I fell in love with her instantly.
Dear C.D.,
I keep thinking about that blonde woman who accepted your prize.
I know you like blonde women. Nearly all the fairies and nymphs and dryads in your books are blonde, from moonbeam white to tawny yellow. I so love your picture of the Violet Fairy, but she is blonde too. I’ve always longed for you to create a fairy creature with long dark hair, black as midnight.
But I do understand. Blonde hair is so beautiful.
With love from
Violet
XXX
From Magical Creatures by Casper Dream
The Enchantress
A sorceress; a woman versed in magical arts; a woman
whose beauty exerts irresistible influence.
Five
WE ALL STARED at this exotic new girl. She was like a lovebird amongst a flock of sparrows.
‘What does she look like!’ Marnie whispered to Terry.
‘Who does she think she is?’ Terry whispered back.
Mrs Mason was taken aback too. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at the girl, wincing slightly as if in pain.
‘I know there’s not much point you getting school uniform as you’re only here a few weeks, but maybe you could wear something more suitable for school tomorrow?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ said the girl, smiling.
‘Only here for a few weeks? I bet she’s a gypsy,’ said Terry, so loudly that the girl looked over to our front row.
‘Shut up,’ I hissed, blushing. ‘She’s too fair to be a real Romany gypsy – and anyone else you call a traveller.’
‘I’ll call her whatever I want, Miss Bossyboots,’ said Terry.
‘Right, girls,’ said Mrs Mason. ‘I’d like to introduce you all to Jasmine.’
‘Jasmine,’ I whispered. It was the perfect name for her.
‘Where are you going to sit?’ said Mrs Mason, glancing round the room.
‘I’ll sit here,’ said Jasmine pleasantly, and she walked over to my desk and sat down in the empty seat beside me.
Mrs Mason frowned. She hadn’t meant that Jasmine should choose for herself, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. The only other spare seat was right at the back. Jasmine sat herself down with a swish of her purple skirt and a clink of her bangles. She smelled appropriately enough of jasmine scent, sweet and strange. She smiled at me. She had the most beautiful big blue eyes, outlined with kohl so they looked even larger.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
I swallowed, my throat nearly too dry to talk. ‘Violet,’ I whispered.
Jasmine laughed. ‘You’re kidding! Well, us flower girls had better stick together.’
‘Shh, Jasmine!’ said Mrs Mason. ‘You’re not supposed to natter in class. You’re only meant to talk when you’re answering a question, and then you must put up your hand.’
Jasmine said nothing, but she raised her eyebrows expressively.
‘And I don’t care for dumb insolence,’ said Mrs Mason, going pink.
Jasmine blinked at her, looking innocently wounded, but when Mrs Mason started calling the register Jasmine muttered, ‘Daft old bat.’
She had a beautiful red notebook studded with beads. She opened it and started drawing a startlingly accurate cartoon figure of Mrs Mason, adding vampire fangs and outspread bat wings.
I looked on in utter delight. She saw me staring and smiled. Mrs Mason started giving us back our English homework. Jasmine peered over my shoulder to see what mark I’d got. I was pleased that I’d got an A–. English was my best subject – well, the only subject I was any good at, apart from art and needlework. I’d tried especially hard analysing Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech because it was about fairies.
Jasmine was reading what I’d written. I was suddenly scared she’d think me a sad swot.
‘Romeo and Juliet?’ she said.
I tried to raise my eyebrows the way she’d done. ‘We had to comment on any Shakespeare passage. Boring!’ I whispered, though I actually loved Shakespeare.
‘Yeah, triple-boring,’ she said. ‘Though I don’t mind the death-bed scene.’ She started muttering Juliet’s last speech. She did it beautifully, looking utterly stricken, as if she was truly heart-broken. Her eyes even filled with tears.
I stared at her. She blinked and then grinned.
‘What?’ she said.
‘You know what! You did that like a real actor.’
‘I am a real actor,’ she said. ‘So are my mum and dad. Miranda Cape and Jonathan Day.’
She said the names as if they were household words. I hadn’t heard of either of them but I didn’t like to admit this. I nodded, trying to appear impressed.
‘You haven’t got a clue who they are, have you?’ said Jasmine.
‘Well . . . Are they on television?’
‘No! Well, Miranda was in EastEnders ages ago, and Jonathan’s been several different telly cops in his time, and a few criminals too. But they’re basically stage actors. They’ve both got big parts at the moment. Miranda’s touring in a Noël Coward and Jonathan’s about to open in San Francisco.’ She saw my face. ‘The musical, stupid, not the place.’
I didn’t like her calling me stupid – even though she made me feel stupid. She talked very fast but softly, so that Mrs Mason couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear properly either. It was difficult to concentrate anyway. I breathed in her strong scent and stared at her palely perfect face, her deep blue eyes, her long blonde hair. I wondered if I’d have her airy confidence if I looked like her. But maybe she could feel a little bit anxious sometimes too. I saw her nails were bitten right down to the quick. She sawme staring at her tiny chewed nails and quickly balled her hands into fists.
I didn’t know what to do when the bell went for morning break. I wanted to stay with Jasmine but I didn’t want her to feel she was lumbered with me all the time. Maybe she was dying to make friends with some of the other girls. She didn’t belong with me. She could be friends with anyone – Alicia, Gemma, Aisling, Lucy, all the pretty cool clever girls with designer clothes and boyfriends.
Marnie and Terry were hovering, their eyes bright with malice. I knew they were all set to have a mammoth bitch about Jasmine.
‘Come on, Vi,’ Marnie called.
‘Over here,’ said Terry, beckoning impatiently.
‘Oh,’ said Jasmine. She looked at me. ‘Are they your friends?’
‘Yes. Well, not really.’ I hesitated. ‘I haven’t got a real friend,’ I blurted out.
She didn’t laugh at me or look at me pityingly. She gave me this big beautiful smile.
‘Can’t we be friends?’ she said.
I was so thrilled I started blushing like a fool. I had to hide my red face behind my desk lid.
‘Violet!’ Marnie yelled.
‘You two go on ahead,’ I shouted. ‘I’m going to show Jasmine round.’
I walked her around the school, showing her everything I could think of, the cloakrooms, the art room, the PE changing rooms, the science block, and each and every classroom. She tried to concentrate at first but as we went along corridors and up and down each staircase she shook her head.
‘It’s no use. It’s a complete maze. I’ll never remember it. I get all these schools mixed up.’
‘So do you keep going to different schools?’ I thought about my first day at Ashstead High. I’d felt sick with nerves all day, even though it was Will’s school and he’d told me all about it. He did look out for me at lunch time that first day but I wouldn’t go with him to the canteen because I was too scared to eat.
‘Don’t you mind?’ I asked Jasmine.
She shrugged. ‘You get used to being the New Girl. And I don’t really get fussed about fitting in.’ She looked down at her clothes. ‘As is obvious!’
‘Are you going to wear clothes like that tomorrow?’
‘No, I’ve got an ordinary old outfit, a grey top and a green skirt. I wear that as a kind of scho
ol uniform to keep the peace.’
‘You couldn’t look ordinary no matter what you were wearing,’ I said. I blushed again because I sounded so wet and gushing.
Jasmine giggled. She was obviously used to compliments and people getting crushes on her. A lot of the boys in our year were hovering, yelling and barging about and bashing each other, showing off to get her attention. Jasmine barely bothered to glance in their direction.
‘Idiots,’ she muttered.
One of them threw a KitKat at her. She caught it deftly.
‘Thanks, I’m starving,’ she said, opening up the wrapper. She broke a tiny mouthful off one end and then gave the rest to me.
‘Hey, it’s for you, not SC Violet,’ the boy shouted.
Jasmine took no notice. ‘Eat it,’ she said to me. ‘SC Violet?’
‘Oh God,’ I said.
I didn’t want to tell her. The horrible boys in our school divided all the girls into two categories. Most of us were SCs – Sad Cows. The really pretty cool girls were SBs – Sexy Bunnies. Jasmine would be categorized as a Super-super-super SB. We all knew this was a repellent and degrading practice and all the SCs objected strongly. The SBs didn’t seem to mind too much. But when I told Jasmine she screwed up her face in disgust.
‘God, I can’t stick boys,’ she said.
‘Neither can I,’ I said quickly. ‘Well, apart from my brother. And I’m not officially talking to him at the moment.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, just because of something he did at the weekend,’ I said vaguely.
‘Like what?’ said Jasmine.
‘It’s just this stupid game,’ I said.
‘Tell me more!’
‘Nothing to tell, really,’ I said. I sat down on a bench in the cloakroom and nibbled the KitKat. Jasmine sat sideways beside me, her pointy boots up on the bench. ‘Have you got a brother, Jasmine? Or sisters?’
‘Well. Sort of. I’ve got some steps and one half brother. Miranda’s been married twice. Jonathan’s never married but he had a son – he’s grown up now. I don’t like him; he was really hateful to me whenever we had to spend a weekend together.’
‘My brother can be really hateful to me too, sometimes,’ I said, astonishing myself. It was as if someone else was saying my words for me, like a ventriloquist with a dummy. Then I said something even more surprising. ‘My brother isn’t my real brother either.’
‘Is he a step or a half?’
‘He’s not either. My mum and dad adopted him when he was a baby.’
‘So are you adopted too?’ Jasmine asked, looking interested.
‘No, it’s just Will.’ I swallowed, suddenly scared. I’d only just met Jasmine and already I was telling her everything.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Why? Is it a secret?’
‘Yes! We didn’t even know till last year, Will and me.
And then our granny blurted it out last Christmas. Will was in a strop about something and she was mad at him anyway because she didn’t think he’d been grateful enough for his present. It was a Manchester United shirt and Will isn’t into football one bit. Anyway, she said something about bad blood will out, and what do you expect? We thought she was talking rubbish at first – she’s always been a bit bonkers. But then it all came out and it was so awful.’
‘For your brother?’
‘Well, he acted like he couldn’t care less. Like he was even glad, because he doesn’t get on with our dad at all. He doesn’t really get on with Mum either. But Will and me, we’ve always been very very close. And now it’s so weird, because he’s still my brother, of course, but he’s not really my brother—’
At that precise moment I looked up and there was Will walking towards us, well within earshot. I felt freeze-framed, unable to rewind. Will looked hard at me for one heart-stopping moment and then looked straight ahead. He walked right past us without saying a word.
‘Who was that?’ said Jasmine. ‘He’s a bit different from those other idiots. Do you like him? You’ve gone crimson.’
‘That’s Will, my brother,’ I said.
Dear C.D.,
I wonder how long it takes you to create each of your wonderful books? You must sit at your drawing board all day and half the night to manage so many. Twelve books in seven years, and that’s not counting the colouring books or the calendars.
Do you ever lose all sense of time?
Love from
Violet
XXX
From The Book of Fairy Spells and Potions by Casper Dream
A Fairy Enchantment
A charm using occult words.
Six
I DIDN’T KNOW if Will had heard or not. I couldn’t be sure. He’d given me that one long look, but that could have been coincidence. Maybe he hadn’t heard a word. Maybe I was just kidding myself because I couldn’t bear Will to know that I’d betrayed him.
I was so enchanted with my sudden astonishing friendship with Jasmine that I didn’t even want to think about Will. Jasmine and I whispered and wrote notes all through lessons and walked round arm in arm together at lunch time. Jasmine linked her arm through mine as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I’d been friends with Marnie and Terry for more than a year and we’d never linked arms once. Marnie and Terry disapproved of girls who went round cosied up together and called them stupid names.
It was so wonderful to be with Jasmine instead of Marnie and Terry.
‘Come to tea with me,’ she said suddenly, when the bell went for the end of school.
‘I’d love to,’ I said at once. ‘But won’t your father mind?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Jasmine. ‘We’re renting this flat near the river. It’s in this big mansion block, Ellmere House. Do you know it?’
Of course I knew it. It was a wonderful dark gothic building, with many turrets and cupolas. It looked just like one of the fairy palaces in my Casper Dream books. It seemed a perfect home for someone like Jasmine. I couldn’t possibly miss the chance of going to tea there, though I knew Mum would be worried sick. I didn’t want to phone her. She’d fuss and want to know all about Jasmine and ask embarrassing questions. I didn’t want to get bogged down in all that. I just wanted to go home with Jasmine. So I did.
I walked along beside her. I kept looking round, hoping lots of people would see me with my new friend. I saw our shadows bobbing along behind us, mine little, hers tall and slender, her long hair standing out around her head and waving in the wind. Our arms were linked again so that our shadows were Siamese twins. I pretended Jasmine’s shadow was mine. I wondered what it would be like to be her. I imagined what her flat would be like, lavishly furnishing it in my imagination, giving it purple-velvet curtains and crimson sofas, scattering Persian rugs on the polished wooden floor and hanging cranberry-glass chandeliers from the ceiling.
The real flat was a disappointment, almost as beige and boring as my own house – neutral colours, corduroy-covered chairs with floral cushions, and insipid watercolour prints on the pale walls.
‘Oh it’s lovely,’ I said politely.
‘No it’s not,’ said Jasmine. ‘None of this stuff is ours. It comes with the flat. It’s weird, it’s always the same sort of stuff no matter which flat we’re in. Come into my bedroom. That’s got some of my things in it.’
I thought it was the most wonderful bedroom in the world, although I knew Marnie and Terry would scoff.
Jasmine didn’t have her own television or computer, she didn’t have an elaborate music player, just a little CD radio. Her strange bright beautiful clothes were hanging outside the wardrobe, transforming it. She’d covered the dressing table with glass perfume bottles and snow domes and several sets of Russian dolls, little carefully painted figures lined up in descending order right down to teeny creatures smaller than my fingernail. She’d spread an electric blue and silver Indian veil over the duvet and turned her ordinary bed into a bower. It was sewn with red j
ewels like rubies. When Jasmine lit the candles on her shelf the jewels glowed in the flickering light. They were scented candles, musky, sweet.
‘Are they jasmine too?’ I asked, sniffing appreciatively.
‘They’re neroli,’ said Jasmine. She stretched lazily. ‘It’s especially relaxing. My dad used to have a girlfriend who was an aromatherapist. I really liked her. She told tarot cards as well. She said she was going to teach me how to do it. She was much nicer than Georgia, his new lady. She’s just one of the dancers in the show.’
‘Maybe she could teach you to dance?’ I said.
‘I can dance already,’ said Jasmine. She put some jazzy show music on her CD player and launched into an impressive routine, strutting and sashaying, slapping her pointy boots. Her skirt whirled, showing the taut calf muscles in her slender legs, real dancer’s legs.
I’d been sent to ballet classes when I was five. It was Dad’s idea. He wanted a little dancer in the family. I hated the lessons. All the other little girls went to a different infants school and knew each other already. They had butterfly bobbles and diamanté hairslides and FOREVER FRIENDS necklaces and little Lycra leotards in pink and purple and blue. I didn’t have any jewellery. I didn’t even have a leotard at first. Mum made me change into my swimming costume for classes, even though I nearly died of embarrassment. I begged her to buy me a proper leotard but I didn’t look much better when I got it. It was too big and baggy and I was always afraid it might show my bottom if I bent over.
I was in the ballet class concert that Christmas, even though I was slow to pick up the steps. Every child was in the concert, small or tall, fat or thin, talented or totally useless. I was a kitten who had lost her mitten. Dad videoed my dreadful performance. One of Will’s favourite tortures was to replay me stumbling about the stage, head bowed, knees bent, wrists wringing, totally out of step with the other two kittens. It cracked him up every time.