know they’re silly. I’m silly, a teenage girl fiddling around with fairies, stupid, stupid little dolls,’ I screamed.
I reached up and clawed at the Rose Fairy, the Willow, the Dragonfly, the Crow, all of them, tearing them down, pulling their heads off, snapping their limbs, crumpling their wings.
Jasmine was screaming too, begging me to stop. Will came running and tried to grab hold of my hands. I whirled away from him – and the beak of the crow scratched right down his face.
‘What are you playing at, Vi?’ he whispered, blood starting to trickle down his cheek.
‘I’ve stopped playing,’ I said.
I grabbed my jacket, pushed past both of them, and ran downstairs. I snatched the ten pounds still on the kitchen table and then I was out the door. I was still clutching the Crow Fairy. I hung on tight to her like a talisman and started running.
I didn’t know where I was going, what I was doing. I just needed to run right away. I heard Will shouting after me but I didn’t look back. I don’t know if they tried to follow me. They didn’t have a hope of catching me. I ran as if I had my own wings beating on my back.
I didn’t stop running when I got into town. I needed to get as far away as possible. A phrase echoed in my head – clear across three counties. I suddenly knew where I was going. I didn’t need to check the address. I knew it by heart.
I asked for a child’s fare at the railway station ticket office. It was £9.99. I pocketed my penny and waited for the train. It was a complicated journey, with two changes. The man in the ticket office told me twice and I repeated it as if it was a magic charm.
I didn’t know what to do with myself on the different trains and during the lonely waits at various stations. I couldn’t stop thinking about Will and Jasmine. I thought back through our brief intense friendship, wondering if she’d befriended me right from the start simply because she wanted to get to know Will. And what about him? Was he really interested in Jasmine, or was all this an elaborate game to hurt me?
I felt my head was ready to burst as I thought things through, interpreting everything this way and that. It was like so many of Casper Dream’s illustrations. You’d look at a picture of an ugly old witch and a group of screaming children and first you’d think she was working evil magic and threatening them so they were yelling in terror. But then you’d look again and wonder if the witch was simply a sad old woman cowering away from taunting children intent on playing tricks on her. A painting of a beautiful nymph cradling a little rabbit could also be a hungry girl with her fingers clasped tightly round the rabbit’s neck, ready to strangle it for a stew. A picture of a desperate princess in the clutches of an immense scaly serpent seemed easy enough to understand, but perhaps she was entwining the serpent willingly, her head thrown back in rapture?
I thought about these pictures, imagining all my Casper Dream books, turning the pages in my head, realizing I knew every illustration off by heart.
I arrived at the final station hours later. I stood uncertainly on the platform, not knowing where to go now. I asked an old woman if she knew Paradise Street but she muttered in a foreign accent that she was a stranger. I asked a young man and he said he’d never heard of it. I asked a group of schoolgirls, who stared at me weirdly and shook their heads, giggling. So I stalked past them all, right out of the station. There was a taxi driver waiting out the front so I asked him if he knew.
‘Sure, sweetheart. Hop in,’ he said.
‘No, I
don’t want a taxi ride,’ I said, blushing. ‘I want to walk. Could you possibly tell me the way?’
He sighed and then rattled off a long list of complicated directions, left, left, right, right again until my head was spinning.
‘Are you taking this in?’ he said.
I nodded, not daring to ask him to repeat it again.
‘Rubbish, you haven’t a clue, have you?’ he said. ‘Go on, jump in the cab. I’ll take you.’
‘But I haven’t got any money.’
‘Never mind. I can’t have you blundering around all over the town. And Paradise Road isn’t in a very nice area.’
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘I’ve got a daughter your age, darling. I like to think another cabbie would help her out the same way.’
He gave me a lift through many murky streets, skirting blackened warehouses and tough council estates and rows of boarded-up shops, turning down identical bleak streets of tumbledown terraced houses to Paradise Street. It was an ugly street of squat pebbledashed houses with unkempt gardens and rubbish strewn along the gutters.
‘Are you sure you want Paradise Street?’ said the taxi driver.
‘Yes please. Number twenty-eight,’ I said.
The taxi driver drew up outside the right house. The pebbledash had fallen off the walls here and there, and some of the roof tiles were missing. Someone had tacked polythene up at the windows as crude double glazing, making the house look bleary-eyed. The front door was a harsh pillar-box red, like a gash of bright lipstick on a faded old woman.
It couldn’t be the right house. Someone as artistic as Casper Dream could never have lived here. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I thanked the taxi driver fervently for the free lift and pretended everything was fine. He sat in his cab and watched me, looking doubtful. I couldn’t possibly hover on the pavement. I had to let myself in the broken gate and walk up the pathway. I waited when I got to the garish front door. I knocked – and the taxi driver finally drove away.
I waited a couple of seconds, holding my breath, and then darted back down the pathway to the gate. I wasn’t quite quick enough. Before I could unlatch it the front door opened.
‘Hey, what do you want?’
It was a youngish woman with a tired white face, a grizzling baby drooping on her hip.
‘Oh! I’m sorry. I think I’ve come to the wrong house,’ I gabbled.
‘Oh yeah?’ she said suspiciously, looking me up and down. ‘Who did you want to see?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Well, I think Casper Dream might have lived here once,’ I said.
‘You what? Some bloke called Casper lived here? I doubt that very much.’
‘Have you lived here a while then?’
‘Only six months, and that’s long enough. It’s a disgrace, this dump. I’ve been backwards and forwards to the council ever since the baby was born but they won’t listen. He’s chesty already – he’ll get asthma if we don’t get out soon.’
The baby started crying harder as if he understood. She joggled him on her hip. ‘I’d better feed him. Well, off you go then.’
‘Yes. Sorry. Goodbye,’ I said, as she closed the door.
I edged round the gate and stood staring at her house. I must have remembered it wrong. But I’d known it by heart for years, as well as I knew my own address. Still, what did it really matter? Casper Dream certainly wasn’t here now.
I closed my eyes tight, scared I was going to start crying right there in the street. I put my hands inside my jacket pockets, clasping the Crow Fairy tight. I heard footsteps. I opened my eyes and saw a very fat man lumbering along the pavement towards me. He was so huge he had to waddle. When he got nearer I could hear the wheeze of his breath.
I liked the way he looked, even though his vast bulk was grotesque. He was wearing a huge olive-velvet jacket, gigantic black jeans and purple suede boots. His longish fair hair kept falling forward across his face. He was pink with the effort of walking. I didn’t like to keep staring at him. He must be so sick of people peering. I swivelled my eyes back to the house and stared at the front door instead.
I waited for the fat man to walk past. He was walking very slowly now, his purple boots barely moving. Then he stopped altogether, almost beside me. He breathed rapidly, wheezing a little. I could smell his lemon cologne. He reached in his jacket pocket, found a silk handkerchief and mopped his brow. Then he gave me a quick shy nod and started shuffling off, back the way he had come.
Perhaps he’d made a special pilgrimage to Number 28 Paradise Street too. There could only be one reason why.
‘Excuse me,’ I called timidly after his large back. ‘I know this sounds silly, but do you like Casper Dream?’
He stopped. He turned round, looking wary. ‘Why did you ask that?’ he said.
‘Because I think he once lived here. And you seemed to be looking at the house too.’
‘Do you like Casper Dream?’ he said.
‘I love him. I’ve got all his books, even The Smoky Fairy. I know them off by heart, all twelve.’
‘Which do you like the most?’
‘I think . . . Well, I like them all, but maybe I like Midnight most.’
‘Which page?’
‘The last one, where the princess is looking out of her palace window. Well, I think it’s a palace – I suppose it could also be a prison, it’s hard to tell in the moonlight. There’s a church with a steeple in the distance and the clock is striking midnight. It says on the page opposite the picture that if you wish between the chimes of one and twelve then your wish will come true.’
‘Does it say that? Doesn’t it say maybe your wish will come true?’
‘Yes, it does! So you really are a fan if you know the books so well.’
Surprisingly, he shook his head. ‘No, I wouldn’t call myself a fan. I could find fault with every single illustration.’
‘But they’re beautiful! Each and every one of them, even when he’s drawing ugly or evil things. They’re the most wonderful illustrations ever!’ I said indignantly.
‘Well, I shan’t argue with you. I’m sure Casper Dream would be very proud if he knew there was such an ardent supporter of his work.’
‘I’ve always said I’m his number one fan, only that’s ridiculous, because hundreds and thousands of people love his books. There’s a fan club too, but it’s just run by his publishers. He doesn’t contribute to the website himself.’
‘I’ve heard he’s very elusive,’ said the fat man.
‘No one knows where he lives and he never gives interviews and he won’t do book signings and he doesn’t write to anyone.’
‘No one at all?’
‘Well, perhaps he did once, long ago,’ I said, hugging my secret to myself. I couldn’t help smiling and the fat man smiled back.
‘Did he write to you once too?’ I asked. ‘Is that how you know about this house?’
‘I’ve always known about this house,’ he said.
I looked at him very carefully. I stared at his face and imagined it in shadow, at an angle.
‘It’s you!’ I whispered.
‘And I think I know you too. You’re . . . it’s a flowery name. Wait a minute. It’s Violet!’
‘How do you know me?’
‘You really are my number one fan, Violet. You were the first person to write to me about my books. I treasured your letter.’
‘And you wrote back to me with your address. I wrote back again, but that letter came back unopened.’
‘I moved away. And then when the next book got published I was deluged with letters. I decided I couldn’t write back any more. I’m sorry.’
‘I understand. I still write to you though.’
‘What, to my publishers?’
‘No, I write a letter and then I put it in a big silver box at the back of my wardrobe. It’s like I’m pretending to post it.’
‘That’s a lovely idea. But I don’t suppose you’ll want to write any more letters
now you know what I’m really like. I’m not exactly a handsome prince, am I?’
‘I think you are handsome. Quite,’ I said.
‘You’re a very kind girl, Violet.’ He fumbled in his pocket again and found a little leather notepad and a pen.
‘Are you going to give me an autograph?’
‘If you’d like one. And a little picture?’
‘Please!’
He rested the notepad in his left hand and started drawing. I watched carefully as the black lines arranged themselves on the page into a familiar small fairy, looking down, head slightly on one side.
‘It’s the Violet Fairy!’
‘It is indeed.’
‘It’s magic watching her appear just like that on the page. I feel as if this is magic. I mean, I didn’t even know I was coming here this morning. I live miles and miles away. But now I’m here and you’re here too, by the most amazing, wonderful coincidence.’
‘It’s not quite such a coincidence. I come here most days. I have a chauffeur waiting round the corner. I take my little constitutional along this road as far as the house. I pause for a minute or two and while I’m catching my breath I remember a time when I wasn’t Casper Dream.’
‘So who were you?’
‘This is a secret, Violet.’
‘I won’t tell anyone, you know I won’t.’
‘I was a sad shy fat boy called Colin Dunwell. I wasn’t very happy at home – this home – and I hated school. I wasn’t very clever, so that everyone used to say, “Hasn’t he Dunwell,” as a sarcastic joke.’
‘You must have been good at art.’
‘I suppose I was, but no one took art seriously. And I didn’t draw the sort of things I liked to draw, not at school. But at home I shut myself up in my room and drew my own fairy world – though I had to hide all my drawings from my brothers or they’d have teased me mercilessly. I hoped to go to art college but I had to leave school at sixteen to go and work in my uncle’s newsagent’s shop. I hated that too. I’m not very good at meeting people – and all that chocolate was much too tempting too. I ate all day and half the night. I still do, though Olivia keeps gently nagging me to lose some of the weight. She’s my editor and now she’s my partner too.’