The Red Shoe (16 page)

“What if Mummy and Daddy were really dead?” she asked. “What would we do?”

“They’re not dead, Mattie,” said Elizabeth.

“But if they were,” persisted Matilda. “Where would we live?”

“We’d live here, of course,” said Elizabeth. “Where else would we live?”

We could just stay here? wondered Frances. In this house? How could there be a house of children without a mother or a father? Then she thought of Mark and his mother. How could there be a mother without a child?

“But who would look after us?” frowned Matilda. “We need someone to look after us.”

“I would look after you,” said Elizabeth.

I
love
Elizabeth, thought Matilda with a rush. I
love
her.

“Would you?” said Frances. She turned and looked at Elizabeth seriously. Would she?

“Well, I’d have to, wouldn’t I?” said Elizabeth.

But I do love her, thought Matilda, and it made her feel so strange she jumped off the sofa and ran out through the laundry into the back yard.

The sun had set and it was night-time. Matilda skipped down alongside the grey splintering fence, near the wet patch where she had found her snails. She sank herself into the ground covered by long, thick, prickly fronds of ivy and peered through the cracks.

The yellow house next door was utterly dark. It was as though it had been shut up, and everybody had gone. There were no cars in the driveway. Had they all left, all those people? Could so many people leave just like that, without anyone noticing, without even saying goodbye?

Suddenly Matilda was aware of eyes looking at her through the green, two tiny, shining, slow, black eyes. She pulled herself up against the fence, her heart beating fast. There was a crackling in the leaves.

It’s the goanna, she thought at once. The one that had crawled right up to their house that day, slowly moving its legs forward, one after the other, the one that Uncle Paul frightened away. Half of her was afraid, like her father, but the other half of her was excited. Perhaps this time she would catch it!

“Pssst,” she hissed, moving slightly forward. But the eyes disappeared into the wet leafy darkness.

The earth smelt strong to Matilda and full of things growing and dying all at the same time. She stood up against the fence between the two houses. She had so many thoughts in her head.

She thought about the grey-green tangled bush at the end of her street, full of cowboys and Red Indians, waiting with their guns and their bows and arrows. She thought about the Japs and the Germans and the shining sword and chocolate biscuits, and the Argonauts sailing across the ocean, and the silver trail of snails on cardboard. She thought about the swirling lollipop with every colour in the world, and the old man’s head on the pavement with blood trickling out from it, and the princess in the film, “How do you do, so glad you could come, how do you do” and the wonderful butterfly bathroom and poor little Karen and her beautiful red shoes. She thought about the sad smiling man with his chess set and the newsreel and her tennis ball, up and up and up in the air, high as the tallest tree in the Basin, and Uncle Paul with his hands in his pockets, his lock of grey hair that flopped over his face, and her mother’s red shoe falling down down down into the deep green bush for ever.

Then she remembered the shoebox that their father had brought home with her mother’s present inside.

“That would be good for another snail hotel,” said Matilda to herself. “Just the right size.”

Matilda! she heard someone calling, Matilda! Where are you, where are you, Matilda?

When I grow up I’m going to go around the world! thought Matilda.

She would, she would. Not on a boat, on a plane. She would fly around the world. She held her arms straight out on either side, like an aeroplane.

“Around the world!” she shouted, running up and down the dark back yard.

Matilda! Where are you, Matilda!

All the radios inside all the houses in all the world were humming together, and the sky was filled with electricity. And Matilda was not afraid at all.

While the people and events in this novel are imaginary, the newspaper excerpts are taken directly from the
Sydney Morning Herald
, the
Sun
and the
Sun–Herald
of the dates stated. I gratefully acknowledge the
Sydney Morning Herald
and Australian Associated Press for granting permission to reproduce these extracts.

The extracts from “The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen are from
The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
, edited by Lily Owens, Gramercy Books, New York, 1996, pages 450–3.

U
RSULA
D
UBOSARSKY
is an award-winning author of numerous books for children and young adults, including
The Golden Day
, her first title with Walker Books. About
The Red Shoe
she says, “The children in this story live in both their own world and the adult world – a confusion of shifting shadows, mysteries and secret marvels. Only sometimes do the two worlds cross, and when they do, it’s the smallest child who proves to have the deepest knowledge of all.” Ursula lives in Australia.

Visit her at
www.ursuladubosarsky.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

Published by arrangement with Allen and Unwin

First published in Great Britain 2015 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

Text © 2006 by Ursula Dubosarky
Cover illustration © 2015 by Rebecca Stadtlander

The right of Ursula Dubosarky to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4063-6401-9 (ePub)

www.walker.co.uk