Tiger Moth (19 page)

Dad slowly crept into the room and sat down on my bed.

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ Dad said and I nodded.

‘She doesn’t have a name yet,’ Mum said, looking up at me, smiling hopefully. I sat up and wriggled closer to Dad. I took his arm, pulled it round my waist and I felt him kiss
the top of my head. I let my feet dangle down from the bed so that my toes were touching the top of Mum’s feet, so that I could feel her soft skin beneath mine. I leaned in closer to my dad
and stroked the hairs on his freckly arms. All the questions stopped being questions. All the bad feeling that was churning in my stomach was gone. It was just like it used to be, but something
made it better.

I peered over the blanket at my little sister. She
was
beautiful, she really was. With her tiny hand, she reached up, gripped my finger and stared right at me. She seemed to stare at me
as though she would never stop. Her little hand seemed to hold on so tightly I thought she would never let go. As she began to drink again, her eyes stayed fixed on mine, and when I tried to pull
my finger free she gripped it even tighter. She was so small. Smaller than small. Tinier than tiny. I stared back at her eyes, smiled and after six months of silence I looked up at Dad and Mum and
softly said: ‘Rebecca.’

Mum and Dad looked at each other quickly and then they both smiled.

‘Rebecca Richardson,’ Mum said.

‘Rebecca,’ Dad sort of whispered. ‘It’s perfect.’

Now my little sister has a name.

It was Tuesday August 27th when I sat up in bed and felt like me again. My eyes sort of pinged open. I jumped out of bed, pulled back the curtains and when I looked down the
garden to the cedar tree I saw something which made my heart sing.

I didn’t walk down the hallway, I ran. I didn’t run down the stairs, I jumped two steps at a time, and I didn’t stop until I felt the wet grass under my bare feet and I was
standing right under the cedar tree, looking up at it.

‘It’s amazing!’ I shouted. ‘It’s perfect!’ I cried. ‘It’s the best tree house in the whole world!’

And just then Zack stuck his head out from the little window and said, ‘That’s exactly what I said.’

He let down a little rope ladder and I climbed all the way up. The first room was sort of square and it had a kind of rectangular window that looked down across the fields and out to sea. It was
like a perfect little wooden house, and there was even enough room for two beanbags and a table. The walls were painted a sort of pale blue, like the colour of the stones on the beach. On one wall
there was a huge map so that you could see the whole of the vale and out to sea to the little island where no one lives.

‘It’s cool, isn’t it?’ Zack said, showing me the three little steps which led up to another smaller room that also had a kind of window. ‘It’s a two-tier tree
house and I helped make it.’

And the best thing about it was this. At one end of the tree house was a hole that you could fit through and slide down to the ground on a sort of fireman’s pole which is exactly what I
did. In fact, I did it three more times until I heard a familiar, horrid, whiny voice, and when I looked out of the window I saw the toady face that it belonged to. Casper. I’d forgotten all
about him and Florence coming to stay, and as I looked up the lawn to the terrace I saw Aunt Aggy and Florence walking across the terrace towards Mum.

‘Let me up!’ Casper demanded, folding his arms across his chest and tapping his foot.

‘Who is that?’ Zack asked, peering down the hole.

‘It’s Casper, my cousin,’ I said, pulling a face.

‘Let me up now!’ he yelled, his pasty face getting redder.

‘Quick,’ said Zack and he pulled the rope ladder back up into the tree house just in time to see a red-faced Casper glare up at us.

‘I want to come up!’ he shouted. ‘Let me up now!’ But Zack and I just laughed, and when he tried to climb up the fireman’s pole the two of us laughed so loudly that
I think the whole of Porlock Weir must have heard us. ‘I’m telling! I’m telling Mummy!’ he cried.

Zack, who was trying to stop laughing, just shouted back, ‘NO ONE likes a telltale, Casper!’

We stayed up there until Mum shouted at me to come inside and get dressed, but before I slid down the pole Zack said, ‘Will you tell? I mean, seeing as you’re all better and
everything?’ He looked scared, really worried, and I shook my head and crossed my heart.

I raced back inside the house. I heard Rebecca before I saw her. Mum looked really tired again, poor Mum; it’s actually hard work looking after something so tiny. I followed her upstairs
to the nursery. I stood at the door and watched her carefully lift Rebecca out of my old cot and when she turned to me she took my hand in hers. We walked slowly down the hall together until we
reached the big windows that look out on to the garden. She sat down in the middle window and I sat next to her. Then she showed me how to hold my little sister. I held my arms out and delicately
cradled Rebecca so that her head was resting on my arm and she was safe and snug.

Have you ever held a baby? Have you held one close to your heart? It made me feel like a giant. It made me feel like I was holding on to something that could break. At first I was scared and I
looked up at Mum worriedly.

‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll be fine.’

When Rebecca opened her eyes, she stared right at me again and I smiled. Then she opened her mouth and, I don’t know why, but I thought she might just say hello, so I did.

‘Hello,’ I said softly. ‘Hello, Rebecca. I’m Alice. I’m your big sister.’

I looked down at the tiny warm bundle. I felt her wriggle and squirm about, and I kind of liked it. It was a bit like a doll that I used to take everywhere except this was better; this little
doll actually moved around and looked at me. This Rebecca really belonged to me.

Mum handed me a tiny bottle of milk and, without thinking or knowing, without even being told how, I lifted it to her dainty pink mouth and I fed her. She sucked and sucked, and it made me
giggle a bit and feel special and grown-up.

‘Alice,’ Mum said softly. ‘When you became our daughter, when I held you for the first time, I was scared. I was scared, but I was the happiest I had ever been in my whole
life. It makes me very happy to see you hold your sister. I love you both very much.’

I looked up from Rebecca to Mum’s pale face and saw the tears roll down her cheeks and land on her lilac shawl like little silver droplets of rain.

‘She would have loved you so much,’ she said and she leaned over to me and kissed my forehead. ‘She would have loved you if she could have.’

For some reason it made me think of Otter. It made me think of Zack’s gorgeous brown dog. I remembered the dream I had had and I understood. I thought about the photograph of my other
mother and then I said, ‘Where is she now?’

Mum didn’t say anything for a while, but I could see her concentrating hard as though she was trying to put the words together, but kept getting mixed up. ‘We don’t know a lot
about her. We know she was very young when she had you, and that she didn’t have a family to help her, and that she was from London.’

As I listened to her, it was as though it didn’t matter. As she told me a little tiny bit about the mother who had given me away, I found that I didn’t care in the way I thought I
would. My other mother gave me away for a reason: so I could find my real mother who was sitting right in front of me.

I looked up at Mum’s tear-stained face and then down at my beautiful, most perfect little sister. ‘Mum, you are, like, totally crying on Rebecca now, look,’ I said, wiping one
of Mum’s tears from Rebecca’s cheek, and Mum smiled at me again. I sniffed the air and wrinkled my nose. ‘Was that you, Mum, or Rebecca?’ And we both laughed.

‘I’m so proud of you, Alice,’ Mum said, kissing the tip of my nose, and then she pulled me close towards her. I turned round and sat with my back against her, so that she had
her arms round me and I had mine round my beautiful baby sister. We sat like that for ages and when Rebecca finished her milk she closed her eyes again and fell asleep holding on to my little
finger.

I didn’t say anything for a while, but then the rain began. It started with tiny droplets that rattled on the windowpane and very soon the sky seemed to have turned almost black and there
was a waterfall of water. Mum reached up with one hand and pulled the curtain round us so that we were hidden on the window seat, so that it was just the three of us.

‘Mum, how come you and Dad said the footpath to the cove was covered in rocks and things? How come we never went down there because I think it’s amazing?’

She didn’t say anything for ages and, as I looked down at Rebecca, she told me a story that I had never heard before. I listened with the widest eyes. I heard every letter of every word,
and in the end I knew the real reason why the beach had been closed off and it all made perfect sense. And I knew that Zack and I must keep our secret for ever and ever.

The next day Rebecca stayed at home with my aunt and uncle, but Dad said, ‘There’s only one thing to do on a hot day like this,’ and Mum, Casper, Florence and
me followed him through the rose garden where the red rose bush had now been cut back to reveal the overgrown door which I had found.

‘Wow!’ Florence said when she saw the door. ‘That is, like, so cool,’ and, as we walked down the footpath, I told her all about the story I had heard from Mum. When we
got to the waterfall, she turned to me and, tying her long hair in a sort of messy bun, she said, ‘It’s all beginning to make sense now, isn’t it?’ I nodded. I wanted to
tell Zack all about it too, but Mum had said I shouldn’t talk about it too much in case it made Dad feel sad.

When we got to the beach, Zack was there with his bodyboard and for the first time ever I realised that Casper wasn’t being annoying.

‘Is it true?’ Florence asked as we looked for shells together. ‘Is it true you named your sister?’

I looked over at Zack and smiled. ‘Yes, it’s true.’ And just then I spotted the perfect pink shell. It made me think of Rebecca’s little pink mouth and I picked it off
the sand. ‘For Rebecca,’ I said, holding up the shell for Florence to see.

‘It’s perfect,’ she said, looping her arm into mine and the two of us lay in the sun until we got so hot that there was only one thing to do: run as fast as we could into the
sea and dive right under.

That night it was like I was the mum or something because I got to give Rebecca a bath. Well, Mum was in the bathroom too, but I got to fill the little bath up, make sure the
water wasn’t too hot and I used the little sponge to wash her softest-ever skin. Mum wrapped Rebecca in a big white fluffy towel and we carried her back to the nursery. As Mum dried her off,
I placed the pink shell on the chest by her music box.

‘For luck,’ I said.

Mum reached out and stroked my face. ‘She doesn’t need luck. She has you.’

Later, as I climbed into bed, I picked up the photograph of my other mother and took a closer look. The thing that was so familiar wasn’t the street she stood on or the shop she was
standing in front of; it was her eyes. I’d seen them before. I’d seen them every time I looked in the mirror. We did look alike. We had the exact same eyes and smile.

I opened the drawer and placed the photograph inside. I knew I’d look at it again, but there wasn’t really enough room on my bedside table for two photographs, all my books
and
shells from the beach. So, gently, I put the photo away and softly closed the drawer.

That night, as I was falling asleep, I heard the owls in the woods, the waves as they crashed on to the beach and I thought of Rebecca again. Would she grow up to be as tall as Dad? Would she
have hair like Mum? Or would she love swimming in the sea just like me? And in the morning I couldn’t wait to see her.

Yesterday Alice saw the world’s greatest tree house.

I thought I was going to have to lock her annoying cousin Casper in the shed at the back of the vegetable garden. At first I really thought I might have to do something drastic, and when he
started whining about nothing much I waited till no one was looking and gave him a really good dead arm instead. He turned round and glared at me, and for a millisecond I was kind of worried that
he would scream the place down. But after that he kind of stopped being a complete brat and followed me around all day which was a little less annoying.

Alice’s other cousin Florence is sort of OK; she’s really pretty and everything, but she’s not as cool as Alice and she’s a bit like: ‘I live in a castle’,
‘I have three ponies’, ‘I’m so great’. But when we all went down to Culver again she spent the whole time with Alice and every time I looked over Alice was laughing or
doing one of her silly animal walks.

The next day Mum drove me up the hill to visit George, and when we got there the two of them hugged for ages, and when I looked at George he wiped a tear away from his
cheek.

‘He’s going to lend us one of his collection for the day,’ Mum said and I immediately thought about the Ferrari again. But it
so
wasn’t a Ferrari. It was a sort
of camper van thing and as I waited for Mum to finish her cup of tea I wandered into the barn and over to the plane once more, but I didn’t touch it.

‘Fancy going up in her one day?’

I turned round quickly and shook my head at George.

‘Well, if you ever change your mind,’ he said and walked away. Part of me wanted to cry out after him, but part of me knew that I couldn’t.

It took over an hour to drive the little van down the coast road and when I started to feel a bit carsick I kind of wished I hadn’t eaten five pancakes for breakfast. Mum
parked the little van near the sand dunes and, as I looked down the vast windy beach, I couldn’t get in my wetsuit quick enough. The waves were almost perfect. Even Mum put her wetsuit on and
the two of us bodyboarded until my arms ached and my eyes stung, but I didn’t care.

That night the two of us lit a campfire and cooked a sort of supper and a pudding of toasted marshmallows that tasted so delicious I had to fight to have the last one. We lay back on our little
beds with tired bodies and stuffed-to-bursting tummies, and I asked her the question I’d been wanting to ask since the time I was in the attic with David.