‘You’re brilliant at dancing, Jasmine,’ I said. ‘I’ve always been rubbish at it.’
‘I’ll teach you if you like,’ said Jasmine, holding out her hand.
‘Absolutely not,’ I said firmly.
‘OK, OK,’ said Jasmine, and she swapped her CD for wonderfully weird choral music.
‘It’s Lisa Gerrard. Isn’t she great?’ said Jasmine.
‘It sounds very witchy.’
‘It is witchy. I’m a white witch, didn’t you know? With amazing occult powers,’ said Jasmine. She flicked her fingers as if she was executing extraordinary witch spells.
‘Oh yeah – and you’re a vampire slayer too?’ I said.
‘You bet. And Supergirl. Watch me put on my special suit and fly,’ she said, spreading her arms wide.
She was fooling around, of course, but she was so magical I almost believed her. I stood at her dressing table and fingered the green and blue perfume bottles and shook the snow domes and rearranged the Russian dolls, making them line up two by two in a long crocodile of best friends. I felt overpowered by perfume, shaken in a snowstorm, unscrewed into smaller and smaller pieces. I even looked different when I peered at myself in Jasmine’s mirror. My eyes shone in the candlelight and when I shook my hair free of its fat school plait it tumbled past my shoulders in dark waves.
‘You’ve got lovely hair,’ said Jasmine, brushing it with a beautiful silver-backed hairbrush.
‘Nowhere near as lovely as yours.’
‘So we’re the hairy girls as well as the flower fairy girls,’ said Jasmine, and we both fell about laughing.
‘I’m starving. Let’s have tea,’ she said.
I thought about my own tea waiting at home. I knew I should go right that minute. Or at the very least phone. But I still couldn’t bear to break the spell.
‘Yeah, great, let’s have tea,’ I said.
I thought Jasmine’s dad would be in the kitchen but there was no sign of him. Jasmine rummaged in the fridge, selecting stuff.
‘Where’s your dad, Jasmine?’ I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t come out to say hello. Why didn’t he want to know how she’d managed on her first day at the new school? Why didn’t he want to give me the once-over. My dad would have given any friend a twice- or even thrice-over.
Jasmine shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He’s maybe at the theatre, checking stuff. There was a problem with the lighting. Or maybe he’s gone out with Georgia some-place. Whatever.’
I couldn’t believe she said it so casually. The tea arrangements were casual too. There was lots of luxury food in the fridge, strawberries, special cheese, asparagus, fresh prawns, Greek yoghurt, chocolate éclairs, olives, ice cream, but not the makings of a proper meal. Jasmine didn’t seem bothered about proper meals. She’d had one nibble at her gift KitKat and hardly touched her school dinner. She’d just eaten a few chips and half an apple, that was all. She didn’t eat properly now even though she’d said she was starving. She fixed herself a fancy little mouse-meal, one prawn, three olives, six strawberries and half an éclair. No wonder she was so slender. Her wrists were so thin her bangles clinked right down to her knuckles and she was forever hitching them back into place.
‘Help yourself, Violet,’ she said.
I was hungry enough to eat everything in the fridge but I matched my meal exactly to Jasmine’s.
‘What would you like to drink?’ she said, clanking the bottles in the fridge door. She brought out a gleaming green bottle. ‘White wine?’
‘You’re allowed to drink wine?’
‘Sure,’ said Jasmine. ‘I prefer red though. We’ll have that, OK? Let’s take the food back into my bedroom, like a picnic.’
I took both our plates back to the bedroom, worrying about the wine. I was going to be in serious enough trouble as it was when I eventually went home. If I was also drunk I’d be grounded for ever.
‘Here we go,’ said Jasmine, coming into her bedroom with two big blue glass goblets filled to the brim. She gave me one and clinked hers gently against mine. ‘Here’s to us,’ she said.
‘Yes, here’s to us,’ I echoed. I took a deep breath and sipped my drink. Jasmine burst out laughing. It was cranberry juice.
We ate our tiny meal and drank our juice and listened to Lisa in the candlelight. Jasmine had strung Christmas tree fairy lights across the ceiling and now it was getting dark they twinkled red and green and blue and yellow. I felt as if I was in true Casper Dream fairyland.
It got darker and darker, later and later. My heart thudded when I thought of Mum. Dad would be coming home soon. If I wasn’t back then he’d call out one of his police cars and start a search for me.
‘I think I’ll have to go home now, Jasmine.’
‘No, please. Not yet. We’re having fun,’ said Jasmine. ‘Look, I want to play you some of my other albums and show you all my drawings and stuff. Please stay.’
‘I want to,’ I said desperately, ‘but it’s really really late. I know it sounds pathetic but my mum will be so worried. You know what mums are like.’
Jasmine pulled a face, pursing her soft lips. ‘Nope. Not my mum.’ She said it very lightly but her voice thickened, almost as if she was going to cry.
‘Your mum doesn’t worry?’ I said.
‘Oh, she worries all right. You should see her before a first night or a telly show. You can’t go near her. And she has all these little rituals. She has to wear a particular lipstick and line up her little glass animals in a certain way and swallow three sips of wine, like she’s totally nuts. This isn’t just when she’s got a main part, she gets just as fussed if she’s a fairy godmother in some silly panto or a rubbish role in a soap. And she worries about her hair and her wretched highlights and her botox injections and her tummy tuck and her boob job. She goes on and on about herself, and does she really look thin and should she go to power yoga or pilates classes?’ Jasmine was spitting out the words now, her fists clenched. ‘She worries all the time but she doesn’t worry about me. Well, she worries that her new guy makes too much fuss of me. He’s a creep, I can’t stick him, he dyes his hair blond and wanders round posing all the time, you’ve never seen such a plonker, and yet Miranda’s nuts about him. So she shoves me in boarding school out of the way, and she doesn’t even listen when I phone and tell her how I hate it. Thank God Dad rescued me.’
‘And are you happy now, with your dad?’ I whispered.
‘Yeah, of course. It’s great. I love my dad. He’s a truly super guy, not a bit like a dad. He doesn’t get all heavy or tell me what to do and he acts like he’s glad to have me around – but he’s not here often enough. It’s not his fault, he can’t help it with his job. He’s offered to fix me up with some sort of babysitter but I can’t stand that idea. I’m fine by myself. It’s not like he ever stays out all night, he always comes home, though sometimes it’s not till around midnight and it can get a bit weird just sitting all by myself. I know it’s daft but I get kind of . . . scared.’
I gave her a big hug. Her long golden hair brushed my shoulders as if it was my hair too.
‘I’d get scared. Anyone would. Look, I’d give anything to stay with you, Jasmine—’
‘But you have to go.’
‘Maybe I can stay later another time. Even sleep over,’ I promised wildly. I gave her another hug and she hugged me back really hard, clinging to me.
‘We really are friends, aren’t we, Violet?’
‘Of course we are.’
‘Best friends?’
‘Best friends,’ I said.
The two words flickered in my head like Jasmine’s fairy lights, glowing in jewel colours.
Dear C.D.,
I wonder what it’s like for you, drawing and painting your magic world all day long, fairies and phantoms flying above your head? You must lose all touch with reality.
How do you cope when you come back to the real world?
Maybe your real world is magical too. I know you’re very rich. I wonder what
sort of house you live in now? Perhaps it’s a gothic castle like the one in your pictures? You won’t have pairs of disembodied hands to bring you wine and platters of fruit and draw you baths and bring you fine robes – but you’ll have ordinary servants, I expect. And the blonde lady.
With love from
Violet
XXX
From The Book of Beasts and Bogies by Casper Dream
The Ogre
A monster who makes use of a thousand wiles to defeat and devour
the weak.
Seven
‘DON’T BE SCARED now, promise,’ I said, holding Jasmine’s hand.
We hugged each other goodbye and then I set off. I started running as I went down the stairs, hurtling down them two or three at a time. I rushed out of the mansion block and through the landscaped gardens, slipping on the damp grass, dodging bushes and branches. I was the one who was scared.
I’d never been out after dark by myself. I ran nearly all the way home, hardly able to breathe when I got to my own house at last. The porch light was on. Dad was standing there at the door, arms folded.
I wanted to run right past.
There was no chance of that.
‘Where the hell have you been, young lady?’ he bellowed, seizing me by the wrist and jerking me indoors. His big red fist was like a handcuff. I couldn’t shake myself free. I stood blinking in the harsh light of the hall. Mum stood nervously in the background, gnawing on the back of her knuckles. She gave a little cry when she saw me. Will was sitting in the shadows halfway up the stairs. I could see the gleam in his eyes.
‘Violet?’ Dad shook me. ‘Come on, explain yourself. You’ve scared us all witless. Do you have any idea what the time is?’
‘Look, I think you’re over-reacting. It’s not that late. I’m fine. No need to make such a fuss,’ I said, raising my eyebrows, Jasmine-style.
Will snorted, appreciating my performance.
‘We thought you’d been abducted,’ said Mum. ‘I didn’t know what to do. Will said you’d gone off with this girl from school so I phoned Marnie, I phoned Terry, but they didn’t seem to know where you were.’
‘He was obviously telling us a whole tissue of lies,’ said Dad, glaring at Will. ‘You weren’t out with any girl, were you, Violet? Come on, tell the truth. I know you were off playing fast and loose with some boy.’
‘I was with a girl, Dad. Jasmine, she’s in my class.’
‘The one with all the hair?’ said Will. ‘Is she only your age?’
‘You’ve never mentioned a Jasmine before,’ said Mum.
‘You haven’t got any Jasmine in your class. Stop lying, Violet. I’m trained, I can tell. Look at you, all red and shifty-eyed!’
I forced myself to look Dad straight in the face. ‘Jasmine joined my class today, Dad. Come and inspect the register tomorrow if you really don’t believe me. Hook me up to a lie detector, why don’t you?’
‘Less of the lippy attitude, madam,’ said Dad. ‘So what were you doing with this girl, then? Why in God’s name didn’t you phone home and put your mother out of her misery? You made enough fuss to be given that mobile phone so why didn’t you use it?’
‘The battery’s flat,’ I lied. ‘And I asked to use Jasmine’s phone but they’ve only just moved into the flat so they’re still waiting to get a land-line installed.’
Will shook his head at my fluent lies. Mum and even Dad seemed on the brink of believing me. I gabbled on, telling them all about Jasmine’s parents, making out they were still together and that I’d met both of them.
‘I think I know Miranda Cape. Didn’t she use to be in EastEnders? The blonde one who caused all the trouble?’ said Mum. ‘So what’s she really like, Violet? Does she talk really common?’
‘No, no, that’s all an act, she’s ever so posh. And so’s Jonathan, Jasmine’s dad. He’s in San Francisco, that’s a musical at the Rialto.’
‘I saw the advert for it. I was going to get your dad to take me for our anniversary. Good lord, fancy you knowing them! And what about this Jasmine? Is she a showy little thing?’
‘She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,’ I said.
‘Listen to you!’ said Dad. ‘Stop looking all moony, you stupid girl. It’s still no excuse staying out half the night and worrying us all to death.’
But the force had gone out of his bluster. He nagged on for ten minutes, and I meekly did the ‘Yes, Dad, no, Dad, never again, Dad’ routine. He subsided at last, cracking open a can of beer and settling down to watch The Bill on television, yelling insults at the screen whenever he felt they’d got it all wrong.
Mum asked me endless questions about Miranda and whether her hair looked naturally blonde and had she put on any weight at all and what sort of clothes was she wearing? I made it up as I went along and it seemed to keep her happy.
Will had sloped off up the stairs to his room. I sidled quietly up to my room too. I threw myself on my boring pink flowery duvet, staring up at the fairies dangling above my head. I wondered where I could find an embroidered Indian veil and a string of Christmas tree lights.
My door suddenly opened and Will walked straight in, knocking as an afterthought.
‘Do you mind?’
‘I knocked.’
‘Yeah, and you gave me a lot of time to respond, didn’t you?’
‘So what are you up to that’s so secret, eh? Writing to your precious Casper Dreamboat? Oh C.D., darling, I’m so sad and lonesome, poor little yucky me.’
‘Have you been reading my letters?’ I said furiously.
‘How sad is it, writing hundreds of letters to a man you’ve never met – and you don’t even send them!’
‘It’s even sadder sneaking into someone’s room and reading their private stuff. I think that’s despicable,’ I said.
‘I think it’s despicable betraying someone’s birth secrets,’ he snapped back, leaning against my door.
Oh god. He had heard. I stared at his ears, marvelling at their ability to hear a whisper at twenty paces. They were strange ears, a little pointed at the top.
‘You and your Mr Spock ears,’ I said weakly. I paused. ‘Will, I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have told her.’
Will shrugged. ‘You can tell her what you like.’
I couldn’t believe he was so cool about it. I held my hand up, high-five style. He held his hand up too and we did our old complicated slap and wave routine. Will taught it to me when I was six, when we had our own special Will-and-Violet club.
‘Jasmine is my best friend now,’ I said shyly. ‘But she’ll never be friends the way we’re friends.’
‘Yuck! Stop being so sticky and sentimental. I feel like I’m drowning in treacle,’ said Will, miming scraping himself clean, but he grinned at me before walking out of my bedroom.
I couldn’t be bothered to do anything boring like homework. I leafed through my Casper Dream flower fairy book instead. It was like Jasmine had flown right out of his fairyland. There were fragments of her on every page. The Bluebell Fairy had her eyes; the Gardenia Fairy had her white skin, the Water Lily Fairy her slender limbs; the Laburnum Fairy had her long fair hair. I wondered if Casper Dream made his fairies up, drawing them from his imagination, or did he have a series of elfin models tiptoeing round his studio, waving their arms and pointing their toes? Were they all one girl? Was she his girlfriend?
I looked at the dark photograph on the dust jacket. They used the same photo on every Casper Dream book, a portrait in heavy shadow, so that you could only see his eyes and his long nose and the elegant curve of his lip. It was impossible to work out how old he was. I liked to think he wasn’t too old. If he’d created The Smoky Fairy Book just out of art school, when he was twenty-one or twenty-two, he could still be in his twenties now. When I was in my twenties the age difference would be minimal.
I didn’t want to bother with silly boyfriends. I wanted to wait for the only man for me.
I asked Jasmine the next day if she’
d ever had a boyfriend.
‘Not exactly,’ she said, giggling. ‘I’ve let boys kiss me at parties and they’ve sent me Valentines and I’ve hung out at McDonald’s with a whole bunch, you know, that sort of stuff.’
‘Sure,’ I said, though I’d never done any of that myself.
‘But I’ve never been serious about any of them,’ said Jasmine. ‘You can’t talk to them, not the way we talk.’ She smiled at me.
I smiled back, my heart thudding joyfully. It was as if we’d been best friends for years instead of twenty-four hours. Jasmine was marginally more suitably dressed today in a little grey vesty top and a tiny green skirt that showed a lot of her lovely long legs, but Mrs Mason shuddered when she saw her and called her up to her desk for a lecture on appropriate school attire.
‘I should think so too,’ said Marnie, sniffing. ‘Honestly, you can practically see her knickers. I’d die rather than go out dressed like that. What were you doing, letting her hang round you all yesterday? I mean, I know she’s new, but you don’t have to get stuck with her. Terry thinks you like her, but you don’t really, do you?’
‘I like her ever so much, Marnie,’ I said.
‘But she’s so full of herself,’ said Marnie, pulling a silly face. ‘She thinks she’s it.’
‘I think she is it,’ I said.
‘Shut up,’ said Marnie. ‘You’re acting like you’ve got some kind of pervy crush on her.’
‘You shut up,’ I said. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to,’ said Marnie. ‘Oh well. Suit yourself. You go round with whoever you want.’
‘OK. I will,’ I said.
Marnie marched off to join Terry. They whispered together, glaring over at me, then tossing their heads at Jasmine.
I knew that was it as far as Marnie and Terry were concerned. They felt they’d only been friends with me under sufferance. They certainly wouldn’t want to go round with me any more. But what did I care? I had Jasmine.
I knew she wasn’t going to be at school long. It would be lonelier than ever after she’d gone. But I couldn’t bother about that now. I had to make the most of what I’d got.