Alice in Time (12 page)

Gingerly, I move my head and then my arms and legs to see if anything hurts. It doesn’t – I feel fine. In fact, I feel more than fine. I feel great. I sit up but something isn’t right. I’m wearing a dress for starters and socks – white knee-length ones. How strange. My feet are in sandals, the sort that young children wear. I wiggle my toes. The feet’s toes wiggle. But they can’t be my feet, they’re way too small. Then I see the plaits hanging down. Why is my hair in plaits? I tug at them. Ouch – yes, they’re definitely mine. I stand up. The ground is too near, like I’ve shrunk or something.

Beyond the swings is a slide. It’s one of those tube slides made out of stainless steel. In other words, I’ll be able to see my reflection in it. I begin to run towards it and fall flat on my
face. I pick myself up and walk. Obviously I need a bit of time to get used to my new shape. I feel much lighter and looser. Sort of springy and bouncy.

I peer into the metal side of the slide. The reflection is distorted because of the way the tube curves, but I can see myself well enough. Or I would be able to, if there wasn’t some snotty kid in the way. I look around to tell her to scoot, but there’s no one there. I’m alone. I turn back to the slide, and there’s the kid again. It’s me! It’s a little me!

My face is rounder and my nose much smaller. What I’m looking at is me when I was about seven or eight. I sit down on the end of the slide where the tube comes out on to a flattened bit. My heart is flibberty flobbing. Must breathe.

The metal feels warm against the back of my bare legs – my now very skinny legs. I notice a graze covering most of my left knee. Did I do that when I came flying off the roundabout? It looks quite old, all crusty and scabbed over. I pick at the scab and a bit of it flakes off easily, leaving the skin underneath all pink and shiny and new. I put the end of one of my plaits into my mouth and suck. I need to think.

I haven’t sucked my hair for years. It’s such a familiar sensation, but a far-off memory at the same time. I must concentrate; I need to process what’s happening here. Something very weird – that’s for sure. I must be hallucinating. That’s it! I fell off the roundabout and hit my head and now I’m hallucinating.

I shut my eyes and shake my head vigorously. I’ll be OK in a minute, I know I will. Please, please, please let it be OK. When I open my eyes, though, everything’s just the same: the
dress, the sandals, the scab, the plaits – they’re all still there. If I’m hallucinating, it’s very realistic.

I can see some people coming across the grass towards the playground. It’s a group of three mothers and five children and I decide it’s time to go. There’s nothing for it – I’ll have to go home and face my mum. To be truthful, all I want at the moment is to go home. I don’t care if Mum shouts at me. If I’ve been out all night she’ll think I’ve been at Dad’s. If she rang him to check, she wouldn’t have got any answer, not now Trish has gone to her mum’s. I wonder if I ought to tell Mum about the baby and Dad disappearing?

I have this feeling that once I get home, everything will be all right – I’ll tell Mum I’m not well and go to bed and have a sleep and then when I wake up this nightmare will be over. Of course I’ll still have the nightmare of being betrayed by Seth, and Imogen not speaking to me, and being grounded for evermore, and worrying about where Dad’s got to – but hey! – what’s all that compared to this? Surely there must be some medical term for thinking you’re a child again? Oh yes, it’s called insanity.

I start to run. It feels amazing. I haven’t run like this for years. At school, in the summer, we have to do cross-country running, but nobody except the keen, sporty ones actually
runs
. Most of us just lope around the course, jogging for a bit, but mostly walking.

Now, I’m flying across the grass – I feel like I could go on forever – that my legs will carry me to the ends of the earth if I asked them to. And maybe they would, but I run out of breath before I reach the gates, and have to stop.

I do a couple of cartwheels. Wow, it’s easy! I try a handstand.
Then I realise I’m showing my knickers. There’s a man and a dog walking along the path and I look at him to see if he’s noticed. He smiles at me and his dog comes running over, wagging its tail, and starts licking me. The man follows and takes the dog by the collar, pulling it away.

‘Where’s your mummy?’ he asks, looking around, no doubt for a responsible adult. Now, I try not to believe that
every
man is a pervert, and I’m sure this man means well, but the truth is you can’t tell, just by looking at someone, if they’re OK or not, so I decide to get out of there.

‘She’s in the toilet,’ I tell him and run off towards the loos.

The public loos in the park aren’t very nice, and normally I’d try not to use them. Luckily, they are empty and I run over to the mirrors to check if I’m back to normal, but they’re too high up and I can’t see. I scramble up on to the sink unit. Damn, I still look seven. I poke my tongue out at myself and grin. Oh my God! I’ve got two teeth missing. Did that happen when I fell off the roundabout?

This is a disaster! My two front teeth – gone! I can’t go around like this! I’ve got to get to a dentist. Hang on, my teeth aren’t the only things that feel odd.

With my heart racing, I climb down and shut myself in one of the toilet cubicles. I lift up my dress and see a pair of pink knickers. They’ve got a picture of Barbie on them. OK – I think – this is definitely some weird hallucination. I peek inside. Eeek! All my pubic hair has fallen out. I look up top. Obviously I’m not wearing a bra – there’s nothing there. I’m completely flat! I can see my ribs.

Then I realise something.The man out there, with the dog,
asked me where my ‘mummy’ was. He must have seen a seven-year-old girl as well. So it can’t all be in my head. Unless he was hallucinating too – which is ridiculous. Maybe he was part of my hallucination. This all started when I flew off that stupid roundabout so maybe, in reality, I’m lying in intensive care, in a coma, imagining all this. I pinch myself. Ouch!

I leave the loos and start to run again. When I turn into George Street everything looks beautifully normal. Usually, when I approach number twelve, a feeling of depression descends upon me because the house looks so unwelcoming. There’s a huge yew hedge surrounding the front garden and this cuts out most of the sunshine. The grass is all mossy, hardly anything can grow in there and the front path is always slimy and wet. Today, though, I don’t care. I push open the front gate. It isn’t as rickety as usual – Mum must have had it mended.

I skid up the front path and realise that I haven’t got my front door key on me. I’ll have to see if the back door’s open. I go round the side of the house but for some reason the side gate’s closed and when I try to open it, I find it’s locked. We never shut that gate and I didn’t even know Mum had a key for it. I go back to the front door and ring the bell. If Mum has a go at me for forgetting my key I’ll just shout at her for locking the side gate. Why is she taking so long to come to the door? I can see her through the stained glass, making her way down the hall. God! Why is she so slow?

I’m bouncing up and down with impatience. Finally, she’s at the door. Now she’s fiddling with the safety chain! We never use that. God, hurry up! The door opens and I’m about to
shout at her for being so slow, but the words get sucked back in by my gasp. Because, instead of Mum standing there, it‘s Miss Maybrooke. The Miss Maybrooke that was at death’s door only last night – the Miss Maybrooke who called for Mum to dash to her bedside – thereby ruining my date with Seth and, in fact, my life.

Is this some sort of elaborate joke that Mum has cooked up? Is she trying to get her own back because I scared her last night by going out and not telling her where I was? No, that’s crazy. Miss Maybrooke was ill. She was bedridden. I saw her myself at the nursing home. But this is definitely her standing at the door, and although she’s old and bent she isn’t
dead
. When Mum got home last night she was upset because Miss Maybrooke had died. She’d never joke about something like that.

‘Can I help you, dear?’

I realise I’m doing my guppy impression again – the one I did when Luke asked me out – the one where I stand there with my mouth opening and closing.

‘You’re a bit young to be working for social services. They said they’d send someone round to help me with the housework. I was expecting someone a bit older. You’re not from social services, surely?’

‘No,’ I say and then, in a moment of inspiration, ‘I’m from the Girl Guides . . . no, the Brownies.’ Am I seven or fourteen? I don’t care – I just want to get inside the house to see if Mum and Rory are in there. ‘It’s “Bob a Job” week. Do you have any jobs you’d like me to do?’

Miss Maybrooke looks doubtful.

‘Well, I don’t know, dear. You look a bit small.’

That’s right, rub it in, I think.

‘Maybe I can find something for you to do. You’d better come in so I can shut the door and keep the cold out.’ I’m tempted to tell her that it’s a hot, sunny day beyond the hedge and that she should chop it down – but what’s the point? She’s only a hallucination.

She moves aside and I step indoors. The first thing that I notice is the smell. It smells of lavender and beeswax with an undertone of old lady. Also, there’s lino on the hall floor. It’s all grubby and cracked. The air is cold and damp. If I thought it was bad when I lived here, this is much worse.

By now we’ve reached the kitchen, but instead of the bright new one my mum had fitted, it’s really old-fashioned and it smells of sour milk. Now I know it’s not a joke.

Miss Maybrooke is rummaging under the sink and pulls out a bag of potatoes. She spreads some newspaper on the table and hands me a potato peeler.

‘I wonder if you could do these for me. I have a bit of trouble with them these days, with my hands like this.’ She waves them at me and I see that they’re all scrunched up – the fingers twisted and bent. ‘Arthritis,’ she says. ‘It’s a terrible thing, getting old.’

You ought to try getting younger, I think. It’s not exactly a bundle of laughs. I’m having trouble keeping hold of the potato because my hands aren’t big enough.

‘I think I’ve got some orange squash somewhere.’ She’s rummaging in the cupboard again and brings out a sticky-looking bottle containing something dangerously orange. She pours some into a glass and gives it to me. I take a tentative
sip and try not to spit it back out all over the potatoes. Should I tell her that it’s supposed to have water added to it? Now she’s found me some carrots and as I peel them, I wonder about discussing my problem with her. But what exactly could I say? ‘I had an accident and I’m in a coma and not really here,’ sounds like the ramblings of a deranged person. She’s likely to think that it’s just some game I’m playing.

It’s then that I notice the newspaper. I push aside the peelings and look for the date.

‘Is this today’s paper?’ I ask as innocently as possible, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.

‘No, dear, that’s yesterday’s. I haven’t read today’s yet.’

And there it is, at the top – 2nd June, which is right – but seven years ago!

Miss Maybrooke is getting a pound coin out of her purse.

‘Thank you, dear, that’s very helpful,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘You’d better run off home. Where do you live? Is it far?’ That is a very good question. If I don’t live here – which I obviously don’t – then where do I live? Oh my God! Of course!

‘I live at twenty-five Cavendish Street,’ I tell her, which is where the seven-year-old me lived. I have to get back there. This is truly awesome – I’m going HOME.

I run all the way to Cavendish Street. I could get a bus some of the way, with the pound I’ve just earned, but I’m so excited I feel like running. I slow down when I get a couple of streets from home, though. What if I’m wrong? What if Mum isn’t at the house in Cavendish Street?

I stop when I get there and stand looking at it. It’s just an ordinary house – not old, like Miss Maybrooke’s house in George Street. This house has an open front garden, a garage and a red front door. It looks like home. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wished that I still lived here with Mum and Dad and no Rory.

Right, here goes. I ring the front door bell and when the door opens, there’s my mum. She looks perfectly ‘mum-like’, only prettier and happier and a lot taller. No – I forgot; it’s me that’s a lot shorter. The relief at seeing her is too much and I burst into tears.

‘Alice, sweetheart, whatever’s the matter?’

She pulls me to her and gives me a huge hug. My first reaction is to pull away. I never hug my mum – I leave that sort of thing to Rory. But somehow it feels right. When I put my arms round her, though, there’s a big lump in the way.

‘Oops, mind the baby,’ she says and I realise that she’s pregnant and that ‘the baby’ must be Rory.

I manage to reduce my sobbing to sniffing.

‘Have you fallen out with Sasha again?’ says Mum, looking up and down the street. ‘Did her mummy just drop you off and go?’ She tuts and closes the door. ‘She could have waited. What if I’d been out or something?’

What? What
is
she talking about?

‘Never mind,’ she continues, ‘I’m sure you’ll make it up with Sasha at school tomorrow.’

Of course! When I was seven, Sasha and I were always round each other’s houses. I suppose Mum thinks that’s where I’ve been. But never mind all that – I’m here in Cavendish Street!

‘Come and have some milk and biscuits,’ says Mum. It’s a bit freaky – she’s talking to me in the same way that she talks to Rory. We go into the kitchen. I want to run around the house looking at everything and touching it to make sure it’s real, but Mum’s poured me a glass of milk and put a couple of biscuits on a plate. Chocolate biscuits.

‘I’d rather have a coffee,’ I say.

Mum laughs. ‘You funny thing,’ she says, and gives me a kiss. OK, I guess coffee’s off the menu, then.

‘Mum, where’s Dad?’ I ask her.

‘At work, of course,’ she says.

‘But will he be coming back? Here – I mean. He will come home, won’t he?’