The Origami Nun (3 page)

Someone in the maths group nudged her and brought her back from her dreaming. When she looked at how far they’d got already, Ruth could see they were waiting for her to decide how much bacon to buy with the money that was left. She swallowed and wondered if everyone around her could hear the noise. She hadn’t been paying attention. Behind her, the shadow of Mrs. Easting fell across the group. Mrs. Easting didn’t like it when children didn’t pay attention. Ruth had seen that already, even though she hadn’t been at this school for long.

“Ruth?” Mrs. Easting said. “How many rashers of bacon would you buy for Emily? Why don’t you put that figure onto the table?”

In Ruth’s pocket, the origami nun began to tap against her leg. Eyes fixed on the table, Ruth counted out the taps and then tried to smile. Slowly, and not being sure that she’d really understood the message, Ruth reached out and took hold of the number seven, her favourite number. Just as slowly, she placed it in the middle of the table.

Mrs. Easting smiled. “Well done, my dear. Seven rashers of bacon is the right number. Good for you!”

Ruth couldn’t believe she’d got it right. Most times she didn’t get any of the questions right. She was happier with drawing and learning about history. She loved all the kings and queens. So she smiled back at her teacher and sat down. When she looked up, she could see Lorraine’s frown where she was watching her from one of the other groups. Ruth knew only too well what that meant.

When play-time came round, her classmates ran outside to enjoy the sunshine, but Ruth dawdled and pretended to be fiddling with the artwork on the wall. For a few moments, she thought she might have got away with it and Mrs. Easting wouldn’t notice her or would just for today allow her to stay inside where she felt safe, but she wasn’t in luck.

“Come on, Ruth! I’ve got things to do here. Why don’t you go outside and play? The sunshine’s lovely.”

She obeyed, her heart beating fast. As she slipped as quietly as possible out of the door into the bright sun, the origami nun in her pocket squirmed and sent a feeling of warmth into her leg. Perhaps it would be all right then, somehow. She hoped so. Once outside, she hurried to the corner of the school playground as usual where she might escape the notice of Lorraine and her friends.

She leant against the school wall, and the rough bricks dug into her skin. Keeping her head down so she didn’t make eye contact with anyone, she prayed that she would get to the other side of play-time unhurt. It was only fifteen minutes but it seemed like forever. If only she could have taken the day off and spent her birthday at home with Great-Aunt Alice, they could have gone for a walk or baked some cupcakes or anything. It didn’t matter what they would have done, she would have been very happy with that. But school was for always and you had to go every day while it was on. The only reason to have a day off was if you were sick, and Ruth wasn’t sick.

She stared at the small blades of grass struggling for enough sun to grow at the edge of the schoolhouse wall. Even though it grew in the playground, grass didn’t have to go to lessons, and it didn’t have to run away from horrid children. It didn’t know how lucky it was. How she wished she could be a blade of grass and not have to worry about anything else ever again. That would be like real magic, the sort that never happened. She wished her mother was here.

Thinking about her mother made Ruth’s eyes get wetter and she had to wipe her tears away. She and her grandmother had been killed in a car crash. Ruth had been with them when it happened, or so Great-Aunt Alice had said, but she couldn’t remember anything about it. All she could remember was sitting in the back of the car with her seatbelt on as the car drove down the High Street, and then the next thing was waking up in a bed she didn’t recognise and her great-aunt hugging her. For the first few weeks after that, she’d tried and tried to remember, but it hadn’t done any good, and in the end people stopped asking and she stopped trying.

“Hey, dumb girl, what you doing?”

Even before she glanced up at the girl in front of her, Ruth knew who it would be. Lorraine was the only one in the school who spoke to her like that. Everyone else just looked and joined in if they wanted Lorraine to be their friend. Lorraine didn’t want an answer, and anyway how could Ruth give one? She was silent. So she did nothing but shrug and look away.

Now if Lorraine was in a good mood, she’d laugh at Ruth and walk off, sneering. If she wasn’t, then Ruth was really for it. She put her hand in her skirt pocket and felt the reassuring presence of the nun between her fingers.

Lorraine pushed her. It was going to be a bad day then. Ruth froze. This time she had nowhere to run as Lorraine’s friends blocked any chance of getting away. Her throat felt dry. She wished Great-Aunt Alice was here. She would know what to do, she would protect her.

But she wasn’t here, and Lorraine and her friends continued to push and prod at her, as she made herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Ruth tried to make-believe she wasn’t here at all, but somewhere else far away from school and play-time.

After a few minutes, though it seemed like hours, Lorraine stepped back and reached sideways to grab something Ruth couldn’t see. The next moment something dark and hot cut out the light and she punched at it, fingers scrabbling at whatever it was that Lorraine had thrown over her. It felt scratchy, like wool, and it smelt musty. The more Ruth tried to escape, the more trapped she became, and the less she could breathe. She hated this darkness and she had to get away.

In her pocket, the origami nun twisted and caused a pinprick of warmth to flow through her leg. She grabbed the nun and beat at the darkness surrounding her with it. As if she’d opened a secret door to a magic world, the darkness disappeared and she blinked in the light again. Next to her lay the blanket they used for the school rabbit hutch. It must have been that which Lorraine had thrown over her. Across the playground she could see a tall figure marching across and she could hear Mrs. Easting’s voice, raised in anger but not at her.

None of this mattered. With the nun in her hand giving her courage she’d never had before, Ruth pushed Lorraine to the ground so she landed with a thump and a yell. Then she kicked her.

I hate you,
she mouthed so that Lorraine could see.

After that, still clutching the nun, Ruth raced past her class teacher, whose eyebrows she saw were raised in a half-moon shape and her lips opened in an O, then she was through the school gates and out onto the pavement.

She was going home.

Chapter Three

The rain lashed down on her and the wind roared as Ruth ran home. Odd how only a moment ago, the skies had been clear and calm, and now everything was different. How she hated thunderstorms. She kept on running, past umbrellas on legs, past trees that scattered rain across her head as she galloped by, past houses and bicycles and wildly barking dogs. She kept on running, carrying the nun in her hand and feeling braver because of her warmth.

When she arrived home, she pushed open the garden gate, raced down the path and pounded on the front door. She was soaked to the skin.
Please let Great-Aunt Alice be in
, she thought,
please let her be in
.

Her plea was answered because the door opened and the next moment Ruth was swept up into her great-aunt’s embrace. “My darling girl, what on earth are you doing here? Look at you, you’re soaked through, let’s go inside, we need to get you warm and then you can tell me what happened.”

Great-Aunt Alice kept on talking in a comforting way as she carried Ruth upstairs to the bathroom, sat her down on the bathroom stool and ran a steaming hot bath. Ruth slipped out of her school clothes and into the hot water as soon as she could. She realised she was crying and couldn’t seem to stop. It hadn’t been her best ever birthday so far. In fact maybe it was her worst birthday ever. She hoped all the other birthdays she would have in her life wouldn’t be anything like this.

Her great-aunt held her hand as she cried, and the nun Ruth was still holding grew warm in the heat of their palms. When Ruth finished crying, Great-Aunt Alice released her hand and patted her head.

“All right, my love,” she said. “You finish your bath and I’ll put your wet things in the washing machine. I’ll bring you up a hot drink and some dry clothes in a minute but first I need to ring the school and let them know where you are. Is that all right?”

Ruth nodded and wiped away the remains of her tears. She smiled at her great-aunt as she left the bathroom, grateful she had been at home. Great-Aunt Alice had a lot of friends and often would be out for coffee or doing the voluntary work she loved so much, mainly with old people. Ruth smiled at that, as she’d always thought Great-Aunt Alice
was
old. But perhaps there were different stages of being old she didn’t yet know about.

Still, for now, she lay back in the water which was deliciously hot and stared at the nun who stared back, the look on her face one of kindness. From downstairs, Ruth could hear the sound of the washing machine being turned on, and then the murmur of her great-aunt’s voice on the phone in the hall. She must be phoning the school and she wondered what she was saying. The thought of school felt like someone had hit her in the stomach, someone like Lorraine, and Ruth sank deeper into the safety of the water. She put the origami nun onto the stool near the bath and gazed at her. Funny how the nun made her feel safe too, but she couldn’t go back to school, she really couldn’t. What was she going to do?

Soon she heard the sound of the telephone being replaced, and then footsteps on the stairs as her great-aunt returned. Ruth sat up in the bath, hugging her knees to her chest, and waited.

Great-Aunt Alice opened the bathroom door, holding two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Ruth could smell them. She gave one mug to Ruth and then, putting the origami nun on the rim of the bath behind the taps, she sat down on the stool and took a long slurp of her own drink.

Ruth giggled silently. The noises her great-aunt made when she drank hot chocolate always made her laugh. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. For a while, the two of them slurped their drinks quietly together. Then Great-Aunt Alice put down her mug and picked up the nun, holding her gently between her fingers.

“Did something horrible happen at school?” she asked quietly.

Ruth nodded.

“Was it that Lorraine, the girl you don’t like, who upset you?”

Ruth nodded again and her great-aunt sighed.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get you out of the bath and into some dry clothes and then you can write down exactly what happened.”

Ruth finished her hot chocolate and let the bathwater out. She dressed in the clothes Great-Aunt Alice had laid out on the bed for her—her favourite pink top and her most comfortable trousers—and hurried downstairs to the kitchen, taking the nun with her. Neither of them wanted to keep her great-aunt waiting. Usually Ruth enjoyed writing down her account of how her day had been but she wasn’t looking forward to it now. It had to be done though. She hoped the origami nun would help her.

With the nun’s help, Ruth’s pencil flowed across the page and soon her great-aunt had the whole story in full. As Ruth finished each piece of paper, Great-Aunt Ruth would pick it up and read it slowly while Ruth carried on writing. This was their usual way of communication and it was one that suited them both. Great-Aunt Alice believed that some things were best understood slowly and in fact that the best things in life were never rushed. It was something she told Ruth often.

When she’d read all of Ruth’s words, she put the papers down in a neat pile at the edge of the kitchen table and closed her eyes. Ruth knew her great-aunt was thinking and she became as quiet as possible while she waited. Great-Aunt Alice didn’t like interruptions while she was thinking. In her hands, she was sure the origami nun twitched and Ruth glanced down at her. She thought the nun was smiling.

After a while, Great-Aunt Alice opened her eyes again and spoke. “This is not a very good thing to happen on your birthday, my dear. It’s not even a good thing to happen at any time and we do need to try to make it better. I’ve spoken to the school and they’re glad to know you’re safe with me, but you mustn’t run away like that again, do you understand?”

Ruth nodded. She knew it had been a stupid thing to do and she’d have to go back, but she hadn’t been able to help herself at the time. Anyway, she hadn’t been unsafe, had she? The nun had been with her. To try to show her great-aunt how important the origami nun was, she placed her on Great-Aunt Alice’s lap and smiled.

Her great-aunt smiled back. “Yes, my love, she’s very beautiful and I know she has special powers, but even so you’re a little girl and you have to be careful.”

It startled Ruth that her great-aunt knew so much about the nun. But then again great-aunts knew everything, didn’t they? And Great-Aunt Alice knew more than most so Ruth listened carefully as she continued to talk.

“We’ll have lunch together,” she said. “A birthday lunch just for you. Then we’ll go back into school this afternoon, and then the nun, you and I will see what Lorraine has to say. Because if there’s cruelty in the world, then it’s up to us to try to make things kinder.”

Ruth helped her great-aunt make poached eggs on toast, and this was followed by a slice of freshly made lemon meringue pie, which Great-Aunt Alice must have baked this morning. She supposed it was for her birthday tea surprise, but she was very glad to eat some now, on her own. Lemon meringue pie was one of her great-aunt’s best recipes and Ruth had never tasted anything better. It was light and bright and sharp, it was soft and sweet and lemony. It was Ruth’s favourite pudding ever and she loved it. While her great-aunt had her back turned, Ruth quickly took a piece of the pie and put it in the nun’s lap where she sat on the chair beside her. She thought the nun, if she were really magical, might like it and, sure enough, when Ruth next looked round, the lemon meringue pie had vanished. The nun, and Great-Aunt Alice, were both smiling, and Ruth smiled back.