Chapter 22
22
2001
I don’t mind school today because Flint is coming around tonight for Halloween. Mum said we could go trick or treating together. She has to come with us – even Flint’s mum insisted on that – but she’s promised to stay at the end of each house’s drive so that we don’t look like babies. He came to tea at the weekend. Mum made us chicken and vegetables. I prefer fish fingers and chips but Flint said it was really yum. His dad has a vegetable garden and they have chickens, mostly for eggs but sometimes for meat. We talked about what outfits we’ll wear.
Flint is going as a skeleton. Mum bought me a glittery witch’s hat and a cape from the supermarket. She’s not sleeping as much now. That makes it more difficult for me and Flint to sneak into Applegrove Wood. When we go there at the weekend, I crawl through the gap in the fence while Mum is watching telly. Her eyes aren’t as red. It’s strange but she’s somehow better since last weekend when she got a phone call saying Uncle Kevin had been found. He was on the second floor of his tower. Masonry (I wonder what that is) had fallen on his head. Mum didn’t tell me, but I heard her repeating what the person on the phone said: that Uncle Kevin must have got to work seconds before the plane hit and not been high up and at his desk; that he started to walk back down the tower again. Being found on the second floor meant that he almost got out.
I cried a lot, in secret, over that; his near escape makes his death much worse.
But not for Mum. She talked to another friend. Listening to her conversations with other people is the only way I find things out these days. Mum said she could cope now that she was no longer in a place called limbo. I don’t know where that is – perhaps it’s near work and she goes there when I’m at school. It can’t be very nice because all these weeks it’s made her really miserable.
‘Let’s go, Violet,’ calls Mum.
I pull open my bedroom drawer and take out a sandwich bag. Inside is Muffet. He’s not a spindly spider with his lovely thick, furry legs. What a relief he is still alive. I took one of Mum’s sewing needles and made holes in the plastic so that he could breathe. I found him down the bottom of the garden last night near the woods. Last weekend Flint and I talked through my plan. I almost chickened out but Flint kept on encouraging me to be brave.
Halloween is the perfect day to do it. Alice is such a scaredy-cat. And it serves her right for not asking me to her party. I’m the only girl in the class who didn’t get an invite.
‘It’s not personal,’ said Alice, who likes to use grown-up phrases. ‘But you’re such a Shrinking Violet, I know you’d rather stay at home. You’d only cry at the biscuits Mum has bought with monsters on the front. And me and everyone else will be doing pretty Halloween make-up. It wouldn’t show behind your big purple glasses.’
As I wave goodbye to Mum, my stomach hurts as if I want to eat. But I had a big breakfast. Mum bought half-moon-shaped pastries with chocolate in the middle. She hasn’t done that for a long time. The pain must be because I’m nervous. What if Alice finds out it was me? And I don’t want Muffet hurt. I hope he manages to run away. Flint said unkind Alice deserves it. I know he’s right.
I make sure I am one of the last to go in the classroom. When I get to my peg, Alice and her friends are already sitting on the carpet. I wait until all the other children have hung up their coats and then quickly I pull out the sandwich bag. I tug off my bobble hat and jiggle it over my peg. I turn around to check no one is looking. Everyone is listening to Alice showing off about the games her mum has organised for the party tonight. Apple dunking sounds like fun.
Alice’s peg is at the other end of the wall near the toilets. I put the sandwich bag on the ground and hang up my coat. I head for Alice’s bag. It doesn’t take me long to let Muffet escape. I do her bag up again and go into the toilets where I pretend to wee.
Heart thumping, I return to my peg, stuff the empty sandwich bag in my coat pocket and sit on the carpet. That’s the good thing about having a second name beginning with V. It gives you a bit of extra time when Mrs Warham is calling the register.
After what seems like a whole year, we come back from assembly, fetch our bags and sit at our desks. It’s maths first today. I stare very hard at my notebook, not daring to look up in case I catch Alice’s eye. My hands are damp. Suddenly a loud scream echoes around the classroom.
Alice stands up quickly and falls back onto the floor. She flashes her knickers. They are red with white spots today. Alice likes to do that if it’s her choice, but not when it’s an accident and everyone giggles.
‘A huge spider! It jumped out of my bag. It ran onto my book,’ she says in between sobs.
‘Calm down, Alice, and sit back at your desk,’ snaps Mrs Warham.
Alice shakes her head. It matches her whole body.
‘Do as you’re told this instant,’ says Mrs Warham, who checks Alice’s chair. ‘There are no spiders here. You must have imagined it.’
‘There was.’ Tears run down her face.
I’ve never seen Alice cry before. Lots of her so-called friends grin. It’s a relief to see that her face gets blotchy and swollen too. But I can’t help feeling sorry for her. Her tears make me realise that underneath she’s just like me.
At break she is still crying. But then, Muffet was quite big and especially hairy. As we all hurry into the October sunshine, I go up to Alice and give her a tissue.
She sneers. ‘You reckon that’s going to make me invite you to my party?’
‘No, I—’ I’m stuttering. I only wanted to make her feel better.
Flint is right. There’s no point in feeling sorry for Alice.
‘I’d rather invite that spider,’ she says and brightens up when the others laugh at her joke. She stuffs the tissue down the front of my jumper and, holding hands with Georgie, skips away.
But I’m not bothered. Her tears have shown me that Alice isn’t as brave as she likes to think.