CHAPTER FOUR The Piece of Glass
Sophie was right to be pessimistic. The paperwork for the trip came back in a large brown envelope with one of Rosemary’s scrawled notes paper-clipped to the top: No can do. Much too expensive. In another pen, she had added, Away for most of school holiday. Best get yourself invited to a friend’s.
Sophie stuffed the envelope into her bedside drawer, then lay on her bed and stared at the leaden sky.
She could understand Rosemary not wanting to spend the money: She knew there wasn’t much of it around for Sophie, and the little there was had been earmarked for school fees.
Rosemary was keen on Sophie’s “education” largely because it meant they had to spend very little time together.
It was hard not to think about how different things could have been if … No. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about her father. Nothing would bring him back.
Sophie straightened the photo on the windowsill.
She tried hard every day to remember everything she could about him, but he was starting to fade.
She couldn’t stop it. And trying to remember him was like trying to remember a dream.
Sometimes she had a sudden memory of climbing onto his knee to put her finger in the cleft of his chin, or snatches of a song he sang in the car, or the way he used to laugh as he wiped her face after he’d let her use ketchup for lipstick …
but she couldn’t force these memories to come without them feeling damaged in some way.
And she couldn’t remember his voice. All she really knew about the night he had died — through listening to Rosemary on the phone years later — was that it was dark and it was raining and her father had borrowed someone’s car to drive home after his poetry reading.
“Have you handed in your form?” Delphine had come back to the room to pick up a forgotten workbook. She plucked it off her shelf and pushed it into her oversized Chanel handbag.
“No.” This would make it even worse. Her two closest friends were going on the trip … and they didn’t even want to go. Delphine kept going on about how cold it would be, and Marianne said she was actually interested in Thomas Hardy’s cooking.
Delphine raised one eyebrow.
“It’s Rosemary,” Sophie muttered. “I need her permission and she won’t give it.”
Delphine put out her hand. “Give the form to me.”
Sophie handed the envelope to Delphine, who whisked a pen out of her pocket.
“But you can’t!” Sophie gasped. “That’s illegal.”
“Look, the office isn’t going to check. They just want a signature.
The only time they go back and check is if something goes wrong.
And nothing ever goes wrong on a school trip, does it?
” She dashed off a signature with a flourish.
“Anyway, I’m doing Rosemary a favor. Mrs. Sharman will send home anyone who isn’t traveling, and she won’t want to be stuck looking after you while everyone else is on the trip.
So it’s better for everyone if you come with us. ”
“But what about the cost?” Sophie said, her stomach heavy.
Delphine shrugged. “It’ll go on her school bill. And by that time it will be too late. She’ll just have to pay up.”
“I don’t feel very happy about this,” Sophie whispered.
“You don’t have to feel happy,” Delphine said.
“You just have to hand it in at the office and start thinking about what you’re going to pack.
” She shook her head. “Or should that be not pack?” She laughed.
“My mother still talks about the little English orphan who came to stay in Paris for a whole week with a plastic bag as her luggage.”
“I didn’t need anything else …” Sophie started to say, although the image of Delphine’s mother opening the door of the small but incredibly chic apartment, and shaking her head as if Sophie were from another planet, made her scalp tingle with embarrassment.
“Don’t worry.” Delphine sounded confident. “My mother is sending me some clothes from Paris. There’s bound to be a few things that will fit you.”
Sophie held the signed form in her hands.
Could she do it? She looked at the signature and realized that this was more than just a piece of paper: She was holding snow and a forest and a dream in her hand.
Of course, it wasn’t her dream, it could never be her dream, but the thought of going to Saint Petersburg, to Russia, made her scalp tingle in a different way.
She had glimpsed something magical, as if a butterfly had landed on a boring textbook.
For a moment she remembered the glamorous visitor who had made it possible, then the sense of unease she had felt in her presence. She put them both out of her mind.
She would go!
“Can’t you move your stuff, Delphine?” Marianne kicked two metal suitcases out of her way as she crossed the room. “I knew you didn’t have a headache! You just wanted extra time to pack!”
It was the day before the end of term and, by Sophie’s reckoning, only fifteen hours and seventeen minutes until they left for Saint Petersburg.
“Normally, I would have laid everything out at least two days in advance!” Delphine picked up a canvas tote from the floor. The suitcases remained where they were. “But of course in London you are expected to pack in half an hour!”
“We’re not going until tomorrow!” Marianne said, throwing her math books onto her bed. “Why all the fuss?”
Delphine ignored Marianne and started wrapping a pile of cashmere sweaters in tissue paper. “Can I put some of my clothes in your bag, Sophie? I’ve no more room in mine.” She looked across at Sophie’s small pile of clothes and frowned. “Although I hope you’re taking more than that.”
Sophie laughed. “Do I need anything else?”
Delphine sighed. “What about a dress? For the evening? It said on the itinerary that we were going to the ballet. You can’t go to the ballet in Saint Petersburg in a pair of jeans.”
Sophie dug out a little sequined summer dress from her narrow wardrobe and held it up.
It had looked pretty in the summer, she thought, with flip-flops.
But now, in the gray London light, she knew it looked cheap and flimsy.
A couple of the sequins were hanging down from the hem on long threads.
And it wouldn’t be warm enough for Russia.
Delphine shuddered. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You can borrow something of mine, like I said.” She looked suspiciously at Marianne. “Have you even started packing yet?”
“It’ll get done.” Marianne lay full-length on her bed, reading a guidebook on Saint Petersburg. “But you know, all I really need to take is a happy smile!” She beamed over the pages at Delphine. “My mother says it’s the most important thing to wear!”
“Oh yes, I can just see it on the catwalks,” Delphine mused. “Clothes by Yves Saint Laurent … lunatic grin by Marianne!”
She ignored the book thrown at her head and calmly put several shoe boxes into Sophie’s rucksack, placing Sophie’s clothes carefully on top. “What’s this?” she asked, picking up an old-fashioned wooden pencil box. She stuck her fingernail in the tiny indent and slid the lid to one side.
“Just … stuff …” Sophie said. “I’ll put it in my rucksack.”
Delphine picked out a heavy gold cuff link.
“My dad’s,” Sophie muttered.
A small piece of lace was next to come out. “It must have been from one of my mother’s summer dresses,” Sophie said.
Delphine put them carefully back in the box. “And this?” she asked, unfolding a piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn from a magazine. Inside was a large colorless stone on a piece of old string. It looked like a piece of dirty glass.
“I don’t know, really,” Sophie said. “It’s just something of my dad’s. He used to hold it up to the light and it would suddenly have all these other colors in it.”
“Prism,” said Marianne.
“What?” Delphine held the glass up and little sprinkles of light seemed to jump out.
“Refraction!” Marianne said. “When light is split up into its component parts. Like in a rainbow. Don’t you ever pay attention in physics?” She added, “It looks a bit like my lucky druid stone.”
“Mon Dieu,” Delphine muttered. “How can you be so superstitious and so clever?” She held the piece of glass up to her ear. “It’d make a nice earring, though.”
“Except there’s only one.” Sophie sat down on her bed. “I don’t have a pair of anything. Rosemary got rid of most of my parents’ things in one of her big spring cleanups.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t got rid of you in one of her cleanups!” Marianne said, trying and failing to lighten the mood. “Sorry,” she added.
“I wonder what it would be like to be one of a pair …” Sophie whispered. “Or a family …”
There was an awkward silence and then Delphine said softly, “It’s all right being the only one, Sophie. It means you’re unique.”
Sophie smiled, although she didn’t feel happy.
Talking about her parents always made her feel their loss more keenly.
She took the box from Delphine, wrapped the piece of glass back up in the torn magazine page, and put it neatly back in the box.
Then she put the box in her rucksack. Her father had promised to take her on a magical journey.
Of course, he probably meant traveling by flying carpet, or charging along in a time machine.
She couldn’t manage either of those, but she would take what little she had left of him with her.
That way she could take him on a magical journey.
She was really going!
She allowed herself to think about it — really think about it — for the first time.
Of Russia. Of vast lily pads of ice slipping down the inky river Neva.
Of uprisings and royal bloodshed. Of the story of the poet who fought a duel on a bitter frosty dawn for the sake of his skittish young wife.
And everywhere — under the hooves of the horses pulling sleighs through the streets, on the onion domes of churches, or covering the parks of ornate baroque palaces — snow.