Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) (15 page)

Who? What? What on earth are you talking about?
Those were only a few of the questions on the tip of my tongue. I started with the first.

“Who?” For the sake of dramatic effect, I leaned forward and spoke in as mysterious a whisper as hers. “Who’s pitiless?”

She shook her head and avoided answering my question. “I do love Arthur—you must believe me. I always thought all that stuff about the one great love of your life was nonsense—until I met Arthur.… It was like a tsunami rolling over us. I knew we were meant for each other, I knew he was the man I’d been waiting for all my life.” She faltered and bit her lip.

Good heavens. You could hardly get more theatrical. Quite apart from the fact that I was always suspicious of anyone baring her heart about her great passion to a total stranger, hadn’t there been something different about it in the Tittle-Tattle blog? Arthur was the one great love of her life? She had to be kidding. How about that ex-boyfriend Tom Something? And wasn’t he dead?

She let out a sigh. “At least, I ought to have known that you can’t lie to him.”

“You mean Arthur?”

Anabel looked at me in surprise. “No! I’m talking about
him
.” Only now did I notice that the pupils of her eyes were enormous. Her words went wandering down the corridor and were thrown back from the walls as a whispering echo. “I mean the one we conjured up by playing the game.”

I stared at her. “Conjured up? Who did you conjure up?” And why?

Anabel said nothing for a couple of seconds, and then she whispered, “He has many names. Lord of the Winds. Keeper of the Shadows. Demon of the Night.”

The corridor became noticeably darker. A cold draft of air touched my arms, and I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Not so much because of what Anabel was saying as because she was clearly frightened. I could see it in her eyes.

“He is lord over dreams. The Akkadians called him Lilu. In Sumerian his name is Lulila, in Persian mythology he is…”

“Lulila, Lord of the Winds?” The little hairs on the back of my neck lay down in their usual position, and I burst into a fit of the giggles. I really couldn’t help it.

Anabel was staring at me, wide-eyed. “You shouldn’t … No one makes fun of a Demon of the Night.”

“I’m sorry…” I gasped, trying to control myself. “But if he doesn’t want to be laughed at, maybe he ought to give himself a more terrifying name.” Oh, this was useless. Another peal of laughter made its way out of me. “Really, I mean, Lulila! Sounds like something out of a lullaby for Teletubbies.”

The fear in Anabel’s face had given way to incredulous astonishment, along with something else that I couldn’t identify because my vision was blurred by tears of mirth.
Lulila, Lord of the Winds
 … There was no stopping my laughter—it was as if I’d never heard anything funnier in my life.

Anabel seemed to be frozen rigid with horror.

I knew myself that my reaction was totally inappropriate. Particularly as the light in the corridor had turned so atmospherically gloomy and the temperature had distinctly fallen lower. But before I could pull myself together and apologize to Anabel, the alarm clock went off.

And I found myself awake, still laughing.

Even now, out taking Buttercup for a walk, I couldn’t help giggling so loudly that she turned her head and gave me an inquiring glance.

“It’s all right, Butter,” I told her. “Do your business, then we’ll go back, and I’ll give your coat a little brushing.” I looked at the time. “Anyway, you’re going to see your future home today. And your new patchwork family, along with the patchwork family cat. We want you to look cute, so that all of them will love you.”

Buttercup stood still, put her head to one side, and looked so cute that even the most conservative tomcat in the world would take her into his patchwork heart. Even the Pope’s cat, if he happened to have one.

Then she barked at a cyclist so suddenly that he almost collided with a lamppost.

I giggled again. That dog was a real little devil.

Speaking of which, it was quite difficult to bring Lulila up on the Internet (there were any number of children’s-wear stores with that name), but I did finally find a list of Sumerian gods and demons.
Lulila, Sumerian demon of the night.
Unfortunately that was all. However, I was able to add another point to the scientific evaluation of my dreams on record. Fifth, I was obviously able to dream of things that I couldn’t possibly know.

16

FOR VARIOUS REASONS,
there was a little tension in the air when we arrived at Ernest’s house. First, we really were twenty minutes late (but it wasn’t my fault; it was because, led astray by Miss Seventy Percent Sure Mia, we’d boarded the wrong bus), and second, Mia and I had deep forebodings about Lottie and Florence and how they would get on.

“If she makes a single nasty remark…,” muttered Mia ominously to herself.

We hadn’t told Lottie how furious Florence had been at the idea of giving up some of her space; even Mom hadn’t dropped the faintest hint. Otherwise, we all knew Lottie either wouldn’t have come with us or, considerably more likely, would have insisted on moving into the broom cupboard.

“Or if she has any kind of silly look on her face…,” Mia went on.

Myself, I stared at Frightful Freddy outside the Spencers’ front door and could only just stop myself saying “Ydderf, Ydderf, Ydderf” instead of ringing the bell. Strange how familiar I’d become with that overweight stone statue over the last few nights. I almost expected it to wink at me.

Mia and I had run from the bus stop, shaking off Mom and Lottie, and only now did they round the corner, gasping for breath. At the same time, unfortunately, so did a tall man in corduroys and a roll-neck pullover, coming from the opposite direction and apparently in just as much of a hurry. He stumbled over the dog leash, which didn’t amuse Butter at all. She began yapping and kicking up a fuss, and there was minor chaos. Mia and I tried to grab her collar, but that wasn’t so easy; Buttercup twisted and turned like an eel. The extra-long leash wrapped itself around Lottie’s feet and the man’s legs, and they both fell over while Mom stood there watching and saying, “Bad dog!” about ten times in a row, not very helpfully.

At last I managed to drag Buttercup away by her collar, and Lottie and the man got to their feet. In doing that they banged their heads together, and when Lottie said, “Ouch!” Buttercup would happily have leaped to her defense. She barked reproachfully.

“Bad dog,” said Mom faintly.

The man rubbed his forehead. “Are you all right?” he asked Lottie, and I really thought the better of him. Anyone else in his position would have threatened us with legal proceedings.

“I’m so sorry,” said Lottie, rather breathlessly, putting a strand of brown hair back from her face. “I’m usually a very nice dog.”

Mia put her hand in front of her mouth so as not to burst out laughing.

“Er, I mean she is,” stammered Lottie, going red in the face. The sight of the tall man seemed to have confused her terribly. “She’s a dear, good dog. I … er … it’s just that she doesn’t like postmen.”

“Well, I’m not a postman,” the tall man assured her. “I’m the black sheep of the Spencer family, Ernest’s brother Charles. And you must be the new additions to our family. I’m very glad to meet you all.”

Now that we had time to take a closer look at him, we weren’t really surprised by these revelations, because Charles was very like Ernest: the same broad shoulders, the same blue eyes, the same bald patch on the way, the same enormous elephant ears. Even his voice was very like Ernest’s.

He shook hands with us one by one, and we told him our names and assured him that we were pleased to meet him, too. When it was Lottie’s turn, she blushed even more and explained that she was the mindchilder.

“Or something like that, anyway,” murmured Mom.

Mia and I exchanged glances of alarm. What on earth was the matter with Lottie? We could hardly believe our ears when our mindchilder went on to reveal her family secrets that even we had never known before.

“I used to be the black sheep of my own family,” she said cheerfully. “But then my cousin Franziska fell in love with her cleaning lady, so that made her the black sheep instead. Until my cousin Basti converted his hotel into a swingers’ club and—”

“Let’s leave the details until later,” Mom hastily interrupted her, firmly pressing the doorbell. “After all, there’s no end of furniture to move.… Oh, hello, Ernest darling! I’m so sorry we’re late, but it wasn’t my fault.”

“We boarded the bong wrus,” explained Lottie with a blissful smile, although it wasn’t meant for Ernest. I was gradually getting the idea of what was going on.

“I think we’ve found a possible candidate for Operation Marrying Off Lottie,” I whispered to Mia as we went indoors. “That black sheep with the beginnings of a bald patch somehow seems to be her type.”

“Yup,” agreed Mia. “I’ll just sound him out.”

And so she did, by asking a whole series of indiscreet questions while wearing her sweetest smile. The questions were addressed either to Charles himself or to his relations.

By the end of that day we’d made a good deal of progress. First, we had introduced Spot and Buttercup to each other, which, considering Butter’s inauspicious first appearance, proved surprisingly simple. They began with a staring match, Spot looking down with a haughty expression from his place on the sofa, Buttercup snuffling anxiously as she kept close to Lottie’s legs. Then they decided to ignore each other for the rest of the day. Spot was much better at that than Buttercup, who kept casting suspicious glances at the sofa but otherwise stayed with us as we went all around the house. We got a lot of exercise, because we had to move what felt like forty tons of furniture and boxes from right to left, from up to down. We basically cleared everything out and put it back in a different place.

Meanwhile, we’d looked at over fifty shades of white paint for the walls, picking the ones with the prettiest names (“Old Lace” for Lottie, “Snow White” for Mia, “Seashell” for me). Here, surprisingly, Florence turned out to be an adviser with a good sense of style, while Grayson was practically color-blind. (“Are you trying to be funny? They’re all white, for heaven’s sake!”)

We had also put together an exhaustive file on Ernest’s brother Charles. He was thirty-nine years old, childless, and had been on his own for two years. Getting divorced from his ex-wife, Eleanor, “the greedy dragon,” had cost him a holiday home in the south of France, a Jaguar, and endless nervous stress. The vertical line between his eyebrows was also Eleanor’s doing, or so Florence claimed. He played tennis, donated to the World Wildlife Fund, liked open-air classical music concerts in the park, and a band called Lambchop. Speaking of lambs, he was known as the black sheep of the family not because—for instance—he sprayed graffiti on the walls of tunnels or grew his own cannabis or did whatever else you might expect a black sheep to do, but just because, unlike his three older brothers, he hadn’t studied law or gone into politics. Instead, he was a dentist with a practice in Islington. Mia and I were rather disappointed. A veterinarian would have been fine, but a dentist—well, that wasn’t quite so toothsome, if you see what I mean.…

However, Charles wasn’t the only one who had to undergo cross-examination; Lottie herself was bombarded with peculiar questions, because clearly Florence had a problem with Germans, so she wanted to know whether there had been any Nazis in Lottie’s family and, if so, whether she felt guilty and what she was doing about it.

Mia would happily have come to blows with Florence over that question, but Lottie said that as far as she knew, any Nazis in the family had died in the Second World War, and Florence seemed happy with that for now. She appeared to have come to terms with the merger between our families, and the rearrangement of the Spencer household that was part of it. At least she wasn’t complaining anymore and did not seem about to fall into hysterics. I was almost disappointed. I’d liked Florence better when she lost her self-control and let rip.

And of course Mom wasn’t about to spare me embarrassing remarks. For practical reasons, she kept them until lunchtime, because then everyone would get the benefit of hearing them.

“It’s sweet of you to take Liv to that party with you this evening,” she said, beaming at Grayson. All I needed now was for her to pat his cheek. “I always say, young people don’t spend Saturday evening at home unless they have a temperature of a hundred degrees. I’m so glad Liv won’t be a wallflower here in London.”

“Er…” Grayson was clearly at a loss for words. He glanced at me, and I couldn’t resist a mischievous grin.

“Mom, I don’t think you’re up to date with the latest developments. You’ll embarrass Grayson. You see, he’d rather I didn’t go to the party this evening.”

Ernest put his soup spoon down. “What did you say?”

Grayson put a piece of bread in his mouth and muttered something that no one could make out. I felt slightly sorry for him, but he’d been asking for it.

“Nonsense, mousie,” said Mom. “Why, you have Grayson to thank for your invitation to the party in the first place. Isn’t that so, Grayson?”

Grayson swallowed. “Yes, well, but it … I’ve … um … er.” A quick glance at me, and then he seemed to pull himself together. He went on, without quite so much stammering, “These parties are rather wild. I mean, there’s a lot of alcohol flowing, and what with Liv being only fifteen, I thought it would be better if she stayed at home and…”

Oh, really, this was too much. “I’m going to be sixteen in three weeks’ time,” I said, stung.

“Really? You don’t look it.”

“Grayson!” Ernest gave him a stern glance. So did I. What did he mean, I didn’t look it?

“I can tell what he’s thinking,” said Mom. “He’s a responsible boy—he only wants to protect Liv.” She turned to her future stepson. “But there’s really no need for you to worry, Grayson dear. You just have fun at the party—Liv can look after herself perfectly well.” She leaned over to Ernest and whispered loud enough for everyone at the table to hear her. “Too well, I sometimes think. At her age I’d already done it all: my first hangover, my first joint, my first experience of sex. Liv is something of a late developer there. I’m rather afraid she may take after her father. He never did anything in his life without thinking it over first. Or no, I’m wrong about that; after all, he married me.” She laughed.